THE HISTORY OF THE AREA
Earliest Times
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THE HISTORY OF THE AREA
Earliest Times
When the glaciers and ice-sheets of the last Ice Age finally retreated from the Scottish Highlands some ten and a half thousand years ago, they left a barren landscape of sub-Arctic tundra, much like that of modern northern Siberia or Canada, with humocky low-lying districts, where extensive tracts of marsh and boggy pools formed in the hollows. At this time much of the lands around the coastal marsh teemed with wildfowl and game. Even many of the hillier areas of the Highlands and the Northern and Western Isles were cloaked beneath game-rich forests.The low-lying promontory that projects eastwards from the mountainous interior of Ross-shire to end in the rocky headland of Tarbat Ness was an area where hill-country and coastal marshes met. To the west the land rose steeply into moorland backed by mountains and cut by deeply-eroded river valleys. Southwards lay the Cromarty Firth and to the north the Dornoch Firth and the long Kyles of Sutherland
First Peoples
Ten thousand years ago, wandering bands of semi-nomadic tribesmen roamed the land. These 'hunter-gatherers' neither farmed nor raised stock, but were entirely dependent on the natural resources of the land where they could reside for a few months to exploit the local wildlife until either the weather or depletion of the hunting-stock forced them to move on.
No firm evidence of the presence of these early hunters has been found in Easter Ross, but it is unlikely that the rich hunting-grounds which bordered the Dornoch and Cromarty Firths would have escaped their attention, particularly in the area of the Morrich More to the east of Tain, where sandy flats and salt-marsh had grown up at the foot of the boulder-clay cliffs to the raised beach.
The Earliest Farmers
Some five and a half to six thousand years ago the first primitive barley, or bere, was being grown by Ross-shire farmers in the lighter, upland soils - the light ploughs of the Neolithic farmers couldn't cope with the heavy clay soils of the lower grounds of the Tain peninsula.
The wetlands along the south shores of the Dornoch Firth had little attraction for these first farmers, other than as grazing for their flocks and herds and as hunting land. They seem to have made their settlements west of Tain, where the land rises more rapidly from the Firth, and to have exploited the land. Whilst we cannot say with certainty where they lived, however, we can still see where they were buried. Amongst the greatest monuments raised by the Neolithic farmers were the great communal tombs - the chambered cairns - which served both as places of burial and of worship. Great upright slabs, the narrow spaces in between them filled with smaller stones, were set in a ring to form an inner chamber into which a long passage would lead from one side. Over this would be raised a great mound of pebbles and stones, bounded on its outer edge by a kerb of massive boulders.
To later peoples these tombs were not objects of veneration, but were simply convenient piles of building-stone. Long since plundered, several of these cairns survive to the west of Tain, at Ardvannie and Leachonich near Edderton. Despite having lost most of its covering mound of stones, the cairn at Ardvannie is still more than seventy feet in diameter.
The Bronze Age
By about four thousand years ago the eastern and southern-facing slopes of the hills of Easter Ross had probably been freed from trees and won for farming: the low lying ground of the Tain peninsula with its heavy soils was still too wet to be tackled by these primitive farmers. But by about 2000 BC it is clear that a new society had emerged, one which was dominated by a warrior-aristocracy and distinguishable from the Neolithic by new styles of burial, new forms of pottery and the appearance for the first time of tools and weapons made from bronze.
The climate had reached what is referred to as the 'post-glacial optimum' and had begun to deteriorate, becoming cooler and wetter. Peat began to grow on the higher land and the growing season for barley in the uplands began to shorten. Many old settlements, such as those on the moors near Aultnamain and on the eastern slopes of Struie near Edderton, were abandoned as the peat encroached on their fields and the barley failed to ripen in the colder, wetter climate
The Iron Age
By about 500 BC iron had begun to replace bronze as the main metal used in the manufacture of tools and weapons. From the time of the late Bronze Age settlements had begun to be protected by massive defences. Hillforts emerged as the main centres of population, where the chiefs and their warrior entourage lorded it over the neighbouring farmers. One such fort was begun to the west of Tain at Cnoc an Duin near Scotsburn, but for some reason it was left unfinished. Its half-built ramparts crown a broad shoulder high above Strath Rory, looking out over the lands controlled by the chief who ordered its construction.
The sites of the outlying farmsteads have long since been swept away by modern agriculture. One probable site survives at Easter Rarichies, to the south of Cadboll and Ballintore, where a small fort or homestead lies on the northern slopes of the hills which look westwards across the interior of the Tain peninsula. At Scotsburn itself, a little over a mile from the hillfort at Cnoc an Duin, are the remains of a dun - a smaller stone-built fort - which may have served as the stronghold of the chief of the district in place of his unfinished stronghold.
In the 80s AD the Roman army had campaigned in the north and a fleet sailed right round the Scottish coast, harrying the coastlands and receiving the submission of many of the remoter tribes. The Alexandrian Greek geographer Ptolemy, writing in the 2nd Century AD, produced a map of the British Isles which gave names to the tribes settled in various parts of the country. Between the Beauly Firth and the Strath of Kildonan he placed a people which he called the Decantae.
Throughout the first two centuries AD Roman raiders and traders scoured the coasts of the lands beyond the imperial frontier, with many people fleeing from conquered areas and attempting to settle in areas remote from the threat of Roman campaigns. The broch-builders, settlers and craftsmen from the Northern Isles spread their influence southwards down the coasts of Scotland. The great drystone towers known as brochs were their trademark. One was reared at Dun Alascaig near Easter Ross on slopes overlooking the Dornoch Firth, its tumbled walls still bearing ample testimony to its former strength.
Over a period of two centuries, the fragmented tribes of the north began to come together in greater confederations of tribes. By the beginning of the 3rd Century AD two major confederacies had evolved from the multitude of earlier tribes: the Maeatae in Scotland north of the Forth-Clyde isthmus and south of the mountains, and the Dicaledones beyond the mountains. From these two confederacies eventually developed the kingdom of the Picts.
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