As the year turns again, we find ourselves in the shortest and darkest days. In Scotland, as in other northerly places, this time of year provides an important reminder that while in some ways the past may feel distant and inaccessible, in other ways, things remain very much the same. Particularly in the deep Glens of Western Scotland, the difference between summer and winter is dramatic. In the Summer, the sun can feel almost inescapable (as long as it isn’t raining!) while in the Winter it often scarcely rises above the tops of the hills and mountains.
This cycle of light and darkness provides opportunities for reflection. The low sun peeking over the horizon and illuminating the clouds from beneath in vivid yellow sherbet revealing a rich tapestry of greens, greys and browns. Feeling, just for a moment, a hint of warmth on your skin which will not truly arrive for another three months. These powerful sensory moments can come at any moment, never when you expect them. As an archaeologist, one of the great joys of these moments is to know that they are now as they ever were. The process of archaeology can, in some ways, place a distance between us and the past. Particularly when examining the Modern past. Objects which under other circumstances might feel quite normal, the wine glass, the blue and white ceramic plate, become alien. Fragments of a different place and time. But, when you are stood on the hillside, perhaps it the doorway of a ruined 18th Century farmhouse, and the sun bursts upon the landscape you have a moment of communion with the past and with all of the other people who have stood here and smiled.
We prioritise creative practice at Glencoe for precisely this reason. To think in a typical archaeological fashion is to circumscribe your thinking. Using an inevitably fragmentary body of evidence we interpret, we analyse and we offer a vision of the past based upon a balance of probabilities. But, of course, this is an over-simplification. This is an idealised vision of a scientific process, and it doesn’t really explain why we do this work or why we care about people in the past. The truth is, that we share this land not just with each other but with all of those who came before us. They made this land what it is, they planted the seeds and built the walls, they put up the houses, and they took them down again. We are shaped by our places. If we are to understand ourselves and our place in the world it is important that we understand and protect the land, but also that we understand the people who made the land what it is. The people who shaped our physical, cultural and spiritual landscape.
So, in this blog post we wanted to share one of the creative works that we have produced over the past few years. This has been time spent with wonderful colleagues, in a wonderful place. It has also been time spent with the ghosts of the people who were here, trying to see beyond the stiff formal portrait of scientific data and trying to build a picture of what it means to exist here, in time, alongside these past people. They are not present as we are present and yet, their presence is inescapable.
Rannoch – the film
We worked together to produce the film, Rannoch in 2025. Rannoch is a short film with sound by Lizzie, animation and illustration by Nicole and film footage by Gareth that speaks to our developing relationship with two sites that we had been working on, Ba cottage on Rannoch Moor and Achnambeithach on the edge of Loch Achtriochtan, as well as the interconnectedness of sites of working across the Glencoe landscape.
This is a film of water. The Tarbh-uisge (the mythical water bull of Loch Achtriochtan) is present throughout the film and views of broken windows and deep peated wetlands across Rannoch Moor are of a landscape in which (to quote Lizzie in the film) ‘it is hard to tell what is solid ground and what is liquid ground’. It is also a film of experience- this is not a representation of a landscape but a representation of being within a landscape, which by this time, we had become very familiar. This film was shot with conventional cameras and with the camera obscura, and was built around a score produced by Lizzie. Conventional footage was manipulated and we used a mix of analogue and digital post-processing including the overlay of animation and illustration by Nicole.
The Rannoch film was a moment in which we were interested in how we show both the material (things we have found as part of the survey and excavation work) and the mythic (the ideas that we have been developing from those things blended together. We wanted to put into film format some of our own experiences of the landscape at Glencoe, as a place where everything bleeds together and is connected. There are stories about the past of Glencoe and there are tales about entities and their influence on the physical world of Glencoe. All these things inform our ideas about the archaeology, and this unavoidable intertwining of storytelling and material culture shaped this film. The Tarbh-uisge appears in Rannoch but there are other figures and places that have inspired us. For a great example of this, you can read about the Cailleach, the old woman who brings the Winter in this lovely blog post by the Historic Environment Scotland on the Cailleach: https://blog.historicenvironment.scot/2025/12/cailleach-scotland-ice-queen/and a short blog post on the Scottish Avalanche Information Service website on A’Chailleach munroe at Glencoe with some beautiful photos: https://glencoeblog.sais.gov.uk/2024/02/the-elusive-queen-of-winter/
Over several weeks and months, returning to different places in the landscape, we made records of our experiences, through sounds, video footage, and sketches. We layered these different experiences together, mimicking the intertwining of these different worlds. Rannoch is one of many poem-films, images, and soundscapes that we have made, inspired by our surroundings when we are at Glencoe and after we return back to Glasgow. Inevitably, our experiences while we are at Glencoe shape these creative things that we make. From filming in the rain and it being so wet that the camera stops working, to interrupting sound recording to rescue a sheep marooned on the wrong side of a fence, to sketching in the long grass whilst guiding fellow archaeologists across the boggy ground, Glencoe permeates into all of our made objects.
– Nicole, Gareth, and Lizzie
Some of the text in this blog post is based on a paper that we wrote in 2025 for Epoiesen. You can read the longer article here: https://epoiesen.carleton.ca/2025/03/17/what-next-for-archaeological-representation/
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