Author: Eddie Stewart
Kailyards and hunting lodges
An update from our excavation team after our 2026 season. The excavations at Achnacon were led by Dr Edward Stewart (AS), Derek Alexander (NTS), Amy Hellier (Perth Museums) and Leonore Kitt (UofG). Excavation This summer we were back in Achnacon exploring a kailyard adjacent to the modern sheepfold. Kailyards were garden plots attached to individual…
Glencoe Summer Season 2026
This summer we will be back in Achnacon excavating an enclosure within the township area. This investigation builds on our previous excavations in the kailyards, corn kilns, platforms and field systems of this township. By digging these features and securing soil samples from their deposits, and artefacts for dating, we can build up a picture…
Archaeology, Gaelic and the Glencoe Landscape: A workshop with An Lochran
We had a lovely night at the An Lochran centre in Partick, Glasgow, exploring the results from our recent excavations in Glencoe and how Gaelic – through placenames, storytelling and song – can contribute to our understandings of these landscapes and help us tell new stories! The session began with an introduction to Glencoe’s archaeology…
The house of many hearths: Fireside stories from Glencoe
During our 2024 and 2025 seasons excavating at the township of Achnacon we uncovered a large turf-walled house. Within the structure three hearths were identified, one within a stone setting flush with the floor surface and close to the Northern gable wall, another in the structure’s centre within a pit sealed with a cauldron fragment…
Oh Schist! A millstone quarry at 400m
Last week Derek Alexander (NTS) and I climbed up to Corrie na Cuilc to explore two sites recorded in the previous NTS survey of Glencoe (carried out in 1996 by Harden and Wordsworth). While we struggled to find the still site recorded by the previous survey, perhaps due to the low light (which never reached…
Digging for Britain!
You can check out some of the findings from our 2024 and 2025 seasons at Achnacon on Digging for Britain now via BBC IPlayer. Their team joined us this summer to explore our exciting findings which shed new light on life before and after the Glencoe Massacre of 1692. Tori from Digging for Britain, does…
The Chief’s coin pot: Fireside stories from Glencoe
A story by Dr Edward Stewart Alisdair Mac Alisdair Ruadh (‘Alexander son of red-haired Alexander‘) Chief of the MacIain MacDonalds of Glencoe. The chief, an old man now, sits by the fire on a chair carved of hewn oak staves, carved when the chief was but his fathers heir, and polished with age and wear.…
Crafting the Past
Among our finds from the Summerhouse of MacIain were an assemblage of spindle whorls. These are hoop shapes, in this case cast in lead, which were used to spin fibres into thread. These would be used to create textiles from wool as well as other fiberous materials including bog cotton and tree basts. Two of…
Look up, look down, look all around: A trip with the Archaeo-botanists
Between the 30th July and 1st August I was joined by Nicholas Cullen, Sabrina Ross, Cole Juckette and Nicky Juckette, for a series of site visits to our excavations across Glencoe, and some areas we would like to investigate around Rannoch Moor. Nick is our projects archaeo-botanist, based at Stanford University and a specialist in…