Crannogs and Later Prehistoric Settlement in Western Scotland 9781407306407, 9781407321806

Table of contents :
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Front Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Table of Contents
PREFACE
CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER TWO: THEORETICAL CONTEXT
CHAPTER THREE: ENVIRONMENT AND ECONOMY
CHAPTER FOUR: DISTRIBUTION AND DATING
CHAPTER FIVE: PHYSICAL AND CONCEPTUAL ORIGINS
CHAPTER SIX: CONSTRUCTION, OCCUPATION AND TAPHONOMY - THE USE, REUSE AND ABANDONMENT OF CRANNOGS
CHAPTER SEVEN: SOUTH WEST SCOTLAND
CHAPTER EIGHT: ARGYLL
CHAPTER NINE: DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS
PLATES
REFERENCES
APPENDIX ONE: CRANNOG SURVEYS
APPENDIX TWO GAZETTEER OF CRANNOG SITES IN SCOTLAND

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BAR 510 2010 CAVERS CRANNOGS AND LATER PREHISTORIC SETTLEMENT IN WESTERN SCOTLAND

B A R

Crannogs and Later Prehistoric Settlement in Western Scotland

Graeme Cavers

BAR British Series 510 2010

Crannogs and Later Prehistoric Settlement in Western Scotland

Graeme Cavers

BAR British Series 510 2010

ISBN 9781407306407 paperback ISBN 9781407321806 e-format DOI https://doi.org/10.30861/9781407306407 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

BAR

PUBLISHING

CONTENTS

Preface ........................................................................................................................................... ii Chapter One: Introduction ........................................................................................................... 1 Chapter Two: Theoretical Context .............................................................................................. 4 Chapter Three: Environment And Economy..............................................................................17 Chapter Four: Distribution and Dating.......................................................................................26 Chapter Five: Physical and Conceptual Origin ...........................................................................37 Chapter Six: Construction, Occupation and Taphonomy: the Use, Reuse and Abandoment of Crannogs ............................................................................52 Chapter Seven: South West Scotland ........................................................................................... 74 Chapter Eight: Argyll ................................................................................................................ 120 Chapter Nine: Discussion and Conclusions .............................................................................. 168 Plates .......................................................................................................................................... 179 References .................................................................................................................................. 187 Appendix One: Crannog Surveys .............................................................................................. 207 Appendix Two: Gazetteer of Crannog Sites in Scotland ........................................................... 233

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PREFACE

This monograph comprises an edited and reviewed version of my PhD thesis, completed in 2005. The aim of my doctoral research was to take a contextualised approach to the archaeology of crannogs, attempting to understand their origins and the evolution of their function and meaning in later prehistoric and early historic society within the wider patterns detectable in Scotland. This document comprises my attempt to place crannogs in their correct geographical and chronological and social context, and to extract a more meaningful interpretation of their significance beyond a simple description of their often spectacular preservation. Since the completion of the work in 2005, the Scottish Wetland Archaeology Programme has been actively pursuing a research agenda designed to contextualise Scotland’s wetland archaeological resource, in line with current paradigms in wetland archaeology (e.g. Van der Noort and O’Sullivan 2006), and I have been fortunate to have been involved in the formulation of this research agenda and the associated field programme (Cavers 2006). Although much of this work has direct relevance to the themes, areas and sites discussed in this document, I have not attempted to incorporate results of this work into this document prior to its publication. I have however, attempted to refer the reader to more significant publications of crannog-related material that has arrived since 2005- most notably the publication of Jack Scott’s excavations at Loch Glashan (Campbell and Crone 2006)- in relevant chapters. Although the premise of this document is that crannogs have been understudied in comparison to other contemporary site types, it will be apparent to the reader that wetland archaeological studies are currently vibrant in Scotland, largely due to the Historic Scotland-funded SWAP programme. It is hoped that this interest in Scotland’s wetlands will continue to grow into further productive research initiatives. Numerous people provided help and support in many different ways during the course of this research. I would like to express my thanks to my supervisor Dr Jon Henderson for encouraging me to carry out my thesis at Nottingham, for the opportunity to be involved in the establishment of the Underwater Archaeology Research Centre at Nottingham University. My good friends Simon Davidson and George Geddes both provided much needed assistance in the field, and I am grateful to both for their enthusiasm. Access to unpublished material, comments and advice were very kindly given by Dr Anne Crone (AOC Archaeology), Dr Nick Dixon (University of Edinburgh), Dr Lloyd Laing (University of Nottingham), Dr Simon Gilmour, Dr Gavin MacGregor (GUARD), Betty Rennie, Dr Rob Sands (University College Dublin) and Ronan Toolis; my sincere thanks go to all of them for their help. Chris Fleet at the National Library of Scotland provided assistance with map sources and Dr Colin Breen (Centre for Maritime Archaeology) kindly loaned me an underwater camera for the Argyll survey work. Many of my ideas were scrutinised through discussions with George Geddes and Tessa Poller, and I am grateful to both for their thoughtful opinions. I also wish to thank Patrick Ashmore (then Historic Scotland) for providing radiocarbon dates for crannogs surveyed as part of this research. The assistance of Prof. Julian Henderson, Prof. Bill Cavanagh and Prof. Roger Wilson at the Dept of Archaeology, University of Nottingham was also much appreciated. Finally, I am indebted to Dr Lloyd Laing and Prof Dennis Harding for their comments, criticism and advice on the final version of my PhD thesis. I am grateful for the grants for fieldwork given by the Council for British Archaeology, The Dr JN Marshall (Isle of Bute) Memorial Fund and the Dumfries and Galloway Natural History and

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Antiquarian Society. This research was funded by a grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council. I would like to thank my parents and family for their many years of support and encouragement, without which I never would have finished this work. But most of all, I want to thank my wife Debbie, without whom I would never have started.

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CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION

Since the radiocarbon dating of Milton Loch I crannog in Kirkcudbrightshire (Guido 1974) and Ederline Boathouse in Loch Awe (Morrison 1982b) first indicated that lake settlements had a chronology stretching back into the early Iron Age, lake settlement in Scotland has been assumed to represent a long lived tradition, spanning almost two millennia of Scottish history. As such, the few studies of Scottish crannogs that were undertaken in the 20th century took a multiperiod approach, forced into discussing sites of widely varying dates across distant geographical areas (e.g. Oakley 1973; Morrison 1985), so that the importance of crannogs within any given chronological horizon was overlooked and their impact somewhat diluted; even the key syntheses of the Iron Age give crannogs only cursory treatment (e.g. Cunliffe 1991). Indeed, this lack of context is a problem for crannog studies that affects even the most recent writing (e.g. Holley 2000; Dixon 2004).

on the later prehistoric period, from the earliest constructional origins of crannogs in the late Bronze Age through to their apparent emergence as status dwellings in the Early Historic period after the mid first millennium AD. The aim is to investigate the ways in which crannogs functioned as settlements, both on a practical, economic as well as a symbolic and sociocultural level. Throughout, the primary concern is with contextualisation, considering crannogs within their correct chronological and cultural context through the critical analysis of dating evidence as well as the identification of the relevant ritual and symbolic themes- i.e. the Iron Age veneration of water. It is argued in this book that the stereotypical view of a crannog that has largely been derived from the results of work carried out on Irish crannogs by the Harvard expedition in the earlier 20th century (Hencken 1936, 1942, 1950) has been misleading in the case of the Scottish sites, tending towards a view of crannogs as high-status strongholds, often as royal seats. Though crannogs were certainly a significant feature of the Early Historic period in Scotland, there is as yet no evidence of direct connections to royalty in this period and, based on the currently available evidence, the characterisation of crannogs as high status sites is misguided in the context of their late Bronze and Iron Age origins. The focus of this project is on the crannogs of Scotland, and while the evidence from similar Irish sites of the late Bronze Age and Early Historic periods forms a basis for comparison and contrast with the Scottish material, the interpretative paradigms prevalent in the study of Early Historic crannogs in Ireland do not form the basis of interpretation of the Scottish material in this study. Indeed, recent research in Ireland is beginning to suggest that the blanket equation of ‘crannog’ with status even in the Early Historic period is too simplistic (e.g. Boyle 2004:93).

As radiocarbon dates for crannogs began to strongly reinforce the view of prehistoric origins, Henderson argued in a paper compiling the dating evidence for lake settlements that they should be seen as a major component of the later prehistoric settlement record, with the majority of dates relating to the centuries of the late Bronze and Iron Ages (Henderson 1998). Henderson pointed out that while the lake settlement tradition was indeed long-lived, the proportions of dates collected indicated that crannogs constituted a major component of the Iron Age settlement record, accounting for an entire class of settlement that had previously been ignored (Henderson 1998:242). Further discussion of this recognition by Harding (2000), related the ‘island duns’ of the Hebrides to the same tradition, discussing the role of Iron Age lake settlements as farmsteads. Both Henderson and Harding, however, called for a more integrated approach to studies of crannogs as settlements, considering them as a major part of the settlement system of Iron Age Scotland, and not simply a peripheral tradition without major significance.

The relationship of Scottish lake settlements with the archaeology of Ireland is of key importance, since it is likely that the concept of living over water is a shared trait that has origins in both Ireland and Scotland at least as early as the Neolithic. In this respect, lake settlement can be thought of as one facet of a suite of

This book comprises the results of research undertaken to redress this imbalance. The focus of the research is 1

CRANNOGS AND LATER PREHISTORIC SETTLEMENT IN WESTERN SCOTLAND shared traditions between Scotland and Ireland which include the wide range of drystone circular settlements that range in date from the late Bronze Age to the Early Historic period, and throughout this research comparison is made to the development of the Atlantic roundhouse tradition in Scotland. By making links with these related traditions it is possible to draw parallels between developments in the form and function of terrestrial settlements and those of lake dwellings, greatly contributing to a better understanding of Iron Age settlement evolution in the Atlantic regions. In this respect a kind of feedback process occurs, whereby the trends set by the developments in the settlement record help us to interpret the archaeology of crannogs, while the data from crannogs may substantially fill out our understanding of terrestrial monuments. In particular, by connecting crannogs to Atlantic roundhouses in areas like Argyll, construction dates for the late Bronze/early Iron Age horizon within which the stone roundhouse tradition is thought to originate become much more plentiful.

any significant way when applied to the Scottish sites. As unnatural as it may seem for the archaeologist, for the time being classification of crannogs is to be avoided in the interests of permissiveness. What this book does attempt to do is to take a landscape perspective of the changes in settlement organisation in two study areas in western Scotland, within the broad chronological boundaries of the first millennia BC and AD. Crannogs are found in some of their greatest densities in the modern administrative areas of Dumfries and Galloway and Argyll and Bute, and it is on study areas in these regions that this research is principally focussed. As such, the project is a presentation of primary survey and excavation work, but it is also an interpretation of the development of settlement organisation in these two poorly understood regions (termed ‘black holes’ by Haselgrove et al 2001:25). The aims of this work are thus twofold: to contribute to an understanding of the later prehistoric archaeology of west and south western Scotland, and also to develop an interpretative paradigm for the archaeology of crannogs, so that future survey and excavation data from these immensely informative sites might be more productively compiled.

Crannog studies, however, are still in their infancy and very little substantial work has been carried out on the Scottish material. For this reason, it is difficult to offer firm statements or reliable classificatory schemes at this stage, and no attempt is made to do this here. It was remarked by both Henderson (1998:227) and Harding (2000:302), for example, that the term ‘crannog’ is unhelpfully inclusive, in much the same way that the term ‘dun’ has been shown to be in the past. Unlike ‘duns’ and ‘brochs’, however, the problem faced by crannogs is a lack of classificatory criteria resulting from a fundamental lack of fieldwork, rather than preconceptions of the form of a ‘typical’ example. Labels for Atlantic roundhouses are unreliable since most archaeological surveyors tend to have a very clear interpretation of what does and does not constitute a ‘broch’ or ‘dun’; for precisely the opposite reason crannogs are grouped together because surveyors tend to be unclear on what exactly constitutes ‘a crannog’. Yet this can be seen as a merit rather than a problem: crannog studies in Scotland have the rare opportunity to start effectively from scratch, with no significant history of prejudiced frameworks that might constrain interpretation based on the evidence alone. Morrison (1985:19-20) suggested that the definition should entail some degree of artificiality, but there seems to be no need to exclude natural islet settlements from consideration alongside crannogs since the intention was clearly the same- to occupy an islet location in open water (Harding 2000:302), and indeed many crannogs are only partially artificial, founded on natural bedrock reefs. Given the embryonic state of our knowledge of crannog taphonomy, even simplistic classificatory terminology such as the ‘high cairn’, ‘low cairn’ and ‘platform’ crannog labels used by Fredengren (2002:7881) is likely to be misleading, and does not hold up in

Structure of this book This book is organised into two parts. Part one aims to contextualise the archaeology of lake settlement in Scotland, with Chapter Two setting the theoretical and methodological context for the investigation, as well as identifying and explaining the reasons for the choice of study areas. Chapter Three considers the environmental history of western Scotland through the later prehistoric period, with an analysis of the evidence for agricultural and resource exploitation strategies employed by the communities of Argyll and Dumfries and Galloway through the period of interest. Chapter Four compiles the evidence for dating and distribution of crannog sites in Scotland, based on an analysis of data from antiquarian excavation and survey, records held by the RCAHMS and from modern research programmes, with the production of justified distribution maps founded on analysis rather than the distribution of ‘crannog’ reports. Chapter Five investigates the origins and developments of the crannog concept through the late Bronze and Iron Ages with close comparison to Ireland. This chapter explores the combination of the ritual importance of water with the symbolism of the household, and discusses the importance of this as the basis for the proliferation of crannogs in the Iron Age. Chapter Six considers the evidence for the construction, occupation and taphonomy of crannogs, with particular reference to the ways in which variation in taphonomy affects the results of the excavation and sampling of crannog sites.

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INTRODUCTION Part two of the book comprises two landscape studies, focusing firstly on western Dumfries and Galloway, and secondly on mainland Argyll and Bute. In depth analysis of the settlement archaeology of these regions forms the basis of these chapters, with the analysis and discussion of the results of primary fieldwork also a major component of these sections. Analytical statistics derived from GIS analysis also form the basis for discussion of landscape patterning in the study areas. The results and conclusions are summarised and discussed in Chapter Nine, while four appendices compile the data from primary fieldwork, radiocarbon dates and a database of crannog sites in Scotland.

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CHAPTER TWO: THEORETICAL CONTEXT

The first part of this chapter considers the theoretical background to the current research, with an appraisal of current movements in Iron Age and crannog research and a discussion of recent developments in landscape archaeology. Part 2 outlines the methodology used in geographical analyses and primary data collection.

the settlement record for this understudied area. The work in the Highlands of Scotland’s first underwater archaeologist- Odo Blundell- significantly increased the number of known sites, though did little to change the overall impression given by Munro’s work (e.g. Blundell 1910, 1913).

A Brief History of Crannog Research

Munro’s interpretations were long-lasting enough to comfortably explain the date and function of the crannog at Milton Loch I, excavated by C.M.Piggott (1953) and it was not until the application of radiocarbon dating to this site that the true longevity of the settlement was appreciated (Guido 1974). Further radiocarbon dates began to demonstrate that the chronology of crannogs was much longer than had been previously anticipated (Morrison 1982a), while major surveys in Loch Awe (McArdle and McArdle 1973) and Loch Tay (Dixon 1982a) demonstrated that crannogs were found in large numbers outside of their traditional ‘heartlands’ (Morrison 1985). Following the presentation of the initial results of excavation at Oakbank crannog, Loch Tay (Dixon 1981a, 1981b; 1984) and modern re-excavation at Buiston (Barber and Crone 1993; full publication Crone 2000) Crone compiled the dating evidence for crannogs in the early 1990s, identifying three major phases of crannog construction: in the late Bronze/Iron Age, the Early Historic period and in the Medieval centuries (Crone 1993:246). However, while crannogs were now known to have a long developmental sequence and their prehistoric origins were recognised, they were still treated in terms of the Early Historic models derived from Ireland, where crannogs were better studied and known to have been a highly significant feature of the Early Historic landscape; Crone even postulated the movement of the crannog concept to and from Ireland over the course of some 1500 years (Crone 1993:250).

It is not my intention to go into the details of the history of crannog research, since this has been outlined in detail on numerous occasions (Dixon 1991, 2004; Crone 2000; Holley 2000). However, a number of important historical points should be noted as a relevant prelude to this study. The interest in lake dwellings in the British Isles was triggered by the discovery and description of the lake settlements of Switzerland, published by Keller (translation 1866), when the true antiquity of the crannogs of Scotland and Ireland was initially realised (B.Coles 2004:101). Numerous antiquarians carried out inspections and excavations of crannog sites in Scotland, including Grigor (1863a; 1863b) and Stuart (1865), but it was the contribution of Robert Munro (1882a, 1885a, 1885b, 1893, 1894a, 1894b) that was to stand as the most significant. Munro travelled widely, responding to reports of lake settlement structures across the country and compiling his observations in reports to the Society of Antiquaries, and he also carried out his own excavations at several sites, though most notably at Buiston and Lochlee in Ayrshire. The publication of Munro’s observations in 1882 (Munro 1882) went some way to forming the stereotypical view of a crannog, with the finds from Lochlee and Buiston suggesting that crannogs dated to around the period of the Roman presence in Scotland, continuing in use into the Early Historic period, when they could more comfortably be linked to the examples known from Ireland (Wood Martin 1886). Munro’s concentration on the south west of the country, where the most drainage occurred for the purposes of agricultural reclamation furthermore served to create the impression that crannogs were a feature of the south west, an explanation that typicallythough not altogether accurately- helped to fill a hole in

Recent discussion, however, of the proportions of dates for Scottish crannogs has resulted in the view that they were a highly significant feature of the Iron Age, albeit the ‘long Iron Age’ (Henderson’s ‘later prehistoric period’, 1000BC- AD500; Henderson 1998), and that it is to this horizon that most crannogs properly belong (see further discussion by Harding 2000, with relevance 4

THEORETICAL CONTEXT to research on Hebridean ‘island duns’). Henderson proposed that crannogs constitute an Iron Age settlement class that crosses the traditional boundaries of classification and as such should be studied as a major part of the Iron Age settlement record of Scotland.

always been included in this category; the regions south of the Clyde generally have not. The ‘Atlantic’ settlement record is, however, characterised by its own variety; the diversity within the ‘province’ makes its artificial boundaries decidedly blurry and it is questionable whether Piggott’s landbased boundaries really hold any significance. Piggott never intended the provincial scheme to be tightly adhered to, nor to withstand changes brought about by research (S.Piggott 1966:12), but it is fair to say that the use of the ‘Atlantic’ terminology has excluded significant areas with closely related archaeology. It is not clear, for example, that Loch Tayside- traditionally considered within central and eastern Highland frameworks- should be separated from Argyll, since the settlement archaeology of that region is characterised by the same stone forts, ‘duns’ and crannogs as mainland Argyll. Similarly, there are developed brochs in southwest Scotland, different in details to classic northern examples, but perhaps no less so than the variation within the traditionally defined Atlantic zone would allow. It remains anomalous that these sites have not been considered within the Atlantic framework.

While many of the hypotheses considered by Henderson can now be argued against, this movement towards the treatment of crannogs within the later prehistoric settlement archaeology of Scotland forms the basis for the current investigation; it is argued in this book that when crannogs are considered within the patterns set by the better-known terrestrial record, they become much more valuable as sources of information on prehistoric society than previous views would have allowed. As this research demonstrates, when crannogs are properly contextualised they help explain- and are explained through- the patterns set by the more readily accessible terrestrial record. Considering ‘Atlantic’

Western

Scotland:

‘Solway-Clyde’

and

Since the principal concern of this book is with the later prehistoric archaeology of western Scotland, it is pertinent to consider the history of academic interest in this area. Recent syntheses have highlighted how much of western Scotland- and much of the area with which this study is particularly concerned- constitutes a ‘black hole’ in our knowledge of the northern British Iron Age, with no well-established regional chronological or developmental framework (Haselgrove et al 2001:24-5), while the Iron Age of south west Scotland has apparently been completely outwith the concerns of research excavation and survey (Ralston 1996; Banks 2002).

It seems probable that the exclusion of south west Scotland from considerations of Atlantic connectivity and shared traditions resulted from the characterisation of the region in terms of its most important Iron Age finds- the Balmaclellan mirror and the ‘chamfrein’ from Torrs. Piggott offered these finds as evidence of the links between the south west and south east England (see also Stevenson 1966). While the La Tène connections are apparent (Mackie 1995:657; Harding 2002:204), it seems inconsistent and disingenuous to characterise the south west in terms of isolated finds, when otherwise regional frameworks were based upon settlement evidence. The inevitable characterisation of the south west (or at least Galloway, i.e. west of the Nith) as most closely related to the south and east is no longer tenable, and is not taken as a working premise in this research.

The area was originally divided into two through S.Piggott’s (1966) ‘provincial’ scheme for the northern British Iron Age, with the western seaboard north of the Clyde classified as ‘Atlantic’, while the south west, including all of Dumfries and Galloway, Ayrshire and Strathclyde south of the Clyde was classed within the ‘Solway-Clyde’ province (see S.Piggott 1966: figure1). Though the details of Piggott’s original scheme are now somewhat outmoded, it is certainly fair to say that the legacy of the provincial scheme is still apparent as a divisive factor in synthesis (see Armit and Ralston 1997:170). Most commonly used of all is the ‘Atlantic’ label, which is generally taken to mean the western and northern Highlands, but especially the western islands, the Outer Hebrides and the Northern Isles. It is probable that this label has been so widely accepted because it helps address the apparent continuity within the settlement record for these regions, based around the ubiquitous brochs, duns and stone forts that characterise these areas. Because of the presence of related stone-built settlements, Argyll and Bute has

It is argued that this more fluid approach to the archaeology of western Scotland helps to more accurately contextualise shared traditions apparent in the settlement archaeology. In this way, the crannogs are not seen as anomalously spread across otherwise well defined boundaries, but part of a set of traditions shared by south west, west central and north west Scotland (see figure 2.1). The importance of sea contacts in the western British Iron Age is now clear (e.g. Henderson 2000; Cunliffe 2001) and this view helps to explain the integration of western Scotland; if anything the Irish Sea zones- including Argyll and the south west- can be seen as central and united (e.g. Alcock 1972) rather than isolated and obscure. For this reason, the term ‘Atlantic’ is used very loosely in this 5

CRANNOGS AND LATER PREHISTORIC SETTLEMENT IN WESTERN SCOTLAND

Figure 2.1: Principal Later Prehistoric settlement types in western Scotland, illustrating the continuity across much of the western seaboard, including south west Scotland. study, since although the label has direct relevance in accounting for shared traditions across western Scotland, the boundaries imposed by previous studies do not have significance for the material with which this study is concerned.

understanding of Iron Age society, and have advanced new standards of archaeological investigation involving rigorous scientific, geographical and analytical techniques as well as post-processual and symbolic approaches, aiming at an holistic approach to understanding Iron Age society. However, these approaches have by no means resulted in universal agreement on the significance of the data, and within the same geographical framework and even with data from the same sites, interpretations of the structure of Iron Age society have varied dramatically. These interpretations have a direct bearing on this study, and the following section discusses the most pressing issues and how they affect the interpretation of the western Scottish Iron Age more generally.

Current paradigms in the study of the first millennia in Northern Britain The Atlantic Iron Age controversy: a summary Perhaps the most significant developments in our understanding of the northern British Iron Age have derived from the study of the Atlantic regions, and the monumental drystone settlement tradition in the north and west. The changes in approach and interpretation that have occurred over the course of the last 25 years in this field have been of profound importance to our

The rejection of the traditionally accepted origin of the broch structures of northern and western Scotland as 6

THEORETICAL CONTEXT buildings of settlers from southern England (e.g. Lane 1987; Harding 1990, 2000c) and reinterpretation of several key excavations which had been formative in the interpretation and dating of field monuments in the Atlantic regions (e.g. Armit 1988:81) had the result that a much wider group of drystone settlements could be related within a single generic group, termed ‘Atlantic roundhouses’ by Armit (1990c:437). In this scheme, those roundhouses with complex intra-mural architecture and monumental stature are seen as one version within a much wider tradition, and as such were termed ‘complex Atlantic roundhouses’ by Armit (1988:437). Approaching Atlantic settlement archaeology in this way allowed an appreciation of the long date range of circular drystone structures, from simple-walled beginnings perhaps as early as 800 BC, through the complex and monumental developed broch towers, probably constructed in their greatest numbers between 300 BC and 100 AD, to secondary re-use in the ‘cellular’ phases of the late Iron Age and Early Historic periods. The realisation that field monuments in the Atlantic regions were often not preserved in such a way as to allow the recognition of architectural features that had previously been the basis of divisive classification (e.g. Armit 1990a; Harding and Armit 1990; Harding 1990:6) combined with the long chronology led to a view of the contemporaneity of many Atlantic roundhouses within a developmental sequence in which a major phase of monumentality, involving complex architectural forms including the developed broch towers, occurred in the period c.300BC-100AD (Armit 1990b:203-4).

impression (Armit 1997b:267). In Armit’s view, if social differentiation was pronounced within Iron Age society in the Hebrides, it was not reflected in material terms in the architecture of the region (Armit 1997a:250). This interpretation, however, has not been universally accepted and strongly contrasting views of the Atlantic settlement phenomenon have been offered by researchers working on Hebridean and Northern Isles settlement evidence. Sharples and Parker Pearson, for example, do not accept Armit’s reclassification of the drystone settlement record and reject the Atlantic roundhouse terminology (Sharples and Parker Pearson 1997:255-6). In so doing, they preserve the broch as a specialised and restricted form of settlement, distinctive from the general mass of drystone settlements that they would prefer to class as duns in keeping with the traditional schemes (Parker Pearson et al 1996:59). Sharples and Parker Pearson see the construction of brochs as beyond the means of simple small-scale farming groups, requiring specialist knowledge and labour on an excessive scale, and as such brochs should be thought of as the ‘embodiments of boundedness and exclusion’ (ib. id. 264). They reinforce this view through their interpretation of the economy, material culture and location of brochs in relation to contemporary settlements: where brochs on South Uist such as Dun Vulan were liminal, visible and exploitative, wheelhouses like Kildonan were central, hidden and exploited (Parker Pearson and Sharples 1999:363; Parker Pearson et al 1996; see argument against the basis of this theory by Gilmour and Cook 1998, and response by Parker Pearson et al 1999). While this interpretation is certainly controversial for the Western Isles, similar arguments have been put forward for the brochs of the Northern Isles, contrasting the location, monumentality and economic wealth of the Old Scatness broch with Tofts Ness in Shetland by way of illustration (Dockrill and Batt 2004:133).

This in turn had profound implications for the interpretation of land division and territorial organisation that had resulted from the hierarchical view of Iron Age settlement. Armit has been the principal exponent of the interpretation of Atlantic roundhouses as autonomous and independent farmsteads, preferring to see them as symbols of localised authority and power, legitimising claims to land and asserting a permanence of settlement in the locality than as the affluent and extravagant castles of powerful elites (Armit 1992a:133, 1997a, 2002, 2003). From his study of the Western Isles sequence, Armit concluded that many of the Atlantic roundhouses of the Outer Hebrides may have been in use contemporaneously during the principal phase of domestic monumentality in the second half of the first millennium BC, and as such were used as ‘powerful symbols of the legitimacy of the household within the locality; to demonstrate their control over an area of land and the resources associated with it’ (Armit 1997a:249). Atlantic roundhouses are found in such densities in the Western Isles that suggest they could not have been solely the residences of elites, while the lack of any substantial body of evidence for a lower order of settlement class further reinforces this

It is not the purpose of this book to discuss in detail the controversies of the interpretation of the Atlantic Iron Age, and the preceding summary is a simplification of many more detailed arguments. However, the general theme of the discussion is of direct relevance to the present study, since, as will be argued throughout this book, Scottish lake settlement was a highly significant feature of a set of shared western Scottish traditions. However the debate is also relevant because a) the assessment of the field monuments of the Atlantic Iron Age is illustrative of the problems caused by failing to contextualise sites correctly, and the misconceptions that can be introduced- and difficult to reverse- when artificial criteria are too strictly adhered to for the purposes of classification and analysis, b) the debate has been informative of diversity and regionality that can be expected within and between archaeologically related geographical areas, and c) the study of the Atlantic 7

CRANNOGS AND LATER PREHISTORIC SETTLEMENT IN WESTERN SCOTLAND regions is illustrative of the diversity of interpretations that can be derived from apparently ‘conceptually’ related archaeology. What is certainly clear is that there is no universally applicable explanation of the specific function and meaning of monumental settlement that is comprehensively suitable across the Atlantic zone- it is probable that much confusion has arisen as a result of the expectation that there was ever likely to be one- and sub-regions within the traditionally-defined Atlantic zone followed very different trajectories (Armit 1997b). In this respect the lessons learned through approaches to the study of the Atlantic zone sound a warning to the study of the Iron Age more generally.

of labour in construction and maintenance (Barrett 1981:215; Bowden and McOmish 1987) to the physical organisation of internal arrangements of the structure (Parker Pearson and Sharples 1999:21-2; Fitzpatrick 1994). Furthermore, there can be little doubt that location, orientation and pre-construction foundation deposits were all important factors in investing the domestic structure with ritual significance (e.g. Oswald 1997; Armit 1996:139, 2002). As such, Iron Age houses in Scotland are potentially sources of information on the full range of social and cultural characteristics of the communities that built and used them. It is sometimes remarked that we know little of Iron Age ritual in Scotland, since funerary sites are rare and other specifically-ritual monuments even less so. But on the basis of our current understanding this is to mischaracterise the period: evidence for Iron Age ritual is available to us- it was simply not clearly demarcated from more ‘mundane’ domestic activities in the lives of Iron Age communities in the way that modern researchers might have instinctively anticipated (Bradley 2005).

In terms of the relevance to crannog studies, there are elements of both of the main points of view that have a bearing on this study, and both contribute to the interpretations set out in this book. The issue perhaps most important to stress, however, is that it is likely to be inappropriate to think in terms of western modern logic when discussing Iron Age social organisation. As Harding has warned, ‘the facile inference that the chief’s house should be larger than the rest seems to be based on an entirely anachronistic capitalist conception of status’, and labour can be organised in more complex ways than simple hierarchical enforcement for the benefit of the privileged (Harding 2004:292; cf. Trigger 1990). Furthermore, as anyone who has stood within one of the more inaccessible promontory forts of the west coast or within the walls of a Hebridean island dun will realise, it was seldom efficiency and practicality that were the motivating forces behind Iron Age construction.

Central to the concept of the symbolic importance of the domestic structure is that of monumentality. Typically this has been defined as the characteristics of any building that greatly exceeds the practical requirements of function in terms of labour investment and scale (see e.g. Trigger 1990:119; Armit 1992:21). Armit has also applied the term to buildings that have been deliberately constructed in order to be highly visible, and which make a significant impact on the landscape (ib. id.; Knapp and Ashmore 1999:10). Monumentality is a trait of much of Iron Age construction, and whether this takes the form of excessively thick or tall roundhouse walls, multivallate defences or artificial islet construction, it is probable that the aim was similar- to display a level of investment in the domestic arena that greatly exceeded any practical function. Common to most northern Iron Age settlements is some (at the least superficial) impression of defensibility- a trait that had in the past invited characterisation of the Iron Age as a time of constant conflict and war- though as Bowden and McOmish discussed, the defensive qualities of Iron Age fortifications are often rendered completely redundant by the choice of location or construction materials (1987:76) so that modern approaches to the Iron Age tend to focus on the symbolic aspects of monumental defence construction, beyond the simple assumption of warlike tendencies.

Monumentality and the house in the Northern British Iron Age Hingley’s survey of the Scottish Iron Age settlement record comprehensively demonstrated that the focus of Iron Age social organisation was on the house, with the household the principal social unit (Hingley 1992). Settlement structures account for the largest proportion by far of evidence for Iron Age activity, and it seems certain that it was the domestic sphere of life that was the principal focus of community activity throughout most of the early and middle Iron Ages at least, and there is a general consensus that the house was a potent source of symbolism within northern British Iron Age societies (Barrett 1981:210; Hingley 1992:14). Where previously communal ritual monuments related to death and burial, or to ceremonies often arranged around agricultural cycles had constituted the focus for the definition and expression of community structure and relationships, after the mid first millennium BC in Scotland it seems that the domestic arena became the focus of community effort, with the house structure becoming the principal means of asserting and renegotiating social relationships, from the organisation

This symbolic-domestic paradigm has direct relevance and great importance to the study of crannogs. In the limited studies of crannogs carried out in the past the concern with defence has been most prominent, and it is only recently that the importance of lake settlement has been considered in non-functional terms, though so 8

THEORETICAL CONTEXT far these studies have been restricted to Ireland (e.g. O’Sullivan 1998, 2004; Fredengren 2002). The importance of watery places in the British Iron Age has long been recognised, however (Wait 1985; Haselgrove et al 2001:11), and the association of monumental settlement with water may be seen as the combination of two of the most significant symbols within Iron Age society. On this basis alone, then, the potential of crannogs within the study of the Iron Age in Scotland is axiomatic.

quantified and statistically correlated to observable relationships.

