Antiquity 2020 Vol.

94 (375): 797–801
https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2020.64

Review Article

Brochs and beyond: excavations at Old Scatness,

Shetland
Simon Gilmour1 & Jon Henderson2,*
1
Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, C/o National Museums Scotland, UK
2
Department of Classics and Archaeology, University of Nottingham, UK
* Author for correspondence: ✉ jon.henderson@nottingham.ac.uk

Stephen J. Dockrill, Julie M. Bond, Val E. Turner, Louise D. Brown, Daniel J. Bashford, Julia E.
Cussans & Rebecca A. Nicholson. 2010. Excavations at Old Scatness, Shetland, volume 1: the Pictish village
and Viking settlement. Lerwick: Shetland Heritage Publications; 978-0-9557642-5-7 hardback.
Stephen J. Dockrill, Julie M. Bond, Val E. Turner, Louise D. Brown, Daniel J. Bashford, Julia E.
Cussans & Rebecca A. Nicholson. 2015. Excavations at Old Scatness, Shetland, volume 2: the broch and Iron
Age village. Lerwick: Shetland Heritage Publications; 978-0-99327-40-0-8 hardback.
Nigel D. Melton, Stephen J. Dockrill, Julie M. Bond, Val E. Turner, Louise D. Brown, Brian Smith,
Daniel J. Bashford, Julia E.M. Cussans & Rebecca A. Nicholson. 2019. Excavations at Old Scatness,
Shetland, volume 3: the post-medieval township. Lerwick: Shetland Heritage Publications; 978-0-9932740-9-1
hardback.
Completely unknown until 1975, when it was revealed during the
construction of a new road, Old Scatness is a multi-period site that
has provided unequivocal evidence dating broch construction to
the mid first millennium cal BC, alongside a firmly dated sequence
that is crucial to understanding the long Iron Age in Atlantic Scot-
land. Excavations were carried out at the site between 1995 and
2006 by local volunteers and staff and students from the University
of Bradford in a collaborative project led by Bradford and Shetland
Amenity Trust. The first volume, The Pictish village and Viking settle-
ment, covering around 1000 years from 400 cal AD–1400 cal AD,
appeared in 2010. It was followed by The broch and Iron Age village in 2015, which consid-
ered pre-broch occupation from the Neolithic, but focused on the construction of the broch
village from the mid first millennium cal BC. The third and final volume, The post-medieval
township, published in 2019, examines the settlement evidence from the late fifteenth cen-
tury AD to the end of the twentieth century AD, placing it within the historic context of
the documentary evidence for the period. Given the complexity of the excavations, the
range of scientific methods employed and the comprehensive nature of the published
volumes, this is an impressive turnaround. As a set, these three volumes represent the full
publication of an extraordinary occupation sequence spanning over 2500 years, allowing a
detailed reconstruction of the changing social and economic role of a location in Shetland
from the development of an enclosed broch, through a period of Norse occupation to a
final phase as a nineteenth-century AD croft.

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Old Scatness is a Scottish tell in that it is a distinct man-made mound, created through the
repeated modification and rebuilding of stone structures, alongside the deposition of ash and
midden material in disused buildings. It is a mound focused around a monumental broch simi-
lar to the complexes at Jarslhof, Lingro, Howe and Gurness. Unlike other broch mounds, how-
ever, Old Scatness was undisturbed by previous investigations, allowing the excavation team a
unique opportunity to establish a rigorous scientific approach to the dating and bioarchaeolo-
gical sampling of the deposits. Three scientific methods were used to accurately date the struc-
tures and phases on site: archaeomagnetic dating of in situ fired structures such as hearths,
accelerator mass spectrometry radiocarbon dating of carbonised plant remains from secure
depositional features and, finally, optically stimulated luminescence dating of quartz grains
within the stratigraphic sequence. To create a full picture of the lifestyles and landscape of
the past inhabitants, this was backed up by detailed archaeobotanical work (charred plant
remains, animal bone and the analysis of buried soils) to produce a comprehensive palaeoeco-
nomic dataset—a rarity in Atlantic Scotland. This work emphasised the importance of an Iron
Age infield-outfield system of agricultural production, with hearth residues and other midden
material ploughed into the soils around the mound to enhance productivity.
For many Iron Age scholars, the secure dating of the broch at Old Scatness to shortly after
the mid first millennium cal BC is one of the most significant results of the project. There has
been disagreement over the form and dating of brochs since they were first recognised and
recorded by antiquarians, and a brief, and rather selective, account of the development of
broch studies is provided in volume 2 (pp. 21–29). The section ‘What archaeologists thought
they knew’ is particularly skewed, presenting one side of the debate with little regard for the
significant number of scholars who were arguing for a mid first-millennium cal BC origin for
broch-type constructions since the excavations at Bu in the mid 1980s (e.g. Hedges 1987;
Armit 1992, 2003; Ballin-Smith 1994; Gilmour 2000). The defence for the late dating of
brochs was based on the work at Dun Vulan (Parker Pearson & Sharples 1999) even though
the primary occupation of the site was not conclusively sampled (Armit 2000). Rather than
being an unexpected revelation, the secure dating evidence from primary construction depos-
its at Old Scatness puts the mid first-millennium cal BC origin of brochs beyond doubt for
the first time.
Armit’s Atlantic Roundhouse terminology, unfairly dismissed here as a ‘marked failure’
(vol. 2: p. 27), was successful in freeing up thinking about drystone constructions in the
Iron Age, releasing academics from the straightjacket of strict broch typologies to consider
exactly the kind of longer-term indigenous development of related drystone forms seen at
Old Scatness, and leading to wider consideration of drystone forms across Atlantic Scotland.
Terminology and detailed structural analyses remain important, as evidenced at Old Scatness
in the consideration of wheelhouses, aisled roundhouses and later cellular structures, which
all present similar spatial relationships, but are teased apart here through firm dating and
detailed architectural analysis. The implication is that the preservation and excavation
methodology at Old Scatness provides a clear and nuanced understanding of earlier and
later constructions that may have been misinterpreted elsewhere. The cellular structures,
the details of their construction, layout and their internal fittings, including hearths, have
such close comparanda across the Atlantic coasts that they must reflect connections across
the sea, and emphasise the wider context for these developments. The presence of

