“We wined them and dined them, they ate o’ our meat; new insights into subsistence, settlement and status in Early Modern Glencoe. Edward Stewart, University of Glasgow

From travellers’ accounts and romantic re-imaginings perceptions of the Highlands of Scotland as a backward, isolated and impoverished region in the early modern period dominate popular narratives around landscapes such as Glencoe, and frame events such as the Cromwellian, Williamite and Jacobite wars. Recent excavations by the University of Glasgow and National Trust for Scotland in Glencoe at the Summerhouse of Maclain, and townships of Achnacon and Achtriochtan, and shielings of Gleann Leac-na-Muidhe, can allow us to construct new narratives around the connectivity of communities in this region  and the strategies these communities developed for subsistence.  These excavations allow us to build a picture of life in Glencoe before and after the events of the 1692 massacre and consider the responses of the communities of this landscape to this event, and the worsening climatic conditions of the Little Ice Age.