The clocks have gone back and the nights are drawing in, so what better time to look back and celebrate Scottish Archaeology Month (SAM) 2024 – which saw over 300 archaeology and heritage-themed events taking place across Scotland!
For those of you who are new to Archaeology Scotland, SAM is Archaeology Scotland’s flagship festival, that takes place every September across the whole of Scotland.
SAM has grown and expanded considerably during the past 30 years, and now, along with Doors Open Days forms part of Scotland’s contribution to European Heritage Days (EHD) helping to forge partnerships and links to our European heritage and encourage visitors to Scotland to explore our shared past and culture.
We started SAM 2024 by launching the festival in partnership with The National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, where families and visitors had the chance to dress up as Vikings, handle Viking artefacts from one of our artefact kits and have a go at playing the Rubbish Game introducing people of all ages to the archaeology of our everyday rubbish and what this tells us about a person’s life, just as archaeologists do with material remains from the past.
Our SAM launch also coincided with 10 year anniversary of the discovery of The Galloway Hoard, one of the most important Viking finds in Scotland which is showing us the cosmopolitan links between Scotland and West Asia. This tied in very nicely with the 2024 EHD theme of Routes, Connections and Pathways and we saw many SAM event organisers embrace this theme or incorporate it into their events.
This year’s programme saw over 300 events take place from Orkney to Dumfries & Galloway. Events ranged from excavations, live performances, guided walks, exhibitions, talks, re-enactments and everything else in between.
Some of the highlights were the “Rock, Paper, Chisels” Festival on Luing celebrating its history and future as a Slate Island, Fotheringhay: An Audience with Mary Queen of Scots, a play about the night before Mary Queen of Scot’s execution, The Culloden Battlefield Archaeology Week highlighting the archaeological work being carried out there by The National Trust for Scotland and a Guided Walk by Nick Card, the Director of the Ness of Brodgar Excavations looking back at the last 20 years of excavations there.
Its been a great year and looking forward we are hoping to expand and develop what we offer as part of SAM 2025 and beyond so watch this space!