Increasingly important in studies of the later prehistoric period have been landscape approaches, which attempt to define the physical and socio-cultural parameters within which prehistoric societies lived. Instead of treating sites as isolated focal points of activity, recent movements in landscape archaeology have attempted to understand the local context of settlement, in both functional and cosmological terms; Haselgrove et al have termed this aim the need for an ‘agrarian sociology’ (2001:10). Landscape approaches since the early 1990s have aimed to move beyond the simple quantification of the physical environment- ‘the study of geometry not geography’- to consider the social significance of landscape, the arrangement, formalisation and perception of past environments. As Taylor puts it: …individuals know landscapes because they encounter them continually in the course of their daily actions. The structure of these landscapes should therefore reflect the fundamental relationships of individuals to their world (Taylor 1997:193).

However, the tendency toward quantification became a point of criticism of geographical approaches throughout the 1980s. While these approaches were suitable for quantifying complex distributions and identifying significant relationships, it became apparent that these methods were inadequate in terms of explaining why relationships were significant. As the importance of symbolic and non-adaptive behaviour, and the socially-derived rules (‘spatial logic’) that order landscapes (Hillier and Hanson 1984; Urry 1985) was explored more fully within landscape studies in geography and anthropology, explicitly quantitative approaches to regional studies in archaeology declined in popularity under charges of positivism and environmental determinism. By the early 1990s there was a distinct move away from quantitative techniques towards phenomenological approaches, which attempted to understand human behaviour in terms of the ‘experienced landscape’, in which physioenvironmental factors were only one part of a package of influences on the ways communities perceive and act within their surroundings, with socio-cultural factors such as tradition and particularly symbolism considered to be equally prominent (Tilley 1994). Fundamental to this movement was the recognition that landscape, rather than a series of points on maps defined by coordinates and characterised by attributes was a culturally created concept, the ‘stage upon which culture and society are enacted’ (Hirsch 1995:3), but also a process, both formed by and formative of behaviour (Ingold 1990:154-5; Knapp and Ashmore 1999:13-9).

Landscape studies in the age of New Archaeology were typified by the quantitative methodologies inherited from geography, most notably described, exercised and discussed by Hodder and Orton (1976). Techniques for the quantification and description of spatial relationships were developed using numerous statistical tests such as nearest neighbour and rank-size analysis (for worked examples and description see Hodder and Orton 1976; Shennan 1997). In this way, ordinal values could be applied to spatial relationships and associations; this approach was typically applied to the analysis of territorial catchments and central place theory (e.g. for hillforts, Clarke 1977; for chambered cairns, Renfrew 1979). In Scottish Iron Age studies such approaches were applied to the brochs of Shetland by Fojut (1982) and to a limited extent to the crannogs of Argyll by Morrison (1985). Developing in conjunction with routine detailed environmental reconstruction of site environs, geographical approaches such as these would link, for example, the distribution of settlements to productive agricultural land, leading to a view of prehistoric settlement distributions that could be

Integral to this view of archaeological landscapes is the concept of scale. Exploration of the concept of historical scale developed by the French Annales school led to the refinement of archaeological methodology in terms of the approach to landscape. The distinction was made between the événements, particular events and actions, and the longue durée, the long-term structural perspective of development and change through time (Braudel 1972; Gosden 1994; cf. Bourdieu 1977). Settled landscapes were thought of as historically-derived with activity strongly influenced by ancient patterns of landuse, a trait which is increasingly recognised as explicitly expressed in the later prehistoric archaeology of Scotland (Hingley 1996, 1999). Thus the reuse and reference to earlier monuments can be seen as an ‘active manipulation of the past’, with settlement organisation defined and understood through the interpretation of the past (ib. id. 246). These views are useful to the interpretation of multi-phase and long-lived sites such as characterise the settlement record in the first millennia in Northern Britain, since this allows us to move past environmentally determined explanation, which would

Landscape approaches in archaeology: processual, post processual and beyond

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CRANNOGS AND LATER PREHISTORIC SETTLEMENT IN WESTERN SCOTLAND see the archaeological site as a product of the same repeated decisions over time (though such approaches are both valid and necessary, see Kuna and Adelsbergová 1995:120) towards explanations with more social relevance, i.e. as the deliberate definition of territorial identity through association with established tradition. A recent treatment of crannogs in Ireland has focussed on this latter view, identifying clusters of multi-period sites of varying functions and considering the crannogs found within these clusters as products of repeated activity through time, within ‘tribal nodes’ (Fredengren 2002).

characterisation and quantification, aiming for symbolic and socio-cultural interpretation from the basis of a sound foundation in statistical significance (for good examples, see Ferrell 1997; Jackson 1999; Bevan 1997). Key to this direction has been the routine application of geographic information systems (GIS) in landscape analysis. GIS have revolutionised approaches to regional, chronological and thematic investigations in archaeology, yet it has become increasingly clear that GIS approaches must be undertaken within their own carefully designed research policies. These must involve awareness of the abilities and limitations of GIS, close scrutiny of the provenance and integrity of data sources and a clear theoretical agenda to which geographic investigations must work. Since the aim of the current project is to tackle relatively large settlement databases and to analyse geographical and chronological patterning, and furthermore to introduce new data from field surveys, GIS provides a very powerful analytical tool with which to store, query and present this information. The following section comprises a consideration of the suitability of GIS to the investigation, a technical evaluation of proposed data sources for the project, and a brief review of current theoretical standpoints relevant to this research.

These phenomenological-symbolic approaches have been very influential in recent interpretation of archaeological landscapes. There is, however, a concern that these approaches verge too often on the abstract, to the detriment of a proper treatment of functional and practical elements. As Collis has discussed, postprocessual approaches have not meant the end of ‘socioeconomic’ techniques: ‘We still need to know the parameters within which ancient societies functioned…’ (1997:298). Crannog studies are perhaps particularly prone to this imbalance. In the same way that studies of the ‘alien and ritual’ Neolithic and Bronze Age have been the principal focus of post-processual and symbolic archaeologies whereas the ‘functional and domestic’ Iron Age has been treated in practical, ‘pragmatic’ terms (see Hill 1989; cf. Knapp and Ashmore 1999:6), crannogs are likely to invite post-processual and symbolic explanations since they seem so alien to the modern concept of house and home. Recently, Fredengren has been openly critical of the lack of postprocessual approaches to crannogs, asserting that previous approaches have been over reliant on environmentally deterministic explanation, to the neglect of a proper understanding of the cultural significance of the phenomenon (Fredengren 2002:3). While Fredengren’s complaints are justified, particularly in Ireland where the crannog settlement record is better studied and better understood than in Scotland, and while there is certainly a need to explore the symbolic significance of lake settlement, in Scotland where crannog studies are still in their infancy there is a pressing need to define a basic understanding of the archaeology, with concepts of the dating, distribution, function and taphonomy of these sites still underdeveloped. Furthermore, Altenberg has recently criticised some phenomenological approaches as ‘ungrounded subjectivism’, protesting that even phenomenological-symbolic interpretations of landscape patterns must be founded on some basis of recognisable data (Altenberg 2003:27).

Methodologies GIS and methodologies of pattern identification ‘The recognition and analysis of the spatial organisation and usage of past landscapes is fundamental to archaeological endeavour’ (Lock and Harris 1992:81). Since human activity involves the ordering and usage of space, spatial analyses are central to archaeology. GIS have greatly enhanced the archaeologist’s ability to carry out such analysis, yet it is necessary to be aware of the theoretical basis of spatial and geographic investigation. It is the lack of this awareness that has undermined many GIS-led investigations in the past, which have drawn criticism for focussing on investigating those aspects that GIS are good at analysing (Woodman 2000:92). Recent writing is more positive, pointing not at ‘what should not be done’ but rather ‘what can be done’ (Wheatley 2000:123). Here we will consider the ways in which GIS may be a useful means to investigate the role of artificial islets in the later prehistoric settlement record of western Scotland. The state of crannog studies is such that, at present, no fully integrated work including artificial islet sites and terrestrial sites exits, and of the very few ‘models’ to be proposed that consider crannogs within the context of contemporary field monuments (Morrison 1985, Nieke 1990, Crone 2000), none has been based on substantial reviews of both land and underwater sites. Crannog site

For these reasons, the analysis of the basic attributes of sites is still very much at the heart of landscape studies of settlement. Recent movements in landscape archaeology have rediscovered empirical 10

THEORETICAL CONTEXT distributions are to an extent unique in that the preserved distribution may very closely approximate to the original distribution, since submerged sites are rarely lost entirely to subsequent activity in the area. While this must be reconciled with the lack of extensive field survey that documents these sites in their proper numbers, the opportunity for the investigation of nearcomplete crannog settlement patterns is evident. From a statistical point of view, a large enough sample to allow comparison and contrast of observed patterns in the data set must be considered; for this reason alone- the simple ability to handle large quantities of data- GIS provides a useful tool. But archaeological application of GIS to regional analysis may go beyond simplistic graphical summarisation of established data sets, and a primary aim of this investigation will be to move past general interpretations of later prehistoric settlement patterns. There are several ways in which this line of enquiry might proceed.

preserved and perpetuated by subsequent surveys of the settlement record of western Scotland, particularly in discussions of Iron Age and Early Historic patterns (e.g. Nieke 1990; Harding 1997). GIS is an effective way of evaluating the validity of landscape/settlement correlation, and this can contribute to current wider interpretations of the social status of common later prehistoric settlement types in Scotland (Armit 2002). It has been noted that the reduction of physiographic variables to nominal or ordinal values for reasons of manageability in manual analysis (as in Morrison’s original scheme) has, in the past, compromised the validity of geographic analysis (Hunt 1992). By carrying out statistical tests on apparent correlations between settlement types and particular landscape circumstances in a large number of lochs Morrison’s hypothesis can be tested. Furthermore, comparison between study areas may shed light on differences in role of crannog sites between highland and lowland environments.

Correlative and explanatory models: Spatial/locational Morrison (1985) proposed the first real attempt to integrate terrestrial and underwater sites, with his widely accepted- though largely untested (Harding 2000)- scheme of crannogs and duns. In this simple model based on topographic and bathymetrical data from Loch Awe, Argyllshire, he proposed that crannogs and duns represented equivalent sites within common ‘rank’ in the local settlement hierarchy, with the occurrence of either site type being determined by the presence or absence of favourable loch bed/shoreline topography in the immediate vicinity of suitable agricultural land (Morrison 1985:64-5). The application of this model has been problematic, however, suffering from a certain circularity in reasoning: crannogs and duns are assumed to be equivalent due to their reciprocity in topographic location, and their reciprocity in location is assumed to be a consequence of their equivalency in rank.

Wheatley warns that geographical analyses must consider sites together- not as individual statistics- since any archaeological site was located within, and with reference to, an existing social landscape that is no longer accessible to the researcher (Wheatley 2000:125). To this end all spatial and locational analyses must be carried out within the context of a considered chronological horizon. While GIS may be able to identify and test the validity of settlement ‘clusters’ or ‘units’ (using such techniques as nearest neighbour analyses etc) this must be considered against the framework of an acceptable hypothetical model for the organisation of settlement, and one which sits appropriately with indications from other sources of investigation before any meaningful conclusions can be drawn: ‘…it is productive, explanatory thought, and not computers, that can potentially raise predictive modelling above an anecdotal level.’ (Ebert 2000:130).

A preliminary test of this ‘geographical determinism’1 hypothesis has already suggested, as might be expected, that the pattern is more complex than this simplistic correlative scheme (Cavers 2001). While this may not be surprising, the implications are important for broader interpretations regarding the social status of both crannogs and duns. An evaluation of their supposed equivalency in settlement hierarchy would properly be undertaken in conjunction with other factors such as artefactual assemblages and economic bases, yet landscape/topographical evaluations based on Morrison’s original hypothesis can further elaborate such an investigation. There is a need to scrutinise Morrison’s general observations, which have been

Church et al (2000:135) draw a distinction between correlative predictive models (those that ‘identify and quantify relationships between archaeological site locations and environmental variables’- Sebastian and Judge 1988) and explanatory predictive models (those that are ‘deductively derived and attempt to predict how particular patterns of human land use will be reflected in the archaeological record’- Sebastian and Judge 1988). Typical uses of correlative predictive modelling include site location predictions for the purposes of cultural resource management (van Leusen 1995), while explanatory models have been characteristically been applied in research to huntergatherer settlement patterns, the latter being

1

An exaggerated term- Morrison never expected the pattern to be clearly rule bound.

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CRANNOGS AND LATER PREHISTORIC SETTLEMENT IN WESTERN SCOTLAND stereotypically seen as ‘environmentally determined’ and thus better suited to GIS application. The incorporation of the ‘cultural environment’ into geographic analyses that are otherwise based upon physical attributes alone has been a major issue for debate in GIS-based studies, since by definition the culturally-constituted landscape cannot be quantified in comparative terms. Ultimately, the way that the cultural environment is interpreted and incorporated into geographic analysis will remain a subjective and theoretical matter (Gidlow 2000; Wise 2000b): GIS may demonstrate that certain locations or sets of environmental and geographical circumstances may be important within a settlement system, yet it will always remain the role and responsibility of the researcher to explain in what way these may have been important, and to justify this within a reasoned argument based on a broad view of the subject matter (for discussion see e.g. Woodman 2000:92). In this respect current theoretical approaches must be evaluated and appraised as part of the interpretative stage of any landscape project. Typically, lakes and water bodies are eliminated from a GIS based analysis to avoid skewing results of analyses based on percentages of inhabitable land (Kuiper and Wescott 1999; Hansen 2000). By incorporating water bodies, however, correlative models might demonstrate the way in which crannog sites fit into the pattern of settlement set by their land based contemporaries.

Argyll study area, in order to test Morrison’s hypotheses. Using GIS a theoretically derived ‘area available for settlement’ can also be calculated, allowing comparison of the observed to the theoretical distribution for statistical purposes. One further use of GIS analysis has come as a result of the aim for more ‘socially-derived’ statistics, namely viewshed analysis. The investigation of the social landscape has always been a stumbling block of GISbased approaches, since the organisation of human behaviour does not always consist of the discrete, ‘mappable’ blocks that GIS are good at identifying and analysing (Wheatley 2000:124; Gaffney and van Leusen 1995:368). The viewshed analysis technique involves the identification of intervisible sites and areas, so that the choice of site location may be compared to the number of intervisible sites in the locality, in order to determine whether intervisibility was an important influence on the choice of location. Such techniques of course involve certain assumptions, particularly regarding the local environment, especially vegetation cover. The accuracy of source data, furthermore, is of central importance (see below; discussion by Wheatley and Gillings 2000:5-10, 2002:209-11). Viewshed analysis has, however, been successfully used in conjunction with statistical testing to demonstrate that intervisibility was often an important factor in site location, with useful examples demonstrated for chambered cairns and other Neolithic monuments (Ruggles et al 1993; Wheatley 1995; Fisher and Farrelly 1997; Woodman 2000) as well as Iron Age hillforts and routeways (Lock and Harris 1996; Bell and Lock 2000). In this study visibility analysis is considered in order to draw comparisons between the visibility and viewsheds of different site classes (chapters 7 and 8).

One of the main obstacles facing crannog studies is the consistent lack of reliable dating for sites. This is a recurrent problem facing geographic analysis (e.g. Lock and Harris 1996:220) and is a problem which must be addressed in any interpretation of the significance of landscape patterns. As discussed in later chapters, not only are later prehistoric settlements difficult to date closely and confidently, but in most cases were very long-lived, typically with multiple phases of occupation and reoccupation. For this reason, chronology and dating are constant concerns of this study.

Data Sources Clearly, the results of geographic analysis are only as good as the source data which supplied them (see discussion by van Leusen 1995:36). The following section considers the data sources that will be used in the current investigation, and evaluates the accuracy and integrity of their provenance- essential considerations before geographic investigation can take place (Hageman and Bennett 2000:114).

Applications GIS are used in this study for two principal purposes, for both descriptive and analytical purposes (Bailey 1994). Firstly, for the compilation of descriptive statistics in the physical attributes of sites and their location. For example, in conjunction with a detailed topographic model and thematic map coverages attributes on altitude, distance to coast, aspect, slope and soil types can be assigned to each site in the study area. Secondly, analytical statistics can be derived from the analysis of site attributes using specific functionality of the GIS software (Bailey 1994). For example, proximity values for sites can be calculated to give the distance to the nearest site in the locality, which can be used to compare the distribution of crannogs to duns in the

Topographic/Environmental Data The data which provides the ‘background’ topographic model for the study areas is derived from EDINA’s Digimap2 service, provided in conjunction with the Ordnance Survey by the University of Edinburgh. The DEM (Digital Elevation Model) is comprised of tiles from the Landform Panorama DTM raster. This 2

12

http://edina.ac.uk/digimap/

THEORETICAL CONTEXT represents the digitised version of the Ordnance Survey 1:50 000 Landranger maps, with the DTM (Data Terrain Model) being calculated from the OS contour data at 50m horizontal intervals; the height values are rounded to the nearest 1m. Landform Panorama contour tiles are also used, which represent a model contoured at 10m vertical intervals, with accuracy typically better than 3m root mean square error (Digimap 2001).

the study areas. The data downloads were obtained indiscriminately from the complete NMRS records, and as such constitute a very varied resource. This resource had to be filtered in order to separate out relevant and irrelevant data; the filtered records used in the present study were then evaluated from a critical standpoint so that they may be applied appropriately. The principal drawbacks of the resource in its raw state are as follows: 1. The NMRS includes records of sites reported to the NMRS without validation by the RCAHMS, Historic Scotland or the (then) Archaeology Division of the Ordnance Survey. Sites can be classified on the basis of the reports supplied to the NMRS, and so without confirmation by qualified inspectors.

Vector data containing river, shoreline and inland water body attributes is derived from Strategi and Landline tiles. Strategi tiles represent a geometrically structured 1:250 000 scale vector database, which defines realworld geographic entities as point and line features. The coordinate resolution of Strategi vector data is 1m (Digimap 2004a). Landline tiles represent vector data at 1:10 000 scale and lower for rural areas, with an accuracy of between 0.9 and 3.5m, with co-ordinate resolution of 0.01m (Digimap 2004b).

2. There are many ‘possible’ sites. 3. Ordnance Survey/RCAHMS terminology is not guaranteed to have stayed constant over time, nor between inspectors/surveyors/archivists.

There are obvious limitations to the capabilities of these data sources as background topographic models. The relatively small scales of both landform (1:50k) and Strategi (1:250k) mean that landscape analyses within small areas would incorporate a significant degree of inaccuracy, though for the purposes of georeferencing field surveys, Landline tiles are suitably accurate. However, it is considered that at the level of analysis for which these sources will be used, they are more than adequate. When landscape analysis requiring highly accurate topographic modelling is carried out, this is supplemented by localised field survey using georeferenced high precision methods (i.e. total station survey) (Gillings and Wise 1998:16). This is particularly relevant in the analysis of site location with regard to loch bed and landscape topography.

4. The NMRS includes many sites with 2, 4, or 6 figure NGRs- these are problematic for the purposes of locational analysis. 5. NMRS records have no provision for dating or chronology, except for occasional speculation on the part of the reporters and the results of excavation of sites. These limitations to the NMRS must be addressed for the purposes of analysis in this project. It is clear that there is some considerable overlap in the RCAHMS classifications; this is particularly illustrated by the descriptions of ‘forts’, ‘brochs’ and ‘duns’. All three of these site types are common in the study areas, and it is often difficult to determine why they have been separated out into different categories. The same can be often be said of the categories ‘hut-circle’, ‘roundhouse’, ‘ring ditch’ and ‘homestead’. Furthermore, the RCAHMS records are unsystematic in their compilation, as data was derived from many sources following many and varied agendas. Massagrande (1995) has considered the problems involved in using nonsystematic survey data in geographic analyses with GIS, noting the importance of the establishment of an agreed terminology within the analysis project. Particularly important is the evaluation of survey metadata, principally NGR accuracy, classification accuracy and evaluation of the aims and methods of the relevant survey (Massagrande 1995:59).

Bathymetrical data and land use coverage At present there exists no modern bathymetrical survey of the inland lochs of Scotland. However, the manuallycollected bathymetrical data published by Murray and Pullar (1910) has been shown to be reasonably accurate and digitised versions have been incorporated into the GIS to provide models for loch bed topography (see appendix 1). Digitising paper maps inevitably introduces a degree of error and inaccuracy, though given the limited accuracy of the source data this is unlikely to give rise to fatal problems at the interpretation stage. Manually digitised soil and land-use capability maps have also been incorporated into the GIS for the purposes of geographical analysis.

Issues 1-4 above were addressed by field visits to sites that are key to the study, for the purposes of verifying locational information and classification (see discussion in Chapter 7). As regards NGR accuracy, it is possible

Site Records A download of data from the National Monuments Record of Scotland (NMRS) was obtained for each of 13

CRANNOGS AND LATER PREHISTORIC SETTLEMENT IN WESTERN SCOTLAND to rank NMRS data by accuracy according to the reliability of the NGR, i.e. by sorting data according to the precision of the grid reference provided. Patterns are immediately evident in NGR accuracy variation with finds and reported sites that can no longer be located having the least accurate positional attributes. For the purposes of this project, NGR accuracy was generally evaluated for the project data, and re-evaluated or re-established on an individual site basis as and when necessary.

Timber samples for radiocarbon dating were collected by hand and, where possible, underwater photographs were taken. Excavation In addition to the surveys of the Argyll crannogs carried out as part of this project, a small trial excavation was carried out at Ederline Boathouse crannog in Loch Awe by the author and Jon Henderson. The results of this excavation are discussed in detail in Chapter 8; the context descriptions for the deposits encountered are included in Appendix 2, with the trench plan and section.

Primary Data Collection: survey and excavation The most significant obstacle in the way of any comprehensive synthesis and analysis of the crannog settlement record of Scotland is the distinct lack of primary fieldwork that has been carried out. The surveys of Loch Awe (20 sites), Loch Tay (19 sites) and the Lake of Menteith (4 sites) (McArdle and McArdle 1973; Dixon 1982a; Henderson 1998b) are the only lochs to be fully surveyed, with inspections of all of the potential sites in each loch, so that only in these lochs can we be confident that all of the crannogs have been located. However, while these surveys greatly increased the number of known sites, the vast majority of documented examples in other lochs remain uninspected, so that even basic comparisons of shape and size between geographical zones are difficult. Furthermore, the lack of reliable reports and the inaccuracies of grid references supplied for many sites causes problems for spatial analyses; the approach taken in this study was to locate, survey, describe and- where possible- date examples of crannogs across a representative area within the two study zones defined below.

The methodology for this excavation followed the techniques devised for freshwater underwater excavation by Ulrich Ruoff, and further developed by Dixon (1982b, 2004; see Dean et al 1992), principally using a water dredge for the removal of spoil resulting from the excavation of delicate organic deposits underwater. Recording was carried out using a combination of total station survey and 1:1 perspex planning (see Dean et al 1992, Dixon 2004; Cavers and Henderson 2005 forthcoming). These techniques were also employed during the small excavation carried out at Loch Arthur crannog, as part of the South West Crannog Survey. The South West Crannog Survey The South West Crannog Survey (SWCS) is a conservation-oriented project, which originally began in the early 1990s, when a number of crannog sites in Dumfries and Galloway were surveyed and recorded on behalf of Historic Scotland. At this time many of these sites, both submerged and drained, were seen to be at threat from a range of erosive processes, including natural organic decay and desiccation as well as insect infestation and algal growth (Barber and Crone 1993). As the second phase of this project, these sites were returned to for visual inspection in 2002 (Henderson et al 2003) and detailed survey and excavation of selected sites in 2003 (Henderson 2004; Henderson and Cavers forthcoming a, forthcoming b).

Survey Two field survey projects were carried out as part of this project. The first targeted sites in Argyll and Bute, and encompassed surveys of ten sites in Mid Argyll, Lorn and on the Isle of Bute. The second field project targeted crannog sites in western Dumfries and Galloway, in conjunction with survey and inspection of a range of terrestrial field monuments. Radiocarbon dates were obtained for four sites in Argyll and two sites in close proximity in western Galloway. The results of these surveys and the radiocarbon dates are reported in detail in Appendix 1, and reference to the sites is made consistently through this book.

Aside from the monitoring and conservation remit of the project, the SWCS allowed the opportunity for accurate recording of a range of crannog sites in South West Scotland, thereby providing a resource which had previously been unavailable, and archaeological observations, environmental data and radiocarbon determinations obtained as part of the project have provided data for this book, forming part of the discussion in Chapter 7.

The crannog sites were surveyed with a shore-based total station, using the technique described by Morrison (1985), Dean et al (1992) and Henderson and Burgess (1996), producing contoured site surveys in CAD. The surveys were georeferenced to the National Grid and incorporated into the GIS projects for the study areas.

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THEORETICAL CONTEXT

The Study Areas: identification and definition Two study areas have been selected for the purposes of the landscape studies in this investigation (see figure 2.2). These areas comprise two of the most important regions in terms of crannog archaeology. Study area 1 is located in western Dumfries and Galloway, including the Rhins headlands and the Machars peninsula. This area is among the most densely populated by crannogs, and was the main area of research by Robert Munro and the highly active Ayrshire and Galloway Natural History and Antiquarian Society in the nineteenth century. Study area 2 is located in mainland Argyll and Bute, taking in the land of Mid-Argyll and Lorn around Loch Awe (see figure 2.1). This area is well served by the RCAHMS inventories which have documented much of the terrestrial archaeology of this region, though the crannogs were little known prior to this investigation. The survey of Loch Awe by McArdle and McArdle (1973), however, was formative in Morrison’s (1985) discussion of crannogs as a significant part of the settlement archaeology of Scotland. For these reasons, and because few modern surveys existed for the crannogs in these important regions, these study areas were chosen for the landscape investigations that form part 2 of this book.

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CRANNOGS AND LATER PREHISTORIC SETTLEMENT IN WESTERN SCOTLAND

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CHAPTER THREE: ENVIRONMENT AND ECONOMY

Perhaps the western seaboard’s most important unifying factor is that of climate. The same Atlantic winds affect the coastal zone from Galloway to Sutherland, with a warm and wet climate common to all of the western regions. Local environments are variable, however, with a great degree of diversity within the Atlantic zones. On the whole western Scotland is agriculturally marginal, with the best land for agriculture found south of the Clyde. This has had profound affects on the organisation and distribution of settlement in the area; in this chapter the physiographical background to settlement in western Scotland is discussed in conjunction with a discussion of economy and resource exploitation, with particular reference to the study areas of Argyll and Dumfries and Galloway.

1979:45)- has formed well-developed raised beaches which have eroded into the characteristic rocky promontories of western Galloway. While much of Galloway comprises upland areas, the peaks are generally low, though the largest hill in the region, The Merrick, reaches 843m OD. Study area 2, the western plateaux and foothills in Mid Argyll and Lorn, is principally composed of an underlying geology of metamorphic rocks of Dalradian age, with some basalts of Carboniferous or Devonian age along north and western coastal areas (Craig 1991; Ballantyne and Dawson 1997:25). The topography of this area is strongly ridged, characterised by steep-sided U-shaped valleys formed by glacial scouring (figure 3.2; Bibby et al 1982:8). In the northern areas of Mid Argyll, Tertiary basalts and Old Red Sandstone rocks have created tabular hills separated by rectilinear valleys along fault lines or joint planes, and it is in these valleys that the characteristic deep glacial lochs of the area are located. Much of the Argyll area is mountainous and Ben Cruachan in Study Area 2 reaches 1104m OD. In the Argyll region, fluvio-glacial deposits tend to be shallow, and bedrock is encountered at or close to the surface in much of the upland regions, greatly restricting soil development. Outwash regions such as around the River Add, Kilmartin, provide the highest quality soils and cultivable lands in the present day are generally restricted to pasture and grazing in valleys and coastal areas (Bibby et al 1982).

Topography and climate of Western Scotland While climatically similar, the topography of the two study areas is markedly different. Study area 1- western Dumfries and Galloway- has an underlying geology principally composed of shales and greywackes of Silurian or Ordovician age, with some carboniferous and Devonian sedimentary rocks (Ballantyne and Dawson 1997:26), while parts of the Galloway hills have been metamorphosed at the point of contact with the granite intrusion of the Craignaw-Mullwharchar range (Birks 1972:183; Craig 1991). The Southern Uplands acted as a centre for ice dispersal during the last deglaciation, and the hills are heavily eroded resulting in low, rounded topography (see figure 3.1). Deglaciation has resulted in the widespread coverage of glacio-fluvial deposits, principally till (glacially deposited sediment) or, in outwash regions such as around the Luce isthmus, in estuarine deposits and alluvium (Ballantyne and Dawson 1997:30). These latter areas have provided the main basis for better quality soils in the region, and this is reflected in the density of settlement archaeology through prehistory and history. The floodplains of glacio-fluvial deposits in the lowlands are frequently punctuated by kames and kettle-holes formed by the melting of buried ice, and these have caused the formation of many typical lowland lochs. Isostatic rebound- particularly evident on the land in coastal areas of the Machars and Rhins (Bown and Heslop

The Western areas of Scotland, from the Solway to Cape Wrath are subject to broadly similar weather systems. The Western seaboard has an essentially maritime climate, with high annual precipitation levels and comparatively low variations in seasonal air temperatures (Western Scotland had an average January temperature of 6.7 C and an average July temperature of 16.9 C in 2004; data from UK Met Office), and typically high mean annual wind speeds: mean annual wind speeds in coastal areas of Argyll are among the highest in the world (Bibby et al. 1982:15). Through the Holocene Western Scotland has always been subject to this maritime climate, though the severity of the constraints that such a generally wet environment have placed on settlement and agriculture has varied through 17

CRANNOGS AND LATER PREHISTORIC SETTLEMENT IN WESTERN SCOTLAND

Figure 3.1: Landform regions in Western Dumfries and Galloway, Study Area 1 (Bown and Heslop 1979).

Figure 3.2: Schematic representation of physiography of Mid Argyll and Lorn, Study Area 2 (Bibby et al 1982). 18

ENVIRONMENT AND ECONOMY time. Through the period c.3200-800 BC the climate was generally warm and dry, with occasional cold episodes, traditionally termed the Sub-boreal phase.1 The general movement after c.800 BC to a cool and wet Sub-Atlantic phase meant the increasing agricultural marginality of many previously favourable areas, and this process had its most profound effects in the upland regions of Atlantic Scotland (Askew et al 1985:14).

(Macklin et al 2000:117). Pollen data from later prehistoric contexts in coastal and inland zones in Argyll indicated that at several stages through the later prehistoric period, this area would have been profoundly sub-marginal and adaptive practices (such as changing the balance from reliance on arable to pastoral agriculture) would have been forced on local societies by necessity during cooler and wetter periods (ib id).

Settlement and agriculture in climatically marginal zones

Warming and cooling episodes were not uniform, however, and Parry’s study of settlement responses of 12th to 19th century AD settlement in SE Scotland observed that the altitudinal limits of settlement rose and fell repeatedly in response to climatic change (Parry 1978:102). Sheltered glens, lowland coastal fringes, estuaries and loch valleys would have consistently been more reliable environs for agriculture, suffering less severely from climatic downturns and more stable through time than uplands, and it is notable that this is principally where the majority of Iron Age settlement is located in the Atlantic regions considered in this study. On the basis of the palynological evidence for the period after the mid first millennium BC it seems highly likely that arable agriculture was frequently restricted to areas of only the most favourable soil conditions throughout much of western Scotland. Farming was occurring in upland areas in south west Scotland at around the time of the LBA/EIA transition, c.2600 ± 50 BP (GrN-13131), as evidenced by pollen cores from the environs of Loch Dee (Edwards et al 1991:35), but the effects of increased paludification and peat growth and the consequent replacement of mineral soils with acid organic soils in the Southern Uplands (Jones et al 1989; Batterbee and Alliot 1994:117) upland areas became increasingly marginal through the later first millennium BC. The landscape of this area today is characteristically treeless, and where modern conifer plantations have not disturbed them, upland areas preserve extensive hut-circle and field system complexes, predominantly dating to the Bronze Age (Gregory 2002:67-8; Halliday 1993). Upland land use did continue through the Iron Age, primarily for pastoral purposes as survey work in Northumberland and the Border counties has demonstrated, and Young has highlighted that the continuity of traditional practice and the adaptation of farming strategy would have offset the immediate effect of climatic changes on farming and settlement (Young 2000:75). However, while short term climatic amelioration in the earlier first millennium AD may have allowed the recolonisation of some upland areas (Tipping 1997a:17; such as at Moss Raploch, Condry and Ansell 1977) the pattern of land-use through the latter half of the first millennium BC and first millennium AD is consistent with the effective abandonment of settlement on a significant scale in upland areas of western Scotland (see chapters 7 and 8 below).

