Paper short abstract:

Community-based archaeological research around a hill in north-east Scotland does not just inform the reconstruction of the past but is a site of active social relations between generations of inhabitants and various landowners.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores the landscapes of a particular hill in north east Scotland. There, community-based archaeological research does not just inform the reconstruction of the past but is a site of active social relations between generations of inhabitants and various landowners. For current inhabitants a primary concern is to make visible and keep visible the archaeological remains against both the encroaching undergrowth of a forest environment and the threat of actual industrial afforestation. The paper presents ethnographic sequences of how members of the community learn to make their own landscape physically and bureaucratically visible through the techniques and structures of archaeological drawing. Such a range of archaeological imaginations start from an involvement in the world as landscape rather than from a discrete cognitive process.