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Research Seminar: Dr Sarah Laurenson

Principal Curator of Modern and Contemporary History, National Museums Scotland

Wednesday 27 November 2024 | 13:00
Seòmar Shomhairle, Sabhal Mòr Ostaig
This seminar will be available live online.

Mountain matters: exploring the material culture of Scotland’s hills

We often think of mountains as physical things – masses of stone and soil and water and woodland to be climbed, admired and cared for. But what do historical objects tell us about the relationship between people and the Scottish landscape through time?

Things made from mountain materials, lost or buried on the hillside, and used to traverse difficult terrain all hold stories of human interaction with high places. From prehistoric tools to Roman armlets, seventeenth-century powder horns and weapons to modern geological specimens, scientific equipment and hilly tourist trinkets, the material culture of Scotland’s mountains offers new ways of thinking through the complex and shifting ways that people have used, experienced and imagined the high tops and corries, before and after the birth of mountaineering. In particular, many of these objects hold the potential to unlock new insights on our existing understandings of how the long histories of the hills are bound up with Gaelic language and culture.

Drawing on a range of objects and historical photographs, this talk visits some of Scotland’s best-known mountain ranges to explore the ways in which traditional knowledge, techniques, customs and beliefs offer valuable past-present perspectives that might inform approaches to the long-term sustainability of the Scottish landscape at a time of global environmental emergency.

This talk will be delivered in English.

Dr Sarah Laurenson

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