Climatic variations through the later Holocene have meant that since the inception of farming much of Scotland has fluctuated between episodes of relatively favourable conditions for agriculture and periods of extreme sub-marginality which severely restricted the area of land viable for agriculture. Climatic fluctuations have meant that the altitudinal limits of viable agriculture in particular have increased and decreased, and consequently settlement patterns have altered through time in response. The densest distributions of crannogs are found in regions of Scotland which have been recurrently marginal or sub-marginal (i.e. the western seaboard and the Highlands), and as such the effects of climatic change on settlement systems through the first millennia BC/AD are of direct relevance to this study. It is often asserted that differentiation in soil qualities between upland and lowland areas would have been as influential on farming prehistoric societies as it is today (Askew et al 1985:6). Parry’s studies of marginal agriculture identified the frequency of crop failure as the main perceived measurement of the climatic viability of any given area, and thus the principal measure of agricultural marginality within a subsistence economy (Parry 1985:38). Parry calculated that the likely limits of ‘marginal’ agriculture would accept a crop failure probability of between 1:0.5 and 1:3, which can broadly be equated to the upland zone between 175m and 325m OD in northern Britain (ib id). The zone of skeletal mineral soils where combinations of cold and exposure severely limit vegetation cover varies in altitude across northern Britain- on average this is taken to equate to the zone from c.200 to 300m ODbut can be as low as sea level in areas such as north western Scotland (Askew et al 1985:6). Evidence for agriculture through the second millennium BC in Argyll is punctuated by drop-offs in levels of cereal pollen associated with periods of climatic deterioration, suggesting that agriculture was regularly directly affected by climate in this recurrently marginal area 1

The details of the Blytt-Sernander classification of the Holocene are now somewhat outdated, and regional trends are diverse, but the terms are still in common usage and refer here to what are still generally held to be broad phases of postglacial climatic change (Roberts 1997:118).

19

CRANNOGS AND LATER PREHISTORIC SETTLEMENT IN WESTERN SCOTLAND Limnology and the settlement and exploitation of wetlands

it seems improbable that such a readily available resource would not have been utilised. Similarly, ducks, geese and other wildfowl seem likely to have been hunted, though again direct evidence is lacking; a fragment of wildfowl tibia from Buiston represents the extent of wildfowl faunal remains from crannog excavations (T.O’Sullivan 2000:155). When considered in terms of access to natural resources then, including reeds for thatching and basketry and not least a ready supply of drinking water, lochs must have been places of exceptional value in prehistory (e.g. Coles and Coles 1996:99-100).

Smith and Lyle (1979) estimated there to be approximately 32 000 freshwater lochs in Scotland, based on counts of water bodies depicted on OS maps. Standing waters account for around 2% of the surface area of Scotland, and there is a clear dominance in the distribution of lochs in western areas (see figure 3.4; Lyle and Smith 1994:40). Lochs and rivers are a major feature of the landscape of western and Highland Scotland, and their exploitation has been highly significant in the development of settlement forms through prehistory. However, lochs vary greatly in form and in the resources they provide. There are two principal types of loch found in Scotland: lochs in deep rock basins formed by glacial scouring (found mainly north of the Forth-Clyde) and those in or created by drift deposits (characteristic of lowland areas south of the Forth-Clyde). For the most part, glacial rock basin lochs of the Highlands and north western regions are far larger and deeper than kettle-hole lochs of the lowlands, and are typically elongated with much higher length to width ratios (44:1 for Loch Awe (highland); nearly 1:1 for Cults Loch(lowland)) (Lyle and Smith 1994:42; Werrity et al 1994:70-1). The differential erosion of underlying geology of much of the north west of Scotland has also resulted in the formation of distinctive ‘knock and lochan’ topography- small hills and shallow depressions on poorly draining substrates which lead to the development of frequent small lochs in peat blacklands (Werrity et al 1994:71). The extent to which wetland areas such as these were exploited in prehistory is unknown, and insufficient survey has taken place, but indications from sites such as Ballachulish Moss in Argyll (Christison 1881:161) and perhaps parallels from Jordanlaw Moss and Whiteburn in the Borders (Scott 1871; Stuart 1868) suggest that settlements or other structures preserved in these wetland environments await discovery.

Woodland resources, deforestation and agriculture Climatic amelioration in the post-glacial period was followed rapidly by the northward and westward expansion of birch (Betula sp.) and hazel (Corylus sp.) by 9500 BP. Elm (Ulmus sp.) had colonised the mainland of Scotland by 8500 BP, oak (Quercus sp.) had spread north of the Forth-Clyde isthmus by the same date and by 5000 BP, human impact on woodland coverage was significant (Whittington and Edwards 1997:16). The character of woodland coverage varied across mainland Scotland. Oak, birch and hazel dominated much of the west of the country, while southern Scotland including the south west incorporated elm as a significant presence in woodland coverage, dominating over birch (see figure 3.5; Tipping 1994:27). Wetland areas, particularly around rivers and lochs were populated by large quantities of alder (Alnus glutinosa), and this was a very common constructional component on crannogs. Populations of Scots pine (Pinus silvestrus) woodlands, which were widespread on upland blanket peat dramatically declined after the second millennium BC, probably primarily as a result of climatic deterioration, and as such pine was probably not widespread by the late prehistoric period and only present in the Highlands and in pockets of Southern Uplands (Tipping 1994:27-30).

Highland lochs provide a greater range of resources than lowland lochs, while simultaneously acting as communication arteries and transportation routes, and as such would have provided access to numerous resources to occupants of highland crannogs. Fish populations of sizeable lochs such as Loch Ness, Tay, Awe and Lomond would have been more than capable of supporting exploitation by local groups, and most Highland lochs would have been rapidly populated in the post-glacial period by Atlantic Salmon (Salmo salar), Brown Trout (Salmo trutta), Arctic Charr (Salvelinus alpinus) and eels (Anguillidae family) among other readily exploitable species (Maitland 1994:192-3). Very little in the way of direct evidence for the exploitation of fish has come from crannog excavations to date, though this is usually assumed to be due to the lack of preservation of delicate fishing tackle or fish bones and

Clearance phases in upland areas were initially small scale and intermittent, characterised by the repeated clearance and regeneration of small areas, probably for the purposes of animal grazing. However, by the mid 2nd millennium BC woodland clearance in the uplands of the north and west became more widespread, leading to complete deforestation in many areas (Tipping 1994:26). Pollen cores from the Southern Uplands indicate that they were effectively treeless by the latter half of the first millennium BC (Birks 1972:210), and after 500 BC, much of southern Scotland including much of Dumfries and Galloway was cleared on a large scale, in many pollen diagrams showing as a distinct and wholesale clearance episode, occurring over as few as fifteen years (Tipping 1997a:20). It seems highly probable that this widespread clearance was undertaken 20

ENVIRONMENT AND ECONOMY Crannog economy and resource exploitation Crannogs offer an almost unparalleled opportunity for the investigation of plant- and to a lesser extent animalexploitation through the first millennia BC/AD. The most extensively studied sites are Buiston, Oakbank and Redcastle, so that at least one representative site is available for study from each of the principal zones of crannog settlement and from a representative chronological range. Compilation of the occurrence of the most common wood taxa on excavated sites (see table 3.2) indicates that alder (Alnus sp.) and oak (Quercus sp.) were consistently the most frequently used species in the construction and refurbishment of crannog structures, almost certainly due to the tolerance of repeated water logging and drying out and hard wearing properties of both of these species (Ebert 1957). Alder is particularly common on crannogs, accounting for over half of all structural timbers on Oakbank (Sands 1997:44), and comprising similar proportions on Milton Loch I (Piggott 1953), Redcastle (Hale 2004:94-5) and Buiston (Brunning 2000). Alder is a water-loving species, and would have been readily available in large quantities in close proximity to most crannogs- water body edges and damp woodlands are typical alder habitats- and this is likely explanation for the similarly high occurrence of alder as both a fuel source and raw material for artefact manufacture. Oak is commonly used for vertical piling on crannog structures, almost certainly due to its natural strength; on many crannog sites oak piles still stand proud of the loch bed and retain their strength. In phase IV at Buiston the perimeter palisade was replaced in oak, while in phase V oak dominated the structural remains on the site with alder being used principally for the filling of the palisaded walkway constructed around the site in the late 6th century AD (Brunning 2000:84; Crone 2000:161). The causeway at Oakbank was entirely constructed from oak piling (Clapham and Scaife 1988:296), analysis of which suggested that it had been harvested from a woodland environment, with the trunks growing tall and straight; such clearance of large quantities of oak would certainly have impacted on the local woodland coverage (Miller 2002:37).

Figure 3.5: Character of woodland coverage in Scotland by 5000 BP (Whittington and Edwards 1997) ‘to provide vastly increased areas for both crops and grazing’ (ib id:32), and clearance in pollen cores is accompanied by increases in cereal type pollen such as Triticum (wheat) and Hordeum (barley types), as well as weed species indicative of cereal cultivation such as Plantago and Rumex spp. (Dumayne and Barber 1994:167). Clearance north of the Forth-Clyde isthmus was much more sporadic however, and pollen records for Mid Argyll and Lorn indicate that there was no significant depletion of natural woodland cover through the Iron Age and Early Historic periods (Macklin et al 2000:113), somewhat undermining the argument that settlements in the Atlantic north west were built in stone due to pressure on timber resources. Construction of military installations and fortification has been advanced as a significant cause of timber depletion in northern England and southern Scotland during the Roman period (Dumayne and Barber 1994; Dumayne-Peaty 1998:210), but for the most part woodland clearance seems likely to have been undertaken for the purposes of providing grazing or land for arable cultivation. It should be noted that impact on woodland resources through consumption for fuel and other purposes by local groups is likely to have been a more significant factor in woodland clearance than primary harvesting for construction materials (see discussion in Harding 1982:190). Extensive clearance in the period after 200 BC to the turn of the millennium south of the Antonine Wall was apparently associated with a rapid increase in settlement and agriculture, however, as pollen profiles from Letham Moss show (DumaynePeaty 1998:210).

Hazel (Corylus sp.) was widely utilised both as structural material, for hurdling and probably for the construction of walls and as a foodstuff, evidenced by the high frequency of hazelnut shells often encountered in occupation and midden deposits. The age-range structure of the hazel rods from the Early Historic phases at Buiston suggests that hazel was harvested strategically, but probably not deliberately managed as coppice, perhaps indicating collection from mature woodland that was not directly owned or managed by the occupants of the site (Brunning 2000:87-8). Hazel from Oakbank does suggest coppicing (Miller 2002:39) and the density of crannog sites in Highland lochs such 21

CRANNOGS AND LATER PREHISTORIC SETTLEMENT IN WESTERN SCOTLAND as Loch Tay and Loch Awe combined with the evidence for selective harvesting suggests that management of local woodland was probably undertaken on a communal basis. The differential use of

other species at Oakbank such as elm, willow and pine (mostly burnt as tapers) further suggests selective management of woodland rather than utilisation of timber procured through large-scale clearance.

Loch Awe Loch Dee

Max depth (m)

Length (km)

94 14

41 1.9

Mean width (km) 0.94 0.53

Table 3.1: Compared dimensions of Loch Awe, a typical large glacial trough loch and Loch Dee, a typical lowland drift basin loch in south west Scotland (data from Lyle and Smith 1994).

Figure 3.3: A view of the south west end of Loch Awe, one of the largest water bodies in the country (photo: author).

Figure 3.4: Distribution of standing waters in Scotland, illustrating the western bias. Shading refers to percentage total share for a: numbers, b: accumulated area; c: accumulated volume; d: percentage land area covered by water (Lyle and Smith 1994). 22

ENVIRONMENT AND ECONOMY

300

250

Count

200

150

100 Burnt structure Charcoal Underwood Structural Palisades

50

Levelling

0 Oak

Brushwood Alder

Birch

Species

Willow

Woodwork Debris Hazel

Other

Figure 3.5: Compared wood species usage in the Early Historic phases at Buiston, top (data summarised from Crone 2000: appendix 7, table 27), and at Oakbank, bottom (LBA-EIA) (source: Sands 1997: figure 13).

Usage of other species is less common, though birch (Betula), willow (Salix sp.) and ash (Fraxinus excelsior) have all been noted as structural components of crannogs. Perhaps surprisingly, Scots pine (Pinus silvestris) is not a common structural species, although pine did form the main substructure of Eaderloch crannog in Loch Treig (Ritchie 1942). Other species such as lime (Tilia sp.), poplar (Populus sp.), yew (taxus baccata) and juniper (juniperis communis) were present in pollen profiles from Oakbank, but as yet their use on the crannog is unknown. 23

CRANNOGS AND LATER PREHISTORIC SETTLEMENT IN WESTERN SCOTLAND Buiston currently provides the majority of evidence for the economy of crannog occupants in the Early Historic period. Exploitation of cultivated cereals such as six-row barley (Hordeum sativum), oats (Avena sp.) and wheat (Triticum avestum) were supplemented at Buiston by both the collection of wild resources such as hazel nuts and various berry producing plants, as well as the use of exotic species which were undoubtedly traded for, such as coriander (Coriandrum sativum) and dill (Anethum graveolens) (Holden 1996:958). The faunal assemblage indicated the exploitation of cattle, pig and sheep, though the absence of droppings or parasitic nematode eggs suggests that livestock were not kept on the island (T.O’Sullivan 2000:155-6). Within the context of the artefactual assemblage the evidence from Buiston is taken to indicate a ‘self-contained community’ at the site, the occupants being largely self-sufficient but productive and wealthy enough to engage in trade and exchange for more exotic and valuable goods (Crone 2000:156). Preliminary analysis of the faunal assemblage from the Early Historic contexts on Ederline crannog, Loch Awe similarly suggest the exploitation of cattle, sheep/goat and roe deer (Cook in Cavers and Henderson 2005).

The inhabitants at Oakbank seem to have engaged in a mixed economy of arable and pastoral agriculture. Animal bone does not survive well on the site so that evidence of butchery strategies and herd management patterns is not available, but well preserved animal droppings from the midden debris indicate the presence on site of sheep and goat (Dixon 1982; 2004). The presence of cereal remains, including both barley (Hordeum vulgare), emmer (Triticum dicoccum) and spelt wheat (Triticum spelta)2 indicate successful arable agriculture (Clapham and Scaife 1988:305; Miller et al 1998), prosperous enough to permit the feeding of surplus barley to livestock as fodder (Miller 2002:35). Cereal remains could indicate threshing on the crannog, though equally these could be seen to represent the use of straw for thatch or bedding (Clapham and Scaife 1988:320; Miller 2002:40). Agriculture was further supplemented by the exploitation of a variety of wild plant species, including the high-altitude growing cloudberry (Miller et al 1998); in general the picture painted by the ecofactual remains from Oakbank is one of prosperity, perhaps to the extent that surpluses allowed the inhabitants to engage in trade for longdistance exotic commodities, such as opium poppy (Miller et al 1998; Miller 2002).

Environment and Economy: summary

The Oakbank economic evidence compares well to the evidence from the initial analysis of organic deposits sampled from two sites during the South West Crannog Survey in 2003, at Dorman’s Island and Loch Arthur, both broadly contemporary with Oakbank (Bogaard in Henderson and Cavers forthcoming a). The deposits from both of these sites contained animal droppings, again suggesting that livestock were kept on site. Both samples contained chaff from emmer wheat and small quantities of emmer wheat or rye (Triticum/Secale). A range of cultivation-type weeds, such as Fat Hen and Chickweed suggest that agriculture took place near the site. Hale’s excavations at the Iron Age inter-tidal site at Redcastle in the Beauly Firth indicated the presence of livestock on the site in the form of hoofprints in the sediments of the main mound (Hale 2004:97) as well a sizeable bone assemblage from across the site. This assemblage comprised cattle (Bos, 31%), red deer (Cervus elaphus, 3%), pig (Sus, 0.4%), bird (3%) and fish (0.4%), indicating mixed exploitation of domestic and wild species. As at Oakbank, Dorman’s Island, Loch Arthur and Redcastle all featured bracken (Pteris aquilina) as a significant component of the organic matrix of the site, probably reflecting the use of collected bracken as bedding, flooring or thatch.

The environment of western Scotland can be seen as a unifying factor, with similar effects on the communities of the western seaboard. However, the regional variations that have resulted from differences in local geology, topography and soil development have produced regional differences that had direct consequences for the organisation of settlement. Though the general pattern of climatic deterioration leading to settlement and agricultural intensification in the lowlands is contiguous, there are stark differences between the pattern evident Argyll and that in Galloway. On the whole, the regions south of the Clyde were less profoundly affected by paludification and peat development in the uplands, but perhaps only because alternative soils were more widespread and readily available, particularly in coastal areas. The contraction of later prehistoric settlement around those areas of better soil quality in Argyll is particularly obvious, implying that structures for the administration of land holding and territorial division, in whatever form this took, must have been highly formalised. It is possible that the increased competition for resources may have led to a fragmentation of the settled landscape, resulting in the Iron Age configuration of dispersed and defended homesteads, a situation that has been postulated for the Western Isles (Armit 1997:2489). What can be ruled out, however, is the suggestion that environmental conditions forced later prehistoric communities into a basic subsistence-level economy (cf. Harding 1990:16), and evidence for economy from both

2

The earliest occurrence of spelt in Scotland, though this is perhaps indicative of the high level of preservation on a demonstrably early Iron Age site rather than any special status.

24

ENVIRONMENT AND ECONOMY crannogs and terrestrial sites indicates a complex, varied and productive subsistence strategy, involving the use of arable, pastoral and wild resources. It is probable that as resources, lochs would have represented highly desirable areas for settlement, allowing access to a wide range of plant and animal species, and typically surrounded by better-quality soils. In this respect, we may consider that the imposition of a highly visible settlement structure, actually located on the water itself, would have been a powerful way of signalling the presence of an occupant group and demonstrating their authority over local land and resources.

25

CHAPTER FOUR: DISTRIBUTION AND DATING

The nature of the evidence

distribution into a more meaningful pattern. A simple density surface calculated using GIS demonstrates that though islet sites are widespread, they are found in their greatest densities by far in western regions, principally in western Dumfries and Galloway, the west central Highlands, Argyll and in the Western Isles (see figure 4.2).

In the following section the distribution of crannog sites is scrutinised with reference to the chronological and morphological categories to which the sites belong. The methodological problems involved in dating crannog sites accurately are discussed more fully in chapter 6, as are the complex issues surrounding the classification of sites by their form, but for the present purposes dating evidence is taken to represent evidence of activity on a site, without assuming that this evidence necessarily signals chronological or constructional origins. A great deal of confusion over the true chronological and cultural context of crannogs has arisen from the treatment of the data corpus as undifferentiated in form and through time, and the aim of the present study is to identify the correct context of those sites for which we have reliable evidence.

Further analysis supports this initial indication of a western concentration. Of the sites located in the eastern regions of the country, many comprise dubious reports or cannot be located by modern surveyors. Furthermore, it seems apparent that of the confirmed crannog sites located in eastern regions north of the Forth, many can be demonstrated to be of medieval of later origin, suggesting that the true number of prehistoric sites in eastern regions may have been very small. Of the 19 sites in Fife, Angus and Aberdeenshire, eight (Clune Hill, Law Hill, Kinfauns, Corby Loch, Tonley Wood, Sunnybrae Farm, Crannoch Hill and Barnsdale) can be eliminated as false reports, while five (Loch Of Clunie 1, Forfar Loch, Loch of Banchory, Loch Kinord and the Loch of Leys) were occupied in the medieval period and show no obvious signs of prehistoric foundations (see Stuart 1868; Blundell 1913; Cachart 1996). Of the remaining six sites, only Loch of Clunie 2 and the Loch of Kinnordy can be confidently identified as crannogs, though with little indication of date1, while others such as Stormont Loch, identified by aerial photography, must await verification by diving inspection. Sites such as Corby Loch and Loch Builg (Inglis and Hay 1984) are possible examples, though only noted for the presence of piles or stone mounds and must similarly await verification. Loch Leven, Fife, contains one certain example (Burns-Begg 1888), though dating is problematic.

Radiocarbon determinations exist for 44 crannog sites (those obtained prior to 1998 summarised by Henderson 1998; for full list including recent additions), though reliable dating evidence is available for around 60 further sites in the form of diagnostic artefacts or literary references. In those instances where antiquarian or other intrusive investigation has yielded datable artefacts, this can be taken as indicative of activity on the site in the period in question and can be seen as of similar significance to radiocarbon dates from unexcavated contexts. Again, such evidence cannot be treated as indicative of chronological origins, or even of the main period of use of the site, but only as derivative of one phase of use. With these caveats in mind, however, it is possible to recognise significant patterns in the evidence that allow the justified contextualisation of lake dwelling sites in Scotland.

While these dubious and unreliable reports of crannogs are certainly not confined to the eastern half of the country, and there are many false reports and unlocated sites in the west (see chapter 7, p.182 for examples in

General observations The undifferentiated distribution of all known islet settlements in Scotland appears at first inspection to represent a homogeneous spread, with apparently all regions in the country containing numerous examples (see figure 4.1). However, basic analysis of the data from which this evidence is drawn begins to refine this

1

Radiocarbon dating, however, of a log boat from Loch of Kinnordy may hint that the crannog was occupied in the early medieval period (Mowat 1996:65-6).

26

DISTRIBUTION AND DATING SW Scotland), the effect of removing the unreliable reports from the distribution is to restrict very much the number of sites found in the eastern regions (i.e. in Piggott’s North Eastern and Tyne-Forth provinces; Piggott 1966), and to strengthen the western bias of the distribution. The compartmentalisation of medieval sites may well be unjustified given the indication of the frequency of medieval re-use found on western sites (see chapters 6, 7 and 8), but as we will see the distribution of medieval crannogs does appear to be largely concentrated north of the Forth-Clyde, and it is significant that no prehistoric dates have been obtained for north eastern crannogs. Three sites located in SE Scotland may well be legitimate crannogs, particularly those located during drainage works in the 19th century in Jordanlaw Moss, where a well preserved walkway leading to a circular structure built of oak and birch was found (Stuart 1871) and in Whiteburn Bog, where a similar ‘circular place built with interwoven sticks’ on transverse beams laid radially was found (Scott 1871). Both sites, however, are now destroyed and no dating evidence was recovered from them at the time of their exposure. Figure 4.2: Density of all artificial islet sites in Scotland, illustrating the western concentration. The structure in Duddingston Loch, Edinburgh (Stuart 1868:161-2) may have been a crannog, though we should be wary of assuming that any wooden structure in a wetland location was related to settlement. The example in Lochcote (Torphichen), West Lothian, seems more reliable however, comprising a stone and timber mound on a drained loch bed, from which a quern stone and pottery were recovered (Stuart 1868:159). There are two factors which bear most directly on the interpretation of the western distribution of lake dwellings. Firstly, there has been more research carried out in western regions of the country, from the days of Munro’s investigations to the modern surveys carried out in Argyll and South West Scotland. The true number of crannogs in Scotland is very difficult to judge, and while the number known (around 370, excluding island duns of the Outer Hebrides) is certainly likely to be a fraction of the true number, any estimate must take into account the number of false reports. The survey of Loch Awe increased the number of known sites in that loch from 5 to 20, while the Loch Tay survey increased the number from 12 to 18 (with a 19th noted in 2000) (Dixon 1982:17-9). Although the smaller increase from 7 to 10 sites as a result of the Loch Lomond survey (five ‘possible’ sites were eliminated during this survey; Baker and Dixon 1998) warns against extrapolating numbers on the scale order

Figure 4.1: Distribution of reported islet settlements of all classes and chronological horizons in Scotland, including islet Atlantic roundhouses in the Outer Hebrides and unverified reports. Data derived from the NMRS.

27

CRANNOGS AND LATER PREHISTORIC SETTLEMENT IN WESTERN SCOTLAND demonstrated by the Tay/Awe surveys, the very large numbers of unsurveyed lochs infrequently used by people, particularly in remote areas such as the west Highlands and Sutherland would suggest that the true number of crannog sites is likely to be very much higher than is known at present, even if the suggested order of several thousand may be somewhat optimistic (Harding 2000:308). Though it is difficult to be precise, taking into account the main factors influencing survival and detection the current author would envisage a number in the region of between two and four times the current figure.

artefactual evidence, particularly from South West Scotland where antiquarian investigation and stray finds attest to the strong representation of the Roman Iron Age, notably evidenced by metalwork and Samian ware sherds. Radiocarbon dates and artefactual evidence combined, dates in the range 800-200BC account for 45% of the radiocarbon dating evidence for Scottish crannogs, with dates in the period 200BC-AD400 accounting for a further 37%. Furthermore, South West Scotland and Argyll account for 68% of this dating evidence (see figure 4.4). The late Bronze Age/early Iron Age, 900-200 BC

Secondly, the most obvious bias in the distribution of crannogs is the fact that the distribution of freshwaters is strongly weighted towards the western half of the country. Though this bias is clearly one of the determining factors in the distribution of crannogs, it is not necessary to resort to absolute determinism, since it was clearly the close organisation of life around water that gave rise to the western tradition of lake dwelling in the first place. Environment may define the parameters of human behaviour, but it is society that shapes the expression and the formation of tradition.

The late Bronze and earlier Iron Ages are well represented, with 22 sites radiocarbon dated to this horizon. Dates in this period suffer from the inefficiency of the radiocarbon calibration curve, which affects the calibrated range of determinations in the 2600-2300 BP bracket particularly badly, leading to large calculated error margins, typically spanning the period 850 to 300 BC, though the archaeological evidence from the few excavated examples from this period support dating around the third quarter of the first millennium BC.

Contextualised distribution There is dating evidence (however slight or unreliable) for just under a third of the crannog sites documented by the NMRS, with radiocarbon dates for 49 of those sites; Table 4.1 shows the breakdown of this dating evidence into chronological and regional categories. Two published syntheses have treated the dating evidence in broad categories, in three phases (850BC200AD; 300AD-600AD; after AD1000) by Crone (1993) and in a ‘later prehistoric period’ taken by Henderson (1998:230) to equate to the period 1000BC to AD500. This section considers the dating evidence within four chronological categories: the late Bronze Age/early Iron Age (c.800-200BC), the middle Iron Age including the Roman Iron Age in southern Scotland (200BC-AD400), the late Iron Age and Early Historic period (AD400AD1000) and the medieval and later periods (after AD1000). For the present purposes Scotland is divided into five locational categories: the South West, the West Highlands and Argyll, the Central Highlands, the North Highlands, the East Highlands and the South East (figure 4.3). This treatment of the dating evidence allows the evidence to be incorporated more sensitively to the regional archaeological context, relating dating evidence to appropriate local chronological phases. It has been noted for some time that although crannogs demonstrably range in date from the late Bronze Age to the late and post-medieval periods, the majority of radiocarbon dates fall in the Iron Age (Crone 1993; Henderson 1998). This evidence is further supported by

Figure 4.3: Geographical zones used for division of dating evidence in chapter 4.

28

DISTRIBUTION AND DATING

29

CRANNOGS AND LATER PREHISTORIC SETTLEMENT IN WESTERN SCOTLAND and were it not for the radiocarbon date from a structural pile there would be little basis for an earlier Iron Age dating. This issue of the reduced archaeological ‘visibility’ of earlier Iron Age crannogs in the absence of radiometric dating only serves to support the view that a large proportion of crannogs have their chronological origins prior to 200BC. Though there are constant reminders that crannogs were repeatedly rebuilt and refurbished throughout the later first millennium BC and through the historic period (considered in detail in further chapters), there are a few instances where relatively well defined start and end dates for occupation can be asserted. Oakbank crannog seems to have been in use constantly during the period 800 to 300 BC (Dixon 2004; Sands 1997:41) and there is no evidence that the site was reused as a settlement after this time. Similarly, Hale found no evidence of occupation after the early Iron Age at Redcastle (Hale 2004), and while Loch Arthur crannog was reoccupied in the medieval period recent radiocarbon dates from three trenches located throughout the mound indicate that the entire islet was constructed in one event, in the period 400-100 BC (Henderson and Cavers forthcoming). Crannogs, then, were built and occupied as settlements from the late Bronze Age onwards, apparently in lochs and inter-tidal estuaries throughout the country, though perhaps particularly in south west and western areas.

Figure 4.4: Distribution of sites with late Bronze and Iron Age dating in Scotland.

The Middle Iron Age, 200BC- AD400 The middle Iron Age is when evidence for the construction and occupation of crannogs is most substantial. Radiocarbon dates are similarly widespread, though again with the greater numbers coming from Argyll and the South West. The antiquarian interest in south western crannogs is particularly apparent here, and dating for 19 sites can be offered on the basis of artefacts recovered from early excavations or drainage operations. While we should consider the likelihood that Roman artefacts were those that attracted the attention of antiquarians, perhaps to the neglect of other artefacts that might have denoted earlier or later dating, the frequency with which evidence for the occupation of crannogs in the late first millennium BC and early first millennium AD is encountered does not seem coincidental. Dating evidence for this horizon is not restricted to the South West, with radiocarbon dates from Firbush (Loch Tay) and Migdale demonstrating that crannog occupation in northern areas did continue through to the end of the first millennium BC and into the early first millennium AD, while the frequent occurrence of rotary querns on crannogs such as Dall Farm South, Loch Quien II, Ederline Boathouse and Durry Loch among others suggests activity after the quern replacement phase (cf. Armit 1991:191-2).

There are indications that the earliest dates come from Highland sites, north of the Forth-Clyde line, with sites like Oakbank (830-520 BC; GU-3469), Redcastle (840520 BC; GU-4542), Loch Avich (830-510 BC; GU11920) and Loch Leathan (790-410 BC; GU-11921) clustering around the late Bronze Age/ Iron Age transition. The date from Milton Loch I in Dumfries and Galloway with its large error margin gives a date which calibrates at 810 to 380 BC (K-2027) however, suggests that though the earliest dates come from the Highland sites, lake dwelling origins in the south west are unlikely to have been any later. Dating for the period 850 to 200 BC is distributed widely, with 9 radiocarbon dates from SW Scotland, 5 from the West Highlands/Argyll, 7 from the central Highlands and 4 from the north Highlands (Table 4.1). The socketed iron axe-head from Bishop Loch, Glasgow, similarly suggests an EIA date for activity at that site (Callander 1930:195; Scott 1966:58). The inter-tidal sites of the Beauly firth have produced early Iron Age dates, as has the recently investigated crannog in Loch Migdale, Moray, illustrating that EIA construction was not confined to west and south west Scotland. It may also be noted here that sites such as Barhapple Loch, Glenluce yielded nothing in the way of chronologically diagnostic artefacts on excavation (chapter 7, pp.187-90), 30

DISTRIBUTION AND DATING While it is impossible without excavation to demonstrate that middle Iron Age crannogs were constructed then, rather than in continuous occupation from EIA origins, the quantity of evidence for the MIA leaves us in little doubt that the large numbers of crannogs in western and south western Scotland were occupied at this time. Many of the sites located within the areas occupied by the Romans after the first century AD have yielded Roman and Romano-British artefacts, indicating that crannogs were very much a significant feature of the settled landscape at the time of the Roman incursions. Four of the Dowalton crannogs, Lochlee, Lochspouts, Black Loch (Castle Kennedy), Langbank, Hyndford, Castle Loch (Lochmaben), Castle Loch (Mochrum), Barean Loch and Buiston all yielded artefactual evidence of occupation during the Roman period. A radiocarbon date from Cameron Point indicates that crannog settlement in Loch Lomond continued into the RIA, while Dubh Loch, Glen Shira indicates a similar horizon in Argyll.

