Dunbeath is a town in south-east Caithness, Scotland on the A9 road. It was the birthplace of Neil M. Gunn (1891-1973), author of The Silver Darlings, Highland River and so on, a lot of whose novels are embeded in Dunbeath as well as its Strath. Dunbeath has a very rich archaeological landscape, the site of numerous Iron Age brochs as well as a very early middle ages reclusive site (see Alex Morrison's archaeological survey, "Dunbeath: A Cultural Landscape".) Of Dunbeath's landscape, Gunn composed: "These small straths, like the Strath of Dunbeath, have this intimate charm. In boyhood we are familiar with every square yard of it. We encompass it physically as well as our memories hold it. Birches, hazel trees for nutting, pools with trout and an occasionally noticeable salmon, river-flats with the wind on the bracken and disappearing bunny scuts, a wide range of wild flower and little bird life, the skyrocketing hawk, the unanticipated roe, the old graveyard, thoughts of the folk that as soon as lived much inland in straths as well as hollows, the past as well as the present held in a moment of day-dream." ('My Bit of Britain', 1941.). There is a neighborhood museum/landscape analysis centre at the old village institution.