This chapter discusses the manner in which the heath and its pebbles have provided inspiration for a contemporary individual artistic and aesthetic response. In 2009, newly returned from living abroad, and anxious to reconnect with the landscape of my childhood, I wrote to the archaeologist Professor Christopher Tilley after hearing there was a dig on the East Devon Heathlands Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. A few days later, I met Chris at his home and he talked about the project, and other digs, and his interest in trying to express archaeological investigation through visual interpretation. He is a tall, thin man, who looks as if he has spent much of his life battling with the elements. After trying to trace the roundabout connections that led me to contact him, he talked about his interest in working with people from different academic fields in order to connect with other viewpoints and ways of working. His experience with artists was a little tentative: ‘They tend to look and then go off and do their own thing’, and are typically not prepared to immerse themselves in the ‘hands-on’ world of archaeology.’

In my letter to him I had explained about living abroad for 15 years, how I had felt displaced and that now I had returned to the landscape of my childhood and ancestors. I said that I walk most days in the landscape and collect materials, take photographs and record thoughts. I was brought up in the seaside town of Seaton, a few miles east of Colaton Raleigh Common, one of the dig sites. My childhood was spent within earshot of the sound of the sea on pebbles, the soothing waves rolling on the stones and then that reluctant sound of the pebbles being dragged back out by the tide. Pebbles filled my childhood with games and ‘friends’ to keep in my pocket or on a shelf. That habit continues to this day: pebbles, their endless variety of shapes and colours, have always been of significance to me, symbols of place, collected wherever I go. I had considered embarking on a project that would involve making a cairn on Budleigh Salterton beach and monitoring the connections people make with it, their responses to the colourful pebbles, the journeys they undertake in order to get to the beach. I had been thinking about cairns as ‘markers of experience’, so it was with great interest I heard about Chris’s three or four-year Pebblebeds project with its focus on cairns and pebbles.

Chris admitted that he is obsessed with pebbles. The ones on Budleigh Salterton beach and in the pebblebeds of East Devon come in an array of colours and markings, which he believes was an attraction for the people of the Bronze Age. The various colours would have seemed jewel-like and may have been precious to them. The markings can be interpreted as symbols, perhaps even human forms, or representing internal organs. I was shown the pebblebed stream at the bottom of his garden and the cairn he had built himself on the patio. He was quick to point out how difficult it is to construct with pebbles, as they are not so obliging as to stay in place.

There are two excavation sites associated with the project, on Colaton Raleigh Common and Aylesbeare Common. We visited the Colaton Raleigh site, a couple of miles from where he lives. We parked the car and walked up a long, rugged pebble-covered track. The pebbled surface makes walking difficult, and it is sometimes quite slippery. Once at the top, the distant views all round are far-reaching, and one can see that it would have been an important high spot. The common is used by many interest groups: bird-watchers, nature lovers, dog-walkers, cross-country runners and the army. There are small tracks through the heather and brush where people have walked regularly. We trekked through, in single file, to a large cairn which is a protected site and must not be excavated. We walked on and Chris pointed out other smaller cairns until we arrived at the site of the first year’s dig. A quarter of the cairn had been investigated and all the stones had been replaced on top of black plastic. This year the area was to be dug deeper and another area started.

Chris invited me to join his team six days a week for five weeks in the summer of 2009, working initially on the cairns on Colaton Raleigh Common. This would give me grounding in the ways archaeologists work and a good understanding of how a cairn is built. There are questions to be asked regarding the Colaton Raleigh Common cairns, for example, why that exact location, how were they built: over a long period as a form of pilgrimage, or all at once? The landscape seems to indicate significant sites that could be related to sun worship during the winter solstice.

I had thought that archaeologists might resent artists being on site, and so it was with a little apprehension that I set out to join the dig in August 2009. I was one of the advance party of five women, four locals and a PhD student. We were to uncover the work started a year earlier and prepare another nearby small cairn for excavation. The ‘real’ archaeologists would arrive at the end of the week. The dig site is at a high point on the Common where a large cairn looks down on a smaller one and then onto the two cairns we would be working on. Our cairns were in a wonderful location, offering spectacular views in every direction, with High Peak, a triangular-shaped hill, to the south, a long ridge running southeast and looking west towards Dartmoor. This place is special: it feels as though it is suspended between the earth and sky, a safe, secret place. At times in the coming weeks, I would feel that I was enclosed in a sandwich of earth and cloud (Figure 15.1). At those moments, sounds would stay close and I would feel the intensity of the immediate location. The lush vegetation of the farmland surrounding the heath was invisible and we were enclosed in our little world and community. I felt tucked in and cosy.