Historic date for Lochan Dughaill might be suggested on the basis of the triangular crucible, which parallels those found at Buiston (Munro 1893). The site in Loch Glashan, excavated by Scott in the 1950s can be taken as a reliable example of an Early Historic crannog, though recent radiocarbon dating suggests that the original construction of the site occurred in the late Iron Age (Crone pers. comm.; see chapter 8, pp.298-302), and it is probable that the Early Historic phasesarchaeologically the most highly visible- represent the latest levels of occupation on a site that has earlier constructional origins. The re-assessment of the Dowalton Loch assemblage put forward in this thesis (chapter 7, p.210) indicates that at least one of the sites in this loch seems likely to have been occupied in the Early Historic period, while a radiocarbon date attests Early Historic construction in Loch Seil, Argyll. It is notable that, for the most part, crannogs with evidence for later first millennium activity are confined to the south west regions (see figure 4.5), particularly in those western coastal regions with close maritime connections; no sites relating to the later first millennium AD have so far been identified north of Aberfoyle. This south-western distribution is significant in terms of the development of crannog sites into the Early Historic period. Both Lochlee and Buiston show elements of similarity with Irish sites of the same date, visible in both the artefact assemblages and structural details, and it is notable that the probable date of abandonment of Buiston in the late 7th- early 8th centuries AD may be paralleled by a number of Irish crannogs (Crone 2000:161). The Buiston constructional sequence closely matches a flourish of crannog building in the late 6th and early 7th centuries in Ireland, a phenomenon that Crone suggests is due to the need of the land-holding nobility in both Strathclyde and Northern Ireland for defended strongholds in a time of pressure on land and resources, Rheged incursions from the south being one possible threat (ib id). Current interpretations have seen the formation of Scottish Dál Riata as a relatively small scale transfer of dynastic power, rather than the wholesale folk movement it has often been assumed to have been, and as such settlement forms and patterns were largely continuous from and derivative of the preceding prehistoric period (e.g. Campbell 2001) The close similarities in construction patterns for Northern Irish and South Western Scottish crannogs in the period immediately after the historic incursion of the Dál Riata may well prove to be significant, but there is no doubt that crannogs were an established form of settlement prior to the documented associations with Ulster. It is possible that by the Early Historic period crannogs may have acquired an association with the higher echelons of society that had not been manifested in previous periods, and this may account for their reduced numbers, though this may only be tested when a significant number have been

It is apparent then, that this MIA period was when crannog occupation in the south west of Scotland was at a peak. Though we cannot be confident that the majority of sites displaying occupation evidence during this period were not originally constructed in earlier periods, there can be no disputing that the period 200BC-AD400 was when many crannogs were in use. That this horizon is concurrent with the culmination of the monumental roundhouse tradition in Scotland (Hingley 1992) is no coincidence, and identifying the MIA as the main phase of crannog occupation allows us to compare them in functional and sociological terms to the wider phenomenon of domestic monumentality. In this respect the south western distribution is in keeping with the archaeological context, if we can see crannogs as the consequence of similar cultural circumstances as resulted in the predominance of Atlantic roundhouses further north. This initial impression given by the analysis of the available evidence forms the basis for much of the analysis carried out in this thesis. The Late Iron Age- Early Historic period: AD 400- AD 1000 Crone identifies the period AD 300- AD 600 as a major phase of crannog construction in Scotland (her phase 2, 1993:246). In fact, the evidence for this period is comparatively sparse and the dating evidence is firmly weighted towards the prehistoric horizon. The sites of Buiston, Lochlee, Glashan and Ederline Boathouse (chapters 7 and 8, below) provide the most unequivocal evidence for Early Historic occupation, though radiocarbon determinations from Barean Loch and Milton Loch III also suggest occupation in this period. Later first millennium AD dating might also be suggested at the site at Altskeith in Loch Ard by Early Historic pottery (Thomson 1965), while an Early 31

CRANNOGS AND LATER PREHISTORIC SETTLEMENT IN WESTERN SCOTLAND excavated, and the proportion of radiocarbon dates in this bracket suggests that the situation is likely to be more complex than this.

Figure 4.6: The distribution of crannogs with known medieval occupation. Figure 4.5: Distribution of Early Historic crannogs in Scotland. Post AD 1000 Investigation of the distribution of crannogs with evidence for occupation after the 11th century AD is beyond the scope of the present investigation, although it is notable that they are largely found in the Highland region north of the Forth-Clyde estuaries (figure 4.6). However, as discussed above, noting the distribution of these later examples may help to explain the apparently widespread distribution of crannogs in general: sites with documented occupation in the medieval period account for many of the sites in eastern parts of the country, and seem to account for a significant percentage of sites in the Highlands. It is possible that the political unification of the north of Scotland after AD1000 accounts for the spread of crannogs into otherwise marginal areas- as settlements and strongholds associated with royalty and nobility crannogs may have been constructed in areas where the tradition was not previously well established. The effect of plotting the distribution of those sites probably of medieval construction is to emphasise further the concentration of Iron Age and Early Historic crannogs in the south and west. Radiocarbon dates from Lochrutton (Barber and Crone 1993:522), Ledmore (Holley and Ralston 1995:596) and Loch Eck indicate occupation of crannogs after AD 1000.

Figure 4.7: Distribution of sites of all periods classed as ‘peat and brushwood’ crannogs, ‘stone’ crannogs (excluding ‘island duns’ of the outer Hebrides) and ‘stone and timber’ crannogs. 32

DISTRIBUTION AND DATING The distribution of types: ‘Peat and brushwood’, ‘Stone’ and ‘Stone and timber’ crannogs

apparent geographical exclusivity of the two main classes.

A typological distinction has been introduced to crannog sites in the past, based largely upon the constructional components visible on the surviving sites. Munro first drew attention to the differences between stone and timber and peat and brushwood crannogs, suggesting that the choice of construction material was likely to have been related to the conditions of the loch bed, with stone foundations more appropriate in lochs with rocky beds, while timber structures may have been preferred in marshy lochs (Munro 1882:243). Henderson developed the distinction, asserting that the difference between the two types has geographical significance (his ‘South Western’ and ‘Highland’ types; 1998:236). Taking the presence or absence of a substantial stone component as the defining characteristic there does indeed appear to be a genuinely exclusive distribution of the two types (see figure 4.7).

It is, however, certain that the two constructional classes do not have mutually exclusive chronological horizons, as can be seen when dating evidence is compiled into a distribution map. The prehistoric sites north of the Clyde tend to have earlier dates, often in the early Iron Age, though early dates are similarly common from the packwerk crannogs of the southwest (Loch Arthur, White Loch of Myrton, Dorman’s Island). Consequently, there is no discernible chronological significance of the constructional division between ‘stone and timber’ sites of the Highlands and ‘peat and brushwood’ sites of the lowlands, and sites of both types were in clearly in use at the same time across the country. ‘Island duns’ in the Outer Hebrides A single coherent group of sites that is of unique importance to the study of artificial islet settlement in Scotland is the suite of so-called ‘island duns’ of the Outer Hebrides. There are around 100 such islet-sited settlements in the Western Isles (figure 4.8; Armit 1992), though only a handful have been excavated, and few of those to modern standards. Largely due to the fact that Hebridean ‘island duns’ comprise stone built Atlantic roundhouses in the same tradition to those on land these sites have been investigated under the auspices of ‘Atlantic Iron Age studies’, with the traditional research focuses of that field, namely architectural analyses and material culture. Though the location of Atlantic roundhouses in the Hebrides has been an issue of some importance in the study of the Hebridean Iron Age (Armit 1988:84, 1992: chapter 12), aside from a few brief comparisons to mainland crannogs the significance of the strong preference for islet locations of Atlantic roundhouses in the Hebrides has not been fully explored. The fact that island sites in the Hebrides are such close parallels of terrestrial Atlantic roundhouses means that they are of central importance to our understanding of the development of the islet tradition in Scotland, and offer a useful opportunity to relate loch-settlement to the wider patterns of later prehistoric settlement and to the phenomenon of domestic monumentality more widely.

The significance of the apparent complementary distribution of constructional types must be reconciled against several influencing factors. Environmental and locational issues are perhaps most pressing. It has been suggested that the stone and timber variant represents a less completely preserved form of the peat and brushwood crannog (Crone 1988), and as such the distribution of stone and timber sites in Highland lochs is in fact a reflection of differential preservation circumstances. Highland trough lochs found north of the Forth-Clyde isthmus are much more active, and sites in these lochs are subject to much more significant levels of erosion than those in relatively shallow, small lowland lochs. The residue of the crannog as a stone and timber mound is thus a factor of the erosion and conflation of otherwise similar sites. The distribution of stone sites somewhat softens the sharp divide between the constructional regions. Henderson points out that it is the existence of stone mounds without the presence of a substantial timber component that needs to be demonstrated, rather than vice versa (Henderson 1998a:237). While there are sites that do not appear to have any likely timber component, such as the stone revetted mounds in Loch Coille-Bharr and Loch Seil, it is very probable that most of the ‘stone’ sites plotted on figure 4.7 properly should fall in the ‘stone and timber’ class. It was noted during the course of the South West Crannog survey in 2002 that many of the sites inspected below the water level comprised a substantial stone element (Henderson et al 2003:100). A fuller investigation of the taphonomic process acting on crannog sites, and the processes by which the site ‘types’ may be formed is the subject of chapter 6, though it is important to note here the

Island ‘duns’ and ‘brochs’ The distinctions drawn between the principal classes of monument found in the Hebrides have resulted from the limitations of pre-disturbance survey and classification of drystone archaeological sites, which have been constrained by the fact that the true architectural details of drystone structures are often invisible without excavation. Harding points out that it was immediately apparent that the island structure in 33

CRANNOGS AND LATER PREHISTORIC SETTLEMENT IN WESTERN SCOTLAND Loch Bharabhat was a complex walled Atlantic roundhouse, not the simple-walled ‘dun’ it had been supposed to be prior to invasive investigation (Harding and Dixon 2000:103), with sufficient complex features to qualify as a ‘broch’ in the traditional scheme. Armit has similarly commented on the problems involved in developing classification based on surface survey data: When the structural detail is concealed by collapse, vegetation or later disturbance the site is classed as a dun. When even the form of the walls is concealed the structure is classed as a crannog (Armit 1990a:53). Armit’s introduction of the Atlantic roundhouse terminology (1990b) was designed to overcome the prejudicial nature of drystone settlement classification, and allows a more flexible view of the entire suite of sites, allowing for the full range of settlement types, including ‘duns’, ‘brochs’, wheelhouses and related structures, regardless of their island location and as such a more accurate understanding of their origins and chronology. Illustrative examples of excavated islet sites came as a result of Edinburgh University’s campaign of excavation and survey in west Lewis, with excavation at the complex Atlantic roundhouses of Dun Bharabhat and Loch na Beirgh (figure 4.9). Excavation at Bharabhat gave a probable TPQ of 2550 ± 50 (GU2436) for the occupation of the structure, indicating a chronological origin around the late Bronze/early Iron Age transition (Harding 2000a:313), concurrent with the postulated ‘event horizon’ for the commencement of artificial islet construction across Scotland on a widespread scale considered in this chapter. Primary occupation at Beirgh has not yet been fully explored, and the excavation did not proceed beyond secondary levels of occupation, though a TAQ in the later first millennium BC may be inferred (Harding and Gilmour 2000).

Figure 4.8: The distribution of islet Atlantic roundhouses in the Outer Hebrides, with the location of sites mentioned in the text (data compiled from Armit 1992). superstructures were a recurrent problem for the occupants of island duns. At Dun Bharabhat much of the secondary ancillary building had slumped into the loch due to the compression of the loch bed under the weight of the stone building (Harding and Dixon 2000:68), while the infiltration of water to the structure at Loch na Beirgh was a constant problem, necessitating the consolidation and superimposition of later structures and resulting in the uniquely elongated stratigraphy of that site (Harding and Gilmour 2000:723). These problems serve to underline that islet locations were preferable to Atlantic roundhouse builders, to the extent that the considerable structural and architectural challenges and constraints were overcome in order to use them. In this respect, then, island Atlantic roundhouses in the Hebrides should be considered as part of the same phenomenon of island settlement through the Iron Age to which crannogs belong. Though these sites undoubtedly represent direct ‘translations’ of the Atlantic roundhouse settlement design onto islet locations (Armit 1988:84), the familiar nature of their superstructures should not detract from the concept of these settlements as island dwellings, particularly since we can say so little about the nature of the superstructures of mainland crannogs. Island Atlantic roundhouses cannot, therefore, be treated differently to crannogs, and to exclude them or compartmentalise them into the field of ‘Atlantic Iron Age settlement’ distorts the wider picture of the development of conceptually related settlements.

Typically island Atlantic roundhouses are built on natural or enhanced islets in small lochs. 68% of sites are known to have causeways, which are stone built and typically link the shore with the side of the islet opposite to the entrance. These causeways can be very long, almost 120m in the case of Orosay on South Uist (Armit 1992:161), and are occasionally elaborated by the addition of cross-walls, as at Loch na Caiginn (North Uist), Dun Bhuidhe Mhurchdaidh (Benbecula) and Loch an Duna (Lewis) A gap in the causeway, as at Dun Thomaidh and Dun Loch Gealag (North Uist) was another means by which access to the site was restricted and controlled. Island Atlantic roundhouses are most frequently situated on natural islets, making use of bedrock outcrops and frequently enhancing them with the addition of boulders as consolidation. It seems that the structural problems involved when insecure foundations were used to support substantial stone 34

DISTRIBUTION AND DATING

Figure 4.9: Dun Bharabhat, Cnip, Isle of Lewis: primary Atlantic roundhouse and the partially submerged secondary ancillary structures (Harding and Dixon 2000). Artificial islets: an Atlantic distribution?

witnessed medieval occupation, although it is equally certain that medieval re-use of prehistoric sites was very widespread and constituted significant numbers of settlements in Argyll and the Western Isles (Chapter 8 and Appendix 1; Raven and Shelley 2003). Until excavation of a number of medieval crannogs has taken place it is unlikely that we will be able to estimate the true proportion of medieval island occupation, though we should certainly be wary of underestimating the impact of medieval crannog construction, and as Henderson rightly acknowledges, there is no reason to assume chronological specifications based on location (1998:240-2).

Though the widespread distribution of crannogs has long been taken as indicative of their diversity in date, form and function, as we have seen distributions based on dating evidence suggest that there are more significant patterns to be recognized. Even a basic map of the simple distribution of numbers of crannogs shows that they are to be found in their largest numbers in western regions, particularly in the west Highlands, Argyll and Dumfries and Galloway (figure 4.2). Further analysis of the distribution of sites with regard to their dating strengthens the case for a concentration in the Atlantic regions of the country, again with the South West the most densely populated region. While it is true that crannogs do not respect the boundaries of Piggott’s (1966) scheme for the Scottish Iron Age (Henderson 1998:240; Harding 2000:302), the dating evidence currently available and the results of existing surveys support the interpretation of a western concentration.

Identifying the distribution of late Bronze and Iron Age artificial islets, associating all of the cognate variants including Hebridean ‘island duns’ effectively extends Piggott’s ‘Atlantic province’ to include most of the western mainland and the south west. One of the principal concentrations of sites, in the central Highlands, might be seen as anomalous in this respect until we consider the character of the terrestrial archaeology of this region. There is no clearly reasoned argument for separating the stone ‘homesteads’ of Glen Lyon (Taylor 1990) from the duns of the west, while the few complex Atlantic roundhouses of western Perthshire and Stirlingshire combined with the small stone forts that characterise the areas around Loch Tayside (Cavers 2001) form a settlement complex that clearly relates more closely to the west than the east. In archaeological terms the area is effectively an extension of Argyll in the Iron Age, so it should come as no surprise that the crannogs follow a similar pattern. As a characteristic monument class, artificial islets form one of the principal components of the Atlantic settlement continuum, and it is argued in this book that understanding crannogs in terms of the Atlantic Iron Age allows us to understand them in their proper context, resulting in more productive interpretations of

The most difficult question to answer is whether or not we can justifiably extrapolate the patterns apparent in the available dating evidence to the rest of the undated sites in Scotland. Although very little work has been carried out on this so far, the greater incidence of medieval and later occupation of crannogs north of the Forth-Clyde line seems to be genuine, so that it may not always be a safe assumption that any given site has prehistoric origins. Sites like Priory Island, Eilean Breaban and Eilean Puttychan in Loch Tay have are known to have been occupied in medieval and later periods, with explicit references to construction at Priory Island (Dixon 1982; 2004:93), and many islands, such as Rubha na Moine, Loch Nell, are marked as occupied settlements on late medieval maps (see appendix 1). In particular it seems that sites located in eastern parts of the Highlands are likely to have 35

CRANNOGS AND LATER PREHISTORIC SETTLEMENT IN WESTERN SCOTLAND their origins, dating and development, as well as their function and meaning. That the pattern presented by the evidence from crannogs does not neatly fit previous categorisations of the archaeology of the relevant periods may well be as indicative of the limitations of previous syntheses as of the restricted nature of the evidence.

(not to mention recognisable to antiquarian excavators). When compiling the evidence for crannog occupation and use, then, we cannot assume that the evidence we collect is indicative of any more than one phase of activity, and crannog sites must be thought of as very long-lived settlements until proven otherwise by excavation. It is possible, furthermore, that the provenance of the dating sample is influential in the date returned- e.g. the majority of dates from samples collected by diving surveyors are MIA or earlier, whereas surface excavations have typically encountered MIA and later material- and this may go some way towards explaining the discrepancies in dating across surveyed regions, not only within Scotland, but also perhaps between Scotland and Ireland. These issues will be discussed further in later chapters, but at this stage of the compilation of the evidence they are important issues to note.

Discussion It is evident from this survey and compilation of the evidence for crannogs that little faith can be placed in well-defined groups of sites, whether classified by type, location or date, and it is clear that crannogs as they typically survive in the field cannot reliably be demonstrated to belong to any particular chronological horizon on the basis of pre-disturbance survey. Certain sub-groups are perhaps visible, such as those sites which are constructed entirely in stone and with stone-built superstructures, closely related to islet Atlantic roundhouses with which they blur the distinction with other crannogs. It may also be possible that sites exceeding around 40m in diameter have often witnessed occupation in the medieval centuries, since many of the largest islets are also mentioned as occupied in historical sources, but there has been far too little investigation of medieval crannogs to state this with any certainty, and exceptions to this very weak generalisation are easily cited. However, the traditionally quoted categories of ‘stone and timber’ and ‘peat and brushwood’ are unlikely to prove useful divisions, at least not until demonstrable differences between the two types can be established. The terms are used in this book in the same way that they have been in the past- to differentiate between sites with principally organic constructional components and those with a significant stone elementbut with no further implicit meaning attached. It is likely, furthermore, that conditions of preservation are more influential in forming this division, so that the study of taphonomy should be seen as a priority before any useful typology of crannogs can be advanced. These issues are the concern of Chapter 6. For these reasons, then, no attempt is made here to establish a revolutionary new classification scheme, and even the term ‘crannog’ is deliberately not defined too tightly, in an effort to avoid categorisations that might obscure the wider picture by excluding conceptually related, but physically diverse sites. As noted in this chapter, the type of evidence we have for crannogs is not constant throughout their known chronology (see table 4.1). For the earliest phases, particularly prior to 200 BC, radiocarbon determinations are the extent of the evidence for construction and occupation, while the middle Iron Age and Roman period is very visible as a result of the large numbers of artefacts that are chronologically diagnostic 36

CHAPTER FIVE: PHYSICAL AND CONCEPTUAL ORIGINS

As previously noted, crannogs have long been considered chronologically as well as structurally diverse. Since the excavation of Eilean Domhnuill on North Uist it has been considered a possibility that lake settlement forms in Scotland have been in existence since the Neolithic (Armit 1996), while in Ireland the existence of related lake ‘platform’ structures dating to the Mesolithic has been established (O’Sullivan 1998; Fredengren 2002). However, as we have seen, closer analysis of the dating evidence for crannogs has indicated that the majority of sites belong to the ‘Later Prehistoric’ period, broadly taken to be the period 1000BC to AD500 (Crone 1993; Henderson 1998). The purpose of this chapter is to identify the evidence for the origins of lake settlement forms in Scotland and Ireland, considering the likely origin of the concept of the ‘crannog’, as well as the physical evidence for the structure of early lake settlements.

clustering around the late Bronze Age/early Iron Age transition. Examples of these early dates come from sites like Oakbank, Loch Tay (2560 ± 50 BP [GU3469], 830-520 cal.BC), Loch Avich (2560 ± 50 BP [GU11920], 830-510 cal.BC), Carn Dubh, Beauly (2530 ± 50 BP [GU-2540], 810-410 cal.BC) and Redcastle, Beauly (2570 ± 50 BP [GU-4542] 840-520 BC). The principal difficulty encountered when trying to parallel Scottish and Irish lake settlement archaeology is the apparently contradictory chronology either side of the Irish channel, whereby the growth of lake settlements in the late second/early first millennium BC in Ireland is seemingly unmatched by similar developments in Scotland, and conversely, as lake settlements appear to decline into the Iron Age in Ireland (O’Sullivan 1998:96) crannog construction appears to reach a peak in Scotland by the first millennium BC. The reasons for this pattern- which is not easily paralleled in the terrestrial settlement record- have never been clearly explained; in this section I attempt to correlate archaeological similarities between the Scottish and Irish evidence, and explore some of the reasons for this apparently complementary developmental sequence, with the simultaneous aim of considering the origins of the lake settlement tradition.

The archaeology of lake settlement in the late second and early first millennium BC is better documented in Ireland than in Scotland, where so far the earliest dates for crannogs (Eilean Domhnuill aside) span the period c.800-500 BC. Lake settlement in the later Bronze Age is well represented in Ireland, and several large-scale excavations have meant that the nature of this early horizon of lake and wetland habitation is relatively well documented. Besides a range of sites which have been demonstrated to have been constructed, inhabited and abandoned in the later Bronze Age (e.g. Cullyhanna, Hodges 1958; Lough Eskragh, Collins and Seaby 1960; Clonfinlough, Moloney et al 1993), it is also apparent that many crannogs dating to the Early Historic period made use of the foundations of earlier constructions dating to this phase (e.g. Moynagh Lough, J.Bradley 1991; Ballinderry 2, Hencken 1942, Newman 1997; Rathtinaun, O’Sullivan 1998:89; Island MacHugh, Ivens et al 1986). In all, there is now a substantial body of evidence relating to a heightened phase of lake settlement construction in the later Bronze Age in Ireland, specifically in the so-called Dowris phase, from approximately 1100- 800 BC (B.Raftery 1994:17-37).

Later Bronze Age Ireland Although we can detect an apparent increase in lake settlement construction in the late Bornze Age in Ireland, there is considerable diversity in the types of structure that were built. It is clear that artificial islets constructed using a ‘packwerk’ style technique and featuring the use of retaining palisades were a feature of the LBA horizon, though it is also apparent that freestanding pile built structures were also constructed at this time. Undoubtedly there has been some confusion caused by the use of the term ‘crannog’ to apply to sites located in wetland contexts, purely on the basis of inundation subsequent to their abandonment, and it seems probable that many of the sites often quoted as ‘lake settlements’ were in actual fact located by the margins of standing water bodies. Ivens et al (1986:102) asserted that:

Late Bronze Age lake settlement in Scotland is also well attested, though dates tend to be somewhat later, 37

CRANNOGS AND LATER PREHISTORIC SETTLEMENT IN WESTERN SCOTLAND The few Bronze Age ‘crannogs’ are quite different in character to those of the Early Christian period. The latter tend to be substantial, defended structures with deep piling, the former little more than small undefended platforms, built in shallow water on lake margins. Nowhere has any continuity between these two groups been demonstrated.

constitute a ‘crannog’, the substantial pile built structures at Ballinderry 2 (Hencken 1942; Newman 1997), and Lough Eskragh (Collins and Seaby 1960; B.Williams 1978) are testimony to the emergence of large scale structures designed to be over open water during their use in the Dowris phase of the Irish Bronze Age, and there can be no doubt that the origins of ‘true’ lake settlements on a widespread scale are found in the late Bronze Age. As a concept, the construction of functional habitations in wetland environments was certainly well established by the early first millennium BC (see figure 5.1).

Similarly, O’Sullivan considers LBA lake settlements to be a different architectural concept to the Early Historic ‘crannóg’: … they [LBA lake settlements] differ somewhat from Early Historic crannógs in that they were usually constructed in marshy ground rather than out in open water, and typically only had foundations of small artificial platforms rather than the substantial cairns of stone and timber found in the Early Historic and Viking Age crannóg (O’Sullivan 1997:115).

The principal evidence for free-standing structures, constructed over open water in the LBA in Ireland comes from two sites, Lough Eskragh and Ballinderry 2. Hencken’s excavations at Ballinderry 2 initially identified the LBA occupation phase of the site, represented in the excavator’s opinion by a rectangular, pile built structure measuring approximately 15 by 17m and connected to the shore by a curvilinear causeway, also free standing and constructed with vertical piles (Hencken 1942). The LBA phase was sealed and stratigraphically separated from the later Early Christian occupation by a thick layer of calcareous lake

This view has also been taken of the early Scottish evidence by Crone (1993:250). While it may be possible to argue over the details of what does and does not

Atmospheric data from Stuiver et al. (1998); OxCal v3.9 Bronk Ramsey (2003); cub r:4 sd:12 prob usp[chron]

KILC 21 2770±20BP KILC 21 2740±25BP KILN 7 2730±30BP KILC 21 2710±40BP KILN 7 2700±20BP KILA 16 2690±20BP KILC 21 2690±30BP KILC 21 2680±25BP BOYL 26 2640±45BP KILC 21 2610±50BP KILA 16 2220±30BP KILA 16 2220±30BP KILA 46 2210±20BP KILA 16 2170±30BP KILA 46 2150±25BP KILA 16 2140±20BP KILA 16 2130±20BP 1500CalBC

1000CalBC

500CalBC

CalBC/CalAD

Calibrated date

Figure 5.1: Radiocarbon dates for five crannogs in Lough Gara dating to the late Bronze and Iron Ages (source: Fredengren 2002, table 1). 38

PHYSICAL AND CONCEPTUAL ORIGINS

Figure 5.2: Ballinderry 2, Co. Offaly: juxtaposed Late Bronze Age pile structures (Newman 1997).

Figure 5.3: Lough Eskragh site A, pile structure and palisade-revetted ‘crannog’ (Collins and Seaby 1960) 39

CRANNOGS AND LATER PREHISTORIC SETTLEMENT IN WESTERN SCOTLAND marl, indicating a period of total abandonment of the site, during which the LBA occupation layers were inundated. Newman has since identified a second large rectangular structure through a revision and reinterpretation of the stratigraphy of the site, demonstrating that the LBA occupation was spread over two, possibly interconnected pile structures (see figure 5.2; Newman 1997). The nature of the structural remains suggests that the occupied floor levels were raised above these foundations (Newman 1997:97), while the lacustrine sediments underlying the LBA stratum indicate that the structure stood over open water, at least most of the time (Hencken 1942, plate 3; Newman 1997:97). The finds assemblage included bronze artefacts datable to the eighth century BC (Eogan 1964), and a range of other organic and ceramic finds that do not sit uncomfortably within a domestic context for the period.

moulds for each type were recovered (Collins and Seaby 1960:31; B.Williams 1978:44-7). The radiocarbon determination of 3105 ± 80 BP (1530- 1120 cal. BC) for site B need not preclude its contemporaneity with site A, as it was retrieved from a foundation layer that was at least partially derived from natural and probably ancient sources (B.Williams 1978:47). The free-standing pile structure is clearly not, then, the exclusive form of lake settlement in Ireland, and there are certainly examples of the palisade-revetted ‘packwerk’ mound dating to the same late Bronze Age horizon. Lough Eskragh site B is the most obvious example of such a site, though evidence- primarily from the excavation of crannogs dating to the early medieval period- indicates that this form of lake settlement was widespread, and there are numerous examples underlying later artificial islets. The late Bronze Age phases at Moynagh Lough certainly qualify in this category, where the Early Historic site overlay a substantial LBA phase, occupied around 700 BC (J.Bradley 1991; A.O’Sullivan 2000:81).

In Lough Eskragh, site A was a similar spread of vertical piles, covering an area in the lake margins measuring in the region of 40 by 10m, and seems likely to represent a single continuous structure (B. Williams 1978:38 contra Collins and Seaby 1960:26). The original excavators interpret the Eskragh site as a free-standing structure, again with a raised floor above water level; their interpretation is apparently supported by the location of the saddle querns found on the site on the surface of the lacustrine muds which formed after the abandonment of the site, presumably having fallen there when the superstructure eroded and collapsed (Collins and Seaby 1960:35). Interestingly, site A at Lough Eskragh also included a palisaded ‘packwerk’ style mound, in deeper water and constructed from horizontal timbers and brushwood (figure 5.3). There can be little doubt that this site was deliberately constructed to be sited in open water, and the probability that it was also in use contemporaneously (in the 9th to 8th centuries BC; B.Williams 1978:46-7) raises interesting questions over the function of each element of the site. The high frequency of saddle querns encountered on the pile site suggested to the original excavators that this area was primarily domestic in function, though the more conventional domestic assemblage comes from the packwerk site, in the form of asymmetrical flat rimmed vessels, wooden vessels and a jet bracelet. As Williams considered, there are more uses for a saddle quern than simply grinding grain, particularly in the course of preparing clay and ores for metalworking, though the Eskragh examples were never tested for this possibility (B.Williams 1978:47).

Difficulties over the definition of a lake settlement are pressing when we consider the evidence for non-free standing lake structures dating to the LBA horizon in Ireland. Settlement sites located in wetland contexts, such as Cullyhanna (figure 5.4) and Clonfinlough date to this same LBA horizon, yet in physical form are somewhat different to true lake dwellings, and neither site stood in or over open water. The Clonfinlough structures, although enclosed by a perimeter stockade of ash piling, were in no way structurally supported by this feature (Moloney et al 1993:63-4), and so the function appears to have been simply to enclose and define the habitation area rather than physically create it. The internal structures were constructed in a ‘packwerk’ style in order to raise the habitation layers above what would have been very boggy ground, but the site itself never stood in open water. Similarly, Cullyhanna was a loch-side settlement, which was later inundated, preserving organic remains (Hodges 1958). Although there is a danger that sites on which organics are preserved are categorised as crannogs for this fact alone, and the important characteristics of true lake settlements are complicated by the picture painted by unrelated sites, these settlements were clearly conceived with the exploitation of wetlands in mind, and should properly be considered alongside the previously mentioned structures. The sites at Ballinderry 2 and Eskragh are almost certainly contemporary, and can be seen as part of a range of lake settlements which appear to proliferate in the late Bronze age in Ireland. Their structure is quite unique, being based on the free-standing, pile built form of lake settlement, presumably signifying structures that were intended to stand over open water, at least for part

The function of site B, a palisade revetted packwerk structure ‘in the same tradition as crannog A’ (B.Williams 1978:47) hardly seems in doubt, as excavations by both Collins and Seaby and Williams returned extensive evidence for the production of bronze swords and axes: hemispherical crucibles and 40

PHYSICAL AND CONCEPTUAL ORIGINS

Figure 5.4: The late Bronze Age palisaded settlement at Cullyhanna, County Armagh (Hodges 1958). of the year when lake levels were high. This form of lake settlement appears to have been unique to the late Bronze Age in Ireland, and can be taken as chronologically diagnostic based on the available excavated evidence; ‘crannog’ structures in the sense most usually defined in Irish archaeology are constructed as palisade revetted, ‘packwerk’ mounds. This early form of lake settlement is, however, perhaps paralleled in Scotland, where the structural origin of lake settlements appears to be in a similar form of freestanding pile built structure.

to a second site nearby suggested that it may represent an early islet Atlantic roundhouse (Armit 1996:44). In the event, excavation demonstrated that the site was occupied no later than the late Neolithic, with a series of occupation levels superimposed as a result of rising water levels. The site consists of a revetted stone mound which appears to be entirely artificial- no evidence of natural foundations were located during the excavationupon which were a series of small domestic buildings within a perimeter palisade (Armit 1996:45-6). The site was approached by a timber walkway, which led towards a façade entrance; in later phases this walkway was replaced with a stone causeway as part of a sequence of elaboration of this entrance façade (Armit 1996:47). The site appears to have been abandoned in the late Neolithic due to a final flooding episode, and was not re-occupied (ib. id.).

