DISCUSION DE LOS RESULTADOS

The settlement record is one of the greatest resources available to Iron Age studies in Scotland. This can be attributed to the research culture of Scottish archaeology, which follows the general British trend of giving special attention to field monuments (Daniel and Renfrew 1987, 70-2), as well as to the nature of the land itself: as much of Scotland is devoid of any tree cover and many areas have not been subject to modern deep ploughing, aerial photography becomes a more powerful tool than in many other European countries (Cowley and Brophy 2001, 61). The main limitation of Iron Age settlement archaeology in Scotland is the apparent lack of chronological meaning among the variety of forms observed in survey. As a result, it is often difficult to assemble the Scottish Iron Age settlement data into meaningful narratives.

The most frequent settlement form recorded for the Scottish Iron Age is the enclosure, perhaps due to its archaeological visibility. Enclosures can be defined through timber palisades; single, as was the case at the early stage of Dryburn Bridge (Dunwell 2007, 98-9), or multiple, as may have been the case at Mar Hall (Cavers et al. 2012), but more substantial systems of ramparts and ditches were also present. These rampart and ditch systems range from a single circuit surrounded by a single ditch, such as Woodend (Banks 2000), to more elaborate complexes with multiple circuits of enclosure, some-times connected to one another, such as Hownam Rings (Piggott 1948) (Figure 2.1).

Enclosures surrounded by a single rampart are often referred to as univallate, while ones surrounded by multiple ramparts are referred to as multivallate. The size of the enclosures is also variable. Some appear to have defined single homesteads, as may have been the case with the small enclosure at Scotstarvit (Bersu 1948), while others were much larger, like the hillfort on Burnswark Hill (Jobey 1978) (Figure 2.2). The Iron Age enclosures also varied with regard to their shape, from round, such as Mar Hall, through sub-oval, such as Dryburn Bridge, to rectilinear, such as Rispain Camp

(Haggarty and Haggarty 1983) (Figure 2.3). If an enclosure has a surrounding rampart and is located on a hill, it may be referred to as a hillfort by the National Monuments Record. However, this classification need not reflect a defensive function of the site (Poller 2005, 2-5). Sometimes, if the site is located on a promontory, advantage would have been taken of the surrounding topography and only the stretch of land grant-ing access would have been enclosed, thus defingrant-ing a promontory fort, as is the case at Carghiedown (Toolis 2007). In a number of cases, the ramparts have been burnt, leading to the melting of their stone component. Such sites are called vitrified forts (Cook 2010). Another specific form of enclosure is the dun. Duns are small circular enclosures made from stone, encountered throughout Scotland, but with a western bias (Harding 2004). In the south-west, some of these sites are referred to as homesteads and a concentration is present on the west coast of the Machars peninsula (Poller 2005, 250). Open sites are also present, though they are less apparent in aerial photography and often are discovered in the process of other archaeological activity. This was the case at Dalladies, where a group of roundhouses was discovered in the course of the excavation of a Neolithic long barrow (Watkins 1980). What is perhaps most impor-tant to remember when discussing these different types of settlement, is that their final form was often the result of modifications that accumulated over several generations.

On some sites, such as the palisaded enclosure, at Braehead (Ellis 2007) (Figure 2.4), this is quite clear, as the successive palisades overlap. Oftentimes though there is no such information, for example at Mar Hall there are three concentric palisades, but we have no way of knowing whether they were part of the same design, or successive replacements.

While it is beyond any discussion that different enclosing features would require dif-ferent forms of know-how and labour mobilization, they need not have typological currency, as illustrated by the story of the Hownam model, developed in the mid-1950s by Margaret Piggott as a means of a meaningful ordering of the settlement record.

During her excavations at Hownam, Piggott realized that the palisaded enclosure at that site was followed by a ditched rampart, succeeded in turn by a multivallate enclo-sure (Piggott 1948, 220-2). Working within Hawkes’s (1959) constrained ABC scheme of the Iron Age, she had to fit the whole development sequence into a 400-year period and proposed that the transition to the rampart was the result of a local shift in func-tion of sites and attributed the second shift to the political instability of the Roman period. Subsequent open settlement was then seen as a product of Pax Romana (Pig-gott 1948, 223). This scheme appeared to be applicable to the next site she excavated, Hayhope Knowes (Piggott 1949), and by the 1960s it was accepted as a generalization applicable throughout the Scottish Iron Age. Yet the 1970s excavations at Dryburn Bridge and Broxmouth proved that the Hownam model is not universal (Armit 1999).

