1: Introduction. Subject. Approach. Structure.
2: Rural Settlement Studies: A Critical History. Rural Settlement Studies as Ethnology. Rural Settlement Studies as Folk Life. Rural Settlement Studies as Historical Archaeology. Archaeology, Documents, and the Writing of Social History. An Active Archaeology of Improvement.
3: Capitalism and Society. Archaeology and Capitalism: The Georgian Order. Beyond the Georgian Order: Society and the Individual. The Constitution of Society and Social Change. Ideology, Material Culture, and Routine Practice. Capitalism, Capitalist Society, and Archaeology.
4: The Changing Material and Routine Environment. The Pre-Improvement Material Environment. Settlement. Landscape. Domestic Space. The Material Environment of Improvement. Settlement. Landscape. Domestic Space. Changing Routine Practice with Improvement.
5: Improvement and Enlightenment. Improvement and the Scottish Enlightenment. Enlightenment Historiography: The Stages of Society. Human Nature, the Commercial Age, and Human Independence. Exemplars for Improvement: Lowland Scotland and England. Settlement. Landscape. Domestic Space. Routine Practice. A Partial Understanding of Improvement.
6: Improvement and the Landowner. Clanship as a Socio-Political System. Duthcas and Oighreachd in Kintyre. Kintyre and the Lordship of the Isles. Forefeiture and Unrest: Kintyre and the Decline of the Lordship of the Isles. Clan Campbell and Clan Donald from the Late Sixteenth Century. Kintyre in the Seventeenth Century: Campbell Territorial Expansion and Resulting Civil Unrest. The Legacy of Unrest: Improvement and the Civilizing of Kintyre. Summary. Improvement in Kilfinan and the Emergent Middle Class. The Landholding History of Kilfinan. Urban Society and the Emergent Middle Class. Improvement and the Establishmentand Maintenance of Middle Class Status. Improvement as a Strategy in Resolving Social Contradiction.
7: Improvement and the Farming Population. Narratives of Response to Improvement. Archaeology and the Dynamics of Improvement. Dual Material Response to Improvement. Improvement and the Horizontal Division of the Farming Community. Regional Variation in the Construction of Modern Highland Society. The Dynamics of Improvement.
8: Conclusion. Improvement, the Material Environment, and Routine Practice. Improvement and the Negotiation of Society. Resistance and the Asymmetry of Society. References. Index.

My interest in the archaeology of the Scottish Highlands began long before I had any formal training in the subject. Growing up on the eastern fringes of the southern Highlands, close to Loch Lomond, it was not hard stumble across ruined buildings, old field boundaries, and other traces of everyday life in the past. This is especially true if you spend much time, as I have done, climbing the nearby mountains and walking and driving through the various glens that give access into the Highlands. At the time, I had no real understanding of these remains, simply accepting them as being built and old. After studying archaeology for a few years at the University of Glasgow, itself only a short commute from the area where I grew up, I became acutely aware that I still had no real understanding of these - miliar, yet enigmatic, buildings and fields. This and a growing interest in Scotland's historical archaeology drove me to take several courses on the subject of rural settlement studies. These courses allowed me to place what I now knew to be houses, barns, mills, shieling (transhumance) settlements, rig-and-furrow cultivation, and other related remains in history. Overwhelmingly, they seemed to date from the period of the last 300 years. I also began to understand how they all worked together as component parts of daily rural life in the past.