The Scottish evidence The earliest origins: Neolithic islet settlements There can be no doubt that the islet settlement of Eilean Domhnuill, Loch Olabhat on North Uist represents the true beginning of the island settlement tradition in Scotland (Armit 1992b; 1996). The site was initially targeted by the excavator since its relationship

Eilean Domhnuill illustrates that the artificial islet settlement tradition existed in Scotland from at least the late Neolithic in the Western Isles. It is difficult, 41

CRANNOGS AND LATER PREHISTORIC SETTLEMENT IN WESTERN SCOTLAND however, to determine how common this type of site was. Armit suggests that Eilean an Tigh may be a similar Neolithic island site, and that there may be many more to be found in the interiors of the Hebridean isles, where peat development marginalised many areas for settlement after the mid second millennium BC (Armit 1996:52). Given the large areas of similarly marginal land in much of the Isles and Western Scotland, where modern agriculture rarely causes the type of disturbance to water bodies and marshlands that have led to the discovery of crannogs in other regions the possibility is strong that many more early islet settlements await discovery. The existence of the Eilean Domhnuill site is also interesting in the context of Irish lake settlement. Fredengren (2002:1589) has noted that the Neolithic was a period when the focus of activity moved away from lakes, where it had been concentrated in the Mesolithic, a development that she suggests is due to the changing concerns of society in the Neolithic, when the wider community took precedence over the concerns of the individual household. If Fredengren’s interpretation of these developments around Lough Gara is correct, it is interesting to consider the different societal changes that must have occurred in Neolithic North Uist, where lake settlement commences at precisely this time. Meldalloch Island, Argyll Figure 5.5: The late Bronze Age defended settlement on Meldalloch Island, Kilfinan, Argyll (redrawn by the author, after Rennie and Newall 2001).

The islet site in Eilean Domhnuill demonstrates that the tradition of living over water was established at least as early as the late Neolithic in the Western Isles. However, the site remains unique and no such early examples of islet settlements have been located elsewhere. The date of the primary foundations of many of the islet Atlantic roundhouses of the Western Isles may well belong to such early horizons, though only large scale excavations- probably involving underwater work- are likely to identify such levels where they exist, and so far Eilean Domhnuill remains unparalleled. Indications that the lake settlement tradition has origins earlier than the earliest dated crannogs are also given, however, by the site in Meldalloch Loch, near Kilfinan in Argyll (see figure 5.5). The island is natural, with no obvious indications of artificial enhancement, other than a stone built causeway which connects the island to the shore. Excavations and survey by the Glasgow Association of Field Archaeologists showed that prior to the re-use of the island in the late medieval period evidenced by two West Highland longhouses the site had been defended by a palisade and embankments; radiocarbon dating of charcoal from the palisade slot yielded a date spanning 1130-830 BC (Rennie and Newall 2001:7). At least one roundhouse had been built in the interior, with dates from the floor and postholes in the excavated example giving dates spanning the period 810-480 BC (ib id.).

As an example of a late Bronze Age palisaded settlement the Meldalloch site is entirely unremarkable, and can be seen as a typical example of the kind of settlement found in large numbers across the country at this time. Rennie and Newall’s excavations were relatively small scale, but there is little indication that the site was of any particular significance in terms of status and function. What is of direct importance, however, is the fact that the site was constructed on an islet location, probably in the early centuries of the first millennium BC, demonstrating that the socio-cultural conditions that caused the combination of domestic structures and islet locations existed on the mainland of Scotland by this time. While it is perhaps not possible to generalise and extrapolate the evidence from one site, it seems likely that natural island settlements such as the one in Loch Meldalloch are likely to be found widely, particularly since natural islands have not tended to be investigated during field survey. Unlike crannogs, there is no way to shortlist natural islands as candidate sites for prehistoric occupation on the basis of aerial photographs, and even when natural islets are dived around they are unlikely to be recognised as settlements unless the dry areas are 42

PHYSICAL AND CONCEPTUAL ORIGINS surveyed. So while we may identify the period 800 to 500 BC as the undoubted commencement of crannog construction on a large scale in Scotland, there are indications that the tradition of island settlement has earlier origins.

and experimental reconstruction work has demonstrated how a pile built structure can support a roundhouse that fits the evidence recovered from the excavation (Dixon 1994b; 2004:170). The material assemblage from the excavation fits well with the radiocarbon dating, supporting an occupation spanning the late Bronze/early Iron Age transition. A wide range of wooden artefacts were recovered from the site, including bowls, plates and stave vessels, as well as a wide range of artefacts relating to craft activities such as weaving and dairying (Dixon 2004:146-51). As might be expected from an LBA/EIA settlement in central Scotland, pottery was not found in large quantities, though sherds recovered showed evidence of having been used for cooking (Dixon 2004:157) and a few small sherds with a vitreous residue may be crucible fragments. The metalwork assemblage is small, though a small iron knife was recovered, as well as a swan’s neck pin, derivative of the crook-headed pin typical of the period in central/eastern Scotland (Dunning 1935; Coles 1960; Dixon 2004:158).

Oakbank crannog Until recently, Oakbank crannog in Loch Tay (figure 5.6) was the only crannog site in Scotland to have been excavated underwater, and was furthermore one of the very few to have been excavated to acceptable modern levels of recording (Dixon 1981; 1982; 1984; 2004). Numerous specialist studies have been undertaken at the site, and although only around 25% of the total volume of the site has been excavated, the dating and details of the structure are relatively well known. Issues of construction and taphonomy of the Oakbank crannog have been the source of some debate within crannog studies- these are considered in more detail in chapter 6- though as the best known example of a late Bronze and early Iron Age ‘Highland’ crannog, it sets the precedent against which all similar sites are compared.

While the bone assemblage is small, probably due to the acidic water conditions in Loch Tay (Dixon 1981:19), the ecofactual material offered a wealth of information relating to the economy of the occupants. The economy seems to have been mixed pastoral and arable, with evidence for the exploitation of cultivated cereals and domesticated animals kept on site (Miller 2002; Clapham and Scaife 1988). Wild resources were also exploited as a supplement to the basic agricultural economy. In all, the Oakbank occupants seem to have been productive and self sufficient, engaged in a successful agricultural regime. There is no indication of any particular status of the Oakbank site, so that the local distribution of large, disaggregated roundhouses seems to support the interpretation of a local society where social relationships were not generally reflected in the physical form of settlements (Cavers 2001).

Radiocarbon dates for the site span the period 830 to 250 BC, and while these dates are affected by the flatness of the calibration curve for this period (Baillie 1995), the structural evidence suggests that the site was occupied and refurbished over several centuries through the late Bronze and early Iron Age (Sands 1997:41; Dixon 2004:134). Physically, the site consists of a massive oval boulder mound measuring c. 25 by 20m, with a conjoined extension feature on the west. Beneath the boulder layer the mound comprises a mass of organic material, consisting principally of upright stakes, substantial piles and horizontal branches within a matrix of compacted plant debris containing bracken, twigs, straw, leaves, animal excreta and hazel nuts (Clapham and Scaife 1988; Miller 2002; Dixon 2004:130). Throughout this organic matrix and surrounding the mound is a large number of vertical piles which seem to have been the principal structure of the crannog. Several hundred structural piles have been located at Oakbank, both surrounding the mound and through the organic matrix as well as forming a 20m long walkway to the shore. The number of piles encountered within the Oakbank mound (along with details of the deposits and stratigraphy that will be considered further in Chapter 6, pp.127-31) has led to the suggestion by the excavator that the site may have initially been a free standing structure, built on piles and elevated above the surface of the water (Dixon 1984:218; 1994b; 2004:143). This theory is not without difficulties and it seems certain that the physical form and structure of the crannog changed considerably through its history, but the free-standing model can certainly be argued for the primary phases of the site,

Evidence of any activities that can easily be interpreted as ritual has yet to be recovered from the Oakbank site. Although agricultural implements have been recovered from the crannog, objects sometimes seen as deliberate deposits related to fertility and the agricultural success of the household (Hingley 1992:24), the excavator does not describe these in any context that would allow them to easily be seen in this way (Dixon 2004:152) and more details of the taphonomy of the site are needed before such an explanation could reliably be considered. If the Oakbank crannog had symbolic importance, it may have been the simple fact of its watery location; as a display of defensibility and architectural prowess, occupying a watery location it may have been typical of the way monumental homesteads of the earlier Iron Age acted as symbols of the authority of the occupants.

43

CRANNOGS AND LATER PREHISTORIC SETTLEMENT IN WESTERN SCOTLAND

Figure 5.6: Oakbank crannog, Loch Tay (Dixon 2004). Structural Parallels

more examples await discovery, especially since these non-islet structures would be particularly difficult to detect in the course of routine loch surveys. Indeed, it seems most probable that these site types will only realistically be found when they are associated with secondary or allied island structures (as they have been in Ireland) which draw the initial attention of surveyors.

The free-standing phase of crannog construction at Oakbank, Loch Tay is the most obvious parallel for the Irish late Bronze Age pile structures. There are other examples, however, of similar structural styles in the lake settlement record of Scotland. Coatbridge crannog in Lochend Loch (figure 5.7) appears to have constituted a substantial free-standing structure, evidenced by an extensive area of vertical piling surrounding a small artificial islet (Monteith and Robb 1937). Similarly, Asgog Loch in Argyll, Dhu Loch on Bute (MacKinlay 1864) and White Loch of Myrton in Dumfries and Galloway (Henderson et al 2003:93-4) all constituted large areas of vertical piling, apparently for the purposes of supporting raised platforms over open water. These examples indicate the presence of this type of site in Scotland, and given the lack of comprehensive loch survey in this country it seems likely that many

The dating of these structures in Scotland is imprecise. At Oakbank, it is probable that the free-standing phase represents the earliest activity at the site, and so most likely relating to the late Bronze Age, in the eighth to seventh centuries BC, and as such can be seen as parallel with the Irish late Bronze Age types. It is notable that the distribution of piles at Oakbank bears a resemblance to the Lough Eskragh site A pile structure. Dating the other examples is more difficult, however, and there are no radiocarbon determinations from these sites. The 44

PHYSICAL AND CONCEPTUAL ORIGINS Coatbridge site was clearly multi-phase, as demonstrated by the excavations carried out by Monteith in 1937; however, the plain coarseware from Coatbridge may suggest the presence of an early Iron Age horizon at that site (Monteith and Robb 1937:37). What is certain is that the Coatbridge site incorporated a substantial free-standing pile structure, which either predated or greatly extended the occupation area of the site out from the main packwerk-style mound. It is not the purpose of this section to discuss constructional techniques, though it is important to note the probable distinction between the free standing and packwerk modes, which likely denotes different phases of construction and occupation where these two styles are found on the same site.

wattle-lined ‘fire-baskets’, very similar in form to those excavated at Rathtinaun and Ballinderry, were a major feature of the site; the function of these features is debated, but the possibility that they were hearths designed to create a reducing atmosphere may suggest they were related to metalworking (Hale 2004:149-50). The estuarine sites have been interpreted as activityspecific, perhaps related to access to trading vessels and transport into and out of the estuaries (Hale 2000:557; Sands and Hale 2001:51; Hale 2004:159-60). Furthermore, there is a degree of structural variability in the estuarine sites that perhaps warns against categorising them as one site type. Munro himself had doubts about categorising the site at Dumbuck as a ‘crannog’ (Munro 1905:133; Sands and Hale 2001:47), yet it has certainly been demonstrated that there are a range of lake dwelling sites in Scotland that do not conform closely to what constituted Munro’s definition of a ‘crannog’. Sands and Hale’s justification (2001:47) of the label may leave room for confusion and inclusiveness, but as they argue there are several reasons for including the estuarine sites reported by Hale as closely related to the overall ‘lake’ dwelling theme in Scotland. In morphological and geographical/locational terms the estuarine crannogs clearly aimed to be located over water;

Inter-tidal crannogs Some of the earliest crannog dates in Scotland come from sites constructed in the inter-tidal zones of the Beauly and Clyde estuaries (Hale 2004). Specifically, Redcastle crannog and Carn Dubh, both in the Beauly Firth, have yielded evidence of LBA/EIA occupation, with radiocarbon dates in the region 800-400 BC. Hale’s excavations at Redcastle demonstrated occupation in the late Bronze and early Iron Ages, with many similar features to Oakbank, including the use of bracken and keeping animals on site (Hale 2004:94-5, 105-6). The

Figure 5.7: Lochend crannog, Coatbridge: the pile built structure and second-phase ‘packwerk’ mound (Monteith and Robb 1937). 45

CRANNOGS AND LATER PREHISTORIC SETTLEMENT IN WESTERN SCOTLAND Atmospheric data from Stuiver et al. (1998); OxCal v3.9 Bronk Ramsey (2003); cub r:4 sd:12 prob usp[chron]

Redcastle 2570±50BP OBK 2560±50BP Avich 2560±50BP Redcastle 2550±50BP OBK 2545±55BP Carn Dubh 2530±50BP Migdale 2515±40BP Redcastle 2510±50BP OBK 2490±50BP OBK 2490±50BP Leathan 2480±50BP Fearnan Hotel 2475±55BP OBK 2450±50BP Milton 1 2440±100BP 1500CalBC

1000CalBC

500CalBC

CalBC/CalAD

Calibrated date Name Redcastle Oakbank Avich Redcastle Oakbank Carn Dubh Migdale Redcastle Oakbank Oakbank Leathan Fearnan Hotel Oakbank Milton 1

Lab Code GU-4542 GU-3469 GU-11920 GU-4543 GU-1323 GU-2540 NZA-18102 GU-4531 GU-3468 GU-3471 GU-11921 GU-1322 GU-3472 K-2027

Age BP 2570 2560 2560 2550 2545 2530 2515 2510 2490 2490 2480 2475 2450 2440

± 50 50 50 50 55 50 40 50 50 50 50 55 50 100

Cal. Range 2 σ 830-520 BC 830-510 BC 830-510 BC 810-410 BC 810-410 BC 810-410 BC 800-410 BC 800-410 BC 790-410 BC 790-410 BC 790-410 BC 780-400 BC 770-400 BC 850-350 BC

Figure 5.8: Radiocarbon determinations for late Bronze and Early Iron Age lake settlement sites in Scotland

46

PHYSICAL AND CONCEPTUAL ORIGINS while many exploit natural promontories and steep shoreline topography (Hale 2000:555); the abundance of jetty and harbour features associated with the sites suggests that vessels could be docked close to the habitable area of the structures. Dumbuck crannog was the best preserved of the sites investigated by Hale, where a radial arrangement of vertical piles supported a horizontal timber floor level. Superficially, in terms of size and construction, there seems to be no reason why the site should be separated from other crannog structures, and may hint that free-standing pile structures in water bodies with fluctuating water levels were a reality within the suite of lake settlement types.

Evidence for a crannog ‘Event Horizon’ in Scotland On the basis of the available radiocarbon dates it is clear that the period c.800-500 BC was when artificial islets began to be constructed on a large scale across the country (see figure 5.8). Indeed, the available dates for the LBA/EIA in Scotland are remarkably concurrent, so that it we may identify this period as a significant ‘event horizon’ in the chronology of crannog construction. As we have considered, the tradition of settlement may demonstrably have earlier origins, certainly extending into the early first millennium AD on the mainland and as far back as the Neolithic in the Western Isles. The full geographical extent of early lake settlement forms will

Sands and Hale (2001:50) consider that the range of estuarine dates in the late Bronze and earlier Iron Age is due to an accident of preservation, and that other similar sites from earlier and later periods have been lost due to changes in river patterns. While it is impossible to disprove this contention, this chronological range sits well in the context of a late first millennium BC crannog construction horizon, evident in both the Highlands and the south west of Scotland, and it is perhaps unsurprising that the estuarine sites seem to be firmly located in this chronological range. The dates from Dumbuck indicate a potentially long period of use on that site, though there is no structural indication of multiple phases of construction that would surely be evident if the site was occupied for longer than 20 to 30 years, the suggested lifespan of structural timbers in water based on experimental reconstruction (Dixon 1994b). However, all of the Clyde sites show a similar pattern and the recovered assemblages would appear to concur that occupation at the Clyde sites was comparatively short lived. Indeed, the complexities involved in building in such an actively erosive location would further support the view that the centuries around the turn of the last millennium BC were a time of heightened investment in crannog construction, and that at this time the cultural imperatives of living over water were prevalent over the difficulties involved in doing so.

only be established with continued research, but the available evidence suggests that a major episode of crannog construction began in the LBA/EIA transition. While calibration brackets may equally ‘suck in’ and ‘smear’ the dating of this horizon (Baillie 1991), it seems that this transitional period was when many crannogs were first constructed. As noted in the previous section, the early dates from crannogs in Scotland are widespread, occurring across the country from Dumfries and Galloway to Morayshire. Whether or not the pattern of LBA lake settlement can be correlated to the highest densities of crannog sites- i.e. suggesting the western concentration of early sites- is unlikely to be easily resolved without much more intensive survey, sampling and excavation programmes. The socio-cultural context: activity on Late Bronze and Iron Age crannogs When considered within the wider context of developments in the domestic and ritual archaeology of the period, the first millennium BC lake settlements of Scotland and Ireland offer a perspective on the increasing significance of the domestic sphere within ritual practice. In particular, the increase in the deposition of metalwork and other objects in watery locations is notably concurrent with the construction of lake settlements across much of Scotland and Ireland. Interpretation of the archaeology of the late Bronze Age has been dominated in the past by the paradigm of conspicuous consumption as an explanation for the metalwork deposition that forms the traditional study basis of the period (Cooney and Grogan 1999:144-5). Implicit in this has been the assumption of the equation of high value metalwork to high status people, and consequently late Bronze Age settlements associated with high value metalwork, such as Rathtinaun and Ballinderry 2 have been interpreted in terms of high status residents (O’Sullivan 1997:118; B.Raftery 1994:34). However, contrary to the central meeting places for ritual ceremonies postulated by O’Sullivan (1997:118) it seems more appropriate to consider the

Other sites with evidence relating to construction or occupation around the LBA/EIA transition are Bishop Loch, Coatbridge, where a socketed iron axe and crucible were recovered in the 19th century (Scott 1966:58), Loch Avich, which has a radiocarbon date from a sample taken during survey work for this study spanning the period 830-510 BC (see Chapter 8) and Loch Migdale, Morayshire, which has similar radiocarbon dates from samples taken during limited excavation by the STUA. Late Bronze Age dates were also obtained from timbers excavated at Buiston, Ayrshire, though these are interpreted by the excavator as relict and unrelated to a concurrent horizon of settlement on the site (Crone 2000:58).

47

CRANNOGS AND LATER PREHISTORIC SETTLEMENT IN WESTERN SCOTLAND evidence for ritual activities around water in the later Bronze and Iron Ages in terms of the wider developmental pattern of the merging of ritual and domestic activities, with the household emerging as the principal forum for ritualistic activity after the late Bronze Age. The argument for conspicuous consumption as an explanation for the deposition of late Bronze and Iron Age metalwork is now questionable, and the strong link between the disposal of the dead and the deposition of metalwork in wetland locations instead strongly suggests a votive explanation (Wait 1985:15; Cooney and Grogan 1999:147) entirely in keeping with the same phenomenon across much of western Europe (Bradley 1998). It is argued here that this association between ritual acts and lake settlement can be aligned with the development of the household as the centre place for ritual activity in the later first millennium BC, and as such is directly relevant to an appreciation of the significance of lake dwellings during this period.

widespread, as at Ballinderry 1 and 2 (Hencken 1936:227-9), Clonfinlough (Moloney et al 1993), Lagore (Hencken 1950:199) and Moynagh Lough (Newman 1997:99) to cite only a few. It is clear that the link between the disposal of human body parts (often with evidence of violent death, mutilation or dismemberment), metalwork (particularly weapons) and watery contexts is strong, and these practices were certainly carried out on and around crannogs. This three-way association of metalwork, human body parts and water is well known across the British Isles in the later Bronze Age, with particular concentrations in the Thames (Bradley and Gordon 1988; Bradley 1998:108) as well as at Flag Fen (Pryor 2001), Caldicot (Nayling and Caseldine 1997), Poulton-le-Fylde (Wells and Hodgkinson 2001) and Holderness, Yorkshire (Smith 1911). Bradley has related this phenomenon to the decrease in burial evidence, suggesting that this change indicates a move away from burial towards votive offering as the principal ritual activity in the late Bronze Age (R.Bradley 1998:102), and Brück has argued that this signifies a reinvention and elaboration of the established practice of wetland deposition, reflecting changing social concerns of late Bronze Age communities (Brück 1995:252-3). Similarly, the deposition of metalwork may have taken the place of mortuary rituals as the principal mechanisms for the renegotiation of social relationships (ib. id. 263; Cooney and Grogan 1999:164; Richards and Thomas 1984).

Ireland Votive deposition is well known in association with Irish later Bronze Age lake settlements. Lough Gara illustrates the pattern, with considerable quantities of Dowris phase LBA and EIA objects from the lough, particularly bronze rings and swords, often in association with crannogs (Fredengren 2002:190). Lough Gara is paralleled however, by the LBA flangehilted swords from lake settlements at Knocknalappa, Co. Clare (J.Raftery 1942:63), and Island MacHugh, Co. Tyrone (Simpson 1986:103), as well as examples from Bohermeen, Co. Meath (Wood-Martin 1886:171) and Ballycroghan, Co. Down (Jope 1953). The muchdiscussed bronze hoard from Rathtinaun has relevance here; while it seems possible that the intention of the owner was to return for the objects (B.Raftery 1994:34), the possible votive significance of the deposition of a large collection of valuable metal objects on a crannog structure should not be overlooked in the light of the wider pattern of metalwork deposition. Similarly, although it is clear that bronzes were being manufactured at Lough Eskragh Site B (Collins and Seaby 1960:27, 30), Rathtinaun (O’Sullivan 1998:90) and Killymoon (Hurl 1995; Ó Faoláin 2004:67-8) the occurrence of sword moulds in the apparently specifically-built deposition pool at King’s Stables (Mallory and McNeill 1991:123; Lynn 1977) suggests that the association of metalworking, water and deposition may well be significant in a ritual context (cf. Fredengren 2002:194). Less equivocal evidence for ritual deposition is the frequent occurrence of human body parts and in particular human skulls in watery contexts. Again, Lough Gara is strongly representative of this practice, with numerous skull finds from the shores of the lough and its vicinity (Fredengren 2002:191 and fig.38) and examples in association with crannogs are

Scotland Metalwork deposition in Scotland was equally widespread during the late Bronze Age, with numerous hoards of weaponry found in wet locations across the country. Again, the principal objects are Bronze swords and axes such as the examples from Carlingwark Loch (Anderson 1879), Bowling on the Clyde (Coles 1960:856), Breachacha in Argyll (ib. id.), Ballymore in Argyll (Childe 1943:184-7) as well as Point of Sleat, Skye (W.Henderson 1938:173; Coles 1960:111) and Adabrock, Lewis (Anderson 1911; Armit 1996:101-2), to demonstrate the wide geographical range of these finds. Evidence for vessel deposition is also recurrent, with frequent cauldron rings, such as those from Duddingston and Dowalton. Human body parts seem to be less frequently encountered in Scotland, although it is probable that this can be explained as a factor of recovery rates. Perhaps the most relevant site is that in Duddingston Loch, Edinburgh, where a hoard consisting of a range of deliberately bent and broken Ewart-Park swords, spearheads and a cauldron ring were recovered in association with ‘skulls and other human bones, together with the bones of animals of the deer and elk species’ (figure 5.10; Callander 1922:360). The precise nature of the wooden structure that seems to have been associated with these deposits is unclear, 48

PHYSICAL AND CONCEPTUAL ORIGINS but the description given in the nineteenth century appears to suggest that it may have been some form of pile structure (Stuart 1868:161-2). While we cannot be confident of the association of this putative structure to the LBA hoard deposits, the connection between water, human body parts and weaponry deposition is again consistent with the wider LBA pattern. Human bones were among those recovered from the margins of the Coatbridge crannog, though the details of the context are vague (Monteith and Robb 1937), as well as from Loch a’ Mhuillin, Oban from around the margins of a stone structure, resting on an organic artificial island (Blundell 1913:288; RCAHMS 1975:93).

more) (Stuart 1866; see chapter 7, p.202). As such, it is clear that the votive deposition of valuable objects took place within areas of settlement in the middle Iron Age in southern Scotland, and consequently if- as seems likely- the reverence of water was of utmost importance then the crannogs of the area must have been viewed as significant symbols of power, merging ritual and domestic spheres of life. Discussion: lake settlement, ritual and domestic As we have seen, the late Bronze Age veneration of watery contexts is well attested across much of Britain and Europe, and the continuity of the importance of water into later Celtic religion is well known (e.g. Green 1997:138). Fitzpatrick and others, however, have noted the decline of metalwork deposition after the late Bronze Age (Fitzpatrick 1984:181; Bradley 1998:166), so that the apparent continuity and even increase of this practice in the middle Iron Age in Southern Scotland stands out as anomalous (Hunter 1997:119). Ritual activity in the middle Iron Age in Southern Scotland, particularly in South Eastern regions seems to have involved the deposition of high-value metalwork as an act of votive offering as one of the main focuses of ritual activity (Wait 1985:48), and this is certainly paralleled by parts of Britain and Ireland (cf. B.Raftery 1994:184). In the Atlantic regions of Scotland, by contrast, this practice seems to have declined almost to insignificance (Hunter 1997:111), and the character of votive offerings changes. In the transitional period from the late Bronze and early Iron Age then, there appears to have been a significant divergence in the manifestation of ritual behaviour, distinguishing the north and west of the country from the south and east.

As always, we must be aware of the lack of comprehensive survey of lochs- a problem which is most pressing in areas of the north and west where agricultural drainage operations have not been carried out to any great extent- and the complex distribution and chronology of crannogs in Scotland makes the association of early lake settlement structures with metalwork deposition difficult. However, we can confidently say that the west European LBA practice of metalwork deposition in watery locations was also prevalent in Scotland, apparently across most of the country, and the same ritual importance of water was applicable in late Bronze Age Scottish society. The continuity of these traditions into the latter half of the first millennium and later- when they can be linked to crannogs- is demonstrated by two important sites in South West Scotland, at Dowalton and Carlingwark Loch. At Carlingwark, a substantial quantity of native and Roman metalwork, principally weapons and tools, were deposited into the loch inside a sheet bronze cauldron (S.Piggott 1953:28-40), some time in the early second century AD. The hoard included broken sword tips, iron hammers and chain mail as well as more mundane objects such as the cooking gridiron (see figure 5.9). The character of the Carlingwark hoard is closely paralleled by the hoards from Blackburn Mill and Eckford, all three consisting of cauldrons containing metalwork deposited in watery places (S.Piggott 1953:2-3), suggesting that much of Southern Scotland shared the tradition through the middle Iron Age (Wait 1985:47; Hunter 1997:119). Metalwork deposition in Dowalton Loch was of a somewhat different nature, consisting of individual items rather than cauldron deposits, though the character of the items, principally valuable vessels and tools, would support a votive interpretation (Hunter 1994; considered further in chapter 7, pp.201-10, below).

It is possible to link this distinction to the changes that occur in the settlement record in the second half of the first millennium BC, and specifically to the phenomenon of domestic monumentality, which sees monumental roundhouse come to dominate the archaeological record of the period after c.500 BC. Hingley has discussed the evidence for the origins of the monumental roundhouses of the Scottish Iron Age, noting the general trend of the abandonment of central, communal ritual monuments and burial sites towards the increasing incorporation of ritual activity into the domestic arena, particularly noticeably in the Atlantic regions (Hingley 1992:23-4). In particular, the deposition of objects related to fertility and agricultural productivity in and around houses was common from the late Bronze Age onwards, and the evidence for the close association of ritual deposition and the house is strong (ib. id.). At the same time, wet locations continued to be revered, and the combination of fertility and wetland deposition was also strong, perhaps illustrated most clearly by the Ballachulish figurine, interpreted as a ‘fertility goddess’ and

What Carlingwark and Dowalton have in common is that both lochs are densely populated with crannog structures. Carlingwark remains unsurveyed, but it seems that at least two of the four occupied islands in the loch are artificial (Stuart 1874), while at Dowalton there are at least four crannogs (and very probably 49

CRANNOGS AND LATER PREHISTORIC SETTLEMENT IN WESTERN SCOTLAND deliberately deposited in a peat bog (Glob 1969; B. Coles 1990; Coles and Coles 1996:75). A radiocarbon date for the figurine places it in the second quarter of the first millennium BC (Coles and Coles 1996:75).

Bronze Age site where interment of human bodies has occurred under the floors of three thick-walled roundhouses, while the more normal LBA rite of cremation was also found, but deposited within the living areas of the site (Parker Pearson et al 2002; Parker Pearson et al 2004:74). The excavators see Cladh Hallan as representing the origins of the symbolic emphasis on the household, with the normal practises of ritual deposition and burial being carried out within a domestic context in conjunction with the increasing elaboration of the architecture of the house structure (ib. id.). This theme of the symbolic importance of domestic structures continues into the Iron Age, and despite the variety of interpretations of settlement status, is frequently suggested as one of the principal reasons for the phenomenon of domestic monumentality in northern and western Scotland (e.g. Parker Pearson and Sharples 1997, 1998; Armit 1997b, 2002). The wheelhouses of the Western Isles illustrate the continuity of this emphasis, with a range of structured deposits occurring behind the walls and beneath the floors of structures at Sollas, A’ Cheardach Mhor and Cnip (Armit 1996:155; Campbell 1991; Crawford 2002:123).

The association of ritual activity with mundane structures with primary functions other than for ritual purposes is known from much of earlier Iron Age Britain, though it is clear that there were strong regional variations on the theme. In the opinion of the excavators the wooden causeway structure at Fiskerton in Lincolnshire was not primarily ritual in function, serving first and foremost as a crossing point, a routeway and a boat mooring point. It was also the site of votive offering on a large scale, however, involving the deposition of large quantities of fine metalwork through the second half of the first millennium BC (Field and Parker Pearson 2003:193). The ritual significance of Fiskerton cannot be questioned, but it seems probable that the site was also constructed to perform some other more functional purpose, illustrating the carrying out of ritual activities within a non-ritual context (cf. Bradley’s interpretation of La Tène and Cornaux, 1998:173). It seems possible that the liminal location of the Fiskerton structure- its ‘betwixt and between’ situation- may have made it particularly suitable as a place for carrying out ritual deposition (Field and Parker Pearson 2003:193), and it is furthermore possible that it was this quality that made lake settlements favoured places for the construction of monumental houses as products of the merging of ritual and domestic spheres of life. As Brown has noted, islands can be thought of as both within and outside the domestic and agricultural sphere, thus combining the ritual and the social, and furthermore signifying power since they can be ‘seen but not touched’ (Brown 2003:10).

Considering the combination, therefore, of the Iron Age veneration of watery places and preference for liminal and isolated locations with the Atlantic Scottish trend towards the symbolic importance of the house after the late Bronze Age helps to understand the development of lake settlement in Scotland as part of the wider process of the fusion of the ritual and domestic spheres of life. By thinking about lake settlement in these terms it is possible to move past practical and functional interpretations, towards a contextualised appreciation of the conceptual origins of the lake settlement tradition in Scotland. The coterminous appearance of crannog structures and the monumental roundhouse tradition is not coincidental, and in this chapter we have considered how the investment of ritual symbolism in the domestic structure was as significant a factor in the origin and development of lake settlement as in the development of monumental drystone roundhouses on land.

There is a growing body of evidence that in Scotlandand perhaps especially Atlantic Scotland- rituals related to death and burial were increasingly carried out within domestic areas and that houses became the principal focus of funerary deposition. At Cladh Hallan on South Uist Sheffield University have been excavating a Late

50

PHYSICAL AND CONCEPTUAL ORIGINS

Figure 5.9: The Carlingwark Loch metalwork hoard, dating to the early 2nd century AD (photo: author).

Figure 5.10: The Duddingston Loch Late Bronze Age metalwork hoard (Scran). 51

CHAPTER SIX: CONSTRUCTION, OCCUPATION AND TAPHONOMY- THE USE, REUSE AND ABANDOMENT OF CRANNOGS

Introduction

stressed that different crannogs were likely to have been built in very different ways. It is furthermore necessary to stress, however, the importance of considering crannogs within their correct context: crannogs are certainly diverse and complex structures, but this diversity and complexity is as likely to derive from changes through time and from regionality as from diversity within chronological and regional categories.

Since the days of the initial interest in lake dwellings in Europe in the late 1800s, the issue of the reconstruction of lake dwellings has been prominent in the field. Lake dwellings have a propensity for vivid reconstructions, and as has been noted in the case of crannogs, there have been numerous reconstructions based on very little data and reports tend to be ‘high on image but low on substance’ (Crone et al 2001:56). The image of the Swiss lake dwelling as a platform village built on stilts over open water captured the imagination of the public and archaeologists alike when it was first proposed by Keller (English translation 1866). This ‘pfahlbauromantik’ image was enduring- even though subsequent research showed that most of the Swiss sites had originated as lake-side settlements which had been subsequently inundated (Menotti 2001:323)- and was very influential upon antiquarian reconstructions of lake dwellings elsewhere (e.g. Donnelly’s reconstruction of Dumbuck (Sands and Hale 2001:43-4)). Both Keller and Munro were aware, however, that there were various types of lake dwelling, including free standing pile structures and ‘packwerkbauten’, or houses built on wooden mounds (Keller 1866; Munro 1882:442; 1894a:105, 1894b). As is the case for the alpine settlements (e.g. contrast Fiavé (Perini 1987), Egolzwil (Vogt 1951) and Yverdon Avenue des Sports (Strahm 1973)) there were clearly lake dwellings in both Scotland and Ireland built as free-standing pile structures, packwerk mounds and seasonally- or subsequently- inundated settlements.

