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Can the evidence for settlement in Grampian between 1000 BC and AD 800 be differentiated in regional or chronological terms or neither?
The archaeological evidence for human use of the Grampian landscape in the last millennium BC and the first eight hundred years AD consists of:
Artefacts and environmental data are useful for dating excavated settlement sites. This essay will look at the conclusions which archaeologists have drawn from excavations and aerial photographs over the last decade, and will attempt to evaluate the evidence for definable differences between the settlements in different regions and in different periods. Upstanding monuments are well represented in Grampian by hillforts, Tap o Noth and Dunnideer being well-known examples. Every year aerial photography identifies more ploughed out sites discernible as crop marks (differences in growth in cereal crops in dry seasons which may indicate prehistoric structures under the ground). An example is Romancampgate near Fochabers, excavated in 1990.
Difficulties in evaluating the available information One difficulty in evaluating the available information is the lack of firm dating for all but the coastal promontory forts. Other difficulties prevail. Understanding of the basic settlement type, the roundhouse, is skewed by the presumed destruction of many examples by subsequent land use in fertile and heavily populated areas, and by lack of modern excavation. [1]
Can the evidence for settlement in Grampian between 1000BC and AD 800 be differentiated in regional terms? Stuart Piggott (1966) postulated four geographical regions, the North-East, the Atlantic, Solway-Clyde and Tyne-Forth. Within these there is a broad regional patterning of Scotland’s Iron Age settlement types: brochs in the Atlantic north, duns in the west in Solway-Clyde, and hill forts and large settlements in the south and east which includes Grampian. Ralston [2] et al (1983) categorised 48 sites in Grampian which have been referred to in literature or on maps as 'forts'. They used as their criteria size and altitude. On the basis of these two criteria five sub-sets of fortified settlements are described; a sixth, which cuts across the altitude and size bands, is the series of oblong timber-laced and usually vitrified forts. Six years later Ian Shepherd classified these sites by their architectural features, mostly above ground, and the perceived defence need which they fulfilled. Neither writer differentiated the sites by geographical region. The large settlements in the east of Scotland include ring-ditch buildings which are large timber roundhouses with concentrically defined internal areas. The best known are from excavations in Lothian and Angus, but aerial photography reveals many of the same settlement characteristics north of the Forth. One explanation of this building type is that cattle were wintered in the paved ditch, and winter fodder was stored in the central, sometimes domed circular area, (an Iron Age sustainable-energy central- heating system). In Atlantic Scotland substantial houses continued to be built to the end of the first millennium BC, but in other areas they were abandoned centuries earlier, and a number were built between Tweed and Tay in the early centuries AD. "Iron Age societies in Scotland shared traits with southern Britain, Ireland, and in some cases, with continental Europe. Such traits included a preponderance of roundhouses in domestic architecture, and, at least intermittently, a preference for enclosed and indeed fortified settlement units — a characteristic shared with much of temperate Europe." (Ralston & Armit, 1997). [3] "The existence of abundant, often elaborate settlement sites is a factor which unites the Iron Age in many parts of Scotland and distinguishes the archaeological record of this period from that of earlier prehistory. The attention paid by builders to the physical appearance of settlements suggests that comparable processes of social development were under way across much of the country." [4]
Can the evidence for settlement in Grampian between 1000BC and AD 800 be differentiated in chronological terms? [5] Stuart Piggott’s (1966) [6] model of four geographical regions also defined a chronological scheme for each province, involving four periods for the Iron Age. The lack of pottery for the Scottish Iron Age meant that the ‘ordered system’ was based on studies of the lay-out of settlement sites (Feachem 1966) and also on the consideration of ‘exotic objects’ (RBK Stevenson 1966), exotic objects being defined by Clarke (1971) as imports or indigenous copies of imports. Based on her excavations in Roxburghshire, Mrs C.M. Piggott (1948) developed the Hownam sequence, which appeared to offer a basis for settlement chronology. It presented an internally coherent picture [7] of settlement development well integrated with post-war views on chronology and diffusion. It proposed a sequence from unenclosed to palisaded sites, through univallate to multivallate forts, and finally back to unenclosed settlements in the Roman period, implying increasingly aggressive societies up to the imposition of the Pax Romana. But since then some of the structural features used in the Hownam model have been found to be invalid as chronological indicators. Palisaded enclosures (Hill, 1982), for example, have now been dated from