Traprain Law casts a long shadow over the study of the later prehistoric and Roman periods in southern Scotland, and is often interpreted as the central place of a Romanophile Votadinian client state. However, the social, economic and chronological relationships between the much-discussed long-term ebb and flow of activity on Traprain Law and the surrounding settlement landscape of East Lothian have been under-studied, despite some high profile investigations of other sites (notably Broxmouth hillfort in the late 1970s). This is an area with a rich and diverse settlement record, but one which remained ‘unsorted’ (C. Haselgrove et al., Understanding the British Iron Age: an Agenda for Action, English Heritage/Historic Scotland (2001)) and presented a golden opportunity for strategic examination.
In this highly impressive volume Haselgrove and his collaborators (11 other contributing authors) present the outcomes of the five-year Traprain Law Environs Project (TLEP) undertaken to address this knowledge gap, by investigating the many putatively later prehistoric settlement sites — mainly ditched or palisaded curvilinear and rectilinear enclosures (mostly surviving as plough-truncated cropmarks) — recorded within a 15 km by 10 km study area centred upon Traprain Law. A nested research methodology involved the systematic mapping by RCAHMS of well over 100 cropmark sites, geomagnetic survey of a representative sub-sample of 30 sites, and the intrusive examination of a range of enclosure types at six locations (half substantial excavations, half limited evaluations) that revealed diverse, complex and frequently episodic histories of activity.
The volume is very well presented and clearly structured in a conventional monograph format. Two opening chapters set the scene and introduce the project. The heart of the volume is formed by a series of excavation reports supported by chapters examining artefacts, environmental remains and radiocarbon dates. The final two chapters synthesise the results and assess priorities for future research. Detailed results of geomagnetic survey and limited field-walking form appendices.
The chronological focus of the report is upon the period from c. 1000 b.c. to a.d. 500, and it is fair to say that the more groundbreaking discoveries are at either end of this spectrum. A pattern of precocious Late Bronze Age enclosed settlement emerges from three of the excavation sites, although the supporting radiocarbon dating evidence is taphonomically rather more secure at Standingstone than the others, particularly Whittinghame. The demonstration of Early Historic activity in the fifth and sixth centuries a.d. at Whittinghame relates to a period that is scarcely represented in the settlement record anywhere in lowland eastern Scotland, never mind East Lothian. However, there are several other significant discoveries relating to the intervening period, for example the confirmation that rectilinear enclosures appeared in the last centuries b.c., were often constructed on virgin sites suggestive of settlement expansion and agricultural intensification, and do not cluster around Traprain Law (a much quoted factoid thus demolished). The TLEP excavations suggest that the landscape encountered by the Romans in the later first century a.d. probably contained a dense pattern of open scooped settlements (containing Peter Hill's ‘Votadinian houses’), in some cases located on the sites of earlier decaying enclosures.
Beyond the structural evidence, the volume also contains a much needed analysis by Fraser Hunter of the chronological patterns evident at a regional level in the character of the artefact assemblages recovered from Iron Age settlements, identifying increasing concerns with status and social identity in the last centuries b.c. Hunter's analysis of the range of Roman artefacts found in non-Roman contexts in East Lothian convincingly reinforces the prevailing model of Traprain Law as a redistributive centre, at least in the first two centuries a.d., with little evidence to suggest any significant social distinctions amongst the other settlements.
The concluding chapters contain overlapping examinations of long-term settlement development. Cowley leads with the cropmark evidence and Haselgrove with the excavation record. These largely complementary companion pieces do, however, contain a few notable divergences, generally where H. is more cautious than C. in extrapolating from the particular to the general (for example, in suggesting the presence of settlement hierarchies at different periods). On the other hand, H.'s model of the ‘low profile’ of Early Iron Age settlement, compared with what came before and after, must remain tentative given the good proportion of curvilinear enclosures for which close dating remains stubbornly elusive — C.'s Iron Age ‘rag-bag’. H. maps out succinctly the dynamic long-term chronological distinctions between activity on Traprain Law and settlement activity in its surroundings, for example contrasting the dense early Roman period settled landscape and the apparently sparse settlement of the third century onwards. The chicken and egg relationship between first contact with the Roman world and the emergence of Traprain Law at around the same time as an extensive ‘boomtown’ settlement remains an unresolved issue however.
Overall, the coherent design, execution and presentation of this exemplary project have produced results that, even though there is room to dispute some of the details, take us a good way forward in developing a more nuanced framework for the later prehistory of East Lothian and the impact of contact with Rome, but show also how far we still have to travel.
