The Coire Dhuinnid fault zone contains emerald green chromian illite-ankerite-quartz rocks that are similar in appearance to the fuchsite(or mariposite)-carbonate-quartz parageneses that are commonplace in Archaean greenstone belts but which are rather rare in Phanerozoic rocks. The chromian illite contains 2.3 wt.% Cr2O3, low K2O (7.1–7.6 wt.%) and high H2O+ (5.7 wt.%), and it is a 1M polytype with ≤10% of an illite/smectite interstratification indicative of a formation temperature of c. 175–200°C. The host rocks contain high concentrations of Ni and Cr, and show low concentrations of Ti, Nb, Y and Zr, suggesting a former primitive mafic protolith (boninitic magma?); they are considered to be retrograde remnants of Lewisian rocks. The latter, and the associated rocks of the Moine Series, have been affected by CO2 metasomatism that was accompanied by the addition of Ca(+Sr), Fe and Mg, and by the removal of Na from, and the addition of H2O to the Moine metasediments. Radiogenic isotope studies of mineral separates and whole rock from sample no. 43 yielded ages of 483±2 Ma (Ar-Ar dating on Cr illite), 413±12 Ma (K-Ar dating on Cr illite), and 322±9 Ma (Rb-Sr dating on minerals and whole rock); the significance of this discrepant pattern is discussed.

This article examines the Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge (SSPCK) and its missions in the Highlands and Britain's American colonies. Constituted in 1709 and operating as an auxiliary arm of the Church of Scotland, the SSPCK aimed to extend Christianity in ‘Popish and Infidel parts of the world’. It founded numerous Highland charity schools, and from 1729 sponsored missions to Native Americans in New England and Georgia. Missions were increasingly important in British overseas expansion; consequently, historians have viewed the society as a civilizing agency, which deployed religious instruction to assimilate ‘savage’ heathens into the fold of Britain's empire. This article suggests that the SSPCK was equally concerned with Christianization: missionaries focused on spiritual edification for the salvation of souls, indicating a disjuncture between the society's objectives and the priorities of imperial expansion. It also challenges the parity assumed by historians between the SSPCK's domestic and foreign missions, arguing that the society increasingly prioritized colonial endeavours in an attempt to recover providential favour. In doing so, it sheds new light on Scottish ideas of mission during the first half of the eighteenth century, and reassesses the Scottish Church's role in Britain's emerging empire.

This paper discusses the project of an archaeology of capitalism through a case study situated in the southern Scottish Highlands. It is argued that archaeology as a discipline has a significant contribution to make to discussions of the emergence and development of the social relations of capitalism. This is because archaeology has as one of its main concerns mundane social practice or routine. Changes in everyday routine and the associated material environment made the ideological aspects of capitalism, focusing on the individual and private property, conceivable for some. These changes to the everyday environment were instigated by the landlords, inspired by enlightenment thought, in order to secure their ownership of certain estates as private property, which had been in dispute under the clan system. Response of the rural population to Improvement was varied and their continuing relationship with their landlord evolved with reference to certain key structuring dispositions. The essential issue for the farming population was land rights. The major conclusion of this paper as concerns archaeologies of capitalism is that we must distinguish between capitalism (an ideology of the individual made knowable in routine practice) and capitalist societies (those societies where capitalism is widespread but not necessarily universal). This allows consideration of varied experience of and interaction with capitalism in the past.

Ameliella Fryday & Coppins gen. nov. is proposed to accommodate two inconspicuous, undescribed species, A. andreaeicola and A. grisea, collected from high altitude in the Scottish Highlands. Outside the Scottish Highlands, Ameliella andreaeicola is known from single collections from Norway and Canada, and A. grisea from a single collection from Norway. The new genus appears to have some affinity with Miriquidica.