Canmore Mapping Layer
The HES Canmore Mapping layer is a GIS shapefile containing the Known Site Extents of around 100,000 sites in Scotland. The map shows the present extent of mapping using the Defining Scotland’s Places methodology. This methodology was developed during a pilot mapping project in 2010 and has gone on to be adopted by the Scottish Historic Environment Data group as its preferred Technical Specification for mapping the extent of archaeological monuments in Scotland. The full Technical Specification can be downloaded below.
Mapping the extent of Scotland’s monuments is an ongoing project being carried out by organisations across Scotland. Forestry and Land Scotland, the National Trust for Scotland, the Shetland Aminity Trust and the Scottish Borders have all mapped their estates/counties. Midlothian, Renfrewshire and parts of Orkney were mapped as part of the original pilot and HES’ survey teams now systematically map all new sites to this technical specification.
There are somewhere in the region of 160,000 unique archaeological records in Scotland. The mapping of these records continues. Watch this space for updates.
*** NOTE: The download below is dated December 2023. This data is the same as that shown on the Canmore map. ***
HES Canmore Mapping is open data produced to the Open Government Licence.
