The Southdean Project and Beyond — ‘Essaying’ Site as Memory Work

Abstract

This chapter offers a reflective account of the production of my artist’s book Between Carterhaugh and Tamshiel Rig (Biggs, 2004). This book is one outcome of my Southdean Project, engaging with a physical site just north of the English–Scottish border and with a fictional site central to the traditional Borders ballad Tam Lin, which deals with fairy capture, love and magical transformation, all framed within the context of an early medieval quasi-pagan Borders culture. These two sites are important because one belongs to a physical archaeological heritage that is rapidly being lost while the other paradoxically continues to exist within the fictional context of the ballad.