Handsel Monday and the Wemyss Caves
Today is Handsel Monday!
Handsel Monday was once the main and sometimes only holiday of the year in lowland Scotland. Rural workers got a day off and received small gifts or handsels from their employers.
The curious Fauna, Kirkcudbright Bay
Why on earth would you cut hundreds of small circular holes into the hull of your boat? Only to painstakingly plug them all again? That was a question we pondered in 2015 when we first visited Gibbhill in Kirkcudbright Bay and saw this old wooden trawler resting on...
From Scotland to Tanzania
Tropical temperatures, mangroves and coral reefs: at first glance, it might be hard to see similarities between the shores of Scotland and the Indian Ocean coastline. However, our recent trip to the island of Kilwa Kisiwani, on Tanzania’s southeast coast with a team...
From stones to bones: studying Scottish coastal change with SCAPE and Dynamic Coast
Eroding coastal heritage sites documented by volunteers through SCHARP are valuable because they are based on field observations so are true records of what is actually happening at the coast. This means we can use them to test or validate models of coastal...
Mesolithic oaks to Mulberry Harbours – 8,000 years of history along the Solway Firth
One of the joys of coastal archaeology is that it encompasses sites of all types and periods. A recent recording visit to three stretches of the Solway coast with the Coastwise Project and local volunteers took us from remnants of Mesolithic forest to secretive D-Day...
Revealing the post-medieval landscape of Higgins Neuk
“What you think you will find is not what you find. That ought to be an axiom in archaeology.” (Ben Okri, FT Magazine October 19, 2018) After decades of research had pinpointed Higgins Neuk as the likely location of a royal dockyard built by James 4th , hard evidence...
Picts and the Wemyss Caves
The nation of the Picts, the Roman-named ‘painted ones’, or possibly the Latin form of a forgotten native name, emerged from the tribal societies of late Iron Age Scotland through resistance to Roman control. Between the 6th and 9th centuries AD, their territories...
“Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silv’ry Tay…”
“Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silv’ry Tay! Alas! I am very sorry to say That ninety lives have been taken away On the last Sabbath day of 1879, Which will be remember’d for a very long time…” The appalling verse of William Topaz McGonagall might wreak havoc on...
Exploring the Clyde with Britain at Low Tide
This week, Channel 4’s Britain at Low Tide comes to Scotland to explore the archaeology of the Clyde…here we give you a bit more about one of the stories that will feature. Glaswegians in the 18th century had a problem - its trading ships landed at Port Glasgow, 18...
Britain at Low Tide – Behind the Scenes
The second series of Britain at Low Tide (Channel 4) features two episodes filmed in Scotland, and the programme is a great opportunity to show off some of our stunning Scottish coastal archaeology. But how do programmes like this get made? The first episode features...
Scotland’s Coastal Heritage at Risk: A Model of Volunteer Involvement in the Research and Management of a Threatened National Resource
This article was originally written for the January 2018 edition of the Society of American Archaeology's magazine the Archaeological Record, and is reproduced here so that non-members can read it. Joanna Hambly, University of St Andrews Introduction Climate change...
Uncovering the hidden heritage of Higgins Neuk
Last month saw us return to Higgins Neuk for our third season of investigation. Building on 30 years of historical research by John Reid, we were on the hunt for Scotland’s 16th century royal dockyards. John has made a convincing case that the second of the two...
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
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
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...