As Henderson has noted (1998:229) crannogs typically fail to produce convincing evidence for superstructures, and as such they are difficult to relate directly to contemporary terrestrial settlements based on architectural similarities. The evidence for crannog superstructures is indeed scanty, though there are reasons for inferring certain architectural characteristics of some sites. A further aim of this chapter will be to consider the evidence for the form and function of crannogs as buildings, from the limited evidence available. Construction and Taphonomy 1: Packwerk crannogs In many ways, the packwerk crannog is to be thought of as the archetypal lake settlement structure of the British Isles. It is probable that the majority of ‘crannog’ sites as they are generally recorded were either built in this way, or became packwerk mounds at some point in their history, and while there is evidence for other structural types it seems that packwerk construction can explain much of the evidence for crannog mounds as they survive today. The construction concept is simple, with organic materials such as brushwood, peat and turf piled into shallow water, weighed down with stones and held in place with vertically driven piles, through and surrounding the mound. The superstructure of the site is then built on top of the resulting mound.

The problematic issue that faces crannog studies, for all the potential offered by organic preservation, is that it has never been absolutely clear what ‘a crannog’ actually looked like. Furthermore, explanatory models of site construction and taphonomy have been based on a very small number of excavated examples. These issues are central to a proper understanding of the way that crannogs functioned within their local societies, as well as of utmost importance to the way crannogs as archaeological sites should be studied. Issues of construction and taphonomy have recently been reviewed by Crone et al (2001), who questioned the validity of crannog interpretations without full understanding of taphonomy (2001:55), and rightly

The majority of evidence from excavated crannogs apparently supports the model of construction in this manner. The important question here, however, is whether the majority of crannogs were in fact built this way, or whether the evidence from excavated crannogs has been interpreted as representing packwerk construction since this was how crannogs were ‘known’ to have been constructed. As noted above in Chapter 4, it has even been argued for the Irish evidence that 52

CONSTRUCTION, OCCUPATION AND TAPHONOMY structures other than those of packwerk construction, revetted with a timber palisade, should not be thought of as ‘true’ crannógs (Lynn 1983:50-1). The fact that there are closely related structures that were not constructed in this way of course argues against this viewpoint, but perhaps more importantly we should be wary of laying the path for future difficulties by establishing criteria for what does and does not constitute a ‘true’ crannog. Perhaps of most importance, however, is the strong possibility that some sites that have been assumed to be packwerk constructions in fact represent accumulations of building and rebuilding over considerable periods of time. It is possible that archaeologists have tended to assume that crannogs were built in a packwerk style since this neatly explains the ‘creation of an island’, when the truth may have involved a much more complex history of construction and taphonomy; failing to think about crannogs in four dimensions, appreciating the considerable life-spans that these sites are known to have had may have further compounded this problem. Furthermore, there has been a tendency to interpret archaeobotanical and other environmental evidence in terms of the accepted taphonomic model, rather than vice versa, and there is as yet no developed methodology for investigating deposition processes on crannogs. For instance, it is often very difficult to distinguish between accumulated deposits of organic material resulting from occupation, which compress and degrade slowly in semi-waterlogged conditions of a drained crannog, and material which was deliberately deposited as peat for foundations.

process that happened rapidly enough for delicate organic ‘leaf litter’ to be preserved and protected from erosion (ib id). Stone, bone, charcoal and soil from the surface of the Phase 1 mound eroded into the [F110] sediments, before stabilising as the entire site was submerged. Carter favours the explanation that the site suffered structural failure and slumped into the water, which would account for the evidence of rapid submergence. Furthermore, none of the mound remained above the surface of the water, as the lake sediment layer ([F110], [F131], and [F134]) was continuous across the site, and so reoccupation did not commence before a drop in loch level allowed access to the site. The significance of the abandonment phase of the primary mound at Buiston is to demonstrate not only how a substantial prehistoric site may underlie an apparently Early Historic crannog, but also that any artefactual or structural evidence of occupation on that pre-existing site may be very easily eroded away without trace in the interim period between abandonment and reoccupation. The secondary phase of occupation, commencing in the mid 6th century AD, directly overlay the RIA occupation, with the builders consolidating the mound with brushwood levelling deposits, cut turf and retaining the mound with a replacement palisade. In the early 7th century the site was consolidated by the construction of a massive palisaded walkway around the perimeter of the site. Slumping of the mound was a continual problem, and may have destroyed the superstructures on the crannog on more than one occasion (Crone 2000:26-8). When such catastrophic slumping occurred on the site, rebuilding took place on top of the previous levels, with the builders often making use of the structural remains of earlier buildings as consolidation material. Buiston, then, with seemingly unequivocal evidence for packwerk construction, was certainly a multiphase site, with numerous superimposed occupation layers.

Buiston, Ayrshire With these caveats in mind, however, the excavated evidence from numerous crannogs certainly seems to support unequivocally the interpretation of packwerk construction in some instances. There are two readily identifiable phases of construction at the site that must be taken as the type-site for the packwerk crannog in Scotland, at Buiston in Ayrshire (figure 6.1). In the primary (Roman Iron Age) phase, substantial timbers were lain down on the loch bed in order to ‘consolidate the loch floor, prior to the construction of the primary mound’ (Crone 2000:14). A low mound, around 11.6m in diameter was then constructed from cut turfs and peat. Sedimentary analysis showed that much of the overlying sediment on the Phase 1 mound was formed underwater, though the top of the mound had been dry. [F110] was a block of sediments overlying the Phase 1 mound, the base of which had formed in dry conditions and the top of which had formed underwater, while [F130] was a natural soil which had developed on the surface of the Phase 1 mound, rather than having been deposited as a turf onto the mound (Carter 2000:59). This means that the primary Phase 1 mound was submerged and covered by lake sediments, a

Loch Arthur Excavations at Loch Arthur as part of the South West Crannog Survey have provided information on the structure of another packwerk crannog in South West Scotland. The crannog survives today as a tree covered mound, approximately 25m in diameter above the surface, though forming a peninsula below the water with dimensions of c.40m by 30m. Three trenches were excavated on the crannog in 2003, two below the water level and one on the dry area of the site (Henderson and Cavers 2004, forthcoming a and b). The site was known to have witnessed at least two phases of occupation, with Iron Age dates obtained in the early 1990s from vertical birch piles (Barber and Crone 1993: table 1), and medieval reoccupation represented by a small stonefooted building, excavated by James Williams (Williams 1971). 53

CRANNOGS AND LATER PREHISTORIC SETTLEMENT IN WESTERN SCOTLAND

Figure 6.1: Plan of the excavated remains at Buiston (source: Crone 2000). Trenches 1 and 2 of the 2003 work, excavated underwater, both encountered layers of timber lain on top of one another within a matrix of comminuted plant material, woodchips and bracken (see figure 6.2; Appendix 1; plates A.13-5). The similarity of the timber deposits throughout the submerged areas of the site suggested that the mound was constructed by piling layers of horizontal timbers upon one another, until a platform of material was constructed in the loch. In trench 2, several of the larger timbers had rough mortise joints cut through them (see appendix 1, p.383). These joints were very crudely cut, had no obvious structural purpose (there were no tenons in these joints) and in several instances were so thin and weak that they could not have provided any strong structural function other than perhaps to provide a loop by which a rope could be attached, in order to drag the timbers to the site. Heavy silting around the base of the crannog possibly explains why no vertical piling was noted around the crannog, although numerous vertical oak and birch piles were recorded on the top of the crannog mound. Trench 3, which was excavated to below the levels of the medieval foundations on the dry area of the crannog, encountered lain horizontal alder timbers. The trench was too small to allow a confident interpretation

of these timbers, but it seemed likely that they were part of the original structure of the crannog, possibly even relating to the occupation levels of the superstructure. Radiocarbon dates were obtained for timbers from all three trenches, with each returning statistically inseparable determinations (trench 1: 2240 ± 35 BP (GU-12173); trench 2: 2275 ± 35 BP (GU12174); trench 3: 2215 ± 35 BP (GU-12175), calibrating in the range 400-200 BC at 2 . These dates are, furthermore, concurrent with those obtained from the vertical birch piles in the early 1990s. While we must always consider that the calibration ranges of radiocarbon dates in this period are large, it seems probable that much of the Loch Arthur crannog was constructed in one event; there is no obvious evidence on the basis of the limited excavation that the mound represents an accumulation of activity. The implications of seeing the Loch Arthur structure as a single construction are that the site must be considered a monumental structure, involving the construction of a massive artificial platform which must imply similar demands of labour and resource control to even the most complex and ostentatious Iron Age constructions.

54

CONSTRUCTION, OCCUPATION AND TAPHONOMY

Figure 6.2: Packwerk structure in trenches 1 (top) and 2 at Loch Arthur, New Abbey (Henderson and Cavers 2004).

55

CRANNOGS AND LATER PREHISTORIC SETTLEMENT IN WESTERN SCOTLAND

Figure 6.3: Eaderloch: upper framework (top), basal layer (middle) and sections through excavated deposits (bottom) (source: Ritchie 1942). Fl: floor; Bsh: brushwood; IT: intermediate timbers, LB: longitudinal beams; H: heather; BB: Birch branches; CB: cross beam of upper framework. 56

CONSTRUCTION, OCCUPATION AND TAPHONOMY Lochend, Coatbridge

settlement, and perhaps a deliberate interest in exploiting the symbolic power of an ancestral stronghold. This is a complex issue, relating to the renegotiation of land and power structures through time, and would have evolved along different trajectories in different regions. This issue is explored further in later chapters, but it is important to note here that the complexity of archaeological remains encountered on crannog sites has an importance beyond simple stratigraphic technicality, and should be recognised in terms of its socio-cultural significance.

The Lochend crannog at Coatbridge similarly witnessed several phases of building, with at least two floor surfaces detected by excavation. As noted in Chapter 5, the site consists of areas of both piling and packwerk structure, though within the mound of deposits the excavators were able to discern at least two phases of construction and occupation (figure 6.4; Monteith and Robb 1937). Multiple Occupations and Relict Material

Ederline Boathouse crannog- taphonomy

From the available dating evidence, it is apparent that multiple phases of occupation and reuse was the rule, rather than the exception, on most crannog sites. Most sites where systematic investigation has taken place have yielded evidence for multiple periods of construction and occupation to a lesser or greater degree. Commonly, the earliest phases are only scantily represented in the excavated evidence, occasionally leading to a temptation to dismiss early dating as residual material from an unrelated site (e.g. in the case of Buiston) or the incidental incorporation of old material into a new structure during levelling or consolidation. A further example of this has come from the recent excavations carried out by the author at Dorman’s Island, Whitefield Loch, where a trench on the upper surface of the site recovered material radiocarbon dated to the early, pre-Roman and Roman Iron Ages, as well as evidence of reuse in the postmedieval centuries. It is tempting to relegate the least significant periods (in this case the earliest and latest ranges of the datable material) to incidental relict material and low-level re-use of the site, but this is perhaps to miss the important point that crannog sites were reoccupied and returned to precisely because they had been important settlements in earlier periods. This is suggestive of a preference for established locations for

The complexity of crannog taphonomy is further demonstrated by the crannog site at Ederline Boathouse, Loch Awe, where the author and Jon Henderson carried out excavations in 2004 (see Chapter 7 and Appendix 2, this book; Cavers and Henderson 2005; Henderson in prep). The crannog rests on a bedrock reef, and comprises a massive stone mound, from which a large number of timbers were protruding prior to excavation. Morrison obtained a radiocarbon date from a vertical pile on the top of the mound at the time of the original survey of Loch Awe in the 1970s, which was returned at 2220 ± 50 BP (GU-2415), calibrating at 400-190 BC (Morrison 1982a). The excavation trench, however, placed at the base of the mound in nearly 3m of water, encountered organic deposits which were dated by two sherds of E ware from a sealed context to the late 6th / early 7th centuries AD. This apparently inverted stratigraphy demonstrates the complexity of post-abandonment processes acting on crannog sites. The Early Historic deposits were sealed under a boulder layer comprising several hundreds of tonnes of stone and can only have been redeposited or buried after post-abandonment slumping and erosion

Figure 6.4: The superimposed foundation and floor levels at Lochend crannog, Coatbridge (source: Monteith and Robb 1937). 57

CRANNOGS AND LATER PREHISTORIC SETTLEMENT IN WESTERN SCOTLAND of the crannog surface. The earlier Iron Age date for the oak timbers protruding from the surface of the crannog must have been exposed after the erosion of the later occupation levels, since it seems implausible that timbers almost a thousand years old could have functioned within the superstructure of the later crannog. The implications of this sequence are very important to our interpretation of crannog archaeology more generally. It cannot, for example, be assumed that basal deposits on crannog mounds are likely to be the earliest, or that surface timbers are likely to relate to the latest occupation of the site.

In some instances, it is possible that stone superstructures were built on islets that had organic packwerk foundations. At Rough Loch, Dumfries and Galloway, a substantial stone-walled roundhouse was found to be built upon a packwerk mound retained with vertical piling (see chapter 7 and appendix 1; Munro 1885:114). A stone structure was also found to be resting on timber and brushwood, revetted by piling, in Loch a’ Mhuillin, Oban (Blundell 1913:288). Similarly, in Ashgrove Loch, a stone-walled crannog with a stone causeway was recorded, with the stone wall apparently constructed on a foundation of brushwood (Smith 1894:57). Structures such as these must have been prone to subsidence, since the weight of the stone superstructure must have caused the foundations to compress and slump. This was certainly the case at Dun Bharabhat, Isle of Lewis, where stone structures collapsed into the loch due to the unstable foundations they were built on (Harding and Dixon 2000). As the organic substructure of stone built crannogs such as Rough Loch and Ashgrove decayed and eroded the stone superstructures would very easily have collapsed, and it is possible that in some of the more active Highland lochs where wave erosion is much more significant than in lowland lochs, stone construction could have been ruined to such an extent that it is no longer recognisable on some sites. Ruinous stone superstructures have certainly been recognised on organic packwerk crannogs in Ireland, as at Hackelty crannog, where a stone kerbed settlement was founded on a pile-revetted organic mound (Davies 1942:22-3, and see esp. his figure 3).

The boulder layer raises its own important questions. This boulder capping at Ederline, like at Oakbank and other ‘stone and timber’ type crannogs, was over a metre thick and incorporated massive boulders, some of which would have presented great difficulties simply in transporting to the site. The function of these boulderswhich are found on most Highland sites- has been the source of some debate in crannog studies. In the packwerk model of construction, it is assumed that the boulders constitute part of the make up of the mound, serving both as foundation material and as a means of weighing down the organic materials used in the construction. As the site erodes post-abandonment, the surrounding organics decay leaving a residue of boulders that effectively caps the site and protects the underlying organic deposits (Crone 1988:47; Crone et al 2001:61-2). This is one plausible explanation for the appearance of the boulder layer on many stone and timber sites, but it is not the only one, as we shall see when we discuss the Oakbank evidence below. It is very possible, furthermore, that many stone/timber sites comprised substantial stone-built superstructures which have collapsed so completely that they are virtually impossible to detect through surface inspection. Examples of such sites, in better preserved form, have been recorded in Argyll and Dumfries and Galloway as part of this study.

Loch Seil in Argyll contains a site that seems unparalleled by any other surveyed crannog. The site itself appears as a well-built rectangular stone revetted mound, approximately 10m by 8m and around 2.5m high. The site is in 2.5m of water, so that it is clear that the stone walling must have been built when the loch level was much lower than it is today. The loch bed around the site is littered with vertical piles and horizontal timbers, which presumably supported superstructures surrounding the mound. Loch Seil, like Loch Coille-Bharr which similarly makes use of stone revetting around its base (see chapter 8), illustrates the fact that crannog structures may have frequently incorporated stone construction, which may only survive in favourable circumstances.

Stone crannogs and stone superstructures: Loch Leathan, Loch Seil, Rough Loch, Ashgrove Loch and Loch a’ Mhuillin Loch Leathan crannog in Mid Argyll is an example of a crannog that appears to have been built entirely in stone. There is no obvious timber component to the mound, and the site seems to have been designed as a stone revetted island, with the superstructures, including cellular buildings and harbour features built on top (see chapter 8 and Appendix 1). Other sites in Argyll, including Loch Avich (appendix 1) and the stone built islets of the Inner Hebrides (Holley 2000) also suggest that stone superstructures were common on many crannogs, and Munro’s description of Loch-aBhaillidh suggests a related site (Munro 1883:208).

The archaeology of packwerk crannogs: discussion It is clear, then, that while packwerk construction was certainly a widely used technique for creating a raised platform, in the majority of excavated examples there were multiple phases of building and rebuilding, so that to think of a crannog site as a single construction is in most cases incorrect: there has yet to be crannog site 58

CONSTRUCTION, OCCUPATION AND TAPHONOMY investigated that was not likely to have been occupied and rebuilt over a considerable period of time. Even those crannog sites that have been formative in the stereotypical view of the definition of a crannog are now thought of as more complex than was originally recognised. At Lagore, Co. Meath, Lynn has argued for more and increasingly complex occupation levels based on a reinterpretation of Hencken’s (1950) excavations. Lynn suggests that as a result of the need to repeatedly raise the level of the occupation surface above the water table due to slumping and compaction (perhaps every five years or more), numerous occupation layers may become superimposed giving the impression upon excavation of a single, complex occupation (Lynn 1986:72). Later in this sequence, as more and more material is laid down on the site and the crannog structure stabilises, the occupation level may need to be raised less frequently, so that there may be a natural bias towards the evidence for later periods of use (ib id). Lynn was able to detect these processes of superimposition of crannog occupation layers at both Lagore and Ballinderry 1, while in Scotland a similar process seems to have taken place through the Early Historic phases of Buiston.

occupation and rebuilding. Water level fall and erosion through desiccation, wave action and biological attack (Crone et al 2001:61; Barber and Crone 1993) can further result in the destruction of surface deposits (figure 6.5, phase y), while debris relating to the history of the site is preserved beneath the water level. The result is an accumulation of archaeology that Morrison has likened to a ‘wet tel’ (Morrison 1985:93-4), though with the added complication that waterlogged preservation renders early construction indistinguishable from late. Such a model of construction and taphonomy would help explain dating evidence from several south western sites, a prime example being Milton Loch I (see discussion in chapter 6 below) where the excavated surface deposits were dated to the second century AD by a bronze ‘loop’, while a radiocarbon date for a structural pile and the plough stilt from the site calibrate in the third quarter of the first millennium BC (Piggott 1953; Guido 1976). Similarly, at Barean Loch (see chapter 6, below), Roman paterae were recovered from the same crannog that yielded both Early Historic and later first millennium BC radiocarbon dates, illustrating the longevity of some occupation sequences on crannogs. At Buiston it was clear that the RIA levels were separated from the Early Historic phases by a period of abandonment indicated by a layer of sterile lake silts, though the anomalous late Bronze Age dates, taken by the excavator to represent the use of relict timbers, may hint at the longevity of activity at that site. It seems unlikely to be coincidence that so many crannogs of Early Historic date seem to be founded on much earlier occupation deposits (Irish examples: Moynagh Loch, J.Bradley 1991; Lagore, Hencken 1950; Ballinderry 2, Hencken 1942).

The complexity of crannog construction and taphonomy can be illustrated by a schematic and hypothetical representation of the processes of deposition and erosion typical of lowland and highland packwerk crannogs. In the packwerk model typical of lowland sites (see figure 6.5, phase 1), the primary crannog structure is built in open water by dumping foundation materials onto the loch floor, and revetting the mound with piling and a perimeter palisade. After abandonment of the first phase (figure 6.5, phase 2), the primary superstructures are eroded away, while remains of the foundation deposits and structural piling are preserved to a stable level below the water level. When the site is reoccupied (figure 6.5, phase 3), the original mound is consolidated with new foundation material, which may incorporate elements of the structure of the original crannog, the islet is revetted with replacement piling and new superstructures are built. After the abandonment of this secondary structure (figure 6.5, phase 4), the mound is again eroded to below the water level, with the secondary phase material now indistinguishable from the primary structure. Hencken was troubled by this problem during his excavation of the Lagore and Ballinderry crannogs; at Ballinderry 2 the Early Christian palisade appeared to be stratigraphically below the Late Bronze Age stratum, since the tops of the piles had rotted away to a level below the layers they were driven through (Hencken 1950:47). In our hypothetical model, as this process happens repeatedly with new consolidation material and new structure added to the site over decades or centuries (figure 6.5, phase x), packwerk sites become highly complex accumulations of multiple phases of

Highland ‘stone and timber’ crannogs may equally witness such complex sequences of occupation and reoccupation, with the added complication of the possibility of stone superstructures, as evidenced by numerous sites in Argyll (discussed in detail, chapter 7, below). These stone structures may not only be used and reused in the same way that terrestrial roundhouses were repeatedly reoccupied, but evidence for construction and occupation, including midden material dumped into the water beside the site, may be preserved as part of the site. If a stone/timber packwerk crannog such as Ederline boathouse was built using organic materials weighed down with stone, with superstructures built in stone in the local tradition on top of the mound, midden material and other debris may accumulate around the edges of the site (figure 6.6, phase 1). The same sequences of abandonment and reoccupation as described above for packwerk crannogs may then occur, with the erosion of the mound and the slumping of boulders causing a residue of stones to cover the site (figure 6.6, phase 2). At this stage, early 59

CRANNOGS AND LATER PREHISTORIC SETTLEMENT IN WESTERN SCOTLAND Site Loch Avich

Lab Code GU-11920

Age BP 2560

± 50

Cal 2 σ 830-510 BC

Loch Leathan

GU-11921

2480

50

790-410 BC

Dubh Loch

GU-11924

2030

50

170BC-AD80

Loch Seil

GU-11922

1500

50

430-650 AD

Loch Eck

GU-11923

780

50

1150-1300 AD

Sample Description Vertical pile protruding from surface of crannog mound, below water level Vertical oak pile protruding from loch bed silts beside crannog mound Horizontal alder timber embedded on top of crannog mound Vertical timber protruding from loch bed silts beside crannog Worked timber off-cut removed from basal deposits of crannog mound

Table 6.1: Radiocarbon dates for selected crannogs surveyed in Argyll, with calibrated ranges at 2 σ and description of the sample provenance. structural timbers may become exposed on the surface of the site, while later midden deposits are preserved beneath slumping boulders as the site conflates. Changes in water level may subsequently allow the site to be re-occupied (figure 6.6, phase 3), with stone superstructures related to medieval or later settlement commonly found on Highland crannogs, such as Loch Avich (see chapter 7 and appendix). This scenario would explain why late deposits were encountered in the trench excavated at Ederline, while an early date was obtained for a timber from the surface of the site and would also accord well with evidence from survey in Argyll.

occupation deposits, and it cannot be assumed that what appear to be foundation deposits do not relate to occupation at the site. At Loch Arthur and Whitefield Loch, in Dumfries and Galloway, samples of the organic matrix of the sites were taken from eroding deposits beneath the water level, and were found to contain large quantities of palaeoenvironmental evidence for the domestic occupation of both sites, including cereal processing and animal excreta indicating livestock kept on the crannogs. With these models for crannog construction and taphonomy we may contextualise the dates obtained for the crannogs surveyed in Argyll as part of this project (table 6.1). At Loch Leathan the LBA date obtained came from a vertical pile in the loch bed adjacent to the crannog mound. The date indicates that construction began at the site in the late Bronze Age, but does not reliably date the construction of the stone crannog mound itself. Conversely, the LBA date from Loch Avich, sampled from a vertical pile protruding from the top of the crannog mound would indicate that the mound was constructed- or had accumulated- by the 6th century BC. Like Loch Leathan, the date from a structural pile in the loch bed at Loch Seil does not date the construction of the crannog mound, since the pile was not stratigraphically related to the stone structure. All this date can tell us is that there was building being carried out at the Loch Seil site in the Early Historic period. Interestingly, the date for the Loch Eck site which came from an off-cut of wood extracted from the very base of the mound- from a context comparable to the deposits excavated at Ederline- is relatively late, in the medieval centuries. When compared to the late deposits from the Ederline Boathouse site and

Implications for dating Understanding crannog sites as such complex accumulations of activity has clear implications for the way we date these structures. As pointed out above, there has yet to be an example of a crannog investigated that does not have evidence for a long occupation sequence, probably incorporating several phases of use, abandonment and re-use. Most obviously, radiocarbon dates must be viewed with caution, since they date only one phase of activity on the site, and without excavation there it is difficult to be confident that the sample even relates to a major period of occupation. Crone et al assert that ‘…the deposits of a packwerk structure will incorporate a large quantity of material that need have nothing to do with the use of the building and will almost certainly predate its construction’ (2001:57). While this may be true of the theoretical model of a packwerk crannog, it is clear that in most instances the crannog structure comprises a highly complex accumulation of construction and 60

CONSTRUCTION, OCCUPATION AND TAPHONOMY interpreted in terms of the model describe in figure 6.6, we can consider the Loch Eck date as likely to relate to a late phase of activity and as such the date of the original construction of the crannog must be considered unknown.

the mound- at Loch Arthur- has concurrent dates from all five samples, in the range 400-200 BC. It is clear, then, that the packwerk model is valid, and some crannogs were apparently conceived and built as massive mounds of material in water. In thinking of crannogs as long-lived settlements with complex structural histories, it is important not to lose sight of the fact that they were also monumental constructions, requiring well organised labour and access to managed raw materials, including timber and stone.

Considering the complexity of crannog site formation processes and the complications that they can introduce into interpreting the archaeology of crannogs, it is somewhat ironic that the one surveyed packwerk site for which there are numerous dates from various parts of

Figure 6.5: Complex taphonomy of a packwerk crannog. Multiple phases of use and re-use interspersed by erosive periods of abandonment combine to create a complex accumulation of activity. This model fits the evidence from the excavations at Milton Loch and Buiston. 61

CRANNOGS AND LATER PREHISTORIC SETTLEMENT IN WESTERN SCOTLAND

Figure 6.6: Model of complex taphonomy of a Highland ‘stone and timber’ crannog. Occupation levels and midden material are deposited beside the crannog and overlain by boulders as the structure erodes, collapses and slumps. Putative stone superstructures may have contributed to the boulder debris as their foundations collapsed. Secondary structures may be built on the crannog during periods of lower loch levels. This model fits the evidence from Ederline Boathouse and other Argyll crannogs. 62

CONSTRUCTION, OCCUPATION AND TAPHONOMY

Figure 6.7: The reconstruction of the putative free-standing phase at Oakbank crannog, at the Scottish crannog centre, Loch Tay. Construction and Taphonomy 2: Free standing pile structures

they were deposited very rapidly and soon after use (Crone et al 2001:58). To this list can be added the fact that there are several fallen piles with the organic deposits at Oakbank with water-worn tool facets on them, which seem to have lain exposed in shallow water before being buried in the organic matrix (Dixon and Cavers 2001).

There is evidence, however, that not all crannogs were constructed as packwerk mounds. The principal source of information on crannogs as free-standing pile built platforms in the style originally envisaged for the Swiss lake dwellings comes from Oakbank in Loch Tay. Excavation at this site has uncovered deposits and structure that seem difficult to explain along the lines of the packwerk models discussed above. Though the details of the deposits have yet to be published in the form of a full excavation report, the excavator is convinced that the original structure stood over open water (Dixon 1994b:66) and has reconstructed a full size replica of the structure he envisages on Loch Tay (see figure 6.7).

One of the more significant sources of evidence for the nature of the structure at Oakbank is the stratigraphy of the pile construction observed in section during the excavation of areas B3 and B4 at the site. According to Dixon’s proposed taphonomic model for the site, primary piles such as timber 380 were replaced and supported by secondary piles such as timber 497 (figure 6.8). These secondary piles, however, often did not penetrate the organic debris that had accumulated beneath the crannog to reach the loch bed, and as such were unstable and occasionally resulted in serious structural failures on the site. In several places at Oakbank groups of piles lean outwards from the crannog, suggesting that a major slumping episode had occurred, presumably with catastrophic implications for the superstructure of the site. Dixon proposes that this is how sections of flooring, walling and hurdling came to be deposited in the crannog mound, and subsequently overlain by occupation debris of later phases. Ethnographic observations of contemporary pile-built lake structures in West Africa have noted this process in action; when parts of the pile structure are replaced the debris of the original building is often deposited on the lake bed around the site, and new

Crone et al have summarised the evidence for the freestanding structure. First of all, there is some dendrochronological evidence for the slow accumulation of the mound over time (Crone 1988). Secondly, there are lenses of lacustrine silt within some of the organic deposits on the site, suggesting that these deposits may have lain uncovered, possibly during an abandonment phase at the site. Thirdly, there are artefacts within the mound at Oakbank that have been pierced by piles- most notably the wooden bowl (Dixon 2004:148)- suggesting that debris related to occupation had accumulated beneath a raised structure, before being pierced by new piles during rebuilding. Fourthly, the preservation of very delicate organics suggests that 63

CRANNOGS AND LATER PREHISTORIC SETTLEMENT IN WESTERN SCOTLAND

Figure 6.8: Section through deposits in area B3-B4 at Oakbank, showing secondary pile 497 driven into the organic deposits, but not reaching the loch bed (source: Dixon 2004:141). building is carried out on top (Pétrequin 1984:63). As the mound of debris on the Oakbank site became larger and larger, it became necessary to add stones to stabilise secondary piles that could no longer reach the loch bed (cf. Munro’s observation of this, 1894a:109), thus explaining the boulder capping which seals the site. By this stage the site becomes effectively unusable, since the boulders prevent the insertion of more replacement piles, ultimately leading to the abandonment of the site. Eventually, after abandonment all trace of organic superstructures is eroded off the top of the mound, leaving the stone and timber mound as is found at Oakbank (see figure 6.9).

temperatures (which govern the quantities of water locked in upland snowfields) and precipitation to generalise but a few (Lyle and Smith 1994). The water level in Loch Tay currently fluctuates between summer and winter by between two and three metres1, whicheven allowing for reduced fluctuations in the later prehistoric period, when woodland coverage would have been denser- causes considerable problems for any structure built in shallow water. The occupation surface needs to be raised at least 2m from the average summer water level in order to guarantee that the site will be habitable during the winter months when the loch level is much higher. [Morrison considered the importance of glacio-isostatic rebound at Loch Awe (1981), which may have raised the tops of crannogs at the east end of the loch more than those at the west; however, given our limited knowledge of the taphonomy of these sites and the numerous variables relating to conflation, depth of water etc, it seems unlikely that this factor will be informative in determining site chronologies on the basis of relationship to water level.] The results from a total station survey of the Loch Tay crannogs demonstrated that in order to remain perennially above the suggested water level, which seems likely to have been on average 1- 1.5m lower than present, based on a palaeoshoreline in the loch and the relative position of the walkway at Oakbank (Harding 2000:310), the occupation level of the Dall Farm South site in the loch, for example, would have had to have been 1.7m higher than the top of the crannog mound as it survives today (Cavers 2001). Given, then, the likelihood that crannogs built in fluctuating lochs would have had to have been built in such a way as to deal with changing water levels

The Oakbank model: discussion This interpretation is not without difficulties. First of all, it can be argued that some of the evidence taken as support for a free standing phase in fact argues for a packwerk construction. Although Crone et al assert that a packwerk crannog would not contain debris related to the occupation of the site within the mound we have already seen how this can in fact occur in certain circumstances. It was probably commonplace that as crannog sites were rebuilt and expanded, debris of earlier occupation was overlain by later foundation material and piling. This would also explain why there are apparently complete portions of flooring within the mound at Oakbank. Of crucial importance to the debate is the water level around the site during the period of construction and occupation. Water levels through time are notoriously difficult to reconstruct, being dependant on so many variables such as drainage and inflow, woodland coverage, soil types in the loch basin, seasonal

1

Information from measurements taken by Firbush Outdoor Centre, Loch Tay (pers. comm.).

