Stonehaven (stoʊnˈheɪvən , Steenhive stinˈhaiv) is a town in Scotland. It lies on Scotland's northeast coast and had a population of 11,602 at the 2011 Census.
After the demise of the town of Kincardine, which was gradually abandoned after the destruction of its royal castle in the Wars of Independence, the Scottish Parliament made Stonehaven the successor county town of Kincardineshire. It is currently administered as part of the Aberdeenshire Council Area. Stonehaven had grown around an Iron Age fishing village, now the "Auld Toon" ("old town"), and expanded inland from the seaside. As late as the 16th century, old maps indicate the town was called Stonehyve, Stonehive, Timothy Pont also adding the alternative Duniness. It is known informally to locals as Stoney.
Stonehaven is the site of prehistoric events evidenced by finds at Fetteresso Castle and Neolithic pottery excavations from the Spurryhillock area. In 2004, archaeological work by CFA Archaeology, in advance of the building of the Aberdeen to Lochside Natural Gas Pipeline, found two short cists burials containing cremated remains to the southwest of Stonehaven. Radiocarbon dating put the burials in the first half of the 2nd millennium BC, which was the Early Bronze Age in Scotland. The burials contained stone tool artifacts and shale/cannel coal beads. That same year, researchers at the National Museums of Scotland and Yale University announced that a fossil found by an amateur paleontologist the previous year was the earliest known fossil of a land-dwelling animal. The fossil was about 420 million years old.
The town lies at the southern origin of the ancient Causey Mounth trackway, which was built on high ground to make passable this only available medieval route from coastal points south of Aberdeen. This ancient passage specifically connected the Bridge of Dee to Cowie Castle via the Portlethen Moss and the Stonehaven central plaza. The route was taken by the Earl Marischal and Marquess of Montrose when they led a Covenanter army of over 9,000 men in the first battle of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms in 1639.