Archaeology/ Gaelic

Archaeology and Gaelic is a combination that is deeply rooted in the history of Scotland and the broader Celtic world. Archaeology studies how people of the past interacted with their world through the material evidence they left behind: objects, sites, monuments, landscapes, and the traces of everyday life that survive in the ground and in museums. Gaelic, with its ancient literary tradition and continuing presence as a spoken language in the Highlands and Islands, connects you directly to the cultures and communities whose remains archaeology investigates.

At Glasgow you will study archaeological methods, theory, and evidence alongside Gaelic language, literature, and culture. Archaeology training will develop your skills in fieldwork, artefact analysis, and the interpretation of sites and landscapes from the prehistoric period through to the medieval and early modern world. You will engage with the material culture of the Celtic world, including its distinctive metalwork, manuscripts, and place-names, in a way that your Gaelic studies directly informs.

Gaelic study will develop your linguistic competence and your engagement with a living cultural and literary tradition that is in many ways continuous with the historical world that archaeology studies. The programme is offered part-time and includes a year abroad, giving you flexibility in your studies and an international perspective on archaeology and Celtic culture.

Graduates pursue careers in heritage management, archaeological fieldwork, museum curation, Gaelic education, cultural organisations, publishing, and research. Many continue to postgraduate study in archaeology, Celtic studies, or heritage management. The combination of material and linguistic approaches to the past is genuinely distinctive.