At Dryburn Bridge, the settlement began as a palisaded enclosure, much as expected from the Hownam model. However, following the addition of an internal enclosure, Dryburn then developed into an open settlement, with no rampart phase (Dunwell 2007, 98). Broxmouth was even more decisive. It began as a palisaded enclosure, but soon afterwards houses were built over the original surrounding ditch. Thereafter, the

Figure 2.1: Different enclosure types: single palisade at Dryburn Bridge (Dunwell 2007, Illus-tration 66), multiple palisades at Mar Hall (Cavers et al. 2012, Figure 2), unival-late enclosure at Woodend Farm (Banks 2000, Illustration 4), 4) and multivalunival-late enclosure at Hownam Rings (Piggott 1948, Figure 2).

Figure 2.2: Comparison of enclosure sizes between Burnswark Hill (Jobey 1978, Figure 1) and Scotstravit (Bersu 1948, Figure 1).

Figure 2.3: Rectilinear enclosure at Rispain Camp (Haggarty and Haggarty 1983, Figure 3).

Figure 2.4: Overlapping palisades at Braehead (Ellis 2007, Illustration 3).

main enclosure phase took place with a series of ditches and ramparts added in some-what close succession. In the subsequent phase, these fortifications are overbuilt by an open settlement, but after that in the final phase of Iron Age activity, the settlement of stone and timber roundhouses is surrounded by yet another rampart (Armit and McKenzie 2013, 17-9). Furthermore, the radiocarbon dating of both sites showed that they became open before the Roman incursion and also that the palisaded phase at Dryburn Bridge would have been contemporary with the multivallate phase at Brox-mouth (Hamilton 2010; Hamilton et al. 2013). This leads to two important conclusions.

First, the formal morphology of a site may not be informative of its chronology and hence cannot be used as a means of ordering sites through time. Second, the current shape of these sites may be an end point of an extended diachronic process and so does not need to represent the original intention of the builders.

One aspect of settlement in Iron Age Scotland that is unambiguous is the central po-sition of the roundhouse in the sphere of domestic architecture. The main recognized division within the group has to do with the material utilized, with some of the struc-tures built in wood and some with a substantial stone component. The latter kind of settlement dominates the Atlantic zone, where stone architecture had a long tradition and may have been a part of a shared cultural milieu of the Atlantic facade (Henderson 2007d). The zenith of the Iron Age stone architecture is the complex Atlantic round-house, a class of buildings referred to in most publications as brochs monumental stone towers, which may have served as family seats (Armit 2002, 22). These sites concentrate in the Scottish north and west, but some are present in southern areas;

in the south-west there are, for example, Teroy (Curle 1912) and Stairhaven (Wilson 1899) in Galloway. Furthermore, towards the turn of the first millennium cal BC stone built houses emerge in the south-east, as testified by the evidence from Broxmouth (Buster and Armit 2013).

The majority of roundhouses out-with the Atlantic zone were built in wood. These come in three forms: the post-ring, the ring-groove and the ring-ditch, as defined by their trace in the archaeological record. The post-ring structures are defined by the presence of a series of post-holes only; the ring grooves are similar, but they also have a shallow circular trench (groove) that is often interpreted as remnants of a wall trench. Ring-ditch houses have a more substantial ditch that may have been purpose dug, or a result of stalling cattle. These different types of wooden structures seem to have no chronological currency; for example at Dryburn Bridge all three are present (Figure 2.5) (Dunwell 2007). Another clear form of variability within the Iron Age roundhouse is the presence or absence of an extended entrance or a porch. Once again, the case of Dryburn Bridge demonstrates that these extension structures can co-occur on the same sites. There are also cases, such as Rispain in Galloway, where round-houses had multiple entrances (Haggarty and Haggarty 1983). Current perspectives on roundhouses argue that these structures would have had meaning beyond that of basic accommodation or economic purpose and that they would have played an important part in representing and perpetuating Iron Age cosmologies (Cavers 2008). Regardless of one’s attitude towards these interpretations, the size of some of these structures as well as their persistence is an indicator that they would have played a significant part in what has been termed as domestic monumentality that is taken to characterize the Iron Age (Cavers 2008, 20).

Figure 2.5: House types of the Scottish Iron Age: post (upper left-hand corner); ring-groove (upper right-hand corner) and the ring-ditch (bottom). All examples from Dryburn Bridge (Dunwell 2007, Figures 21, 30-1).

The key challenge in understanding Iron Age settlement is that although it is unde-niable that there would have been reasons for adding ramparts to an enclosure, or a

porch to a roundhouse, our understanding of these reasons does not go beyond the very general notion of monumentality. This alone is important, for it shows the importance of labour mobilization as the heart of Iron Age social process (Sharples 2007), but, if our interpretations are to develop beyond the very general, we need to develop a better understanding of the causes, patterns and nature of the apparent variability.