Community Survey: The Assynt Hidden Lives Project
AOC leads the way in community heritage projects. One good example is the Assynt Hidden Lives Project, a collaborative parish-wide survey of Assynt in Sutherland, carried out with Historic Assynt.
The community project was designed to assess the archaeological resource of the parish, to provide a platform for an improved archaeological understanding of the resource and to record key representative sites. Walkover survey targeted all known sites within the study area, assessing each of the sites visited on their archaeological value and interest, level of preservation and ‘legibility’ as well as considering aspects relevant to visitor experience, such as aesthetic value and physical accessibility. Following this work, detailed topographic surveys of a representative cross-section of sites was undertaken, aiming to record good examples of sites from across the chronological range of Assynt’s archaeology.
An accompanying outreach programme included a series of lectures, training seminars and schools workshops. A project website kept a diary of the results and progress, and a touring exhibition deployed to disseminate the results across the region.
