Scotland in the Iron Age
Scotland in the Iron Age concerns the period of prehistory in Scotland from about 800 BCE to the commencement of written records in the early Christian era. As the Iron Age emerged from the preceding Bronze Age, it becomes legitimate to talk of a Celtic culture in Scotland. It was an age of forts and farmsteads, the most dramatic remains of which are brochs some of whose walls still exceed in height. Pastoral farming was widespread but as the era progressed there is more evidence of cereal growing and increasing intensification of agriculture. Unlike the previous epochs of human occupation, early Iron Age burial sites in Scotland are relatively rare although monasteries and other religious sites were constructed in the last centuries of the period. The Stirling torcs are amongst examples of high quality crafts produced at an early date and the Pictish symbol stones are emblematic of later times.
Some authorities consider the Iron Age to have ended with the first century invasions by the Romans. However much of Scotland remained outside of the Roman world and after the departure of the legions the Celtic Iron Age way of life, often troubled but never extinguished by Rome, re-asserted itself for several centuries more.
Chronology and sources
There is no accepted chronology for the Scottish Iron Age. There is some consensus that it begins circa 800 BCE and clearly extends into early Roman times, but the terminus is a subject of debate. Some archaeologists use a scheme known as the "Long Iron Age" which lasts until the late first millennium invasions by the Norse, rather than those of the Roman army. This term is particularly useful in the context of the Hebrides and Northern Isles but elsewhere there is potential overlap with the early historic period. The approach taken here is to include the whole of modern Scotland up to the temporary occupation by Roman forces, cover the period of Roman Empire's occupation briefly and then concentrate on Pictland in the north and west that remained largely Iron Age in nature beyond that period.The period is essentially prehistoric with archaeology playing the predominant role in its study. However, radiocarbon dating for this period is problematic and chronological sequences are poorly understood as a result. There are few contemporary written sources made by those who lived in what is now Scotland and none at all until the early Christian era. There are however a few records made by classical authors in Latin and Ancient Greek.
Pytheas of Massilia visited Britain – probably sometime between 322 and 285 BCE – and described it as triangular in shape, with a northern tip called Orcas. Writing in the 1st century CE, the Roman geographer Pomponius Mela called the islands of Orkney Orcades, as did Tacitus in 98 CE, claiming that his father-in-law Agricola had "discovered and subjugated the Orcades hitherto unknown",. Demetrius of Tarsus was commissioned by Rome to sail to the islands closely surrounding Britain, possibly as part of Agricola's campaign. His report, which may have been primarily about the Hebrides, recorded that these islands were largely uninhabited, often named after spirits or heroes, and that those who did live on them were all holy men. Writing about 70 years later, in 140-150 CE, Ptolemy, drawing on the naval expeditions of Agricola and most likely the earlier explorers, created a map and identified numerous tribal territories throughout Britain. However, Ptolemy's information about the interior north of the Great Glen is sparse.
The later Pictish period is similarly devoid of contemporary, local written material. Evidence has however been gleaned from annals preserved in Wales and Ireland and from sources written down much later.
Society
This was an age of forts and farmsteads, which tends to support the image of quarrelsome tribes and petty kingdoms recorded by the Romans. However, at times the occupants neglected the defences, which might suggest that symbolic power was as significant as warfare. Evidence from the Tyne-Forth area indicates that a dense pattern of unfortified farmsteads existed over a long span of time. Evidence of violence and conflict is "difficult to demonstrate conclusively" although on balance inter-community warfare is likely to have taken place. In the middle to late Iron Age some fortified settlements expanded significantly. The Votadini stronghold of Traprain Law, East Lothian for example was, at its maximum in extent, the size of a town, although there is no certain evidence either of a dense settlement or pre-Roman occupation. Neither have excavations at a similar site at Eildon Hill in Selgovae territory suggested significant occupation prior to the "Roman interludes".There is no evidence from the Highlands of blunt force trauma to humans, although at Sculptor's Cave in Moray, there is 3rd century CE evidence of decapitation with a sword. Hillforts and enclosures around settlements suggest troubled times, but the evidence for actual violence is "limited and open to interpretation". The wealthiest Highland community excavated so far is Culduthel in Inverness and it was unenclosed. Likewise, a similar site at Birnie in Moray. The vitrification of hillforts has been interpreted as the deliberate action of victors in some conflict but accidental fires are a posisbility. The purpose of crannogs may have been apparently defensive but the sites would have been vulnerable to waterborne attacks.
Findings from the site of the broch at Dun Vulan in South Uist, which was occupied for c. 150 to 50 BCE, have generated some debate about the nature of life in the Atlantic coast during the Iron Age. A study of the site in the 1990s posited that the evidence of animal bones suggested a significant difference between those who lived in and around the broch and those in the surrounding area. They concluded that there was a settlement hierarchy similar to the distinction between Medieval English aristocrats and commoners. A second paper two years later refuted this. It does seem clear that in some parts of Iron Age Scotland, quite unlike almost all of recorded history right up to the present day, there does not seem to have been a hierarchical elite. Studies have shown that stone roundhouses with massively thick walls, must have contained virtually the entire population of islands such as Barra and North Uist and throughout Argyll. Iron Age settlement patterns in Scotland are not homogeneous, but, in these places, there is no sign of a privileged class living in large castles or forts, nor of an elite priestly caste or of peasants with no access to the kind of accommodation enjoyed by the middle classes.