64

CONSTRUCTION, OCCUPATION AND TAPHONOMY

Figure 6.9: Schematic representation of the taphonomic model as proposed by Dixon (1994b; 2004) for the crannog at Oakbank. The primary free-standing structure causes a mound of occupation and structural debris to accumulate; structural failures caused by unstable piles contribute to the destruction of the superstructure, and boulders are added to stabilise the mound and support replacement piles; eventually the site is abandoned and the superstructure above the boulder layer is eroded away. 65

CRANNOGS AND LATER PREHISTORIC SETTLEMENT IN WESTERN SCOTLAND

Figure 6.10 Midden material and other debris accumulating around pile-built structures in shallow water margins in Lake Nokoué, Republic of Benin, West Africa (source: Pétrequin 1984). the free-standing pile structure seems much more plausible in a structural sense. It is notable that one other crannog that seems a possible candidate for a freestanding superstructure, at Dumbuck on the Clyde, was constructed in an intertidal location that would require the building to be able to deal with fluctuating water levels (cf. Sands and Hale 2001:43-4).

Cavers 2001). This accords with the findings at Ederline, where a silt layer, context 102 (see appendix 2) separated two organic deposits, in association with a large bone assemblage, interpreted as midden material. It is possible that these deposits on both sites represent dumping of refuse into what may have been very shallow water-or even boggy ground-that was subsequently inundated by seasonal loch level rise, which would account for the discontinuous silt layers; such peripheral refuse deposits have also been identified on Irish crannogs (Lynn 1986:70). This possibility, that crannogs may have been situated in shallow or marshy ground that was perhaps only seasonally flooded, would

Changing water levels could account for the inorganic silt layers found within the organic deposits at Oakbank. These silt layers were observed during the excavation of area B5 in 2001, when small quantities of poorly preserved bone were also found (Dixon and 66

CONSTRUCTION, OCCUPATION AND TAPHONOMY also explain why many of the wooden artefacts found in the Oakbank mound did not float away before burial on the site (cf. Crone et al 2001:64). Such a situation has been observed around the bases of pile built dwellings in contemporary Benin (see figure 6.10; Pétrequin 1984:73). It is notable that at Ederline in Loch Awe, a loch level drop of c.1m would bring much of the bedrock outcrop above the surface of the water, allowing access along it and into the deeper water of the loch.

crannogs may have increased in size and monumentality and as such their permanence in the landscape became more and more apparent as their use continued. Fredengren has recently considered multiphase sites in Lough Gara as products of ‘tribal nodes’- focal points in the landscape around which human activity was arranged through much of the prehistoric and historic periods. Crannogs, as significant monuments in the landscape would have been repeatedly used and re-used deliberately, since the site would have been known and thought of as a settlement, while ‘drawing on the power of earlier monuments and places’ (Fredengren 2002:110). Deliberately re-occupying an abandoned or dilapidated crannog, when it would it most cases probably have been simpler to start from scratch with a new site (see discussion by Harding 2000a:305) must have been undertaken as an attempt to continue the attachment to particular structures and associated land. The motivation must have been largely symbolic and driven by tradition, since crannogs were often occupied preferentially over natural islands that could have served the purpose just as adequately. In the north east end of Loch Awe, the archipelago of natural islands appears to have been unused in the prehistoric period, while several crannogs were constructed close by; a similar situation seems to have been the case in Lough Gara, at Inch Island, where an artificial islet was built just off the shore of a natural island (Fredengren 2002:89). It was apparently the artificiality of the site that was important, suggesting an attachment to the structure that was prevalent over issues of practicality.

Construction and taphonomy: approaching crannog archaeology Crannogs as ‘wet tels’ Crannogs, for the most part, cannot be thought of as single constructions relating to a single point in time. Every example investigated by excavation so far has shown signs that the site was repeatedly refurbished, rebuilt and reoccupied over a long period of time, for example with evidence for late Bronze Age construction as well as medieval presence at Loch Leathan (appendix 1). Even at Oakbank, where the start and end dates of the site are relatively well defined, construction and occupation appears to have continued over perhaps as much as 500 years between 800 and 300 BC (Sands 1997:41). This view of crannogs affects the way the must be approached archaeologically. In a practical sense, archaeological material including structural, artefactual and palaeoenvironmental remains must be interpreted within an appropriate taphonomic model and cannot in all instances be assumed to relate to the dated occupation of the site, without clear stratigraphic relationships. Significantly, radiocarbon dates from structural timbers can only be viewed as indications of a single phase of activity on the site, and without excavation it cannot be asserted that this represents a primary phase or otherwise, or even that the date signifies a major occupation. As such, crannogs must be thought of as complex accumulations of activity, and as the few excavated examples have shown, there are no clear rules as to how crannog sites form, or as to which deposits will be found in any given part of the site.

The theme of the constant reuse of ancient sites is entirely in keeping with what is known about the use of terrestrial settlements of western Scotland in the first millennia BC/AD: in many instances, drystone sites appear to have been in use from late Bronze or early Iron Age foundations through to the later first millennium AD. However, applying this interpretation to crannogs carries the same complications as affect the archaeology of the terrestrial record. Barber and Crone (2001) and Cowley (2003) have recently questioned the assumption that later prehistoric monuments such as the broch village complexes of the north mainland and the Northern Isles were continuously occupied over the course of the first millennia, demonstrating that not only can frequent modification, rebuilding and repair of structures occur within very short periods of time, but that large accumulations of debris deposits can result from very short periods of activity (Cowley 2003:80). Crannog sites are perhaps even more prone to the bias of elongated stratigraphy since water-logging preserves much of the history of construction below the water level, and Cowley has warned against the temptation to think in terms of a static view of later prehistoric settlement, in which society was organised around the same nodal points over the course of two millennia (ib. id. 81). Some dryland sites have suggested that the

In this way, however, crannogs demonstrate very clearly the way in which later prehistoric settlements were not simply buildings that were built, occupied and abandoned within the timeframe of a single generation. Instead, they grew through time, becoming increasingly complex as archaeological sites and, in some instances, becoming increasingly monumental and significant as settlements. The possibility that some sites with late Bronze Age origins- such as Oakbank- may have begun as pile built structures suggests that, as settlements, 67

CRANNOGS AND LATER PREHISTORIC SETTLEMENT IN WESTERN SCOTLAND structural life-span of later prehistoric timber buildings was likely to have been on average around 50 years, with constant maintenance (Barber and Crone 2001:76; cf. Reynolds 1979:36), while abandonment phases can have lasted for centuries (Cowley 2003:76). The average life-span of wooden piling in water is somewhat shorter, with a maximum of 30 years suggested on the basis of experimental work (Dixon 1994b), while ethnographic observations suggest repairs are likely to be necessary every 10 years or more, particularly in fluctuating water level conditions (Pétrequin 1984:63). So, while we should think of crannogs as focal points for activity through the first millennia BC/AD we should not think of them as unchanging, or even occupied constantly between phases indicated by independent dating.

elusive. At Hyndford crannog in Lanarkshire a succession of hearths was found within what may have been a large roundhouse similar to the Milton Loch structure, with a diameter of around 10m (Munro 1899). As we have noted, there is very little in the way of in situ structural evidence from Oakbank crannog, and though the general circularity of the site is suggested by the shape of the boulder mound, the distribution of piling is somewhat more ambiguous. Furthermore, until we understand more fully the processes of construction and taphonomy discussed in this chapter it will be difficult to relate confidently the shape of a crannog mound to the shape of its superstructure; Eaderloch and the rectangular structure in Loch nan Eala, Highland, certainly demonstrate that not all crannog superstructures were likely to have been circular (Morrison 1985:44).

Just as terrestrial sites evolved in form and function through time as societies changed, crannogs evolved in physical appearance and in the activities that were carried out on them. The following section considers one of the problematic issues in crannog archaeology: the evidence for superstructures, their physical appearance and the nature of the occupation of islet settlements.

There can be little doubt, however, that most crannogs were built to be lived in. The vast majority of artefactual material from crannogs strongly supports a domestic interpretation; quern stones are typical finds on crannogs, while sampled organic material from submerged crannogs has invariably indicated occupation, with strong evidence for agricultural activity, including crop processing and animal husbandry (Miller et al 1998; Miller 2002; Bogaard in Henderson and Cavers 2005). Of the other excavated examples, all have yielded evidence of occupation in some form. Hearths, usually taken to denote occupation, have been found on many excavated crannogs, for example at the Loch of the Clans, Nairnshire (Grigor 1865). Hale’s suggestion that estuarine crannogs were probably not primarily domestic in function arises from his excavations at Redcastle and Dumbuck, which produced little in the way of indisputably domestic material. The absence of pottery was particularly influential in his interpretation. However, pottery is not a particularly common find from Iron Age sites in west central Scotland, and sherds of the crude, poorly fired wares (e.g. ‘Dunagoil’ ware) that are found would not necessarily be well preserved in water. Furthermore, the estuarine sites investigated by Hale had been subjected to significant erosion by tidal waters, so that it might be appropriate to question what types of inorganic domestic artefact would be required to indicate that the Clyde sites were domestic in nature. A rotary quern was in fact recovered from the Dumbuck site, and the pollen analysis from the site indicated the presence of barley, wheat and rye (Sands and Hale 2001:47); it is worth considering that the evidence recovered would be more than worthy of a domestic interpretation had the site been a dryland terrestrial roundhouse. Sands and Hale’s interpretation of the estuarine sites as strategically placed access points, or even as functionally specific buildings need not preclude their primary function as dwellings.

Form and function: Crannogs as buildings It is an uncomfortable reality that the evidence for superstructures of any kind on crannogs is extremely thin. As noted in the introduction to this chapter, a few preconceived ideas of what lake dwellings should look like have been very influential, to the extent that the concept of the crannog as a structure has been taken far too uncritically (e.g. Armit 1997:35). Perhaps most influential in the modern archaeological concept of a crannog has been C.M.Piggott’s suggested reconstruction based on her excavation of Milton Loch I in Kirkcudbrightshire (C.M.Piggott 1953). The evidence for a large roundhouse with a central hearth seems indisputable (see figure 6.11), even if the excavator’s interpretation of a square internal arrangement is somewhat more dubious (see discussion in chapter 6, below). As a result if the fact that this structure was concurrent with what is understood to be the typical style of roundhouse for the middle Iron Age in southern Scotland, it has largely been assumed since Piggott’s excavation that crannogs were generally islet versions of terrestrial roundhouses, and while Piggott’s rectangular internal arrangements are arguable, this arrangement has been paralleled by Gregory in middle Iron Age terrestrial roundhouses in Dumfries and Galloway (Gregory 1998:228). Aside from Milton Loch, however, evidence of prehistoric crannog superstructures has been somewhat

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CONSTRUCTION, OCCUPATION AND TAPHONOMY

Figure 6.11: The domestic structure at Milton Loch I, with central hearth (Piggott 1953) Lochan Dughaill, Kintyre, was almost certainly an example of a single large roundhouse constructed on an artificial islet, consisting of radially arranged mortised timbers forming a circular platform c.10m in diameter (Munro 1893). It seems probable, however, that the remains recorded by Munro after his excavations represent the foundations of a superstructure that did not survive, and it is notable that there were no tenons in any of the mortise joints. From the sketch by Bogle made at the time of the excavations it is clear that a large quantity of stone had been removed from the site before the circular structure was uncovered (Ralston 2003:10), raising the possibility that stone construction formed a significant component of the superstructure, a possibility already noted in this chapter for other sites in Argyll.

appropriate to consider crannogs in the prehistoric period as variants of the monumental, ‘substantial’ roundhouses that characterise the period after the mid first millennium BC in Scotland (Hingley 1992).

Indeed, islet sites with stone superstructures seem the most promising in terms of identifying domestic structures. Sites such as Loch Leathan (appendix 1 and chapter 7) and the stone sites of the Inner Hebrides seem to closely parallel the local terrestrial drystone settlements, involving massive drystone walling, typically circular (Holley 2000). In Dumfries and Galloway, Rough Loch crannog similarly incorporates a heavy drystone wall with a diameter which is very similar to local terrestrial settlement structures (appendix 1 and chapter 6). As such, it seems

In the historic period we have some evidence for crannog superstructures, though only reliably from Buiston. Here there were two identifiable roundhouses, House A with a diameter of 5.6m and the more substantial House B, at 8m (figure 6.12). Both were wattle built structures with central hearths that had been repeatedly refurbished and replaced, on top of a clay floor (Crone 2000:107). The evidence for Early Historic domestic structures in southern Scotland is slight, so that it is difficult to find reliable parallels for the Buiston houses on crannogs (discussed by Crone

There is some evidence, however, that not all crannogs were single roundhouses, even in the earlier Iron Age. Barhapple crannog has a radiocarbon date of 2130 ± 50 BP, (360-40 cal.BC (GU-10920)) and Wilson describes it at the time of excavation as having at least two roundhouses, each with a central hearth (Wilson 1882:54). So while crannogs were undoubtedly monumental constructions in the sense of their impact on the landscape, it may not always be appropriate to think of them as single monumental roundhouses in the style envisaged in C.M.Piggott’s (1953) reconstruction.

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Figure 6.12: Houses A (top) and B from the Early Historic phases at Buiston, Ayrshire (Crone 2000). 2000:107-9). The two roundhouses at Buiston are broadly comparable in construction to those found within the vallum at Iona (Barber 1981), if somewhat smaller, though perhaps the best comparison comes from Deer Park Farms, Co. Antrim (Lynn 1987; 1994), where similar double wattle walled roundhouses were built within a raised rath. These buildings are somewhat less substantial, however, than the large timber halls expected of high status sites in the Early Historic period. Crone has taken this as evidence in support of the interpretation of Buiston as a mid to high- but not paramount- status site, since building floor area is often recognised as being closely linked to status (Crone 2000:165; Alcock 2004:250). However, it is notable that Lagore, a referenced royal site in Ireland, failed to produce convincing evidence for any large superstructure (see Hencken’s discussion of the

structural evidence, 1950:54) and Lynn has suggested that the small wattle structures interpreted by Hencken as temporary accommodation for the crannog builders (Hencken 1950:41) were in fact houses of the Early Christian levels (Lynn 1986:71). For this reason it is difficult to place too much weight on the importance of house size in the interpretation of status and function of Early Historic crannogs. Access to crannogs: causeways and harbours The majority of documented crannog sites do not have causeways that have been recognised by surveyors; 64 crannog sites have recognised causeway structures, with 67 ‘island dun’ sites in the Outer Hebrides giving a total of 131. Causeway structures are, however, notably more common in areas where the architecture of island 70

CONSTRUCTION, OCCUPATION AND TAPHONOMY settlements was predominantly in stone, such as the Hebridean sites, so that it is probable that this is an instance of bias in the visibility of the archaeology. Oakbank is the only site in Loch Tay that has a recorded timber walkway structure, but this was not noted until actively searched for in the loch bed silts and had gone undetected during the pre-disturbance survey (Dixon 1984). It seems likely, therefore, that many more crannogs had timber walkways that are difficult to recognise, though it is impossible to tell whether this was the case for the majority of sites.

issues raise important questions over the motivation for living over water, since it seems that in some cases the water did not have to be deep, and may not even have separated the site from the shore at certain times of the year. Fredengren has suggested that causeways on crannogs reflect a wish to ‘reconnect’ with the landscape outside the settlement, while simultaneously defining the terms on which visitors may access the site (Fredengren 2002:108). Similarly, causeways can be thought of as transitional spaces, where the boundary between the ‘outside’, natural world is crossed into the ‘inside’, domestic space (cf. O’Sullivan 2004:356). As discussed in chapter 5, this characteristic may have been why causeways were important places for votive offering in Late Bronze and Iron Age Britain, commonly around structures with other primary functions (cf. Field and Parker Pearson 2004), and the presence of causeways which now leave little trace may be a possible explanation for objects otherwise seen as isolated depositions, as at Dowalton and Carlingwark Loch in Dumfries and Galloway (Hunter 1994; 1997; see chapter 6, below). Causewayed crannogs, incorporating this experience of transition, may have been typical of the western Scottish Iron Age preference for settlement in inaccessible locations with restricted access, paralleled by other exclusive sites such as promontory forts. Sharples and Parker Pearson have commented on the importance of approach to Iron Age settlements in Scotland, with sites like Dun Vulan deliberately restricting access to the site to one direction using the natural topography, while the low entrances of Atlantic roundhouses required visitors to bow as they entered the site, thus enhancing the experience of transition during the movement from outside to in (Sharples and Parker Pearson 1997:264). Crannog walkways may have performed a similar function, and in this sense the perpendicular fence feature at Oakbank is interesting: it is possible that this structure would have obscured the crannog from the view of visitors until the threshold had been passed. This feature may also be paralleled in the ‘cross-causeways’ found on many island-sited Atlantic roundhouses in the Hebrides (Armit 1992).

Causeways have important implications for the ‘mentality’ of the crannog as a settlement. Joining the crannog to the shore of course greatly reduces the defensibility of the site, allowing potential attackers an easy means of access, even if hampered by draw bridges (e.g. possibly at Oakbank, Dixon 2004:128, and Barhapple, Munro 1885:117) or false steps on stone causeways (Holley 2000:61), so that the decision whether or not to connect the site to the shore must have been a trade-off between defence and convenience (Morrison 1985:50). Considerations of defence apart, the construction of a walkway also has implications for the function of the site, since it would have been appreciably more difficult to keep livestock on a crannog if the only access was by boat. The suggestion from palaeoenvironmental analyses that many Iron Age crannogs housed animals as well as people (Bogaard, in Henderson and Cavers 2004) carries with it an implication of access on foot, which perhaps in turn casts doubt on whether defence was really a primary concern in the decision to live on an island. The possibly contemporary crannogs of Buiston and Lochlee (figure 6.13) contrasted in the lack of a wooden walkway at Buiston (Munro 1879; cf. 1894b:218), necessitating access to the site by boat. It is difficult to assign significance to this however, since it could equally be argued that the occupants of Lochlee felt more secure and thus able to afford the luxury of a walkway, or that the threat to livestock herds was sufficient to require them to be kept on site, with the converse arguments possible for the lack of a walkway at Buiston. It seems probable, as discussed earlier in this chapter that some crannogs were built in very shallow water, in marshy ground or even on seasonally flooded ground, so that access on foot may not always have required a walkway. At Loch Quien 2, Bute (see appendix 1) the crannog mound is located less than 5m from the shore, where the water is only centimetres deep. Similarly, at Loch Eck the crannog mound is located at the end of a promontory which is submerged in very shallow water, so that a loch level drop of only 0.5m would have rendered the site accessible without getting wet, and it is notable that this level is approximately that at which the radial timbers noted on this site are located. These

Crannogs without causeways however, can be seen as much more isolated, requiring more effort to reach them, and considerably less practical in functional terms. Crannogs like Loch Leathan, Argyll were probably reached by boat, since the harbour feature is so well built, and there is no evidence of a causeway. It is, furthermore, possible that log-boats such as the one from Loch Arthur (Mowat 1996:50-2), which seems excessively long and elaborate for use on such a small loch, may also have been invested with special significance.

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Figure 6.13: Plan of Lochlee crannog, showing the walkway to the shore (Munro 1879). Conclusion

In this way, the deliberate act of occupying an ancient settlement may have been an important means of restating authority, with claims to land by resident groups given authority in the connection to long-lived settlement foci. The processes of rebuilding must have been supported by the structures of society, with both access to resources and control of labour being fundamental implications of crannog construction. The investment in the house, requiring the exercising of labour and resource control, would have reinforced the structures of society and heightened the symbolic importance of the house as a monument of community cohesion.

This chapter has considered the evidence for the ways in which crannogs form as archaeological sites, and the implications of the variability in these processes for our interpretation of lake dwelling archaeology. Recognising that crannogs were repeatedly occupied and reoccupied has implications beyond the interpretation of excavated data, however, and it is clear that building on ancient sites was undertaken deliberately, in an effort to physically realise the continuity of the lake dwelling tradition. Whatever it meant to live on an islet settlement, it seems that it was important to demonstrate the connection to earlier occupation on the site. Egenter has discussed the significance of rebuilding and ‘foundation traditions’ of settlements in agrarian societies, and the ways in which social relations may be reflected in the patterns of construction and rebuilding: … signs of traditional territorial law were set up at particular places on the occasion of founding a settlement. They functioned as occupation markers and as harmonious models of future settlement structure. … The cycles of renewal re-enacted the social, legal and territorial conditions of the settlement’s origins within the ritual present (Egenter 1992:159).

Pétrequin noted that to put in place a single vertical pile on a typical Lake Nokoué pile structure required in the region of 6 to 10 people (Pétrequin 1984:61). While this may allow us to consider that some less substantial pile built structures may have been built by a relatively small group of people, the physical effort required to bring the quantities of stone and timber required to build a massive packwerk site surely imply the cooperation of large numbers of people. For this reason, it is important to appreciate that the character of crannog structures can clearly change dramatically 72

CONSTRUCTION, OCCUPATION AND TAPHONOMY through time, with increasing monumentality apparently a common trend. It is likely that crannogs required greater labour input during maintenance than equivalent terrestrial structures, so that the statement made by occupying a monumental structure in such an unfavourable environment must have been one of a group confident of its place in society. As Barrett (1981) and Armit (1997:250) have discussed, the organisation of labour for the purposes of maintenance and rebuilding may have reinforced the unity of the household and helped establish local systems of labour and resource access. As the archaeology immediately demonstrates, crannogs were not static monuments, unchanging in form and function through time. There was clearly a great degree of variability on the islet settlement theme, both regionally and through time. This chapter has considered how this variability might affect our interpretation of crannog archaeology, particularly with reference to the interpretation of dating evidence from excavated and non-excavated contexts. Yet as we have seen, the ways in which crannogs were built, used, abandoned and reoccupied was not a simple matter of practicality, and the occupation of ancient islet sites must have been a very deliberate undertaking, designed to create a tangible connection to the past. Crannog settlements were clearly long-lived, but the function, form and meaning of these sites did not remain constant through time. These changes in use, form and function within localised settlement contexts, are the concern of part 2 of this book.

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CHAPTER SEVEN: SOUTH WEST SCOTLAND

of the densest concentrations of crannog sites in Scotland, Wigtownshire clearly has potential to be among the most informative areas in terms of the nature and chronology of crannog occupation in Scotland. Evaluation of these south western sites in the following study derives from primary fieldwork carried out as part of the South West Crannog Survey, as well as supplementary fieldwork carried out by the author and from the re-evaluation and reinterpretation of antiquarian reports in the light of this fieldwork. Settlement patterns in south west Scotland have long been assumed to relate directly to patterns of field survey, and it is notable that in Dumfriesshire recent survey by the RCAHMS increased the number of later prehistoric sites by more than a third (RCAHMS 1997). However, bearing in mind these issues of site detection and survivability (cf. Stevenson 1976), discernible patterns are present in the available record.

Introduction This section considers the later prehistoric archaeology of South West Scotland, and the way in which crannogs feature as an element of the settlement record in this region. The later prehistoric archaeology of south west Scotland as a whole has suffered from a lack of attention from researchers, despite the fact that the surviving archaeology of this period is at least as rich as elsewhere in Scotland, being both well preserved and plentiful (see Banks 2002). Considerations of the archaeology of south west Scotland that have taken place have tended to focus on the enclosed settlements- hillforts, homesteads and palisaded enclosures- attempting to relate them to better studied areas such as the Borders, Lothian and Northumbria. This trend has been further perpetuated as a result of recent survey and excavation by the RCAHMS and others in Eastern Dumfriesshire (RCAHMS 1997), where the later prehistoric settlement record is most closely related to that of the east of the country, while the lands west of the Nith have remained largely unstudied. It is important to note at this juncture that to consider the archaeology of Dumfries and Galloway as a single regional block would be to mask important variation in the character of the settlement archaeology found there. Despite the lack of field survey and excavation in this area, it is readily apparent that the archaeology of western Dumfries and Galloway is different in many ways to that of the east, and that to attempt to understand the entire region through a single explanatory framework would probably be misguided. In many ways, the archaeology of later prehistoric Dumfries and Galloway is typical of the Northern British Iron Age as a whole: there are many overlaps and parallels with adjacent regions, but it is nonetheless important to consider the region on its own terms if meaningful conclusions are to be drawn.

Equally pressing for the present study is the issue of using non-systematic survey data in regional analysis. The catalogue of sites for the western regions of Dumfries and Galloway has been constructed over the course of the 20th century, through various programmes of small scale survey and inspection (RCAHMS 1912, 1913, 1985, 1987; Feachem 1956; Truckell 1984; Cowley and Brophy 2001), and as such terminology and classification have been somewhat inconsistent. Archaeological survey and classification inevitably involves a degree of subjectivity, but useful observations can be made when considered comparisons incorporated into the study, as they are here. Analysis of site classification, although perhaps unfashionable, is integral to the investigation of understudied areas such south west Scotland, and must be addressed as part of any critical investigation (cf. Massagrande 1995). Chronology and terminology In this section I use chronological terminology related to the presence of the Romans in southern Scotland (contra Hingley 1992:7), and will refer to the preRoman Iron Age (PRIA) equating to the period from around the seventh or sixth centuries BC to the primary campaigns of Agricola in the late first century AD, and the Roman Iron Age and sub-Roman Iron Age (RIA) thereafter until the emergence of the historic period around the sixth or seventh centuries AD.

Galloway is of particular interest to the present study due to the large number of crannogs documented in this area. Indeed, Galloway has often been considered the ‘heartland’ of Scottish crannogs, due largely to the original work of Robert Munro and the efforts of the highly active Ayr and Wigtownshire Archaeological Association in the 19th century (e.g. Munro 1885; Wilson 1882), who investigated several artificial islands during the course of agricultural draining works. As one 74

SOUTH WEST SCOTLAND

Figure 7.1: Distribution of upland hut-circles, roundhouses and ringditches in study area 1. Unlike the regions north of the Antonine wall it is argued that, whatever the precise nature of the Roman presence in Galloway (considered in detail below), the effect on the local communities seems to have been significant, and this is particularly telling in assemblages from crannogs in the early first millennium AD. Furthermore, these (necessarily imprecisely defined) terms equate broadly to detectable horizons in crannog construction and occupation in the region, and for these reasons they are used throughout this chapter as the framework within which settlement and social development is investigated.

contour line. It is necessary when analysing the distribution of hut circle sites to consider a balanced distribution in which factors of survivability and detection rate are considered (Stevenson 1975). While hut-circle sites are much more likely to survive in marginal, unfarmed land at higher altitudes, they are consequently much less likely to be discovered except by concerted systematic survey, usually guided by aerial photographic evidence. Of the 108 hut circle sites located in the study area (figure 7.01), 96 (89%) are located above the 100m contour (figure 7.05). The RCAHMS classification of these field monuments as ‘hut-circles’ causes problems for the present study, as such ambiguous terms usually do. The circular roundhouse structure as a form of settlement can be demonstrated to have currency throughout a large chronological span, from the Bronze Age through to the early historic periods, and there is little to guide classification with regard to chronological periods without excavation. It seems likely that many of the examples found in association with cairn fields, field banks and burnt mounds, mainly in the uplands as at Cairnmon Fell (NX04NE 41), Little Laight, Meikle Laight (NX07SE 49) Craigbirnoch (NX16NE 86) and Dalhabboch (NX16NW 88) (figure 7.02), are predominantly of Bronze Age date (Gregory 2002:68) though Halliday has drawn attention to the almost

The Terrestrial Settlement Record Upland and unenclosed settlement and roundhouse morphology The distribution of unenclosed hut-circle sites should perhaps be viewed in terms of the coverage of modern systematic survey in the area, since in those areas covered by RCAHMS surveys in modern times hut circle sites have been found in proliferation; 90% of the known hut-circle sites in the study area were first recorded by during walkover survey by the RCAHMS (see figure 7.01; Cowley 2000:168). It is clear that the majority of hut-circles are to be found in marginal areas, typically in unimproved land above the 100m OD 75

CRANNOGS AND LATER PREHISTORIC SETTLEMENT IN WESTERN SCOTLAND

40m

Figure 7.2: Upland hut-circles and enclosure system at Dalhabboch, Diddles Hill (NX16NW 88). mutually exclusive distribution of cairnfields and platform settlements in south east Scotland (Halliday 1985). The chronological specification of ‘cairnfields’ need not, perhaps, be tightly defined, since these are often interpreted as areas of small scale agricultural clearance and so without necessarily distinct chronological boundaries. The same may be said of the general theme of unenclosed hut-circle settlement, since this configuration certainly was common in the later second and earlier first millennium BC (Fairhurst and Taylor 1971; Jobey 1980; Rideout 1996; Barber 1997) as well as later, apparently post dating the abandonment of fortifications at many sites in southern and eastern Scotland (papers in Harding (ed.) 1982; RCAHMS 1997; Cowley 1998; Armit 1999). It may even be likely that unenclosed settlement was common throughout the later prehistoric period, occurring complimentarily to fortified and defended settlement types. The distribution of hut circle settlement groups in upland unimproved lands is an artefact of differential survival rates as we have discussed, and it is entirely plausible that unenclosed hut circle settlements coexisted with

enclosed settlements throughout the later second and first millennia BC in both upland and lowland zones (Harding 2000:365); indeed, preliminary indications from cropmark sites in the Luce area suggest that this was the case (such as at Fox Plantation; MacGregor 1996, 1997). The hut circles in the study area generally measure between 5 and 12m, with an average and typical diameter of 8-9m (Cowley 2000:169). They typically comprise a low perimeter bank, sometimes set back into a hill slope and occasionally (more commonly in the west of the region) with porch or enhanced entrance features, such as the ‘baffle walls’ at sites like Little Larg (NX16NE 82), Little Laight (NX07SE 44), Several Burn (NX06NE 4) and Dalhabboch (NX16NW 88, and see figure 7.02). Generally, the upland examples are of a type widespread throughout Scotland and northern England, the common double walled variant of which is often referred to as the ‘Dalrulzion’ type (Thorneycroft 1933). Almost invariably, the entrance to hut-circles within the present study area is aligned in the SE 76

SOUTH WEST SCOTLAND quadrant (E, SE or S), a feature that has been taken to indicate ritual concerns with sunrise during solstices on later Iron Age sites (Oswald 1997:93), while Yates suggests that the frequency with which hut-circles are located on S and SW facing slopes indicates attempts to maximise the available light and warmth from the sun (Yates 1984:223). In the study area, the majority of sites are located on south-facing slopes (see figure 7.06). The uniformity of this arrangement might suggest a broad contemporaneity within the currency of these ritual and practical concerns, so that notable exceptions such as hut-circle 1 within the complex at Cairnmon Fell (NX04NW1) may indicate longevity of settlement at that site, outliving the general concern with entrance orientation in these structures. Furthermore, it might be reasonable to suggest that the larger, more developed sites like the massively built roundhouse at Cairnerzean (NX16NW 70), with its 3m thick wall might date to the earlier Iron Age, after the commencement of the main phase of monumental roundhouse construction (Hingley 1992).

Jobey’s (1980) excavations at Green Knowe in Peeblesshire dated the unenclosed platform settlement there to the late second and early first millennium BC; similar date ranges were obtained for the upland hut circles at Carn Dubh, Moulin, Perthshire (Rideout 1995:158-9). The majority of hut-circles in the study are located above the 150m contour (see figure 7.05). The survival of hut-circle sites in these marginal areas suggests that the upland areas were ultimately abandoned by the mid first millennium BC, presumably due at least in part to climatic deterioration which placed severe constraints on altitudes at which arable agriculture could be practised (see discussion, Chapter 3), a theory which is at least believable due to the fact that many of the upland hut circle settlements are buried in peat. Without subscribing to a rigid and generalised model of movement towards enclosure throughout the first millennium BC, a view based on the now-discredited Hownam model (Armit 1999; Harding 2000), this upland abandonment seems in part to have been the cause of increased agricultural settlement and consequent territorial intensification of

Figure 7.3: Aerial photograph of the juxtaposed unenclosed roundhouse, souterrain and enclosures at Cairn Connell Hill (source: Cowley 2000).

77

CRANNOGS AND LATER PREHISTORIC SETTLEMENT IN WESTERN SCOTLAND RCAHMS cataloguing for hut circle sites categorises them on the basis of morphology, however, not on the basis of likely date. It is clear that many of the examples of roundhouses date to the later first millennium BC and that some, such as the Romano-British example at Moss Raploch, were in use in the first millennium AD (Condry and Ansell 1978). For the purposes of this study, however, it may be reasonable to categorise those examples situated in elevated locations, perhaps above the 150m contour (cf. Gregory 2002:68) as belonging predominantly to the late second/early first millennium BC, and as such this zone occupies a marginal role within Iron Age and Early Historic settlement patterns. Lowland cropmark sites are somewhat more difficult to assign, however, and may not easily be discounted from either the earlier or later horizons, though perhaps we might tentatively suggest that larger diameter roundhouses, and particularly those with two opposed entrances such as the example at Rispain Campparalleled by Carronbridge and Hayknowes- should date to the later Iron Age horizon (Haggarty and Haggarty 1983; Johnston 1994; Cowley 2000:171; Cowley and Brophy 2001; Gregory 2001a). The numerous sites catalogued as ‘ring-ditch’ by the RCAHMS, typically occurring in lowland farmland regions as cropmarks, present the biggest problem for interpretation, since it is almost impossible to separate the penannular ditches of Neolithic henges from later prehistoric ring ditch houses without excavation. The RCAHMS plotted the ring-ditches of the region on a map of known and possible henge monuments (RCAHMS 1997:116), though it seems likely that some, particularly of those around Dunragit associated with enclosures (e.g. Kirminnoch, NX15NW 24) might belong to a later prehistoric settlement context. Ringditches as a class tend to be difficult to date much more accurately where they are not found in association with enclosure structures or stratigraphically related to better known forms.

