Ancient Lothian is an online project that aims to popularise knowledge of and stimulate further research into the diverse cultural histories of South-East Scotland and their modern heritage. It is owned, written, published, designed, developed and maintained by Steve Sweeney-Turner on his personal internet domain: cyberscotia.com, first registered in 2001. He lives in and writes from West Lothian, generally as a freelance cyber-scribe, mostly about Scotia per se. This work is dedicated to his daughter, Arianrhod — aye wise beyond her father's years.
The following sections are provisional website policy drafts that will be refined and expanded in the near future. The author reserves the right to change the terms of this document at any time and without prior notification to this website's users, to whom its terms apply. Any changes come into immediate effect upon publication, and it is the user's responsibility to ensure that their use of the website complies with the currently published terms.
res ipsa loquitur
the thing speaks for itself
(legal jargon)
Summary: You pay me nothing, and you're welcome to have it back.
This website is free-to-access by conventional technological means alone (ie. within a web-browser) and is offered solely "as is", for information only and with all extant flaws, without guarantee or warranty of any kind whatsoever, at any time or under any circumstances or for any reason. Use it wisely, at your own risk and discretion. The same terms apply to any links offered on this website to external materials of any kind. If you purchase any product as a result of following any third-party advertisement, recommendation for any third-party product, or as a result of any other information offered on this website concerning any third-party material, the transaction you enter into with any third party is not with the author of this website, who neither offers nor accepts any responsibility for the actions of others, yourself included. At his discretion, the author may offer to remunerate you for any problems you encounter in using this website or its contents up to but not exceeding the full amount that you paid for your use of his material: £0:00.
Summary: If my webpage falls off your screen, let me know.
This website is hand-coded in XHTML using CSS, with its pages routinely tested for conformity to the accepted standards of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) by means of their own online validation services. It also makes use of various types of scripting technologies, particularly JavaScript, in order to offer the user a range of functionality and convenience and automate certain authoring tasks. In other words, the website will not perform as intended unless you have JavaScript enabled in your browser. Unfortunately, at the time of writing (02-02-2009), there are no universally-accepted standards for implementing JavaScript. However, both the code and scripts that make up the website are regularly tested for design and functionality across the latest versions of the most popular web-browsers, not least Internet Explorer, Safari, Firefox and Opera. None of this constitutes a guarantee of anything, for either of us. Currently, the website uses no cookies, and no personal information about the website's users is stored, with the exception of any e-mail correspondance sent to the author, which may or may not be kept offline for his own private records.
Summary: If you've got better sources, I'd like to hear about it.
No legal guarantee of accuracy, factuality or veracity is implied by the publication of any text. However, one of the issues currently being addressed as part of the 2009 re-launch of the website is the radical improvement of its scholarly standards for the future. Given the amount of old material requiring detailed revision and expansion, there are bounds to be embarrassments coming to light for some time. Your tolerance during this period will be much appreciated, as will any suggestions for specific improvements.
Summary: It's free to read, but it's not your property.
Unless otherwise indicated, all original material on this website is Copyright © 2001— by Steve Sweeney-Turner and remains his exclusive intellectual property with all rights reserved within the legal frameworks of applicable Scottish, UK and EU laws and within the international context of the Berne Convention. "Original material" is here defined non-exclusively to include any text, graphics, multimedia content, code, scripts, stylesheets, software, products, services and communications originating from the website, its systems, servers or e-mail addresses. If you wish to re-use any of the contents of the website in any way other than those allowed by either this document or conventional Fair Dealing ("Fair Use") practice (here defined as including the conventional automated copying to and storage in a web-browser cache) you must first apply for formal permission without any guarantee of acceptance. In the event of formal permission being granted, the permission will constitute of Limited Use License within the specified terms and restrictions and on condition that the author is fully acknowledged and correctly referenced by name and website or specific webpage URL. The author respects the copyright of others and does not intend to infringe upon those rights. However, if any party feels that their own copyright has been infringed by the contents of this website, please contact the author immediately to attempt a swift resolution of the issue.