The site of Old Scatness was discovered during the construction of an access road in 1975, and the excavations published in these three volumes took place between 1995 and 2006. This was an exceptional project that involved a long-term commitment by a well-resourced local authority to excavate and then display a major archaeological monument. It was designed to create an attraction that would interest tourists to Shetland and make a memorable impression on these visitors. The concept was visionary and, though it is too early to assess whether the long-term aim to create a sustainable visitor attraction was successful, the objective to provide an archaeological narrative that makes a major contribution to understanding Shetland’s history has been repaid handsomely.

The project was focused on the broch exposed in the road cutting, and, though it was obvious that this would only be part of the story, it was perhaps not obvious just how long lived and complex the history of this site would turn out to be. The publication reveals a sequence that starts in the Neolithic (though the pre-Iron Age deposits were only glimpsed through small trenches) and continues through to the recent historical past. Volume 1 covers the Pictish and Viking settlement. Volume 2 deals with the prehistoric sequence, the construction of the broch and the external village that surrounds it in the Middle Iron Age. Volume 3 describes the post-medieval settlement. The latter volume is not considered in any detail in this review.

The project strategy was always to create a visitor attraction and it needs to be acknowledged from the start that this created problems. The need to preserve upstanding structures for consolidation and display strictly limits access to the early phases of the site. The most impressive architectural remains belong to the Middle to Late Iron Age and were built several centuries after the broch. Later structures, belonging to the Norse and post-Medieval settlement, were badly damaged and could be dismantled without any great loss to the cultural significance of the monument. The examination of the Iron Age village, however, was more problematic and involved complex decisions about what should be left in situ and what should be dismantled. One of the major casualties was structure 5, a characteristic figure-of-eight structure of the Pictish period, the removal of which enabled the examination of one of the largest and most interesting Middle Iron Age wheelhouses on the east side of the broch. In contrast, the substantial remains of a Pictish cellular building built into the centre of the broch were deemed too important and well preserved to remove, and so the interior of the broch was not investigated and the main structural features were only examined in a few limited areas. Though at first I was frustrated by this decision, I now accept that the later Pictish construction had probably destroyed most of the primary occupation and the decision makes sense.

Overall, the requirement to preserve the Middle Iron Age and Pictish structures means that we know very little about the broch and the settlement that surrounded it. The general dimensions of the broch structure were clear, but the only place where the primary deposits associated with it were available for examination was in the section cut by the access road. This section provides one of the key pieces of evidence about the broch: the date of its construction. Broch construction dates are a very thorny problem, and much ink has been spilled arguing about the very few dates that currently exist. The reason for this is simple; it is very rarely possible to excavate a monumental structure such as a broch and find stratified samples that both precede and immediately succeed its construction. Amazingly, the excavators of Scatness were fortunate to recover an almost perfect series of samples, which provide a date for construction of 390 to 200 cal bc.

The date is arguably of considerable importance as it is earlier than most other dates for architecturally sophisticated brochs, but it cannot be regarded as revolutionary. Monumental roundhouses – that is thick-walled stone-built roundhouses, though without architectural details such as guard chambers, hollow walls and scarcements – were present on Orkney from at least the fifth century cal bc. It has always seemed likely that these evolved into brochs sometime in the second half of the first millennium cal bc. Interestingly, the Scatness broch has the characteristics one might expect of an early broch. It has relatively thin walls with a large internal space, and this contrasts with the small interior and thick wall of brochs such as Scalloway, which appears to have been built at the end of the millennium, and Mousa, the tallest surviving broch. The difference might indicate that a desire for the prestige given by a very high wall was a late feature of the development, and this would fit the dating that is so far available.

The broch was surrounded by a substantial external boundary consisting of a roughly concentric ditch and bank, which is a characteristic feature of Shetland brochs. In one area the primary fills of the ditch were found to contain very large quantities of cattle bones, which may represent the remains of a large feast. The dates for this deposit confirm the early date for the broch and suggest the feast might have been associated with the construction process. The area enclosed between the broch and the external boundary was occupied by a substantial village that formed the main focus for the excavations.

The authors argue that there was a village contemporary with the original broch tower, but that this was levelled by the construction and modification of later buildings. What survived to be excavated is a complex settlement comprising large circular houses and more irregular structures that infill the spaces between the round houses, the broch and the surrounding rampart. In the Middle Iron Age most of the houses were wheelhouses. Wheelhouses, like brochs, are a regionally distinctive tradition of stone-walled roundhouses found in Atlantic Scotland. They are characterised by a peripheral area around a central open space that is divided into rooms defined by stone-built piers that protrude from the inner wall face. They are architecturally sophisticated structures but, unlike the brochs, the sophistication is only visible to those allowed to enter the structure.

The presence of the circular houses distinguishes the village at Scatness from the well-known broch villages of Orkney where the constraints of circularity were discarded, and it confirms the pattern observed at nearby Jarlshof where a very similar, though much smaller, broch village of circular houses was excavated. The presence of a substantial village reflects the agricultural fertility of this district of south Shetland where the windblown sands encourage arable agriculture. They do not seem to be a feature of many of the Shetland brochs, though most of these brochs are surrounded by additional boundaries and the occasional external structure is not unusual.

It is difficult to make an accurate estimate, given the amount of destruction caused by the airport road, but a village of at least sixteen separate buildings could have been present in the area surrounding the broch. Not all of the structures were domestic dwellings occupied by a household; structure 8, a rectangular building attached to a wheelhouse, was clearly providing specialist facilities for the adjacent household. The broch itself seems to be partially restructured, possibly late in this phase, but remains the focal point of the settlement with an entrance facing west.

The site provides an extremely valuable sequence that demonstrates the development of wheelhouses from the last centuries bc through the first millennium ad, and provides important new information on how they were used. The early wheelhouses have isolated rectangular stone piers separate from the internal walls of the house. Close observation of the wear on the architectural stones reveals that the narrow gap between the pier and the wall was used as a doorway that allowed movement between the peripheral rooms. These movements may later have been regarded as problematic and the spaces were blocked up; later houses had long piers that ran up to the surrounding walls. The final wheelhouses were much smaller structures with massive triangular piers fully bedded into the house walls. It is clear that early wheelhouses had an upper floor and though in some cases this may have been a mezzanine gallery in others it is argued that the first floor spanned the interior and was likely to have been the main living space.

The later wheelhouses are structurally much more secure buildings, but the reduction in size clearly indicates a shift in the social significance of the house interior. The large early wheelhouses provided an arena for social interaction within the household and between the household and visitors, which simply wouldn’t have been possible in the later smaller structures. This change can be related to the increasing importance of material culture and personal ornament in the later periods that culminates in the Pictish period.

The finds from the site demonstrate the important connections that Shetland had with areas further to the south; important connections with the Pictish kingdom are emphatically demonstrated by the discovery of the Scatness bear: a strikingly lifelike carving of a bear done in a typically Pictish style. It is carved on an orthostat placed at the end of a pier on one of the wheelhouses. Much could and should be written about this carving; the style of the art, the symbolism of the animal, the selection of the stone, the original location and the way it was treated at the end of the life of the house. However, it is just one of several pieces of art and one of a multitude of finds from this exceptional site.

The volumes published provide the end of the beginning of the work at Scatness. My review is limited and has had to ignore many important and fascinating aspects of the archaeology. The site itself has yet to be consolidated and laid out to the public, and there is still much work to be done to appreciate fully the significance of this monument and the work that has been carried out and documented here.