History Scotland

Explore centuries of Scottish history and archaeology with fascinating features on topics from all branches and periods of Scottish history and archaeology, written by leading historians, archaeologists and museum curators. With news on the latest research, opinion, expert reviews and spotlights on the country's most significant historical archives, this lavishly-illustrated magazine has everything you need to explore Scotland's rich past.

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History Scotland

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WALLS, FORTS AND CASTLES • Sam Williamson and Mary Peteranna (AOC Archaeology) report on recent excavations at Amity House, Stornoway, Isle of Lewis

How ‘red’ was Red Clydeside? • Three historians debate a subject that has occupied academics and politicians for over a century.

The long, strange journey of VIKING-AGE RINGED PINS • Dr Adrián Maldonado traces the history of ‘ringed pins’, a distinctive form of early medieval dress fastening whose emergence and development potentially sheds significant light on the nature of Scottish society during theViking Age.

TO READ OR NOT TO READ GAELS’ ATTITUDES TOWARDS GAELIC LITERACY IN THE HEBRIDES, 1811-C.1843 • Elizabeth Ritchie looks at efforts to bring Gaelic literacy to Scotland’s highlands in the early 1800s, which were met with both enthusiasm and resistance.

DÁL RIATA rise and fall? • Dr Russell Ó Ríagáin reconsiders the challenging, fragmentary evidence related to the Dál Riata, whose settlement and polities in west-central Scotland played a significant, though highly elusive role in early medieval history.

Scottish Episcopal Acta • In his latest column, Dr Kelsey Jackson Williams takes a look at Norman Shead’s Scottish Episcopal Acta

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LOTHIAN and the SCOTTISH KINGS • Now a core part of the country, Lothian was not included the Scottish kingdom as it began to develop from the 9th century onwards. Dr Neil McGuigan investigates how Lothian might have been absorbed into the medieval polity, and asks what consequences this had for the development of Scotland.

KICKING BALLS IN WAR-TORN VIETNAM • In 1967, young Scottish players joined New Zealand and Australian teams in war-tornVietnam for a football tournament, facing both fierce competition and the constant dangers of an active conflict zone.

THE EARLIEST CHILD KING OF SCOTS? • Whether little boys like David II or baby girls such as Mary, queen a common feature of Scottish history from the later Middle Ages. But how deep into the past does this traditional of youthful kingship stretch? The answer is complex, and depends, in part, on how we define ‘childhood’. Dr Emily Joan Ward explains.

HELEN DUNCAN (NÉE MACFARLANE) (1897-1956), MEDIUM • Tessa Spencer explores the life of Helen Duncan. A well-known and popular medium, she was the last person in Scotland to be controversially tried and convicted under theWitchcraftAct of 1735.

TOXIC MASCULINITY in 11th-century Scotland • Professor Alex Woolf reflects on a curious story of house-burning preserved in cartulary of the priory of St Andrews, suggesting that it offers striking, and perhaps uncomfortable insights into the values of honour and masculinity that governed medieval Scottish society.

MEDAL CARDS • With Ancestry.com releasing what it describes as the‘BritishArmyWorldWar II Medal Cards 1939-1945’, it is important to examine the difference between those of the Great War already onAncestry and those of WWII. Ken Nisbet investigates.

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