Strathearn Environs & Royal Forteviot (SERF) Project

Forteviot occupies a special place in the history of Scotland. The death of King Kenneth mac Alpin, one of the first kings of a united Scotland, was recorded at the ‘palace’ of Forteviot in AD 858 and at this time this site was an major royal centre in a fledgling Scottish nation.

Forteviot is also the location of one of the most extensive concentrations of early prehistoric ritual monuments in mainland Scotland. It is these two chronologically separated but physically linked episodes of landscape use at Forteviot, which provides a focus of the Strathearn Environs and Royal Forteviot project (SERF).

SERF is a major research project that explores the long-term evolution of the Forteviot landscape and its wider social, political and geographical context. Since 2006 archaeologists from the Universities of Glasgow and Aberdeen, with the help of local volunteers, have been investigating the archaeology of Forteviot.