Surprisingly, there are a similar tiny number of excavated villages from the later medieval period (eg Rattray, Yeoman 1995). When buildings are excavated that prove to belong to the early Middle Ages, they normally have no surviving artefacts in them. But as intensive survey shows (eg RCAHMS 1990, 1994a, 1994b, 1994c, 1994d) the remains of habitations from the Bronze Age to the Clearances are often located in the same area, and the signature of the first millennium AD remains undistinguished. Those parts of Scotland that are cultivated produce cropmarks, and the less cultivated uplands produce shallow earthworks – and a great many buried structures have been located in this way – round houses, long houses and field boundaries. These are all different and placed in time only through radiocarbon dating. For the period 400-1100 there are fewer than 10 houses known on the Scottish mainland (eg Pitcarmick, Portmahomack). The locations of the majority of sites have not survived, even as placenames, and physically they are hard to find. The use of organic materials is undetectable other than for a short period in limited places (e.g. With few exceptions, the cemeteries contain no grave goods. Few buildings from before 1200 remain standing.
However, it is no easier to read than the other kinds of evidence and is particularly challenging in Scotland. This is archaeology’s forte, and a wealth of medieval material culture has survived. The documentation gradually increases from none to sparse to plentiful, but rarely becomes coherent or objective, and historians and art historians struggle to go beyond the sequence of events, the evidence of high status proclamations and propaganda into the varied lives and thoughts of ordinary people. This so-called “Middle” age is a period crucial for the history of Britain, creating the territorial, ethnic and religious loyalties still in existence today. Over a thousand years separates the end of the western Roman empire from the Renaissance.
Highland Archaeological Research Framework (HighARF).South East Scotland Archaeological Research Framework (SESARF).
Regional Archaeological Research Framework for Argyll (RARFA).Scottish Network for Nineteenth Century European Cultures.