Scholars investigating the entwined nature of art and science in the late eighteenth century have rightfully noted and remarked upon the architectural vocabulary that Joseph Banks (1743– 1820) used in his pictorial and textual description of the island of Staffa, as published in Thomas Pennant's A Tour in Scotland, and Voyage to the Hebrides, MDCCLXXII (1774). References to both Gothic and Classical architectures conveyed the visual affect of regularity or the appearance of artifice that the basaltic columns displayed. It presented, as Banks claimed, ‘a very singular sight’. Understandably, scholarship regularly frames Staffa as a geological object. Banks was, after all, on his way to Iceland to study volcanic activity and botanize; however, the account published in A Tour in Scotland reflects a limited engagement with current debates in the geological or mineralogical sciences. In the context of the Tour, Banks's description of Staffa could be better understood as an antiquarian object of study, one which resonates well with the overlapping interests of naturalists and antiquarians, and engages a picturesque vision of the British landscape.

As the account is fixed between antiquarian descriptions of Iona's Gothic cathedral and Cairn na Burgh More's ancient fortress, the research programmes of dilettanti and antiquarian groups provide a rich and nuanced framework for thinking about Staffa, especially since both Thomas Pennant and Joseph Banks were enthusiastic associates of antiquarian circles. From 1754 to 1760, Pennant was a member of the Society of Antiquaries of London, and his extensive correspondence testifies to a continued engagement in antiquarian matters until the 1790s. His second tour in Scotland, which included excursions through the Hebrides, was well planned and organized. Queries were circulated to various parishes in anticipation of his arrival. Picturesque descriptions of landscape and antiquities played an important role in his revised and expanded account of Scotland, and supported a vision of ‘improved’ landscape that ideologically united Britain with its most remote and wild regions. As John Bonehill has argued, Banks was also motivated by an idea of a unified British heritage and was significantly influenced by antiquarian interests in his decision to travel to the North. His formal involvement in the Society of Antiquaries of London included sitting on the Council, and as member of the Society of Dilettanti he served various positions such as ‘Very High Steward’, Treasurer and Secretary.