 Yes, Exxon. Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland is a unique space to examine the dynamic and often tensioned exchange between local small farms and Scotland's tourism industry. Surgling economically, the region has attempted to improve itself to become more viable within this industry. However, what happens when regions do not fit neatly within the tourist brand in Scotland? And what happens to smaller farms that shift their attention to tourism because agricultural production is slowing? These are two questions this paper seeks to explore by looking further back in history, a history that locals understand is not fully viable within a national story, but is still important to them. In June 2001, I arrived in Dumfries and Galloway to empty fields, some of which were scarred with large burn marks, the result of mass culling due to foot-math disease. The spring of 2001 was extremely devastating. From March to May of that year, over 647,000 farm animals, mainly sheep, were culled across the region with a total of 736,000 animals culled in all of Scotland. Accusations were hurled against both Westminster and Holyrood. Conspiracy theories ran rampant. Farmers pointed fingers at other farmers. Losses were extreme. Many farmers did not have the resources despite compensation, which topped about 250 million pounds to continue and attempted to sell their farms. Others did their best to survive. In 2005, I began conducting research focused on the identity of Galloway, its marginalized past, and manifestations in contemporary life. There were clear-cut examples of marginalization that were intricately linked to the practice of tourism and more specifically the process of land development in order to attract holiday travelers. These contemporary processes of improvement, as that encodes, mirrored that of past decisions to improve the land, often at the cost of the general population. Three specific issues surfaced in that research. The act of locals being priced off the landscape and out of the housing or farm market, the physical alteration of land for profit, and encroachment on historically sensitive land. Ten years later, these three issues were still prominent with one significant difference. I noticed repeated references to processes designed to bring about social and economic change, but with the detrimental residual effects. People were leaving the region. There was high unemployment. Farming was deteriorating in an area where agriculture has been dominant for hundreds of years. Over a great deal of whiskey, and we'll underline that phrase, farmers I spoke with repeatedly used two words that directly link back to the region's past to describe the situation, improvement and clearing. Contemporary interpretation of these processes in Scottish history is enmeshed in the tropes of the Highland Clearances and the age of improvement in the Lowlands. Highland Clearances and the tragic experience of Klansmen characterized the period from which Scotland's national history has been molded and branded. The Lowlands, however, are usually conceptualized as being improved rather than cleared. Improvement during the 18th and 19th centuries involved a matrix of economic, material, and social changes as a means to achieving a productive, civilized world. In Scotland, this movement was directed at the landscape and the population of tenants and coders whose lives revolved around it. Landowners and their agents successfully implemented a range of strategies to bring about improvement including the removal of people and settlements which produced a distinct alteration of people's relationships with each other and with things. Contextually, clearing has two complementary meanings the removal of people off the land during the 18th and 19th centuries as well as the ideological erasure of these groups which influences later historical interpretation and social memory. Clearing in both contexts carves out spaces for capitalism and propagates socioeconomic beliefs that significantly alter the life ways of populations. Understanding the clearance of people is indicative of past and present improvement. Clearing in 18th and 19th century Galilee Scotland represents an early example of a transformative process that moved across Scotland then the rest of the world as a distinct colonial practice associated with nascent capitalism. Scotland and especially the southwest region of Galilee are unique spaces to investigate this process. Clarets and improvement were simultaneously in process within the same national boundary yet are suggestive of a much wider global experience one of which is still happening today. Improvement from most of the folks I spent time with equaled a continued marginalization of the population of Dumfries and Galilee where leaving was the only way for a young person to find a job or selling the farm was the only way to stay out of bankruptcy. One farmer definitively expressed this situation in his situation as being on the cusp of being cleared through a process of modern improvement. This was happening he stated through government policies like loans or schemes to farmers who were willing to participate in transforming their farms to production spaces much like and he quoted this repeatedly the American system of farming. His frustrations were many including a pride in the reputation of the region's product mainly milk for which he was certain was to be ruined in the midst of these transformations. He felt the region's farms had worked extremely hard especially since put in the mouth to rebuild their product to protect cattle from crossbreeding with inferior breeds and he also referenced American breeds in that and to maintain good sustainable farming practices. However incentives for middle acreage or small acreage farming were not available in essentially putting small farmers in the position of having to sell out to larger ones or for those interested in starting farming to choose to do other things. Galloway farming he stated was near extinction. Many farmers it was shared had started to consider agritourism or developing their properties for holiday attractions. Several ventures in the region were seen success. These types of improvements were designed according to one local civic official to bring Dumfries and Galloway into accordance with the rest of the nation which was perceived to be making advances in the tourism industry and this is just one rental property. They've been a threshing mill in