
The find, on a hillside near Oban, includes a Neolithic axe-head dating back 5,000 to 6,000 years, three roundhouses around 2,500 to 3,000 years old and the remains of an 18th-century farmstead and metalwork store.
Other objects include a hoard of stone tools dating back 3,000 years, hundreds of fragments of Bronze Age and late 18th- century pottery, plus a clay pipe from around 1760-1820.
Dr Clare Ellis, of Argyll Archaeology, who was commissioned to survey the site at Glenshellach on the outskirts of Oban by local house-builders M & K MacLeod, said: "It's the largest excavation that has happened in recent years in mainland Argyll in this period of archaeology.