Dr. Ingrid Mainland is Senior Lecturer in Archaeology at the UHI Archaeology Institute, University of the Highlands and Islands. Her research has two major themes: sustainability, using environmental data to address long term trajectories of human-environment relations and societal resilience in N. Atlantic island ecosystems; and, palaeodiet, providing new insights into the impact of grazing animals on the landscapes of the N. Atlantic islands, the impact of early Neolithic herding strategies in Southern Europe and pig domestication in Eurasia. Her recent projects include Orkney Gateway to the Atlantic: Landscapes of Change – Medieval to Modern settlement at Skaill and Brough, Rousay. This interdisciplinary field project undertaken in collaboration with the University of Bradford excavations at Swandro is using a combination of archive research, landscape survey, building recording, and sample excavation as an investigative tool to explore how the early medieval estate at Westness has developed from the late first millennium to the present. She was also awarded a British Academy mid-career fellowship (2014-15) for ‘Herding economies, sustainability and resilience in Viking and Norse Orkney’, exploring the role of Norse herding economies in underpinning societal sustainability through gift-giving, feasting and the emerging long distance trade networks in commodities of the Early Medieval period.