The SERF Project
The Strathearn and Environs and Royal Forteviot (SERF) project is a major long-term fieldwork project run by multiple staff at the University of Glasgow and largely funded by Historic Environment Scotland (HES). Publications and an impact case-study based on SERF contributed to the outstanding results that the archaeology subject area at University of Glasgow got in REF2021.
Our research environment is one that is based on teamwork and collegiate research, and the SERF Project embodies this. Commencing in 2006, with fieldwork ending only in 2017, and post-excavation and writing-up still continuing, people across archaeology at Glasgow have been involved in research as part of this project. This includes research staff, technicians, teaching staff, postgraduates, and affiliate staff, while hundreds of our undergraduates received fieldwork training through SERF.
Focused on the parishes of Forteviot and Dunning, Perth & Kinross, excavations and survey included sites from Mesolithic period valley floor activity to post-medieval uplands. Some ten publications by six members of staff came out in the REF2021 review period and continue to do so now. The first two SERF monographs, Royal Forteviot and Prehistoric Forteviot, were published in 2020 by CBA and are open access (find them here) thanks to HES support. In a review of the books in the Scottish Archaeological Journal 42.1 (2022) Richard Bradley wrote:
It is already clear that this was an outstanding project and one that can hardly fail to deliver exciting conclusions in the future. Even at this stage the first two books transform our understanding of the prehistoric and early medieval worlds. They break down the awkward disciplinary boundary that divides them from one another and show one way in which thinking in archaeology might develop in the future.
An impact case-study was also written for REF2021 looking at the connection between the SERF methodology of fieldwork and public engagement, and the development of Scotland’s Archaeology Strategy in 2015, whose initial chair was our own Prof Stephen Driscoll, also a director of the SERF Project. During the course of the SERF Project we worked with dozens of volunteers, had almost 1000 visitors to our excavations, delivered workshops and a pop-up museum for communities in Strathearn, and ran a popular garden test-pitting project in Dunning with local people and the school.
For more about SERF and all of our team members and partners, go to our project website.