The physical process was not unlike digging up potatoes, and the pebbles actually did look like potatoes when covered in the red-brown soil. Each stone was weighed, measured, washed, categorized, its location recorded, and all this information documented. Reams of it! At a later date, the information was to be fed into a computer and analysed to see what emerged. When wet, the pebbles disclose an array of colours and patterns, which probably had as much attraction in the Bronze Age as they still do for some of us now. We look especially for any ‘blue’ stones, which appear black and have irregular, angular shapes, not smooth like pebbles. They are rare to find in this site, and that may have some significance. Chris refers to them as Carter Blues, after George Carter who excavated on Colaton Raleigh Common in the 1920s and 30s. Even rarer are stones called ventifacts, wind-polished pebbles that lay on the surface of a desert 240 million years ago, which we were also looking out for. Their shape is an elongated oval with a smooth ridge and rough underside, very beautiful to hold. Colours have to be sorted too: reds/browns, white, yellow, blacks and then the ‘specials’.

As artist on the dig I have been thinking about what to do. I know Chris would like some ‘land art’. My work is generally small, mixed-media, abstract work that I produce in the comfort of an untidy studio. So what to do has been on my mind. I am interested in the sacred, memorial aspect of the cairns, and the process of making them, which would have required a pilgrimage-like ritual of bringing the stones up from stream beds or elsewhere across the heathlands. How would they have been carried – baskets or leather bags? The brief outline of my professional background that follows gives some context to how my ideas and work developed.

I left school at 16 with art as my only O-level pass. At the time dyslexia was unheard of and I struggled with exams and the written word. Thankfully, I was accepted on a foundation course at Newton Abbot School of Art, based on my portfolio, with the intention of studying fine art and becoming a painter. Fine art was considered an academic course, and that year the art school was taken over by South Devon Technical College and I was transferred to the diploma course in graphic design. At the time I was very disappointed not to be painting, but in retrospect I realize what a great foundation in art the graphics course provided. For many years I worked in hospitals and universities as a scientific illustrator, which was both interesting and technically stimulating. Later, as a mature student, I went to Dartington College to study art and design in a social context. This was a type of outward-bound course in art, challenging perceptions, ideas and ways of working, both as an artist and in the community. In the final year, for the BA, I went on to Middlesex Polytechnic and completed the degree in cultural studies. My family life involved working and living in London, moving to Vienna and then, for ten years, America. On returning to England I took an MA in multidisciplinary print at the University of the West of England in which I explored interactions between memory, place and identity.

During the dig, I kept a sketchbook with ideas and notes, took photographs, and collected heathland materials and found objects most days, which I catalogued with dates and place references and stored in small plastic bags. This became a type of ‘museum of curiosity’ (Figure15.2). All these processes helped keep the memory of events and feelings of place alive in my mind. They were useful references when I was back in the studio and helped inspire further work.

My way of working as an artist is to allow the work to emerge through the experience of being in a place, the ideas that come out of it and the materials to hand. Substantial areas of burnt soil were found in the cairn, possible ritual pyre sites. Fire has been an important part of human culture, and the idea of fire rituals interested me. Every Christmas Eve at the Harbour Inn, Axmouth, East Devon, the ancient ritual of burning a massive ‘ashen faggot’ is enacted, a bundle of ash sticks, about 6 feet long and 3 feet wide, which fills the pub’s open fire. To take a piece of charcoal from the cooled fire, bring it back the following year and place it in the hearth again is meant to bring good luck. At this event you get a feeling of being a part of a primal ritual. There is something about gathering around a fire with ale and song that unifies people.

I was able to harvest some burnt soil from Tor Cairn, and other coloured soils from both sites. Back in the studio, I ground down the soils as pigments, which were used in one of the final artworks. The pigments were stored in labelled vintage glass jars, specimens of time and place, past and present. These collections I saw as part of the artwork itself (Figure 15.3).

