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 Scottish refusal to demark the firth as a separate body: the island of Lismore, Scotland (not to be confused with the various Irish Lismores), blocks the entry to Loch Linnhe in such a way as to create a shelter from weather in the Firth of Lorn. In 1816 the commissioners appointed by the British government to complete the Caledonian Canal reported that ships of 300-400 tons were running into Linnhè Loch to shelter from the weather in the firth. The loch was recognized far earlier, but not under that name. Some crown-sponsored sailing directions by a pilot, Alexandre Lindsay, who