Shoe Buckle Found on Scotland’s Culloden Battlefield

EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND—An excavation of the Culloden battlefield has recovered musket balls, grapeshot, and a shoe buckle that may have belonged to a Scottish Jacobite clan chief, according to a report in The National. The defeat of the Jacobite army by British forces at the Battle of Culloden on April 16, 1746, resulted in the collapse of the Jacobite uprising. Archaeologists from the National Trust Scotland think the copper alloy buckle may have belonged to Donald Cameron of Lochiel, the Jacobite chief of Clan Cameron, who was wounded during the battle. Archaeologist Derek Alexander believes that the flattened grapeshot hit the shoe buckle, since the two artifacts were found in the same hole just 65 to 100 feet from the position of the British army’s front line. Known as The Gentle Lochiel, Donald Cameron is known to have been leading the 400 Camerons close to the front line when he was wounded with grapeshot in both ankles. “This description shows us that Lochiel was hit in the ankles charging forward and if he had been wearing shoes with buckles, it is possible that these would have been hit and partly absorbed the impact,” Alexander said. Cameron survived the battle and escaped to France with the grandson of the deposed king, Charles Edward Stuart, or Bonnie Prince Charlie. To read about the defeated Scottish survivors of the 1650 Battle of Dunbar, go to “After the Battle.”