Review – Raasay: the ACFA archaeological surveys 1995-2009

1 min read
Amy Gazin-Schwartz
Association of Certificated Field Archaeologists, £15
ISBN 978-1999844141
Review Gavin MacGregor

The Isle of Raasay is in sharp focus in Scottish culture. It is the place whose cleared settlements informed Sorley MacLean’s important Gaelic poem Hallaig. It is the landscape where Calum MacLeod spent ten years in the 1960s and 1970s hand-building a road to keep his community connected.

This book synthesises more than a decade of field survey by the Association of Certificated Field Archaeologists (ACFA) across the whole of the Isle of Raasay. Comprising ten chapters, it charts the changing character of settlement from the Mesolithic to the 20th century on a landscape scale. With large numbers of Medieval or Later Rural Settlement (MoLRS) sites, much of the volume comprises survey results of townships, farmsteads, and their associated sheilings. The contributors successfully interweave insights from documentary sources, producing a useful contribution to the study of MoLRS in Scotland.

Above all, the book is a celebration of the work of ACFA, reflecting its members’ skills and dedication to archaeological survey, and the important contribution they have made to the understanding of the historic environment of Scotland.

This review appeared in CA 354.

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