RCAHMS Archaeological Field Survey, Ben Lawers

Project Name: Ben Lawers

Project Code: BL00

Area: 69.6km2

Linework: TM000544.zip

Databases: MS731/29, DX001452, DX001457 and DX001458

The survey of an area of north Loch Tayside, centred on the National Trust for Scotland’s Ben Lawers estate, was the principal focus for fieldwork in 2000. The work was carried out in partnership with the Trust and was supported by a substantial grant from European funds. Ground and aerial survey have revealed a surprisingly large number of hitherto unrecorded monuments ranging in date from the prehistoric period to the 19th century. Included amongst the new discoveries are a chambered cairn, some 70 cup-marked boulders, two ring-ditch houses and an unrecognised class of structure probably associated with peat storage.

RCAHMS (DES 2000, 105)

The ground survey for this project was far more productive than expected, so much so that RCAHMS and The National Trust for Scotland had to provide additional resources to ensure its completion. Carried out under the direction of Steve Boyle, no less than 465 sites were recorded during the survey, which represents a 300% increase in the number of sites previously known in the area. Focused on the Ben Lawers Estate and the adjacent farms, this is a remarkable landscape, the more so for the survival of the estate maps of 1769 detailing the townships and their holdings. Fragments of this mid-18th -century landscape can be detected in the survey data, but it is equally clear that there have also been several periods of change and reorganisation since 1769. With the intense use of this landscape over the last 300 years it is not surprising that relatively few earlier monuments are now visible. Nevertheless, the team located a hitherto unrecorded chambered cairn and also discovered large numbers of cup-and-ring stone carvings, bringing the total of these curious markings in the survey area to 118.

RCAHMS Annual Report 2000-1, p.18