During the 19th and 20th centuries a trail of chance finds on the outskirts of Portmahomack led to the first exposure in 1996 of a Pictish settlement in northern Scotland. The area became the subject of one of the largest research excavations ever to have taken place on the Scottish mainland. This book describes the discovery and excavation of an early monastery. Dating from the 6th to the 9th century AD Portmahomack is one of the earliest Christian sites to be revealed in Britain and the first in the land of the Picts. The monastery was destroyed between 780 and 830 AD and was then lost to history before being unearthed by one of the largest archaeological research projects ever seen in Scotland.