A medieval Royal dockyard at the Clackmannanshire Bridge?

A medieval Royal dockyard at the Clackmannanshire Bridge?

If you crossed the Clackmannanshire Bridge one weekend in early October, you might have seen clusters of people, conspicuous against the green and brown of the salt marsh in yellow, hi-visibility vests. Guided by experts from the Universities of Stirling, Oxford and...

Submerged forests and fishing heritage in the Western Isles

Submerged forests and fishing heritage in the Western Isles

In May, we were happily again in the Western Isles discovering new places with new friends and revisiting familiar sites with old ones. We were lucky to spend time on Barra with Calum McNeil, local genealogist, retired fisherman, boat builder and font of knowledge...

Pettycur’s 17th century storm-wrecked harbour revealed

Pettycur’s 17th century storm-wrecked harbour revealed

In October 2015, shifting sand at Pettycur beach near Kinghorn in Fife revealed the outlines of a stone structure on the beach. The site is well-known locally. A cannon was discovered here in the 1990s, and small parts of the structure periodically emerge from the...

A broch blog

A broch blog

Brochs are amongst the most spectacular of eroding coastal archaeology, and in the course of SCHARP, we have seen and recorded quite a few of them. Many thousands of these towers of the Iron Age would once have been an impressive sight along the coasts of  Northern...

Recording Loch Ryan’s flying boat base, RAF Wig Bay

Recording Loch Ryan’s flying boat base, RAF Wig Bay

The RAF Wig Bay ShoreDIG got underway in March with the survey of the remains of the flying boat base. Set up in 1942, this was Britain's main wartime base for the maintenance of flying boats. It specialised in converting American-built Catalinas to RAF standards and...

Wemyss Caves 4D continues…

Wemyss Caves 4D continues…

The Wemyss Caves are once again at the centre of a digital whirlwind. Thanks to funding from Fife Council, Historic Scotland and the Heritage Lottery Fund, teams from the York Archaeological Trust, (YAT), SCAPE, and the Save the Wemyss Ancient Caves Society (SWACS)...

Findhorn Bay Zulus

Findhorn Bay Zulus

Scattered along the Culbin edge of Findhorn Bay lie the remains of at least 35 large wooden fishing boats. These are extremely rare survivals of the once common mighty Zulu herring drifter. Today only a single Class 1 Zulu survives in the Scottish Fisheries Museum in...

A blog post from Uist – the view from SCHARP volunteers.

A blog post from Uist – the view from SCHARP volunteers.

The visits to Uist by team members from the SCHARP and ACCORD project to carry out training in their respective surveying techniques a few weeks apart in the early autumn of 2014 proved a useful juxtaposition of events for Access Archaeology members Simon Davies,...

Remembering the Flying Boat Base at Wig Bay, Loch Ryan

Remembering the Flying Boat Base at Wig Bay, Loch Ryan

The latest ShoreDIG at Wig Bay, Loch Ryan, has its roots at the start of the SCHARP project. It was nearly two years ago that the SCHARP team first visited Wig Bay, Loch Ryan for one of the first ShoreUPDATE training events of the project. This is a landscape of  the...

The Newshot Ship Graveyard Part 2: A very special vessel

The Newshot Ship Graveyard Part 2: A very special vessel

Amongst the mud punts and the schooners at Newshot Island was one very unusual looking boat. Made of metal, the vessel, when seen from above, had a distinctive chamber at the back (to get a better view, click here and zoom in on Eddie Martin’s aerial image). The Clyde...

Adventures in Lewis and the Uists

Adventures in Lewis and the Uists

Summer fades quickly in northern Scotland, and we were so pleased to fit in a week in the Western Isles before the nights draw in and the wind starts to bite. In Lewis, we spent time with old friends from Lewes Castle College, re-visiting sites that we’re keeping a...

Incredible archaeology in Shetland

Incredible archaeology in Shetland

Nowhere more than in Shetland, have we seen the power of the last two winters of storms to reveal new coastal archaeology. The relentless easterly gales of 2013 and 2014 hit the coast of South Mainland hard. When the seas abated, two incredible sites were revealed....

Preparations to move a burnt mound on Sanday and more…

Preparations to move a burnt mound on Sanday and more…

Exactly a year to the day from our first visit to Orkney, we are happily back on Sanday preparing for the excavation and relocation of Meur burnt mound in July. The 3000 year old structure is being moved from its current perilous location in the intertidal zone to the...

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