Finlaggan and the Lordship of the Isles: An Archaeological Approach

Abstract

The National Museums of Scotland are undertaking a research excavation at Finlaggan on Islay, the centre of the Lordship of the Isles. The strategic design for the programme envisages five seasons of work, the third of which was completed at the end of September 1992.1 The project owes its inception to the desire to demonstrate that archaeology can make useful contributions to our understand ing of an historical period in Scotland for which historians' efforts at interpretation have been significantly constrained by the lack of written documents.