Highland Archaeology Services Ltd

10/06/2026

Check out this cracker of a find from the trench this morning! The team are currently excavating at the site of a former Inn. This chap was probably from a porcelain figurine, but we haven’t seen a complete example that looks quite right yet.

As he is hand painted I think he is likely to date to the 19th century.

21/05/2026

At HAS we encourage our staff to visit ancient sites that are near to where they are working. Here’s what happened when Lynne went to South Uist last week…

05/05/2026

Who doesn’t love a cup-marked stone? They are both very simple, pecked out of the rock face to make a basic ‘cup’ shape, and enigmatic - representative of a belief system or purpose that we still don’t really understand. Here is a lovely example from Perthshire that our team had the chance to record recently:

27/04/2026

Well what a week last week was. Two kirk sites, the start of a very large walkover survey, AND our Achilles UVDB quality assurance accreditation audit.

I am delighted to say that the results are in and we have an initial score of 100%!! This is a phenomenal result for a small team 😃🎉🎊

26/03/2026

What a busy year we have had so far! So busy that we have hardly had time to update you all. We have some very exciting finds to share with you, but in the mean time we have been reviewing 2025. What a range of sites we have been at!

23/02/2026

We’ve been helping with the planning and delivery of Highland Heritage Day again this year. It’s a wonderful way to get different heritage organisations from across the Highlands together in the same room. Do you know any groups who should be there? Get in touch with ARCH Highland :)

Are you a heritage organisation, museum, or interested in the history of our region?

Highland Heritage Day 2026 is just around the corner, and this year we'll be discussing all things collaboration.

Join us on Saturday 14th of March for inspiring talks, facilitated workshops and a chance to network with organisations from across the area.

Booking forms and a timetable can be found on the ARCH website, or by messaging us.

18/11/2025

Autumn is always a busy time for us. We've been busy beavering away on sites and paperwork. Today I have been looking at the OS Namebooks, a fantastic series of documents recording the gathering of placenames for the compilation of the 1st edition OS map.

Some of the most interesting sections are in the correspondence, as here where Captain Macpherson of the Royal Engineers writes:

"The name list from these sheets have been sent to me by the 6th Division Ipswich. I see from them that most of the wrong names were collected by civilian assistant F. Magrath of that Division. He has always had a tendency to make up imaginary English meaning for the Gaelic names received by him on the ground." (OS1/33/30/72C-D)

Have you had a look at the Namebook for your local placenames?

Narrow your search by selecting a type of record, e.g. 'Morayshire OS Name Books (1868-1871)', or leave selection as 'ALL'. Select more than one type by holding down 'Ctrl' when selecting any entries.

07/10/2025

Straight from the fantastic Highland Archaeology Conference into lots of fieldwork for the HAS team, including some stunning locations…

18/09/2025

Family portrait

15/09/2025

It's not long until the Highland Archaeology Festival conference and we are looking forward to some great talks!
- Lynne loves textiles so is fascinated to hear about the Bronze Age horse-hair hat
- Tom is interested in military sites so he should enjoy finding out about the Norwegian Army in the Highlands
- Karen has been working on a shell assemblage recently so we'll be taking notes about Nybster
- Lachlan loves hearing what rabbit-holes Ian has fallen down on the Highland Historic Environment Record

Which talk are you most looking forward to?