As well as the physical act of collecting the burnt soil, I was also interested in the transformation of objects consumed by fire and particularly the transitory nature of smoke. Once again this is a ritual element, used when burning incense, in smoking-pipe ceremonies and on pyres. How to capture the impalpable smoke particles which appear to evaporate into the universe? I started using smoke as a drawing tool, trapping the elusive particles on paper, and sometimes immersing the paper in water, releasing the particles onto the surface of the water. Another piece of paper was then gently rolled over the water, lifting off the smoke particles. This gave a ‘crackling’ effect. The processes were unpredictable, but with interesting results in most cases. I also tried printing with smoke on copper plates that I had etched. The prints were very subtle. The idea of coded messages was another interest that I pursued by burning patterns into paper, then dipping the work into wax to stabilize the fragile paper and seeing the completed work as an untranslated manuscript.

As a group we were always discussing and creating stories of how the cairns may have come about and for what reason, and hoping to find clues in the patterns and placements of certain pebbles in the various levels of the cairn. Early on, Jill, one of my digging companions, brought with her some wax from her bees so that I might polish some stones. All the pebbles look dull when dry, and the colours diminished. I hoped that rubbing wax into warm stones might intensify some of the amazing colours, but it was not very successful. I decided to do something involving pebbles given their importance in the archaeological scheme of things and my fascination with them. I came up with the idea of a series of experiments, placing pebbles on different materials and leaving them in the landscape for a few weeks or longer. I saw it as a means of creating types of ‘environmental print’. My four printing experiments were: (i) canvas as the print medium, placed on the pebbles on top of Tor Cairn, one of the excavation sites, and weighing this down with more pebbles placed on top; (ii) watercolour paper placed on the ground near the cairn with pebbles on top (Figure 15.4); (iii) a sandwich of paper, sticks and paper with pebbles on top; (iv) a sandwich of paper, grasses and sticks with paper on top and then pebbles.

I was disappointed to discover that, over the four weeks, very little had happened to my printing experiments. The heathland terrain drains quickly after rainfall and the dew dries rapidly in the ever-present wind. On my return some weeks later, after the dig had finished, I found that paper experiments (ii), (iii) and (iv) had mainly been nibbled away, leaving small scraps, but the cloth pieces had interesting ‘prints’ where the rain and dirt had settled around the edges of the pebbles and left stains on the fabric (Figure 15.5). The stains included very subtle shades of greens and pinks. I later used these small fabric prints in studio-constructed works. As the fabric had produced interesting results, I asked permission to leave a large piece of fabric over the whole cairn for a few months. The fabric was then covered completely with pebbles, making a sort of ‘sandwich’. This was to become the Tor Cairn Shroud. I also collected samples of soil from the various cairn locations, including some burnt soil from a possible pyre area. The soil was then ground down with a pestle and mortar and used in some of the later artworks. In this manner I hoped to make deep material connections between the past and the present.

Weaving became my other theme. Tracks run all over the heathland, many created by the Royal Marines, who train there by day and night. These make a type of weaving, which I find fascinating. Walkers, horse-riders, bird-watchers and the army frequent the area, which reinforces the tracks as permanent routes through the common. In parallel with looking at the present-day layout of the heathland, I am trying to understand why, when and how it was important in the past.

Before leaving home on the first day back at the dig after the August bank holiday, I looked on the Internet, trying to discover any records of Bronze Age basketry. Bringing stones to the cairn site would have been laborious work, and I was keen to know what may have been used for such a job. To withstand constant wear and tear, the container would have been robust. Maybe leather was used, which would have withstood hard usage, and was probably easier to carry than a wicker basket.

At the dig site, I went in search of willow in order to make a basket. The common is sparsely covered with small pine trees, but an abundance of tree growth lines the bottom of the hill, where a small stream and a boggy area exist. That is where I hoped to find willow. The undergrowth became dense and the gorse shoulder-high, the bracken a couple of feet above my head. I tumbled into a ravine and felt a little panicky about being completely enveloped by the undergrowth, but I was at the point of no return. Eventually I reached a well-worn path, with the common on one side and farmland on the other. I collected a huge bundle of willow and began to wonder if I would be able to make a pleasing structure. I am not a basket-maker, and thought I may have overestimated my skills.

