The Scottish Crannog Centre is a living history museum which is dedicated to life on Loch Tay in Perthshire, central Scotland.

One of the key features of this centre is it’s reconstructed crannog, which is a type of wooden roundhouse which incorporates stilts. Due to the use of stilts, crannogs have a very limited lifespan, so this sort of thing is rare to see.

In recent times, quite a lot of ancient artifacts have been found in the loch bed.

These findings have led to this centre being opened, so that visitors can enjoy and learn about these ancient artifacts and how people in the region used to live their lives.

One such object recently found was a wooden butter dish, which still had some bits of decomposed butter on it.

“When they started excavating, they pulled out this square wooden dish, well around three quarters of a square wooden dish, which had these really nice chisel marks on the sides as well as this grey stuff.”

Liped [sic] analysis on this matter found that it was dairy material, with experts believing it likely originated from a cow.

Holes in the bottom of the wooden dish further suggest that it was used for the buttering process.

Cream would have been churned until thickened until it splits to form the buttermilk, with a woven cloth – possibly made from nettle fibers – placed in the dish with the clumps of cream then further pushed through to separate the last of the liquid.” – Rich Hiden, Scottish Crannog Centre Archaeologist

The Scottish Crannog Centre was supposed to open earlier this year but the pandemic has delayed this process.

They are now scheduled to open on August 1st, 2020.

Address: Kenmore PH15 2HY, United Kingdom