The Historic Land use Assessment (HLA) is a technique for helping understand the historic aspects of the landscape around us from an archaeological perspective. The HLA records the historical origins of the various components that make up the landscape, showing how they interrelate spatially and chronologically, and in doing so offers an insight into some of the processes that have created our modern landscape and enables us to recognise how features that survive from past events continue to influence the present. As such, the HLA is a key tool for understanding the historic landscape and complements other techniques of landscape assessment. In combination these enable a more holistic view of the landscape and its development over time to be achieved and approaches to landscape management and planning to be better integrated.

Defining Scotland’s Places (DSP) aims to define the known extent of the archaeological sites and monuments in the National Record of the Historic Environment at Historic Environment Scotland, John Sinclair House, Edinburgh. The polygons created through Defining Scotland's Places do not carry ANY legal status. For instance they do not represent the legal extent of a Scheduled Monument or Listed Building.