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Artefacts and the Iron Age of Atlantic Scotland: past, present and future

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Andrea N. Smith
Andrea N. Smith*
Affiliation:
Historic Scotland, Longmore House, Salisbury Place, Edinburgh EH9 1SH, Scotland
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Extract

Introduction

This paper is concerned with the Iron Age of Atlantic Scotland, a period running from approximately 600 BC until the onset of Viking colonization and influence around AD 800. The definition of Atlantic Scotland for the purposes of this paper is taken to include the north and west of Scotland and its coastline and archipelagos including Shetland, Orkney and the Inner and Outer Hebrides. This area is also defined by the distribution of a particular kind of drystone monumental architecture, variously termed brochs, duns or more recently Atlantic roundhouses (Armit & Ralston 1997: 183–7). These structures are often well preserved, in the case of some standing as towers 10 m in height, and are thus highly visible in the landscape. In Orkney and Shetland brochs and other Iron Age houses often form only one part of a large and complex settlement mound, with both earlier and later settlement and activity dating over millennia on the same site, as at Howe and Pool (Uallin Smith 1994; Hunter et al. 1993).

Type
Special section: Scotland 2002
Information
Antiquity , Volume 76 , Issue 293 , September 2002 , pp. 808 - 812
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd. 2002

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