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exceptionally finely carved Pictish stones in these buildings also indicates the existence of
wider connections beyond Shetland that we still do not fully understand. The discussions
in these volumes would have been greatly enhanced through a more detailed consideration
of the Atlantic Roundhouse terminology and its wider implications in understanding the cul-
tural significance of shared drystone traditions throughout Atlantic Scotland and beyond.
There is much debate in Volume 2 about the origins of broch architecture and whether it
required an external catalyst or not. Such discussion seems rather outdated. Attempts to iden-
tify the origin of broch-type constructions have proven, and will continue to prove, fruitless.
Most scholars would now agree that due to the traditions of drystone architecture that already
existed, no external introduction is required—the appearance of similarities in construction
occur within a wider maritime-oriented Atlantic cultural continuum where similarities exist
at a broad level but diversity is seen at the level of local execution (Henderson 2007). Broch
builders were undoubtedly aware of what was happening elsewhere along the Atlantic coasts.
That said, broch constructions remain unique to Scotland and represent a level of architec-
tural complexity in construction that is unparalleled in Iron Age Europe. Recent work by Bar-
ber (2017, 2018) highlights the fact that many, if not all, brochs underwent high levels of
mutation, destruction and rebuilding within their short lifetimes, and it is therefore a great
shame that the overriding tourism context for the excavations at Old Scatness precluded
the detailed excavations of the broch tower itself, as the small part of wall that was excavated
provided interesting details such as the small entrance at the base of the intramural stair,
interpreted as a construction convenience. Work by Romankiewicz (2011) has indicated
the variety of possible roof constructions, and emphasised the imposition of these structures
on the landscape; and while a scarcement ledge was uncovered at Old Scatness, we know next
to nothing about the possible construction details of the broch tower itself.
Volume 1 covers the Pictish and Norse phases at the site, allowing an examination of one
of the great mysteries of Shetland’s pre-history—the fate of local populations when the
Viking settlers arrived. Old Scatness offers no clear answer. Early Norse material occurs in
the upper levels of Late Iron Age structures, forcing us to question whether the evidence
represents actual incomers themselves or local populations adopting Norse forms. Certainly
the ephemeral nature of the earliest Viking structural remains question current assumptions
about the scale of the earliest Viking incursions on Shetland, and suggests that we may need
to re-think our methodologies for future work.
The third and slimmest volume in the series covers the post-medieval occupation and
describes fragmentary evidence for a small freehold from the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries
AD, superseded by more substantial crofting buildings in the nineteenth century. The
remains chart a stark downturn in social and economic fortunes as the cultural influence
of Scandinavia subsides, replaced by the Scottish mainland, to reveal a fragile Shetland town-
ship contending with reduced usable arable land caused by the ongoing effects of the Little
Ice Age climatic downturn (evidenced through deposits of windblown sand in the deposi-
tional sequence). For the most part, the poor material culture reflects little more than
subsistence-level farming, but evidence for wider contacts with German, Dutch and Scottish
merchants in the seventeenth century is seen through ceramic finds.
One of the most remarkable achievements of the Old Scatness excavations is the ability to
chart the development of a Shetland community in a fertile location over two and a half

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millennia from the middle of the Iron Age to the beginnings of the twentieth century AD.
The story is one of dramatic local flowering and success—from the indigenous development
of the broch tower and subsequent associated village based on the control and storage of agri-
cultural resources, through the relative prosperity of the Viking Age to the dramatic loss of
wealth and status evident in the post-fifteenth-century remains that accord with the historical
narrative of poor harvests, famine and deteriorating climate.
Although the long occupation sequence is fascinating and incredibly important to under-
standing the archaeology of Shetland, it is the exceptional survival of the drystone Iron Age
buildings and the deposits associated with them that remain the centrepiece of this work. The
well-dated structural sequence of large monumental Iron Age buildings, more malleable in
their structural biographies than previously imagined, followed by less monumental
wheelhouse-related structures, which are then replaced by small-scale cellular buildings,
will be of major importance to the understanding of Atlantic Iron Age sequences throughout
northern Scotland. As Harding (2017: 171–72) has pointed out, however, we should remain
cautious in accepting the Scatness model as a template for broch occupation across the
region—as a broch village Scatness was concerned with the control of good land and the storage
of agricultural resources, but this economic base and social function is unlikely to be reflected at
the isolated broch sites of western Scotland. Even within Shetland there is likely to have been
marked differences between broch sites, with some more related to coastal and maritime activ-
ities rather than access to good agricultural land. Significantly, Jarslhof is a much richer settle-
ment than Scatness in the post-medieval period even though it is only 1.9km away.
Together, these three well-presented volumes combine modern excavation and
cutting-edge scientific techniques to demonstrate how far archaeology in Atlantic Scotland
has come; but in doing so they remind us how much more there is to learn, especially
about the wider context for the local developments charted so expertly at Old Scatness.
This work has provided the first tightly dated sequence of broch to wheelhouse to cellular
building construction in Atlantic Scotland, and as such it will be hugely influential. What
is now required is to consider the wider significance of the Old Scatness sequence, how it
fits into regional sequences and how in turn these relate to wider British and European
power structures in both the Iron Age and early medieval periods.

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© Antiquity Publications Ltd, 2020