Open Access E-Books

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...