The next day, Jill showed me how to start a basket, which she wove with whatever she could find in the car park, and loaned me a book about weaving. I struggled to weave the foundation of a basket with the materials I had gathered the day before. It was very frustrating: the branches were too thick and did not bend enough. The willow should be soaked. I read that it should be cut during mid-October and March. No wonder I was finding this difficult. I felt this was getting in the way of what I really should have been doing. I must not be confined by a process, but bring ideas alive through the materials available on the common.

The following day Jill had another sample weaving for me, made with grasses and small twigs. Not a basket shape, but fence-like, with straight twigs and leaves on the end. The shades of the grasses created a lovely graded colour range. Again, the process of weaving overwhelmed me. More frustration. Rethink ideas.

A week later. By now, weaving had dominated my thoughts so much it had become a metaphor for life on the heathland. The weaving of narrow paths across the landscape mirrors the structure of the plant life. The gorse and heather grow together, creating dense undergrowth. The pebbles may have some weave-like order in their placement within the cairn. We weave stories around each pebble layer of the cairn, as it is unearthed. So I am going to stay with the idea of weaving something. I collected heather and gorse and spent hours stripping the needles off the gorse. There is a repetition of walking, collecting, sorting and stripping back, a meditation of sorts. The making of the cairns would have required many journeys back and forth with the pebbles. Creating paths, creating stories and remembering.

The next day I gathered more roots, this time from the spoil heap. This was a great collection point, as most of the material had been there for a year and the gorse needles fell off easily. I began working on a free weaving, hoping in time that it might become a large sphere, strong enough to hold pebbles – a sculpture to sit atop Tor Cairn. None of the roots were straight, so the shape had a life of its own, with not too much strength to the structure.

In the following days I continued to weave, and tried to control the shape of the structure. It definitely had a life of its own, looking more like a nest! As the structure grew it felt as though its weight was pushing its sides down. The inflexible and random nature of the roots and branches inevitably dictated the form. Not surprisingly it related to its surroundings. At this point, I thought I may have been getting too involved with structure, rather than working through ideas. The container could be more imaginatively conceived. The cairn is about containing and also covering something of importance. How could I create something that would communicate that?

Taking a break from the slow progress on weaving the basket, I attempted a splatter drawing over some pebbles on a big sheet using muddy water – a Jackson Pollock-style work. Some areas came out well, leaving a vague silhouette of the stones. Trying to get depth of tone, by splattering for a second and a third time, was unsuccessful. I was not really sure what I was trying to achieve, but some of the areas had an interesting texture. The breeze dried the fabric quickly. A wind sculpture might be a possibility. I could not remember a day when the wind wasn’t blowing.

Back to the weaving. I collected more gorse and heather and continued to try to control the structure. Feeling despondent about the wayward nature of the weaving I bound it with string, so that further weaving might bring the whole thing together. The wind took the structure, rolling it around like tumble weed, and parts broke off. Clarissa came up with the idea of putting the basket on top of Great Tor Cairn, to see how it looked in its intended resting place. What a relief. It looked as if it belonged there, and it stayed steady in the wind even though it was on higher ground. Much to my surprise it looked finished. A woven flame (Figure 15.6). Its character changed depending on where it was viewed. I was suddenly pleased with the outcome. Gradually people took a break from digging to look at it and take photographs. The sky was bright blue with a few wisps of cloud. The photographs came out well. ‘Woven Flame’ will stay there throughout the year and I will photographically document its life through the seasons.

Sometime later, an excavation of an Early Bronze Age cremation burial at Whitehorse Hill on Dartmoor turned up a woven basket made from the fibrous inner bark of a lime tree. The basket contained beads, wooden ear studs and a flint flake. It was made from two woven circular discs forming a flat base and a lid, each 12 cm in diameter, joined together with a tube of coiled basketry. There was stitching made using cow hair around the edges. From Tor Cairn, on a clear day, one could look out to Dartmoor. It would be nice to think that in prehistoric times, there were craft traditions that connected artisans working across these landscapes.

