93 Medieval Settlement Research 35 (2020), 93–99 GEOARCHAEOLOGICAL INVESTIGATIONS AT LINDISFARNE, NORTHUMBERLAND: SOIL SURVEY AND ASSESSMENT IN 2018 AND 2019 By AGNI PRIJATELJ, 1 RAPHAEL KAHLENBERG 1 and KAREN MILEK 1 Introduction This report introduces the Lindisfarne Landscapes Project, and presents the results of two exploratory feld seasons on the Holy Island (NGR NU130428). It sets out the results of soil surveys and assessments conducted in order to assess the potential of geoarchaeological methods to investigate the landscape evolution of the island, and to reconstruct its environment and land- use during the Anglo-Saxon and Medieval Periods, when the island was home to one of the most important monasteries in Europe. Lindisfarne, a small tidal island on the Northumberland coast, north-east England, is the site of a monastery founded in AD 635 by Oswald, King of Northumbria, and Aidan, a monk from Iona. It has been famous since the early medieval period as the focus of the cult of St. Cuthbert until his relics were moved to the mainland in the late ninth century in the wake of Viking attacks, and as the site of the scriptorium that crafted the most spectacular manuscript to survive from Anglo-Saxon England: the Lindisfarne Gospels (Bonner et al.; Brown 2003). Despite the recovery of a signifcant quantity of early medieval sculpture from the area of the later medieval priory, much about the life of the early medieval monastic community on the island remains unknown. This includes the locations of settlements and feld systems, patterns of land use, and the origin and date of the Lough, a small pond northeast of the priory (Fig. 1). The original topography of Holy Island has likewise been lost as a result of signifcant landscape alterations over time, most notably sand dune encroachment from the north shore of the island during the Little Ice Age (AD 1300–1900), enclosure and drainage of felds from the 1790s onwards, and the expansion of the village since the eighteenth century (for an overview of Lindisfarne’s archaeology see Petts 2013; 2017). The landscape of Anglo-Saxon Lindisfarne was frst investigated in detail during the 1980s and early 1990s when a major research campaign by the University of Leicester revealed a pre-Conquest agricultural settlement at Green Shiel, on the northern end of the island (Fig. 1; NGR NU 121436; O’Sullivan and Young 1991a, b). As part of this study, Kevin Walsh (1993) and co-workers (Walsh et al. 1995) examined the faunal assemblage from Green Shiel, associated buried soils, the overlying dune system, and the pollen record from the Lough (NGR NU 136429). Their analyses provided evidence for arable and pastoral activity at Green Shiel during the late ninth and tenth centuries, when at least part of the monastic community had already left Lindisfarne. In 2012, Archaeological Services at Durham University, on behalf of David Petts, with the fnancial support of National Geographic, conducted a 20ha magnetic gradiometer survey around Lindisfarne village that identifed a series of new features in the area of the Priory and west of the village (Petts 2013). In the Glebe Field, now used for hay crop, a series of feld boundaries and enclosures were detected, including some that appeared to be westward extensions of Marygate and Prior Lane (Fig. 2; NGR NU124419). O’Sullivan (1989) had earlier proposed that the present street layout may refect earlier spatial divisions, and that either or both streets were contenders for the course of a monastic vallum. Valli, consisting of drystone walls or earthen banks accompanied by inner ditches, were essential components – both physical and symbolic – of early medieval Irish monastic settlements and those derived from Irish monastic houses, which were used to enclose and demarcate holy spaces (Jenkins 2010). Whilst O’Sullivan (1989, 140) had postulated that the monastic boundaries may have curved south, following the line of Lewin’s Lane, the magnetometer survey showed high and low resistance linear anomalies aligning with Marygate and Prior Lane that continued westwards towards the eroding cliff face on the western shore of the island (Fig. 2). In 2016, collaborative feldwork by Durham University and DigVentures investigated the anomalies aligning with Prior’s Lane, revealing a cobbled trackway and several building structures dated to the thirteenth century and later (Trench 3, Fig. 2; Wilkins et al. 2017). However, a monastic vallum was not identifed. Geoarchaeological survey and soil assessment in 2018 and 2019 In September 2018, and again in September 2019, a new geoarchaeological project supported by the Medieval Settlement Research Group, Durham University, and DigVentures combined extensive soil survey and more detailed, multi-scalar geoarchaeological analyses to evaluate the degree to which Lindisfarne’s medieval landscapes are preserved below today’s pasture, agricultural land, wetlands and dunes. Ten locations across the island were cored with a hand auger in order to determine soil depths and identify the presence and potential preservation of buried soils and other landscape features (Fig. 1). In addition, two soil test pits (Trenches 5 and 6) were excavated in the Glebe Field 1 Department of Archaeology, Durham University.