Academic literature on the topic 'Adventure and adventurers-Scotland'

A central theme in both Irish and Scottish migration studies is the distinction between voluntary and forced migration, which is highlighted in the titles of major books in the field by the contrasting terms ‘emigrants’, or ‘adventurers’, and ‘exiles’.1 However, it has received relatively little attention with regard to the medieval period.2 Migration was central to the process by which the early Irish Church established itself in Scotland, most notably on Iona, in the sixth century. This article is concerned mainly with migration between Ireland and Scotland as evidenced by Adomnán's Life of Columba – ‘a source of the first importance for the early history of Ireland and Scotland’.3 In particular it is concerned with how the distinction between ‘emigrants’ and ‘exiles’ was understood, in both secular and sacred contexts, and it finds that in the early medieval period, c.300–800, as distinct from later periods, Irish migrants to Scotland and Irish and Scottish migrants further afield were thought of less as ‘exiles’ than as ‘emigrants’ or ‘adventurers’

Academic study of eleventh- to thirteenth-century high-status residence in Scotland has been largely bypassed by English debates over origin, function and symbolism. Archaeologists have also been slow to engage with three decades of historical revision of the traditional socioeconomic, cultural and political models upon which their interpretations of royal and lordly residence have drawn. Scottish castle studies concerned with the pre-1250 era continue to be framed by a ‘military architecture’ historio graphical tradition and a view of the castle as an alien artefact imposed on the land by foreign adventurers and a ‘modernizing’ monarchy and native Gaelic nobility. Knowledge and understanding of pre-twelfth-century native high-status sites is rudimentary and derived primarily from often inappropriate analogy with English examples. Discussion of native responses to the imported castle-building culture is founded upon retrospective projection of inappropriate later medieval social and economic models and anachronistic perceptions of military colonialism. Cultural and socio-economic difference is rarely recognized in archaeological modelling and cultural determinism has distorted perceptions of structural form, social status and material values. A programme of interdisciplinary studies focused on specific sites is necessary to provide a corrective to this current situation.