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A bronze-worker's open air workshop has been found on the Island of Eigg and a hoard of buried axe-heads has been found in Lochaber. It is an interesting fact that the nearest sources of copper and tin are many hundreds of miles away from the Highlands. From about 4,400 years ago travelling metalworkers introduced ornaments and tools made of copper and then bronze (copper and tin mixture), bringing in the Bronze Age. Another curious type of site associated with the Iron Age is the souterrain. This is a curved underground tunnel built of stone slabs. There are good examples in Skye, Sutherland, and at Easter Raitts in Badenoch. Pictish stones are found all over the Highlands, but there is a concentration in the east. Some of the great Pictish carved cross-slabs such as those in Easter Ross are magnificent works of art dating to the 8th - 10th centuries AD, with influences from Northumbria, Ireland, and Scandinavia. These combine Pictish and Christian symbolism.
Early shrines and sites associated with missionaries or even bishops (St. Kentigern; Mungo of Glasgow) tended to be preserved in the later structure of dioceses (under King Malcolm III, 1055-93 onwards); early associations may account for the extreme irregularity of the Scottish diocesan structure. Many parishes of Dunblane and Dunkeld lay within the boundaries of the other diocese; those of Brechin all lay within a territory covered by St. Andrews without being subordinate to it; Inchcolm Abbey remained a foundation of the bishop of Dunkeld in the Firth of Forth at the centre of St. Andrews' dioecese.
The finest brochs to visit in Highland are in Glenelg. At Rubh an Dunain on Skye, there is a broch-like stone wall defending a rocky headland, and a variety of other types of Iron Age fort, many of them called duns, are found. Often these make use of natural defensive features such as sea-cliffs. Duns and brochs were not just for defence. They also indicated the status of the chief who lived there. Crannogs for example would have had limited defensive potential in an age of boat transport as they were houses built on artificial islands, in lochs. Many of these local centres of power seem to have continued in use well into the medieval period - there are references to crannogs still being occupied in the 16th century.