Double Diamond Archaeology™

June Julian, Sea Pinks 

North Uist Research Site

 Watercolor, 9 inches X 12 inches

Landscape and Culture:  

Expedition Art of the Scottish Hebrides

Explorers Club Flag #109

Chashama Space, New York City

In the Landscape and Culture exhibit of 14 watercolor paintings, artist June Julian celebrates the beautiful islands and classic tartans of the remote Scottish Hebrides, UK. Collaborating there on two Explorers Club Expedition Flag Award projects with archaeologist, Rodrick B. MacLennan, the research objective was to record the effects of climate change on endangered coastal archaeology sites and to provide implications for shoreline cultural heritage worldwide. Continuing in the longstanding tradition of Landscape Art/Archaeology, the art work depicts the dramatic backdrop for two fieldwork seasons. The smaller paintings are expedition documentations of the landscapes of the Isles of Vallay and North Uist, and the larger works integrate traditional Scottish clan tartans into images of the depopulating ancestral islands. 

Explorers Club Flag #109

We were awarded The Explorers Club Flag for  our second expedition to North Uist and the Isle of Vallay.  Previously  we published our field research on 18 of the original 225 archaeology  sites first  discovered  by 19th cen. archaeologist,  Erskine Beveridge,  on the Isle of Vallay, Scotland, and reported the impact of climate  change upon them. 

We  extended our survey to include additional Beveridge sites on the NW  coast of North Uist, located directly across the Vallay Strand. Our  continuing research objective was to record the critical loss of Coastal  Heritage due to climate change - the increasing severity of storms,  rising sea levels, and subsequent erosion of archaeological evidence.