Scotland before the Romans

For much of Scotland’s prehistory and early history the basic dwelling was the round house. This simple but effective domestic unit is known across the world. At its centre a hearth supplies practical facilities for cooking and warmth. As importantly, it provides a social focus for its occupants, who can sit communally around the fire. Beyond this space the structure requires one or more circles of poles or pillars, and these form divisions around the edge of the house which can be utilised for various purposes - living space for groups or individuals, or areas for specialised activity. Modern examples of round houses demonstrate complex patterns of social relationships, gender, status, and behaviour, often underpinned by concepts of ritual and spiritual belief. Similar patterns probably existed in the Iron Age.

Aerial photograph showing evidence of timber round houses (revealed by crop-marks of their circular foundation trenches) at Coin Hill, Perthshire.
© Colin Martin

Such houses could be made of wood or stone, depending on which material was most readily available. Thus the largely treeless Northern Isles developed a tradition of stone-built houses. Some have interior partitions arranged like the spokes of a wheel, and are called ‘wheel houses’. In lowland areas, where timber predominated, houses were usually built of wood. They almost never survive in visible form, and it used to be thought that there had been little or no settlement in these zones. However the post-holes and slots cut into the subsoil to hold the timbers often show up as crop-marks, and so in recent years the lowlands have been extensively ‘repopulated’ with prehistoric settlements.

The roofs were of turf or thatch, set on timber frameworks. Houses of this kind varied in size, but were often 20 metres or more in diameter. The larger ones could have held as many as 30 people, suggesting that they housed extended kinship groups rather than nuclear families.

Souterrains are underground chambers often associated with round houses. They predominate along the eastern coastlands, mainly beyond the Tay, and in the Northern and Western Isles. Their purpose is not absolutely certain, but most probably they were used to store food, perhaps mainly grain. Many seem to have a capacity much greater than would be required by the house to which they were attached, which suggests that its inhabitants were responsible for supplying food to others. This in turn implies a level of power and control over their neighbours. Souterrains seem mainly to date between the first century BC and the first or second centuries AD. Roman objects have been found in some of them.

A sophisticated and impressive variation of the stone-built roundhouse is seen in the brochs of the west and north. Most appear to date to the last two centuries BC and the first century AD. Brochs are circular towers built of inner and outer dry-stone walls held together by cross-slabs locked by the weight of the structure. Interior chambers and stairs were contained between the walls. Within the broch a wooden structure appears to have held one or more upper floors and a roof. There were no external openings in the walls except for a single entrance which could be securely barred. The most complete example is on the island of Mousa in Shetland, which still stands over 13 metres high. Most brochs were not so tall.

A final category is the hillfort, examples of which are found in many parts of Scotland although the largest of them, and the greatest number, cluster in the south east. Like all prehistoric monuments, the name and the criteria we apply to them are modern constructs. Hillforts range from small enclosed settlements to enormous fortified enclosures. The few that have been excavated indicate long and complex histories, going back in some cases to the beginning of the first millennium BC. Their fortifications, moreover, often seem to reflect occasional and sometimes short-lived episodes, with later hut circles frequently impinging upon or even overlying earlier defences.

The largest hillfort in Scotland is Eildon Hill North, which is believed to have been occupied from c.1000 - 600 BC, and possibly into the Roman period. This 16-hectare enclosure may have contained as many as 300 hut circles, implying a population (if they were all occupied at the same time) of up to 5000 people. They are unlikely to have lived there permanently, however, since the hilltop has no adequate water supply and it is an inconvenient distance from the farms which its inhabitants must have cultivated on the lower ground. More probably it was a place for occasional tribal gatherings and, if so, a considerable level of social cohesion and political authority is implied.

The architectural traditions and settlement characteristics of Iron Age Scotland make the situation which faced the Romans tolerably clear. There was a moderately unsettled zone in the south which could be contained by a network of roads and garrisons. These, additionally, would provide the lines of communications needed to support operations further north. The settled farming tribes of East Lothian, and perhaps Fife, could be left largely to their own devices, perhaps under some kind of treaty accord with Rome. If necessary, the Forth-Clyde isthmus which effectively divided Scotland into two islands could be controlled by a chain of garrisons. Beyond lay the eastern coastlands with their patchworks of open settlements. This area was evidently the seat of considerable power and political cohesion, based on its extensively farmed soils. Events would show that it was implacably hostile to Rome.

There remained the Highlands, and the Northern and Western Isles. Rome probably never had any intention of penetrating these areas. The brochs and their ilk speak of power and social cohesion on a local scale, but the fragmented and small-scale nature of settlement in a harsh environment militated against the larger-scale political development which could pose a military threat. Rome’s best response to these regions was probably to bottle them up.

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