Winter Zoom talks 2025, Peter McNiven, Placenames and dating peat clearance on the Carse of Stirling

. It will attempt to use place-names as a tool for the rough dating of peat clearance on the carse basically between Stirling and Falkirk, showing peat had been cleared, or potentially so, for around 1500 years. It also argues that Lord Kames’ clearance of peat at Blairdrummond was part of the latest phase, not the earliest as some modern writers suggest. The place-names are basically Brittonic, Gaelic, and Scots, with modern Scottish Standard English names around Blairdrummond dating from around 1800 or so, but the talk will concentrate on the Medieval period.
Peter McNiven is a former coachbuilder who went to Glasgow University at the age of 32. He studied history and archaeology. After he graduated he did several bouts of digging in places like Shetland, Kintyre, and behind IKEA in Glasgow! He got into place-names when he did my masters and then completed a PhD entitled ‘Gaelic Place-names and the social history of Gaelic speakers in Medieval Menteith’. He was then employed on a project at Glasgow University that produced two books, Place-names of Kinross-shire and Place-names of Clackmannashire. He is currently working freelance, and also fulfilling duties as a foster carer.