Tag: glencoe
Survey 2026: The Joy of Walls
If you’re into landscape survey and later historical periods in the Scottish Highlands, you have to be very interested in walls. And fortunately – we are… One of the great things about doing the Glencoe survey as part of a field school is that there is always time to stop and talk about what you’re…
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…
Achtriachtan and the Power of Walking
The 19th-century complex (students left), the excavated house (students centre) and the house on the knoll above (students right) (Photo: Michael Given) It’s a slightly depressing thought that so much of learning archaeology is done by sitting in a lecture room or in front of a computer. That’s certainly been the case with my course…
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…
Archaeology of Light and Change
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…
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…