Scotland in the Early Middle Ages to be adopted for house building, often combining layers of stone with turf. Place-name evidence, particularly the use of the prefix "pit", meaning land or a field, suggests that the heaviest areas of Pictish settlement were in modern Fife, Perthshire, Angus, Aberdeen and around the Moray Firth, although later Gaelic migration may have erased some Pictish names from the record. Early Gaelic settlement appears to have been in the regions of the western mainland of Scotland between Cowal and Ardnamurchan, and the adjacent islands, later extending up the West coast in the 8th century. There is place name and archaeological
Firth of Lorn Lorne, or of Appin” from the “Hielandes and Isles.”. At that time Lorn, like the rest of the highlands, was speaking mainly Gaelic. A Stuart ownership of Appin and Lorne is entirely consistent with the Dál Riata theory; moreover, there is easy access through the valleys of the east to Perth, ancient capital of Scotland. The firth of Lorn was a major conduit to the west of Scotland, yet there was no language concept of it as a separate body of water. It remained the Atlantic, or at most the coast of Lorne. There was an exception to this early