Transcript: VFT 3: Kilmartin Glen - Interview with Steve
Farrar, Historic Scotland
Q3: How does Historic Scotland’s role in the interpretation of Kilmartin’s
archaeology differ from (or complement) the work of other stakeholders,
such as the forestry commission, Kilmartin House Museum and the Dalriada
Project?
We’ll start with Kilmartin House Museum, we grant fund or we apply some funds to them, and their
approach to interpreting this remarkable prehistoric landscape very much compliments ours which is why
in some part we support them. It is a remarkable privilege to actually see artefacts from a cairn and look
out the window of the museum and see the cairn. There is a particularly staggeringly beautiful Early Bronze
Age bowl with little bits of schist in the clay so it sparkles – it’s absolutely stunning -and it’s displayed with
the cairn from which it was extracted in the 1880s just behind you. [Just behind] you can see the tomb in
one glance. So that really does add a great deal to a visitor’s understanding and experience going around
Kilmartin Glen, to be able to go into the museum. So on those panels we consulted extensively with the
curator of the museum and we sent a photographer to the museum to take very high quality photographs
of artefacts afresh, to include on our interpretation panel and in each instance explain to visitors where
these objects are [so] they can go back and see them for themselves.
Our relationship with the museum is very good; we have good relations with The Forestry Commission
(Scotland) and we really both interpret the site at Achnabreac where there’s wonderful rock art. The car
park is a good 20 minutes’ walk from the site and there’s a Forestry Commission panel there [at the car
park], it’s an excellent panel; our panels are right buy the rock art. So I’m very aware of visitors have
already seen in the car park – it might not be Historic Scotland, we can’t control the content there – but
bearing in mind they’ve already put those in we wanted to make sure that what we wrote at the site was
complimentary and so we focussed very much on what you’re seeing, guiding you around the motifs and
the symbols on the site as well as some aspects of interpreting them based on some very recent
archaeological work.
So that [Achnabreac] was quite complimentary, the Dalriada Project – Historic Scotland wasn’t involved in
that. We got a little bit involved at Dunadd, on advice there. Their panels are in the car park at Dunadd, in
deed they’ve also got panels at Achnabreac but my response at Dunadd, where we did have a panel, was
simply to remove our one and put our interpretation actually onto the monument – again, focussing very
much on what you are seeing, what you are doing as you walk around trying to get people to understand
not just the monument but also how it was excavated to how explanations of its heritage have been
generated in the past and are still being generated.
So, the Dalriada Project panels are heavier on themes than ours. We do link into themes but we’re more
specific to the monument. I think it’s complimentary. I was very aware of what those panels said and where
they said it when I created our [Historic Scotland’s] panels. So, hopefully, from a visitor’s perspective,
they’ll probably not notice all the branding – they might not even notice that the panels look particularly
different – but hopefully they won’t see too much repetition and they’ll just have one smooth visitor
experience.
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