Settlement
Celtic culture and language spread into southern Scotland at some time after the 8th century BC, possibly through cultural contact rather than mass invasion, and systems of petty kingdoms developed. However, the written records about Iron Age life in Scotland are principally from Roman sources and as a result tend to focus on the interludes of Roman occupation rather than a broader scope.Ptolemy's Geographia lists tribes located north of the Forth-Clyde isthmus including the Cornovii in Caithness, the Caereni, Smertae, Carnonacae, Decantae, Lugi, and Creones also north of the Great Glen, the Taexali in the north-east, the Epidii in Argyll, the Venicones in Fife, the Caledonians in the central Highlands and the Vacomagi centred near Strathmore. It is likely that all of these cultures spoke a form of Celtic language known as Common Brittonic although there are no written records to corroborate this. The occupants of southern Scotland were the Damnonii in the Clyde valley, the Novantae in Galloway, the Selgovae on the south coast and the Votadini to the east.
Little is known about the alliances of Iron Age tribes. The exact location of Caledonia is unknown, and the boundaries are unlikely to have been fixed. The name itself is a Roman one, as used by Tacitus, Ptolemy, Pliny the Elder and Lucan, but the name by which the Caledonians referred to themselves is also unknown. It is likely that prior to the Roman invasions, political control in the region was highly decentralised and no evidence has emerged of any specific Caledonian military or political leadership. For example, Calgacus "is never referred to... as king or general" by Tacitus.
Similarly, we know nothing of the foreign policies of the senior leaders in mainland Scotland in the first century.
The Geographia identifies 19 "towns" from intelligence gathered during the Agricolan campaigns of the first century. No archaeological evidence of any truly urban places has been found from this time and the names may have indicated hill forts or temporary market and meeting places. Most of the names are obscure: Devana may be the modern Banchory; Alauna in the west is probably Dumbarton Rock and the place of the same name in the east Lowlands may be the site of Edinburgh Castle. Lindon may be Balloch on Loch Lomond side.
The Ravenna Cosmography utilises a third- or fourth-century Roman map and identifies four loci in southern Scotland. Locus Maponi is possibly the Lochmaben Stone near modern Gretna which continued to be used as a muster point well into the historic period. Two of the others indicate meeting places of the Damnonii and Selgovae, and the fourth, Manavi may be Clackmannan.
Architecture
The north and west
The peoples of early Iron Age Scotland, particularly in the north and west, lived in substantial stone buildings called Atlantic roundhouses. The remains of hundreds of these houses exist throughout the country, some merely piles of rubble, others with impressive towers and outbuildings. They date from about 800 BCE to CE 300, with the most imposing structures having been created around the second century BCE. The most massive constructions that date from this time are the circular brochs. On average, the ruins only survive up to a few metres above ground level, but there are five extant examples of towers whose walls still exceed in height. There are at least 100 broch sites in Scotland. Despite extensive research, their purpose and the nature of the societies that created them are still a matter of debate.Quanterness chambered cairn in Orkney is a Neolithic structure constructed two millennia or more prior to the Iron Age. Excavations their uncovered a roundhouse built into the cairn dated to circa 700 BCE.
Wheelhouses have an outer stone wall within which a circle of stone piers form the basis for lintel arches supporting corbelled roofing with a hearth at the hub. About a third are double-walled. They range in diameter from. Those sites that have been dated tend to fall within the period 25 BC to 380 AD. In the Northern Isles they are of a later date than the towered structures in all cases. The majority are dug into the landscape and only their thatched roofs would have been visible above the ground — although these would have been 6 metres or more in height. A total of 62 sites have now been identified in the Northern and Western Isles, and on the north coast of Caithness and Sutherland. The highly restricted nature of their geographical locations suggests that they may have been contained within a political or cultural frontier of some kind. The co-incidence of their arrival and departure being associated with the period of Roman influence in Scotland is a matter of ongoing debate. It is not known whether the culture that constructed them was "Pictish" as such although they would certainly have been known to the Picts.
File:Neolithic souterrain Canna Island.jpg|thumb|Souterrain on Canna in the Hebrides
Over 400 souterrains have been discovered in Scotland, many of them in the south-east, and, although few have been dated, those that have suggest a construction date in the second or third centuries. The purpose of these small underground structures is also obscure. They are usually found close to settlements and may have been for storing perishable agricultural products.
Scotland also has numerous vitrified forts but an accurate chronology has again proven to be evasive. Extensive studies of such a fort at Finavon Hill near Forfar in Angus, using a variety of techniques, suggest dates for the destruction of the site in either the last two centuries BCE or the mid-first millennium. The lack of Roman artefacts suggests that many sites were abandoned before the arrival of the legions.
The site at Jarlshof in Shetland is part of a tentative list of proposed World Heritage Sites called the "Zenith of Iron Age Shetland".