Preservation and Visibility: Why We Know So Little

The discovery at Loch Borralie is partly a story about the past and partly a story about what conditions allow the past to be visible to the present.

Understanding why this particular evidence has survived in interpretable form requires some attention to the mechanisms of preservation.

The northwest of Scotland, including Sutherland, supports the preservation of bone material that would have dissolved in the more acidic soils of much of the rest of Britain.

The specific chemistry of the local soils — influenced by the carbonate content of the underlying geology in some areas and by the relatively stable cool temperatures — creates conditions where bone can survive for millennia in a state that allows meaningful analysis.