Early Scottish Farmers Didn't Use Manure to Fertilize Their Fields

Heritage Daily ^ | September 2022 | Antiquity

[SunkenCiv]

According to a study published in the journal Antiquity, researchers analysed grains recovered from the 6,000-year-old Neolithic site at Balbridie in Aberdeenshire, Scotland.

Balbridie is the site of a Neolithic long house situated on the south bank of the River Dee. The site is one of the earliest known permanent Neolithic settlements in Scotland, dating from 3400 to 4000 BC.

Balbridie was first excavated between 1977 and 1981 following aerial photography carried out by the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland that identified cropmarks during a dry summer in 1976.

A large quantity of ancient grain was also recovered, which a team of researchers have now studied with stable isotope analysis. A plant’s growing conditions impact the ratios of its carbon and nitrogen isotopes, indicating that the prehistoric farmers at Balbridie didn’t use manure to fertilise their fields...

Conversely, previous research on early farms in England, as well as on mainland Europe, has almost always found evidence that crops were grown in manured fields. This shows that during the initial phase of farming in the Neolithic, parts of Scotland were well suited for farming.

However, not all early farmers got to avoid dung duty. The team also analysed the contemporary site of Dubton Farm, Angus, and found manure was used there.

Indeed, manuring eventually became the norm in Scotland. Dr Bishop and the team also analysed later Neolithic farms on Orkney, at the sites of Skara Brae and the Braes of Ha’Breck from c. 3300-2400 BC, and found they were using manure. The team also found the Orkney farmers were using permanent plots in a wider landscape than expected.

[Mr Radical]

You’re not wrong:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bere_%28grain%29

But I couldn’t possibly add anything to Twatt.

[wildbill]

The canny and thrifty Scots used materials that were cheap and plentiful in the land to fertilize their crops. Rocks.

Archeologists have found fields literally filled with rocks and made the obvious deductions.