In mid-September we moved to the Aylesbeare site. I wondered what artwork I could produce in a place that I did not feel connected with. It would have to be something that could be made and left in the environment, as was the work on Colaton Raleigh Common. I was tired of working with heather and gorse, so pebbles it would have to be. Classifying the stones had been a big part of the dig’s agenda – size, weight, colour and specialness. I would use the uniqueness of the pebbles as the focus for my next project. It felt good to have an idea to start the next day with.

I decided to use one of the metal grids the archaeologists use when making plans of the layout of the pebbles. The metre-square grid, with its 25 squares, is placed over the area to be recorded and the information laboriously drawn onto graph paper. I sited my grid on a lower edge of a sloping gravel area so as not to be disturbed or be in the way of others walking around. I created colour categories – black, black with white lines, white, white quartz, grey, red, red/brown, yellow, orange. It would be hard to find enough colours in some of the categories, as they were scarce. I spent all day engrossed in finding the required pebbles, and had only filled half of the grids. I would have to create new categories in order to fill all 25 squares.

The next day I conjured up more categories to fill the spaces. Pebbles that were broken in half, big stones, ones that look like body parts! The body-part ones reminded me of my days as a medical/scientific illustrator. Some of the stones definitely looked like internal organs. The end result, when wet, magically reveals the range of colours and textures of the pebbles (Figure15.7). After lunch, two of the archaeologists helped me find pebbles. One of them seemed a little unsure if she was finding the right ones. It was interesting to see others feeling ill at ease in my creative space. What was ordinary and unthreatening to me became another world to others, just as their world was to me.

I would return regularly to both sites over the coming years to see how the passage of time played a part in the weathering of the art works. I also left paper and fabric in the landscape with a covering layer of pebbles for weather and time to produce their own drawings on the surfaces.

After the dig had finished I continued to work in my studio, using ideas that had evolved from my experience of being on the Pebblebeds project. These artworks, although interesting in their own right, have a sense of ‘control’ and formal presentation, characteristics that were not present in the landscape pieces. The problem is, having produced artwork, what to do with it, who is going to see the work? Putting on an exhibition is a big responsibility, finding a suitable venue, publicity, insurance, curating the work, putting the work up and ‘babysitting’ the exhibition. I approached the Devon Guild of Craftsmen, as a member, about an exhibition, and in 2012 ‘Strata: An artist’s response to an archaeological project’ was exhibited at the Riverside Gallery in Bovey Tracey (Figure 15.8). It was a wonderful venue and great to see the work come together in one place. I managed to retrieve the pebbles from the landscape for the ‘pebble grid’ piece, even though time and weather had distorted the original pattern. The ‘pebble grid’ and fabric ‘shroud’ became the focal point of the exhibition. I think some people expected to see archaeology in one form or other, something recognizable. They came with their own expectations rather than being open to an artists’ response to the whole experience, which for them made the work difficult to identify with.

The Devon Guild of Craftsmen, sponsored by Villages in Action, took the exhibition to two local village halls at Farringdon and Lympstone, each for a three-day event. Attendance at these was good. Some of the people had visited the dig site on the open day which Chris Tilley had organized; these people were particularly interested in seeing and talking about my work.

The challenge of working in the landscape and limiting the use of materials to those at hand for creating work was both intimidating and liberating. Taking oneself out of one’s comfort zone opens up unpredictable possibilities. Trying to weave with gorse and heather was impractical because of the inflexibility of the fibres. However, the resulting ‘basket’, although not practical as a vessel, when placed into the landscape reflected its environment and took on a presence in that space. I was surprised and honoured as members of the team walked up to the cairn where the basket, known as ‘Woven Flame’ was situated, some leaving a pebble inside as a type of offering. That was very touching. Over time the basket has disintegrated back into its landscape, leaving but a trace, detectable only by those who knew it was once there. The ‘pebble grid’ also merged comfortably into the landscape, with its colours blending into the surroundings. Over the next two years plants began to grow through it, and its edges ‘frayed’ and discomposed back into its constituent parts. This was art emerging in the landscape and then slowly being reclaimed by it, almost the reverse of archaeology, which seeks to recover what has been reclaimed.