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Citation

Thacker M (2013) Making lime at the edge of the world: a mortar archaeology at the medieval chapel of St. Ronain’s, North Rona, Scotland. In: Proceedings of the 3rd Historic Mortars Conference HMC13. 3rd Historic Mortars Conference HMC13, Glasgow, 11.09.2013-14.09.2013. Glasgow: University of the West of Scotland. https://invenio.itam.cas.cz/record/2373?ln=en

Abstract
This paper presents continuing discussion from a PhD research project which is exploring the archaeological potential of building lime mortars across the North Atlantic. Within this region, the earliest surviving Scottish Atlantic evidence indicates that the initial medieval emergence of lime here demanded a remarkable level of technical improvisation and material investment, often from small communities within diverse, and sometimes extreme, physical environments. More specifically in this paper, the materials and form of the medieval chapel on North Rona is discussed as a case study which, uniquely in a Scottish context, illustrates how the materiality of sacred places changed in the early to high medieval period, from an apparently ancient dry-stone monumentality, to one in which lime mortar was seemingly essential. The evidence for this process within the archaeological record, however, is complex, presenting opportunities and challenges for our reflexive interpretations of the mortar archaeology at this particular site and across neighbouring regions. This evidence is presented, in interim, in order to highlight certain issues of approach, before interpretations harden-up in future work. It is asserted, however, that this lime mortar evidence effectively demonstrates the materials importance to people, particularly in the medieval period, and that this should be reflected in the significance we accord mortars and their constituent materials in archaeology more widely. It is suggested that off-shore islands and lime mortar coatings became analogous at this time - as boundaries between this world and the next. Indeed, as we pick over the unraveling dislocated bones and rotting skin of these once powerful buildings, so it appears to this author that in a medieval North Atlantic context lime embodied both the edge of the world, and the Christianisation of stone.