The Iron Age Semibrochs of Atlantic Scotland: A Case Study in the Problems of Deductive Reasoning

Abstract

Modern studies of later prehistoric cultural and technological developments in maritime Atlantic Scotland have rejected any form of diffusionist explanations and insist on the priority of local evolution and adaptation to explain the appearance of various forms of monumental drystone buildings, the most spectacular of which are the iron age brochs. New discoveries in Orkney of less sophisticated but massive stone roundhouses going back to the end of the bronze age have provided support for the views that brochs should be more broadly defined and that they evolved gradually in the north over a much longer period than has hitherto been supposed. This has persuaded many that the earlier view of broch origins is wrong; this saw clear evidence for a Hebridean development for the distinctive hollow-walled drystone tower architecture and for its sudden impact—probably as the result of the expansion of a new ruling class with foreign affinities—on the northern island cultures. The crucial evidence for this view is the presence in the Hebrides of a group of plausible broch prototypes known as semibrochs. Attempts have been made to show that these are neither early nor a distinct group of structures but the evidence reviewed here shows that it is difficult to demonstrate the former and impossible to maintain the latter. What has happened in Scottish Atlantic Iron Age studies shows that, if the absolute priority of all the hard evidence is not granted, conviction that a new view is correct may lead to the ignoring or distorting of evidence which does not fit.

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