the 18th and early 19th centuries. They've incorporated obviously still some of the hardware but it's a popular tourist attraction not only from where it's located but obviously what's inside. Participating in these types of ventures was promoted as a way of increasing property values and saving historic properties that were derelict. However participation was expensive and the returns were not seen as enough to sustain a failing farm. Again here's another successful one turned it out building probably a buyer or a hay barn into a hostile like accommodation. They also had some private accommodations that you could rent as well. The transformation of a working farm to one which regularly catered to tourists meant upgrading facilities but also having a product which would attract people. While the potential increase in tourism could help the region one informant pointed out it would be at the cost of the locals and their history and landscape. We've got two examples of farms that attempted to make renovations in order to have rental properties for holiday travelers and they ran out of money. Several people pointed to the influx of English incomeers buying property and starting businesses. This was just one of the many hindrances keeping locals from buying property, keeping a business going or starting a business or just keeping afloat. Young farmers were unable to buy into a small farm. Old age pensioners were being pushed out of council housing or losing their homes because property values were skyrocketing along with property taxes. Many also suggested that English property owners were not committed to the regional history and were therefore threats to historically sensitive landscapes. English incomeers were not the only group of people causing anxiety. Eastern European immigrants were also the target of mistrust and were also accused of taking local jobs and bringing in crime. Anybody in here from the United States has heard this repeatedly. However, Brexit has prompted a drop in immigration according to the Financial Times in June of this year with, and I quote, registrations for national insurance numbers falling to around 26,000 in the first quarter of 2017 compared with just under 40,000 in the same period last year. Has this mistrust of incomeers been deeply embedded in something tangible, intangible or both? And I think the answer is yes. And the answer is entrenched in locals' relationships to their landscapes where their history and their lives are situated. The contemporary landscape at Dumfries and Galloway is still rich with evidence of improvement and clearance processes of the 18th and 19th centuries. Material evidence of a history which the national story essentially erases. There's resounding evidence in written documentation of tenant and codders, the farmers of that time, being priced out of their farms through a rise in rents and shifts in agricultural and industrial concentrations. In many cases, it was the tenant who embraced improvement that was eventually cleared. The remains of their farms and field systems are still visible. Oops, excuse me, left one out. It's a new buyer under construction. And here's some of these remains of 18th and 19th century farming. All of these pictures have to do with cleared tenants, either through amalgamation or a loss of rents in which they could not extend their lease and had to go elsewhere. So we have field walls at the red arrows. In actually good condition, a dwelling house, more field walls. This probably was what they call a sheepry, which you would bring the sheep into, check them out to make sure they're okay and send them out into the pasture on what we would call sort of upland grazing areas in the summer. However, today's farmers have to make difficult decisions under the weight of comparable shipping, economic and social demands on the landscape. Do they abandon their trade and renovate to meet the tourism market demands? Do they cave under the pressure to shift their farming and dairy practices to keep up with the national and global demands? No matter the course, development of the landscape for private and public... excuse me. No matter the course, development of the landscape for private or public consumption is encroaching on historically sensitive land. The series of next pictures are again another 18th. In fact, this goes back to the 16th century farmstead that is listed on Arkham's, which is the Royal Commission of Ancient and Historical Monuments in Scotland. Technically, it's protected. And I know you can't, it doesn't look like much. The brambles are quite high, but there is a foundation here. The property owner applied for building permission and planning permission, but lied because they decimated the site. So the difference between a picture in May and a picture in June within a month of me visiting the site, the site had disappeared. In Dumfries and Galloway, locals in their landscape carry very little weight when others, and I quote obviously from Raymond Williams, bring the land and its properties as available for profitable exploitation. So clear a profit that the quite different needs of local sediment and community are overridden and that what the state is administering and the planner serving is an economic system which is capitalist. While farmers in Dumfries and Galloway are participants in this capitalist system, it is not without concern that their livelihood is being eroded by the very processes designed to improve it, even when the numbers indicate growth and potential success. And these are brand new numbers released in July and if you notice I've highlighted the numbers for 2007, these are just historic Environment Scotland figures, but if you note there's been an increase of 41% just over the past year. In places like Dumfries and Galloway, landscape is the terrain on which political, economic, social and cultural forces play out. This paper rustles with the region's continued struggle for economic development and finding and maintaining its local identity in the midst of a national story in which the region does not find itself. Archaeology can and should be focused on not only the past, but also on the future. In a sense, leaking the past to the present, but also the future, is building that bridge and one that helps all stakeholders realize that for the region where there's such a deep connection between landscape, history and identity, alterations of one means alterations across all facets of life. Thank you.