Save Wemyss Ancient Caves Big Lottery Fund: Awards For All Scotland grant enables the Save Wemyss Ancient Caves Society: Photographic Project to continue.

“The Save Wemyss Ancient Caves Society (SWACS) are pleased to announce they were awarded a grant from the Big Lottery Fund: Awards For All Scotland that will enable them to continue an exciting photographic project intended to reveal more of the Pictish and Viking symbols inscribed within East Wemyss caves. SWACS Education Officer, Sue Hamstead explains:

“We were lucky enough last year to have a group of specialist digital archaeologists from York Archaeological Trust undertaking a data capture exercise at Jonathan’s Cave. They used a variety of scanning and photographic techniques in order to provide an online visualization of the cave and its famous Pictish carvings. One particular technique we learned about through this experience, RTI (Reflectance Transformation Imaging), has proved especially powerful, and it was seeing the results obtained that inspired us to find a way of funding the equipment we needed to continue this project for ourselves and use it to capture the carvings in the other caves. That’s why we applied to Awards For All Scotland and were delighted when we heard that they had very generously granted our application.

Once we have purchased the equipment we need and tried and tested the method for ourselves we will be looking to involve as many local people as possible in this exercise. So if you have an interest in history or archaeology or if you just want to learn about this powerful photographic technique, please get in touch.