Authenticity's child: Current meanings and future destinies for the Stone of Scone

Authenticity’s Child: contemporary meanings and future destinies for the Stone of Scone is an ambitious longitudinal study that aims to understand and give voice to the contemporary authenticity and social value of the Stone and its recent life-stages from a critical heritage perspective, adding to its better-researched earlier lives.

Principal Investigator: Professor Sally Foster

Authenticity’s Child: contemporary meanings and future destinies for the Stone of Scone is an ambitious longitudinal study that aims to understand and give voice to the contemporary authenticity and social value of the Stone and its recent life-stages from a critical heritage perspective, adding to its better-researched earlier lives.

The Stone is the supreme example of an object defined across time and space by how diverse communities negotiate its (in)authenticity and contest its meanings. The 2023 coronation of Charles III in Westminster Abbey and the 2024 relocation of the medieval Stone of Scone/Destiny to Perth’s new museum will rekindle high-profile debates about where this national icon ‘belongs’, what stories to tell about it and how. There is an unparalleled opportunity to explore for the first time the Stone’s contemporary authenticity and social value in real time while it moves between multiple contexts.

The overarching objective is to diversify public engagement with the Stone by producing memorable research-led stories of contemporary relevance that provoke new thinking about this national icon. Collaboration with Culture Perth and Kinross is integral to the project and will help achieve this impact.

The project is supported by a British Academy/Leverhulme Trust Senior Research Fellowship and a British Academy/Leverhulme Small Research Grants Scheme.