Epilogue

Two broad conclusions can be taken from the foregoing review of Hebridean human ecology. The first concerns the question of whether the different ways in which the Hebridean world adapted to its environment and its resource opportunities in the centuries prior to crofting was more a problem of prehistory than history, developing during the former and surviving unchanged across the latter. The second considers the extent to which the human ecology of the traditional Highland farming toun should be seen as an open or closed system, that is, as a localised network of resource exploitation that enabled it to be entirely sufficient unto itself or as one which, of necessity, reached out to and interacted with other systems as part of its survival strategy.