Join us for an enlightening journey through history. Book now for our exciting online lecture series, where we explore a fascinating array of topics. Discover the secrets of local archaeological excavations, delve into the daily lives of the Medieval era, uncover the mysteries of the Picts, and appreciate the stunning art of George Bain

LECTURE PROGRAMME 2025

Alastair Morton
George Bain Memorial Lecture
The Story of George Bain and Celtic Rug Design
29  May 2025

George Bain (1881-1968) was a key ‘influencer’ in the Celtic Art Revival.  After WW2 he founded a short lived College of Celtic Cultures in Drumnadrochit.  During this period he was commissioned by a Kidderminster based carpet manufacturer to produce Celtic designs for rugs and carpets and to act as a consultant for the commercial exploitation of them.  Alastair has been researching this aspect of Bain’s work for some while and he will be talking about the results to date of this ongoing investigation and showing many of the relevant designs.

Alastair Morton began a fascination with George Bain’s Celtic design work as a teenager and later studied archaeology at London University over 50 years ago.  He became a member of Groam House Museum quite soon after its establishment.  After early retirement in 2007 he moved from England to the Black Isle and soon became a volunteer and member of the museum’s board of trustees.  This work continues….

COMING UP:

Hamish Findlay Lamley
Leather working in Early Medieval Europe
3 July 2025

Alex Woolf
Ships, Men and Land in Scotland, England and Elsewhere
24 July 2025

Fiona Campbell-Howes
Annual Academic Lecture
Rosemarkie and Ross in the time of Curetán: Bishops, Abbots and Churches in the Early Medieval Moray Firthlands
26 August 2025

Rachel Buckley
Untying the knots of Bronze Age Rosemarkie
25 September 2025

Cynthia Thickpenny & David McGovern
Recreating the Tarbat Wreath Fragment: Pictish Stonecarvers as Masters of Transmutation
24 October 
In person at Fortrose Free Church and online.

November – TBC

Sophia Kniaz, University of St Andrews
Highly Fragmented, Intensely Connected: Developing Paradigmatic Approaches to the Early Medieval North Channel World, c. 500-800CE
Thursday 24th April 2025, 7.30pm    Postponed 
Studies of the Early Medieval North Atlantic are often characterised by divisions, both between disciplines (i.e. archaeology, history, and landscape studies) and in research conventions (e.g. regionalised typologies), such that archaeological investigations can become confined within modern political and/or terrestrial boundaries which their historical subjects exceeded. This is especially evident in relation to the early medieval North Channel; although the seascape and its medieval communities were intimately inter-connected (at its narrowest, the strait is only 19km wide between Torr Head and the Mull of Kintyre), scholarship of the region has become compartmentalised according to the distinct archaeological programmes of Scotland, Northern Ireland, and the Republic of Ireland.

Numerous investigations of early medieval communities which spanned the North Channel, such as Dál Riata and the Columban monastic network, have highlighted the need for shared archaeological typologies and investigations which facilitate discussions across the region (Armit 2008; Werner 2007). In response, this lecture proposes the development of an interdisciplinary, multi-scalar, and holistic “North Channel paradigm” within early medieval North Atlantic scholarship. Taking inspiration from the flowering of methodologies, theoretical frameworks, and new research directions within scholarship on the ancient Mediterranean (especially in the two decades following Horden and Purcell’s “The Corrupting Sea”), this lecture explores the value of developing similar maritime paradigms for the North Channel, emphasising the fluidity and “borderless-ness” such approaches bring.

The lecture employs an interdisciplinary methodology and post-processual archaeological framework to explore everyday lives across the North Channel, examining case studies including early medieval Iona, settlement forms, and material culture (e.g. Continental E-ware ceramics) in south-western Scotland and north-eastern Ireland. It offers a dynamic and theoretically-engaged [re]centering of the North Channel, and sheds light on the complexities of past lived experience in a highly fragmented and intensely connected North Atlantic landscape.

Sophia Knaiaz is a current PhD student and undergraduate-level tutor with the University of St Andrews, currently in her final year of study. She is from Arizona in the United States. I graduated in 2021 from University College Dublin with a MSc degree in Experimental Archaeology & Material Culture, with her final dissertation topic exploring the role (and possible uses of) of E-ware vessels in early medieval assemblages across Ireland. Her current PhD research looks at the early medieval North Channel “seascape” through maritime theoretical frameworks like those of the ancient Mediterranean (Braudel, Horden & Purcell).