ACCORD with the Tarbet Isle Dig Group

ACCORD was an AHRC funded research project that took place from October 2013 to March 2015 and was a collaboration between the Digital Design Studio at the Glasgow School of Art, the University of Manchester, the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland and Archaeology Scotland. In the summer of 2014 the ACCORD project worked together with communities across Scotland to co-design and co-produce 3-Dimensional digital models of heritage places and monuments. We explored how forms of community-based social value associated with sites and places can be addressed and transformed through engagement with 3D digital technologies. The project worked together with 10 community groups across Scotland that have ongoing relationships to heritage places. The ACCORD team worked with a group who were excavating medieval remains on Tarbet Isle on a community excavation run by Northlight Heritage with professional archaeologist Heather James on the 21st and 23rd of October 2014. This group included including two American-Scots who claim roots to the clan MacFarlane and volunteer amateur archaeologists. Together employing the technique of photogrammetry we 3D recorded and modelled the excavated trenches on the island which have uncovered the foundations of a building dating to the medieval period and a 1612 plaque built into the church wall at Luss, dedicated to clan chieftain John MacFarlane.