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 Scotland. 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 settlement, 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 considered 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 century 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.
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 similar to the complexes at Jarslhof, Lingro, Howe and Gurness. Unlike other broch mounds, however, Old Scatness was undisturbed by previous investigations, allowing the excavation team a unique opportunity to establish a rigorous scientific approach to the dating and bioarchaeological sampling of the deposits. Three scientific methods were used to accurately date the structures 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 palaeoeconomic 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 Reference Hedges1987; Armit Reference Armit1992, Reference Armit2003; Ballin-Smith Reference Smith1994; Gilmour Reference Gilmour and Henderson2000). The defence for the late dating of brochs was based on the work at Dun Vulan (Parker Pearson & Sharples Reference Parker Pearson, Sharples, Mulville and Smith1999) even though the primary occupation of the site was not conclusively sampled (Armit Reference Armit, Parker-Pearson, Sharples, Mulville and Smith2000). Rather than being an unexpected revelation, the secure dating evidence from primary construction deposits 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 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 cultural 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 identify 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 Reference Henderson2007). 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 architectural complexity in construction that is unparalleled in Iron Age Europe. Recent work by Barber (Reference Barber2017, Reference Barber2018) 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 (Reference Romankiewicz2011) 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 township 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 depositional 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 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 agricultural 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 understanding 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 (Reference Harding2017: 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 activities rather than access to good agricultural land. Significantly, Jarslhof is a much richer settlement 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.
