Survey and excavation were undertaken to inform decision making about the management of the cultural resources around the Machriewater/Blackwater catchment, then under threat from afforestation. Mesolithic spreads, Neolithic settlement sites and field systems, extensive Beaker Period, Later Bronze Age and Iron Age landscapes of hut groups, clearance cairns, burial cairns, field banks and agricultural remains, together with Dark Age fields, all form part of the palimpsest of sites within the research area. Pedological processes like podzolisation, gleying and peat formation have caused geochemical changes in virtually all of the soil contexts of these sites and this aspect of the human interaction with the landscape is considered in some detail.