Archaeology of Perth and Kinross
The diverse natural environments of Perth and Kinross, from mountain top to inter-tidal estuary, contain an extremely rich and varied archaeology.
The modern landscape contains elements of over six thousand years of human activity, including remains of settlements, industry, religious monuments and funerary sites.
The first humans to inhabit the area were small bands of hunter-gatherers who followed the retreating ice northwards following the last ice age, more than 8,000 years ago. Fishing, hunting and gathering food in small groups, moving over large areas on a seasonal cycle, they left few permanent structures and we know of them only through finds of small flint tools.
Around 4,000 BC, farming began to be introduced with areas of forest being cleared for mixed agriculture, growing wheat and barley in addition to domesticating sheep and cattle. These 'first farmers' were also responsible for the earliest monuments in the landscape, including long cairns, ceremonial cursuses, and later standing stones, stone circles, henges and rock art. The introduction of metal-working coincides with the appearance of distinctive Beaker pottery from around 2,500 BC, usually found in single graves rather than the multiple burials of the earlier long cairns. There are over five hundred round cairns and barrows in the area, mainly dating from the second millennium BC. Later prehistoric remains include upland settlements, containing round houses, field systems and clearance cairns, and hill-forts, of which there are over 80 examples in the area. Iron technology was introduced from around 500 BC, and by the first centuries AD, complex farming settlements with souterrains (underground storage spaces) were beginning to appear, with concentrations along the Carse of Gowrie and in Strathmore.
The Roman invasion of Scotland occurred towards the end of the first century AD and had a profound effect on the area, with the construction of several major forts and the Gask Ridge frontier, the earliest and most northerly frontier in the Empire. It was the development of Pictish society, however, that was to shape the area in the first millennium AD. A tribal society based around kings and warlords, the Picts have left an unrivalled legacy of stone sculpture that reflects their religious and political beliefs during a period of great change, with the introduction of Christianity over the second half of the first millennium AD.
By the early 10th century the Pictish kingdom and the kingdom of Dalriada (present day Argyll) had been united to form a new kingdom, Alba. The royal palace and church site at Scone was at the ceremonial heart of Alba, and Scottish kings were crowned there throughout the medieval period. With the development of the Scottish kingdom Perth and Kinross is part of a complicated system of royal, noble and church land-holdings, many of them the focus for small rural communities as well as monasteries, castles and other centres of power. Perth, the key urban centre, was granted the status of a royal charter in the 12th century. A centre of international trade, it flourished down to the 16th century as one of the wealthiest burghs in the kingdom.
There are records of over 16,000 archaeological sites on the Historic Environment Record (HER) for Perth and Kinross. Of these 16,000 sites around 850 are Scheduled Ancient Monuments (SAMs) which are designated as sites of national importance and protected by the 1979 Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Areas Act.