The Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS) is an executive non-departmental public body of the Scottish Government 'sponsored' [financed and with oversight] through Historic Scotland, an executive agency of the Scottish Government. It is one of the country's National Collections.
The RCAHMS is responsible for recording, interpreting and collecting information about the built and historic environment. This information, which relates to buildings, sites, and ancient monuments of archaeological, architectural and historical interest (including maritime sites and underwater constructions), as well as historical aspects of the landscape, is then made available to the public, mainly at no cost.
It was established by a Royal Warrant of 1908 which was revised in 1992.
RCAHMS has a mission statement, which is:
The Commission is based in Edinburgh where it has a huge selection of photographs and drawings for consultation. It also publishes a range of books and documents on Scottish architecture and archaeology. Increasingly study has also been conducted of previously neglected industrial and agricultural constructions, as well as 20th century buildings, including high-rise tower blocks.
RCAHMS maintains a database/archive of the sites, monuments and buildings of Scotland's past; while at one time known as the National Monuments Record of Scotland (NMRS), no differentiation is now apparent in RCAHMS publications or on the organisation's website. A growing proportion of RCAHMS's own survey material and material deposited in the archive by others is now available through online databases such as CANMORE.
Since 1976 RCAHMS has conducted intensive aerial survey of archaeological sites, buildings, landscapes and natural features. In addition to its holdings of its own (mainly oblique) aerial photographs, it holds large numbers of Royal Air Force oblique and vertical aerial photographs taken of Scotland during and in the years after the Second World War, as well as post-war Ordnance Survey, local and national government, and commercial vertical aerial photographs. RCAHMS also holds thousands of wartime aerial photographs taken in a number of different theatres of war.
The RCAHMS in conjunction with Historic Scotland hosts a map-based GIS portal called PASTMAP. This allows Historic Scotland [1], NMRS[2], Scottish Natural Heritage[3] and some Local Authority Sites and Monuments[4] data sets to be viewed together.
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Initially, RCAHMS recorded all buildings and monuments of note until the year 1707. This was later updated to 1805. The findings were published in a series of inventories. Changes in what constitutes a construction "of note", plus developments in how the public could access this information, led to the abandonment of the inventories after publication of the last Argyll volume in 1992. Consequently, only approximately one-half of Scotland was covered by this method.
The volumes are now all out-of-print but are available for consultation at RCAHMS in Edinburgh or at most large public libraries. Until the Dumfriesshire volume, the inventories were paper-bound and issued in octavo format.
This is available as an online pdf at http://www.archive.org/details/secondreportinve00scot
This is available as an online pdf at http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924015428661
This is available as an online pdf at http://www.archive.org/details/seventhreportwit00scotuoft
Three further publications, North East Perth: An Archaeological Landscape (1990), South East Perth: An Archaeological Landscape (1994) and Eastern Dumfriesshire: An Archaeological Landscape (1997) were appended to the series. As the titles suggest these were concerned with archaeological remains rather than significant above-ground structures. Unlike all earlier volumes, these publications used the boundaries of the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1973. Hence 'Perth' refers to an area within Perth and Kinross District rather than historic Perthshire. The Dumfriesshire volume related to both the eastern end of the historic county and the post-1973 district as the areas were identical. To date the Dumfriesshire volume is the only area to be revisited as part of a completely new inventory.
RCAHMS also published a series of lists covering archaeological sites and monuments which simply enumerated and identified, rather than interpreted, historic structures. As before, this series did not see completion. The series of 29 lists was begun in 1978 with the districts of Clackmannan and Falkirk within Central Region and concluded with the Easter Ross area of Ross and Cromarty District of Highland Region in 1989.