the later Bronze Age through to the Early Historic period. Concerning the Pax Romana, students of Iron Age Scotland now believe that the Roman incursion had less impact on native societies than was previously believed. Defensive types of monument in the North-East [8] are also found to defy chronological differentiation. Timber-laced forts, once thought to have a limited period of construction and use, have now been shown by various dating techniques to range at least as early as from the Iron Age into the Early Historic period. Of the highest site, at altitude 563m OD, in his study, OD. Ralston comments that settlement may have been possible there before the onset of the sub-Atlantic [9] climate, 2500 BP to the present, when summer temperatures fell by 20C and rainfall totals increased. Thermoluminescence dating for five Scottish vitrified forts indicates that this type can date from the Iron Age to the early medieval period (Sanderson 1988). [10] "The Iron Age is increasingly seen as …. stretching from the late Bronze Age to the emergence of the Pictish and Scottish states." [11]
Conclusion Only a small number of the 80 000 archaeology sites recorded [12] in Scotland have been, or ever will be excavated or dated. They will need therefore to be interpreted by analogy of their physical features with known sites, which are distinctive enough to be grouped together. But this method is prone to errors, since superficially similar features may have totally different functions and dates. For example, some rectangular timber halls, recognised only from crop marks, are known to be of early historic date, but the one excavated at Balbridie on Deeside was Neolithic. Additionally, since crop marks can only be recognised in certain types of soil and in favourable conditions, there may be many which are unrecorded. We can form hypotheses only from the data we have. We cannot estimate how much data has been lost in the intervening millennia, or what may become available with increased technology. Stuart Piggott’s 1966 paper and other Iron Age studies of that period founded their chronology on the assumption that exotic objects and new ideas were introduced by invaders and settlers. This view dates back to the Graeco-Roman worldview, which saw all innovations as diffusing outwards from the civilised south to the barbaric fringes. Social theory now claims the Diffusionist model is invalid, and available archaeological evidence supports this claim. The brochs of Shetland, Orkney and Caithness and the souterrains of Angus ‘indicate a degree of social complexity among the Iron Age communities of Scotland with which there is little to compare in Wessex or the Upper Thames Valley.’ [13] In recent years the function of enclosed settlement including hillforts has been debated. As long ago as 1986 Ian Shepherd acknowledged the status factor in hillforts: "The great grey, blank walls that crowned conspicuous heights such as Dunnideer, Tap o’Noth or Doune of Relugas were proud assertions of their builders’ power and wealth." Previously, when cultural change was thought to be the outcome of migration and warfare, such sites were regarded as essentially for defence. Now the symbolic qualities of enclosure are leading to new perceptions of social relations and cultural change in Iron Age societies. The building of a ring-ditch house would have required over 650 trees. One excavated at Hawkhill in Angus has a diameter of around 20m and would have stood about 10m high. ‘These buildings were as much about prestige and status as about the practicalities of warmth and shelter’. The perception of our Iron Age predecessors as savages rigorously following their own local building and life-style traditions, living at subsistence level and warring against the neighbouring tribes, is no longer tenable. They were a society where food was plentiful enough to allow time and labour for building prestigious homes. They travelled and shared architectural designs throughout Scotland. They traded ideas and luxury goods with the rest of Britain and with Europe. Their relationships with their neighbours were more along the lines of competition for status than war and bloodshed. From the data currently available the evidence for settlement in Grampian between 1000BC and AD 800 cannot in most cases be differentiated in regional or chronological terms. 28/04/2000 21:28:59 pm PJG
[2]Ralston, I B M, Sabine, K & Watt 1983 ‘Later prehistoric settlement in north-east Scotland: a preliminary assessment’, in Chapman, J C & Mytum, H C (eds.), Settlement in North Britain 100BC — 1000AD, Oxford, 149-74 [3] Ralston, I & Armit, I. 1996 ‘The Iron Age’ in Edwards, K J & Ralston, I B M (eds.), Scotland: environment and archaeology 8000BC-AD1000, London, P. 169 [4] Ralston, I & Armit, I op.cit. P. 172 [5] Ralston, I & Armit, I 1996 op.cit. P. 178 [6] Hingley, R 1992 ‘Society in Scotland from 700BC to AD 200’, Proc. Soc. Antiq Scot, 122 (1992) P.8 [7] Ralston, I & Armit, I 1996 op. cit. P. 176 [8] Ralston, I & Armit, op.cit. P. 178 [9] Whittington, G & Edwards, K J 1997 ‘Climate Change’ in Edwards, KJ & Ralston, IBM (eds.), Scotland: environment and archaeology 8000BC-AD1000, London, 11-22 [10] Hingley, op.cit. P 30 [11] Ralston, I & Armit, op.cit. P. 174 [12] Foster, S op. cit. P.26 [14] Ralston, I & Armit, op.cit. P.182 [15] Armit, op. cit. P 33
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