The Making of the Scottish Countryside

Book excerpt: Originally published in 1980, this book examines the evolution of the Scottish landscape from pre-historic times to the mid-nineteenth century. It considers the way in which the structural base of agriculture and the changing farming ‘system’ came to alter the Scottish rural landscape. This book, with its focus on the underlying landscape processes, gives a developmental view of landscape change. It therefore considers the crucial question of the rate and pace of landscape change and argues that the Scottish landscape was not the product of a few brief phases of quite rapid development but rather the result of a continual and gradual process of change. It also looks at the regional variation of landscape change and establishes the importance of regional linkages in the diffusion of ideas especially in new technology.