Open Access E-Books

Winner of the Saltire Society Scottish Research Book of the Year 2021

The Sculptor’s Cave is one of the most enigmatic prehistoric sites in Britain. Excavated in the 1920s and 1970s, new analysis of the archive has revealed a complex history of funerary and ritual activity from the Late Bronze Age to...

Embroidered samplers show the one aspect of girls’ education that leaves the most lasting and tangible memorial of that part of their lives. This book considers samplers made in Scotland; it aims to situate them within the social context of the period and to examine their role in the education of girls. The time span covers the first...

The Iron Age settlement at Culduthel (NGR: NH 664 414) is one of the most significant later prehistoric sites identified in mainland Scotland. Archaeological excavation in 2005 revealed a craftworking centre which had specialised in the production of iron, bronze and glass objects between the late 1st Millennium BC and early 1st Millennium...

The Fortification of the Firth of Forth describes the story of the great Forth Fortress from 1880 to 1977, when the final traditional defensive capabilities were abandoned. The authors combine archival sources with new fieldwork and oral histories to not only describe what was built, but when and why.

This meticulously...

Around AD 800, a superbly carved cross-slab was erected at Hilton of Cadboll in north-east Scotland. The major part of the stone now stands in the National Museum of Scotland, and the story of what happened to it in the intervening centuries is told here. Excavations at Hilton of Cadboll in 1998 and 2001 revealed not only fragments of the...

The demolition of Victorian villas in the 1970s led to an excavation of a Roman fort at Bearsden, near Glasgow, on the Antonine Wall, and the discovery of a Roman bath-house and latrine.

The bath-house is the tip of an archaeological iceberg. Over ten seasons a substantial...

Portmahomack on the Tarbat peninsula overlooking the Dornoch Firth is a fishing village with a 1,500-year-old history. In the sixth and seventh century it was a high-ranking centre with monumental cist burials and links to the equestrian class in England. In the eighth century it was a monastery, creating manuscripts and making church vessels...

For two hundred years the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland has remained a major guardian of the heritage of the nation in its museum and through the long series of publications by its members that record many of the major discoveries about the early history of Scotland. In 1980 the Society celebrated the bicentenary of its foundation by...