Figure 7.4: Left: Moss Raploch, RIA unenclosed roundhouse (Condry and Ansell 1978); Right: Roundhouses with double opposed entrances (Gregory 2001a; Haggerty and Haggerty 1973; Johnston 1994).

Forts and enclosed/defended settlement The study area is characterised by a variety of enclosed and defended settlements, including promontory forts, hilltop and lowland palisaded enclosures, hilltop and lowland fortifications and defended ‘homesteads’. These sites have tended to be discussed in terms of the enclosure models of the better known areas of southern Scotland (see Harding (ed.) 1982; RCAHMS 1997; Armit 1999; Harding 2000), but there are reasons for considering the enclosed and defended settlement of the western areas of the region on its own terms. The division between east and west was noticed as early as the late nineteenth century by F.R.Coles in his excellent survey of the forts and mottes of the region (Coles 1893), whereby the size of the western sites decreases and construction is more usually based on or incorporating stone. On the whole, western defended

the lowlands in the later part of the first millennium BC (Harding 2000:362; Halliday 2002). The development of the cropmark roundhouse settlement at Cairn Connell Hill, near Kirminnoch (Rhins) appears to reflect this intensification and development through time, with the unenclosed roundhouse juxtaposed with curvilinear and rectilinear enclosures, as well as a souterrain structure (see figure 7.03; Cowley 2000:170). The possibility that upland hut circle complexes represent multiple occupations as a result of transhumance patterns during the late second and early first millennium BC may further complicate the picture. 78

SOUTH WEST SCOTLAND

Altitudes of Hut-circles in SA1 300

Altitude OD (m)

250 200 150 100 50 0 0

50

100

150

200

Figure 7.5: Altitude distribution of hut-circle sites in study area 1.

Aspect of Hut-circles in SA1 35

% of sites

30 25 20 15 10 5 0 NE

SE

SW

NW

Aspect Figure 7.6: Slope aspect distribution of hut-circle sites in study area 1

settlements are smaller than those further east, usually enclosing less than 0.5 Ha (no forts in the study area exceed 1.5 Ha, though there are larger examples further east in the uplands), and tend to occupy rocky summits with commanding views over surrounding land (figure 7.08, 7.09), and there certainly are no candidates for equivalent sites of the minor ‘oppida’ found further east at Burnswark. The larger contour forts such as at Cairn Pat (figure 7.09) in the North Rhins or Doon of May, which commands views over much of the West Machars, may have operated as central places within the local settlement system, but on the basis of surface survey it seems that forts such as these were not

occupied in the density that many of the major forts of the south east were. The distribution of forts in the study area is one which requires scrutiny. Issues of site classification are again most pressing, since it is not likely that modern typologies which divide sites on the basis of physical attributes such as size, ‘defensibility’, physical location and (least of all) state of preservation would have been meaningful categorical divisions during the sites’ use. Discrepancies in terminology are illustrated by sites such as Dinnans (NX44SE 2) where a small promontory fort is classed as a ‘settlement’ on the basis of its 79

CRANNOGS AND LATER PREHISTORIC SETTLEMENT IN WESTERN SCOTLAND location- ‘not in a strong defensive location’ (OS archaeology notes, 1973). However, it is frequently clear that defensibility was not always the most important factor in the choice of location of fortified sites, and as such classification based on such criteria are likely to be misguided and mask important similarities. As figure 7.07 shows, there are apparent groupings of ‘types’ of defended settlement, though there are good reasons to be wary of these groups, based as they are upon categorisation by different surveyors, surveying different areas at different times. It is not clear, for example, that some of the smaller defended sites categorised as ‘homesteads’ should genuinely be separated from some of the smaller forts. Furthermore, it is not at all easy to separate those sites that were originally open settlements, which later witnessed some form of enclosure, perhaps even after the abandonment of many of the structures contained within, from palisaded enclosure sites typically found on more fertile soils in the Luce isthmus area.

multivallate hillfort enclosures known widely across Scotland. The examples of these in the southwest are best known from excavations in the eastern part of the region, at Tynron Doon (Williams 1971), Castle O’er (Halliday 2001; Mercer forthcoming) as well as from Burnswark (Jobey 1978). The available evidence for the area parallels that of other parts of Scotland, with evidence from large upland enclosure at Burnswark having been occupied in the late Bronze Age/early Iron Age as well as later, during the Roman Iron Age. Indeed, Roman practice siege works located around Burnswark hillfort, while clearly constructed after the abandonment of settlement within the fort itself, presumably indicate the perceived need for training of Roman troops in tackling fortified sites that were in use in the area at the time. Furthermore, Mercer’s excavations at the multiphase site at Castle O’er yielded several dates for the refurbishment and use of ramparts between the second and fifth centuries AD that indicate the renewed interest in fortified settlement by the time of the Roman Iron Age (Halliday 2001:100). Excavations at Trusty’s Hill, Anwoth, revealed a similar pattern of re-occupation of an earlier Iron Age fort in the early second half of the first millennium AD (Thomas 1961).

Fortified enclosures- ‘hillforts’ Within the general category of ‘fort’ there are clearly examples which may be treated as a separate group, resembling more closely the typical univallate and

Figure 7.7: Distribution of defended forts, promontory forts, prehistoric enclosures and homesteads in study area 1. 80

SOUTH WEST SCOTLAND

Figure 7.8: The small fort at North Balfern (NX45SW 4), Mochrum, Wigtownshire

Figure 7.9: Left: Doon of Carsluith, Gatehouse; right: Cairn Pat, East Rhins (RCAHMS). Typically, upland defended settlements of the type found in Dumfries and Galloway constitute circular to sub-rectangular enclosures, usually with several earthen or stone ramparts with medial ditches. They often command good views and frequently make use of naturally defensive positions on inland promontories and steep sided hills, standing in contrast to lowland enclosed settlements (Gregory 2001a:37). However, there are several interesting variants on the theme, which may hint at either chronological differences or influence of exotic constructional methods. At Fell of Barhullion (NX34SE 15) a two-phase fort comprises an earth and stone rampart, with an external cheveaux-defrise, succeeded by a well-built faced stone wall, incorporating at least one intra-mural cell. Surface survey suggests that the earlier earth/stone fort was replaced by the later, complex walled stone structure perhaps closer related to the Atlantic style ‘duns’ (e.g. Castle Haven and Killantringan Bay, considered below) found elsewhere in the western parts of the region. Fell of Barhullion may not be the only fort in the region to display these complex features, as possible intra-mural galleries have been noted in the fortifications at Cruise Back Fell (NX16SE 6).

Possible further indication of extraneous influences comes from the rectilinear fortification at Rispain Camp, Whithorn. The square ramparts at this site stand over 2m high within a ditch almost 4m wide, excavation of which produced animal bones as well as three human skulls and implements of bronze (Haggerty and Haggerty 1983:25). While the rectilinear configuration is not necessarily out of context within the broader settlement of northern England and southern Scotland (Harding 2004:62; 1974:32-33) it is unusual in western Dumfries and Galloway, and the special nature of the deposits found at that siteincluding quantities of human remains- might suggest that the site had a status other than that of a standard settlement in the local system; this impression is further heightened by the occurrence of square barrows in the region (Cowley 1996). The monumental character of the two roundhouses excavated within the earthworks, both over 13m in diameter, recalls West Brandon and the rectilinear enclosures of Northumberland (Jobey 1962). Radiocarbon dates for the Rispain site span the turn of the millennium (Haggerty and Haggerty 1983). At Trusty’s Hill, Anwoth (NX55NE 2.01), a vitrified fort occupies a craggy summit in the Boreland hills near 81

CRANNOGS AND LATER PREHISTORIC SETTLEMENT IN WESTERN SCOTLAND Gatehouse of Fleet, with commanding views of the shoreline and the Fleet estuary. Though an earlier Iron Age date is offered by the excavator for the primary hillfort phase, the secondary, ultimately vitrified phase was dated by vessel sherds of classes D and E to the sixth to seventh centuries AD (Thomas 1961:59). Laing has commented on the highly unusual Pictish symbols carved into the rock face at Trusty’s Hill, suggesting that though the incised double disc and Z-rod are classifiable as Class I symbols, their style and character seem closer in nature to Class II symbols, consequently inferring that they were inspired and inscribed some time after the mid eighth century (Laing 1999:11). Given the later first millennium AD dates retrieved during excavation we can expect hillfort construction and occupation dating to the later half of the first millennium AD in the study area to have been more widespread. The so called ‘horned god’ carving on the same outcrop has been attributed, on the basis of parallels in Strathclyde, to the Iron Age (Laing 1999:11), which if correct might also constitute evidence of earlier Iron Age occupation on the site. Cowley has suggested that the Pictish symbolism at Trusty’s Hill reflects the importance of the site, an interpretation ‘further underlined by the vitrification of parts of the ramparts’ (2000:174), though the significance of vitrification can surely now only be taken as an indication of timberlaced rampart construction, without any necessary implication of date or status. Similar interpretations have, however, been offered for contemporary sites at Mote of Mark, Rockliffe, where later first millennium AD metalworking was recovered from within partially vitrified ramparts (Laing 1973a, 1973b; Laing and Longley forthcoming), and for Tynron Doon, which produced 7th and 8th century artefacts (J.Williams 1971a). The Mote of Mark was an important centre of production of high-quality goods in the 6th to 8th centuries, and appears to be representative of the resurgence of interest in fortified dwellings in the west of Scotland in the Early Historic period.

inland in the study area. Excavation at two promontory enclosures, McCulloch’s Castle (Scott-Elliott 1964) and the multiphase site at Cruggleton Castle (Ewart 1985) have indicated occupation in the early first millennium AD, with a first/second century roundhouse constructed within the fortifications at Cruggleton evidenced by radiocarbon dates and a bow fibula (Ewart 1985:12-14), Roman pottery from McCulloch’s Castle (Scott-Elliot 1964:123), and a Roman coin from Borness Batteries (Robertson 1970: table 1). Toolis’ excavations at Carghidown have indicated that occupation of promontory forts may have taken place in earlier periods, however, as suggested by the saddle querns recovered from that site. Where excavation of the fortifications has taken place, this has indicated construction techniques similar to other fortifications in the region, with stone faced ramparts at Carghidown and the incorporation of palisading and stone facing at McCulloch’s Castle. At Ardwell Point, an Atlantic roundhouse has been constructed on the promontory, within a ditched rampart enclosure (see figure 7.10), perhaps reflecting the changing character of existing settlement through time, witnessing the incorporation of exotic architectural styles into the traditional type of defensive settlement. It has been noted that promontory enclosed settlements in Atlantic regions can be the sites of particular activities, such as metalworking or salt manufacture, though it is also clear that many promontory sites were simply a different configuration of settlement, perhaps purely pragmatic in the use of natural defences. Promontory settlement would provide access to the sea, and probably also shelter for boats in close proximity, as at the promontory ‘dun’ at Castle Haven, though Toolis has commented on the fact that many of the promontory forts of western Galloway appear not to have been sited with easy access to the sea in mind (2003:65) The fact that many promontory forts were constructed in secluded areas in order to hide them from view combined with the often highly elaborate nature of their fortifications highlights their deliberate exclusion and marginality. Promontory settlements must have been the first point of contact between local groups and sea-borne trade, however, and in this respect it is intriguing that a proportion of the Roman material found on non-Roman sites in the area (aside from the crannog assemblages, discussed below) comes from coastal sites (Robertson 1970: figs 1-4), perhaps hinting that the mechanisms by which Roman material was finding its way into Galloway were not necessarily through primary contact with Roman forces. The promontory forts of the region appear to embody many of the themes present throughout the later Iron Age settlement of Galloway, in the way that they occupy marginal but lowland and coastal zones- deliberately

Promontory enclosures A large percentage of the fortified enclosures in the study area are classifiable as promontory forts. The coastline morphology of the western areas of Dumfries and Galloway are favourable to the construction of defended settlements which utilise naturally defensive positions on craggy outcrops in the cliff coastline. It is questionable as to where the distinction between promontory forts as a class and the other enclosed defended sites of the area should be drawn, particularly the smaller forts and homesteads, since in morphology, scale and complexity promontory forts seem to have been constructed according to similar principles. Particularly illustrative of this is the promontory fort at Kemp’s Walk (NX95NE 1; see figure 7.10), which is of a size and complexity comparable to the larger sites 82

SOUTH WEST SCOTLAND creating a dichotomy between centrality within the within what were probably the main zones of interaction and activity, while maintaining a level of seclusion and separation in the use of complex fortification and occupation of inaccessible locations. Palisaded enclosures and cropmark settlements The distribution of palisaded settlements in the study area is largely correlative with the location of suitable land for the detection of cropmarks; in the present study area this effectively equates to the Luce isthmus and limited areas of the Rhins- those areas where aerial survey has been most intense (Cowley and Brophy 2001). Detection of palisaded enclosures is otherwise restricted to excavation, where phases of enclosure on more complex sites were occasionally limited to simple stockades. With the acceptance that the ‘Hownam’ model of movement through enclosed phases, starting with palisaded enclosures, need have little bearing on the developmental sequence of the south west it has become necessary to incorporate the majority of them into an unfortunately broad chronological horizon spanning all of the first millennium BC and much of the first millennium AD. Recent excavation at the curvilinear palisaded enclosure at Titwood, Renfrewshire has indicated that some examples can be dated to the medieval period, so that we should be wary of immediately assuming a prehistoric dating for the class (Johnson et al 2003).

Figure 7.10: Above: Kemp’s Walk promontory fort (Stell 1996) and below: Atlantic roundhouse and promontory enclosure at Ardwell Point (RCAHMS).

Having said this, the majority of examples are likely to relate to the later prehistoric period, particularly when found in association with fort defences as at McNaughton’s Fort, or with datable house types as at Piltanton Burn, where a palisaded enclosure is associated with at least four ring-ditches. The complex sequence outlined by the RCAHMS at Gibb’s Hill in Dumfriesshire reveals the expansion, elaboration and contraction of the enclosure through at least five phases of rebuilding at that settlement, probably occurring through the mid to late first millennium BC (RCAHMS 1997:122-4), illustrating continued interest in upland enclosed locations for settlement. In the west of the region, however, palisaded enclosures have so far mainly been identified on low-lying agricultural land (see figure 7.11; Cowley and Brophy 2001; Cowley 2002), typically enclosing areas less than a hectare within single or double palisade trenches as at Barsolus and East Galdenoch (see figure 7.12). Association with ring-ditch houses on cropmark sites like Leffnoll near Dunragit might suggest that the construction of these lowland palisaded enclosures was common in the mid first millennium BC, while structures A and B at the Fox Plantation site near Dunragit are both datable within the second half of the first millennium BC (Macgregor 1996, 1997).

Homesteads The small fortified settlement sites that occur in western Dumfries and Galloway known as ‘homesteads’ in the RCAHMS catalogues are a clear example of the problems associated with classification of field monuments in understudied areas. The blurred distinctions between larger and smaller defensive enclosures and those fortified to a greater or lesser degree make it difficult on the basis of classification label alone to distinguish between major and minor or early and late sites. This issue is clearly of importance to the study since the significance of inter-site relationships depends largely on the classification assigned to any particular site, and consequently much relies on the way defended settlements have been categorised in the field. A principal difficulty is the subjectivity involved in evaluating the ‘defensibility’ of any given site, this judgement inevitably involving a large degree of personal interpretation. Classification might therefore be expected to derive more from the preconceptions and experiences of the surveyor than from genuine divisions in settlement ‘hierarchy’. Indeed, the problem is further heightened by the likelihood that such divisions were likely to have been blurred in the perceptions of the inhabitants at the time of the sites’ 83

CRANNOGS AND LATER PREHISTORIC SETTLEMENT IN WESTERN SCOTLAND currency. It should not pass without scrutiny, for example, that the larger palisaded fort enclosures should be considered less or more defensive in nature than some of the smaller multivallate ‘homesteads’.

1997:144). Feachem, discussing the homestead sites of Dumfries and Galloway, used the terms ‘ring-fort’, ‘dunan’ and ‘homestead’ apparently interchangeably. Furthermore, it seems clear that there are genuine affinities between these ‘homestead’ sites and the better known but equally heterogeneous promontory forts Atlantic roundhouse sites, particularly in their preference for coastal locations and in the use of stone and earth defences. Comparable sites referred to as ‘homesteads’ are known in western Perthshire (Taylor 1990; Hingley et al 1997); Argyll (Watson 1915; Taylor 1990) and in Stirlingshire (figure 7.13). Excavated examples at Borenich, Queens View and Litigan yielded dates in the mid first millennium AD, although the provenance of the dating samples is suspect and this late dating has been questioned more recently by Hingley et al who obtained similar dates from contexts within the homesteads at Aldclune, which had origins in the later second half of the first millennium BC (Hingley et al 1997).

The RCAHMS, however, sought to tackle this problem during their survey of Eastern Dumfriesshire by categorising sites on quasi-objective characteristics such as their location, the scale of their defences and the character of their interior (RCAHMS 1997:126). By this means we at least have a semi-quantitative set of classification criteria through which we might compare different defended settlements. The ‘homestead’ sites in the study area were inspected by the Archaeology Division of the Ordnance Survey in the 1970s, and all except one were inspected and described by three surveyors in the course of two surveys; and as such the homestead sites grouped together at this time were done so on the basis of genuine similarity. The original classification agreed upon by the RCAHMS in the 1970s is summarised as follows:

We must be wary, however, of correlating these sites too closely to one another, or to any specific date. The legitimacy of Feachem’s comparison of the south western homesteads to the examples in the north has yet to be demonstrated, though Hingley et al draw close parallels between the late prehistoric sites at Aldclune and the excavated homestead of McNaughton’s Fort in Nithsdale, Dumfries and Galloway (NX87NE 3; ScottElliot et al 1966). McNaughton’s Fort comprised a palisaded enclosure with at least one timber roundhouse inside, within a stone and earth rampart (Scott-Elliot et al 1966). A 14C determination for the palisade slot gave a date of 280 ± 100 BC (GaK-808), while the enclosing ditch reputedly produced several bronze spearheads. Certainly the similarity in structural features such as the interior palisade and postholes and the paved entranceway within an enclosing ditch and rampart seems convincing. It is important, however, bear in mind the likelihood that sites similar in nature to Boonies, Westerkirk (Jobey 1974) could quite readily be classified as ‘homesteads’ on the basis of pre-excavation inspection, being of similar scale and morphology. Boonies produced a date from beneath the enclosing bank of AD 108 ± 47 (SRR-300), as well as a wide range of typical Romano-British artefacts demonstrating that these sites were constructed into the first millennium AD. The site appears to have continued in use until at least the 11th century AD (Jobey 1974), so that this group of relatively small defended settlements would appear to have some considerable longevity of use. The embanked enclosure at Woodend, Johnstonebridge, though somewhat larger in internal area is probably a related site type; evidence from the excavation of this site indicated a construction date around the turn of the millennium and occupation through the Roman Iron Age (Banks 2000). Recent reinterpretations based on the excavated sequences from Boonies and Woodend have

The classification into homesteads and settlements is, nevertheless, sufficiently simple to be generally reliable. Only those sites at which there is patently no space for more houses than those visible have been classed as homesteads, while those enclosures, superficially lacking traces of occupation, which are too small to allow the presence of more than three houses may be regarded as probable homesteads. All the rest are either settlements or indeterminate enclosures. (Ritchie 1970:49) Such rule-bound definitions tend no longer to be considered appropriate for the purposes of interpretation, principally because such schemes are equally as capable of creating insignificant typological divisions between essentially similar sites, as inclusive terms like ‘dun’ are capable of masking them. The term ‘homestead’ in the context of the Dumfries and Galloway study area has been used to describe small defended settlements. The ones within the present study area are generally sub-circular to oval/elliptical, with typical dimensions of 17-20 by 20-24m. They employ both earthen and stone rampart construction techniques, and these are usually in the region of 2-8m wide (see for example, Airyolland I, figure 7.14). One characteristic is the levelling of the interior into a slope, to create a scooped interior courtyard and occasionally form two or more interior levels, which sometimes display surface evidence of interior structures. This scooped characteristic was once taken as a classificatory division, though the survey of Eastern Dumfriesshire illustrated that this need not be significant and that the broad horizon spanning the late first millennium BC and into the early first millennium AD is equally appropriate to homesteads sites whether or not their interiors are subdivided into levels (RCAHMS 84

Figure 7.11: Altitude distribution of palisaded enclosures, illustrating the concentration in lowland areas. Site

AL M IN

N O D SE UN CH R VE AG R I A L T H FO BA IL R X L S O P PI LA L U LT N S T A N AT TO IO N N BA BU TO RS RN EA N OL ST NA US W GA CH R E ST LD A E G EN A O LI TT LD CH LE EN LO O C BA H C LL H O C DU AN H N S A LE RA G D E B IT R R U M IDG FL O E W E M R A LE RK FF D R N U M O TO FL L L O N SO N W U A C ER LS H R E A A G TL E AR O T H CH SH LA N IN E U D N KI ER CH LF C M AN AI E E R D SS N DA M A R , B MID O N N U G FE R LE LL N N O I F A RO LT N I Q BR U AI A BA R R LM TER U LA RR I G GH E LE E LA NW A D G G HIL AN L Y BU EW RN E H IL L

D

Altitude OD (m)

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300

Altitudes of LP enclosures, SA1

250

200

150

100

50

0

Figure 7.12: Distribution of palisaded enclosures, settlements and ring-ditches

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Figure 7.13: Assorted homesteads: Left: a) Aldclune 1; b) Aldclune 2; c) McNaughton’s Fort (Nithsdale); d) Queen’s View; e) Litigan; (Hingley et al 1997). Right: Boonies, Westerkirk (Jobey 1974).

Figure 7.14: Survey of Airyolland homestead site, near Elrig, west Machars, Dumfries and Galloway (survey: author & G.Geddes).

86

SOUTH WEST SCOTLAND suggested, however, that both sites probably comprised an unenclosed phase prior to the construction of the embankment enclosure, and that the defensive phase may have been relatively late in the sequence, occurring around the first century BC (RCAHMS 1997:147; Banks 2000:274), and this may also have been the case at Knockmade, Lochwinnoch (Alexander 2000). The site at Long Knowe, excavated by Mercer (1981) yielded dating evidence for construction of a small defended enclosure datable to the second half of the first millennium BC, suggesting that ‘homestead’ sites indeed have currency through much of the middle and later Iron Ages.

Killentrae Bridge (NX34NW 7) and Airyolland 3 (NX34NW 34) are problematic in that they were reported as genuine ‘forts’ in the 19th and early 20th centuries, but no trace of them can now be found. Based on the description given it is probable that Killentrae Bridge was another homestead. In order to provide an accurate survey of a representative example of these homesteads, a detailed topographic survey was carried out at the representative site at Airyolland I (NX34NW 14, at NX 3078 4775, see figure 7.14). This site consists of a circular enclosure within a sub-circular enclosing bank, measuring 24m in internal diameter and 38m externally at the extent of the embankment spread. The bank stands at a maximum height of 1.8m where it makes greatest use of the natural slope, but with an average height of 0.85m. The bank is constructed of earth and stone, and has been reduced by plough truncation to the extent that the original edges are obscured. There is no certain trace of the entrance, though a slight depression in the bank on the down slope, eastern side may represent the remains of this feature. Several large stones located on the bank and in the interior of the site are probably the result of relatively modern field clearance; an unusual feature consisting of an extension of the bank into the interior, terminating in a large boulder probably relates to the remains of a secondary structure, built into the bank on a natural rise to the NE of the site.

Morphology of ‘homestead’ sites indicates that they were clearly not a homogenous group, with some incorporating stone built walls while others consisted of earthen ramparts. Similarly, it is possible that some were entirely roofed, while others (e.g. Boonies) were clearly not, and contained smaller structures that functioned as living areas. It is again notable that the sites in the study area show close association with coastal areas, and as such occupy similar positions in the settlement system to the Atlantic roundhouses and promontory enclosures found in the area, which are never found far from the coast. It was noted by the surveyors that several of the homestead examples in the south west occupy headlands or promontories, and in this respect the classification system struggles to justify the separation of homestead from promontory fort, since this distinction is based largely on size, ignoring more important factors such as physical location and the character of the defences. Examples at Mull Glen, Carghidown Castle, Chippermore Heugh and Back Bay are all promontory enclosures, with the latter being categorised as a homestead on the basis of its ‘smallness’ alone. The Mull Glen example is very possibly an antecedent promontory fort which has subsequently been reused as the site of a homestead, as the surveyors recognised. The examples at Crouse (NX35NE 7) and Palace Yard (NX65SW 1) stand out; not only are they located further inland than any of the other examples but they also have straight sides, and ‘bold and regular’ ditches. In the case of Palace Yard, there are documented medieval associations, this being the supposed court of Edward I during his 1300 incursion into southern Scotland (RCAHMS 1914), and though it might be prudent to exercise caution when judging sites based on regularity and ‘straight edges’- rectilinear enclosures being known spanning the turn of the millennium- it seems probable that these examples should properly be categorised within this later horizon.

The only excavated example of the west Machars homesteads is at Chippermore, where excavation in the 1950s recorded the substantial stone-built wall and internal features of a sub-oval enclosure divided into two levels (see figure 7.15; Fiddes 1953). Nothing datable in a secure context was retrieved from this excavation, but in morphological terms the closest parallels to Chippermore are probably to be found in the Atlantic west, with stone walled settlements like Kildonan in Argyll probably being the most directly similar. Close parallels may also be drawn between the Galloway homesteads and the ring-forts of Iron Age and Early Historic Ireland. Though the dating of these structures is debated (cf. Stout 1997 and Henderson 2000:138-141), it is clear that many are datable within a mid to late Iron Age horizon, suggesting a degree of homogeneity in architectural traditions within a zone that included western Galloway. As always, it would be unwise to categorise these sites too tightly in the absence of excavation, but they clearly belong within the same tradition as the other small defended forts and promontory enclosures of the region broadly dateable within the Iron Age from the later first millennium BC and later. Like most later prehistoric site types under consideration in the study, any individual example of a homestead site could feasibly have been occupied anywhere within the later first millennium BC and the earlier first millennium AD, yet the close parallels in

Of the sites listed as ‘possible’ sites, on the basis of the surveyors’ descriptions it seems that Chippermore Heugh should be considered as a genuine site (or perhaps two sites- promontory fort and homestead). 87

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Figure 7.15: Plan and section of the homestead at Chippermore, Mochrum (Fiddes 1953).

Figure 7.16: Distribution of ‘Atlantic’-style sites in the Galloway study area. 88

SOUTH WEST SCOTLAND display the full range of complex features to qualify for inclusion within the class is no longer accepted (Armit 1990b), and it is even questionable whether the south western sites should really be seen as ‘bastard forms’ of the true brochs of the north and west (Cowley 2000:174), given the wide variability in structural details even within the traditional Atlantic roundhouse heartlands. Nonetheless, the Galloway sites are certainly extraneous to the regional settlement context, and have been compared to the other outlying brochs of central and south eastern Scotland (Macinnes 1984; Harding 2000b). Current interpretations of the appearance of the southern brochs are based on the excavated evidence from sites like Buchlyvie (Main 1998), Leckie (MacKie 1981) and Torwoodlee (S.Piggott 1951), which indicates that these sites were built around the time of the primary Roman incursions into southern Scotland. From the wealth of high quality Roman items found on these sites it would appear that the occupants of the lowland brochs were of elevated status, with privileged access to Roman material in what was possibly a mutually cooperative relationship between Roman and native (Macinnes 1984:224). This interpretation is not without complications, however, and it has been suggested that the incorporation of broch architecture into south eastern settlement represents a deliberate adoption of symbols of power from a region that resisted Roman control (Harding 2000b:371). Whether or not we should seriously consider the appearance of the Galloway Atlantic roundhouses in terms of native responses to the Roman presence, however, is doubtful: not only is there a lack of evidence for RIA (or any other) dating from these sites, but as argued later in this chapter the level of Roman involvement in Western Galloway (where most of these sites are found) as a whole is questionable.

the archaeological record from the Atlantic west suggest that they comprise a legitimate distinct group, typically constructed in the later first millennium BC and continuing in use into the Early Historic period (cf. Fairhurst 1938). ‘Atlantic’ settlements ‘Atlantic’ sites in Galloway Among the more important classes of site found in western Dumfries and Galloway are a selection of stone built settlements constructed in what could be termed an ‘Atlantic’ style, incorporating many of the structural features associated with the Atlantic roundhouse continuum of the north and west of the country (Armit 1990c). These sites are not widespread nor are they numerous, but they are informative of the way that Galloway was influenced by connections to the north and west. There is no uniformity in the style of construction of the drystone structures in this region, though there are at least three sites which would qualify as fully fledged complex Atlantic roundhouses- the ‘broch’ sites at Stairhaven, Teroy and Doon Castle, Ardwell Point. As we might expect based on current understanding of the nature of shared cultural traits within the Atlantic regions (e.g. Henderson 2000; Gilmour 2000), the Galloway sites share important features of the complex Atlantic architectural style but differ in their details. Unusual features include the double entrance, one landward and one seaward, at Doon Castle, and the double staircase within the single intra-mural cell at Stairhaven (figure 7.17; Yates 1980), which finds closest parallels in sites such as Dun Kildalloig, Argyll (see chapter 8, p.260). There are also suggestions that complex Atlantic roundhouses were constructed on settlement sites that existed already: at Doon Castle, Crammag Head (Feachem 1963:174) and Teroy (Curle 1912) it appears that the Atlantic roundhouses were built within the fortifications of small promontory forts. The architectural features of the south western complex Atlantic roundhouses would cause problems of classification if the traditional criteria of the ‘broch’ definition were adhered to, since many of the essential traits are missing- intramural galleries, guard cells, barholes and staircases are variously missing from Stair Haven, Doon Castle, Teroy and Crammag Head (see figure 7.18), though in the absence of excavation this is always difficult to assert with certainty1. In any case, the requirement for any given Atlantic roundhouse site to

Little in the way of excavation has been carried out at any of the sites reliably identifiable as complex Atlantic roundhouses, though the rubble was cleared from the interior of Teroy in order to define the wall faces and guard cell. Nothing diagnostic was recovered during this work, though a few sherds of unidentifiable pottery and the upper stone from a rotary quern were found (Curle 1912), perhaps indicating an occupation date for one phase at this site around the end of the first millennium BC or early first millennium AD. Given this paucity of reliable artefactual evidence there is no real reason to assign the construction of Atlantic roundhouses in Galloway to the same stimuli (and consequently, dating horizon) as the examples studied in central and south eastern Scotland. If we are prepared to take the Galloway sites at face value, then, they become one facet of a suite of sites in the south west that are found in greater numbers elsewhere, and as a result there is no reason why they should not be assigned to the dating horizon anywhere from the centuries of the earlier Iron Age to the first of second

1

The example at Crammag Head has been largely obliterated by the construction of a lighthouse, though a sketched plan made at the time of the lighthouse construction survives in the NMRS. The extent to which this sketch should be trusted to represent the features present is of course questionable.

89

CRANNOGS AND LATER PREHISTORIC SETTLEMENT IN WESTERN SCOTLAND centuries AD, as should now be accepted for their class based on a large number of excavations in the Atlantic province (Harding 2000c; Armit 1990, 2003 etc). Recent studies of the influences on the Iron Age structural record of Atlantic northern Britain have re-emphasised the unifying importance of north-south seaways over east-west land routes (Henderson 2000; Gilmour 2000; Cunliffe 2001), further suggesting that the drystone structures of the south west should properly be considered within the context of parallels in the north west, rather than further east, where similar sites are even more alien to the regional settlement context. One possible indication of the currency of the site at Doon Castle, Ardwell point is that the roundhouse has two diametrically opposed entrances, an architectural feature which is paralleled in the timber roundhouse traditions of the region and seems likely, on the basis of a few excavated examples at Rispain (Haggerty and Haggerty 1983), Hayknowes (Gregory 2001a) and Carronbridge (Johnston 1994) to be datable to the late first millennium BC or early first millennium AD, though as the RCAHMS considered, one of the entrances at Ardwell may be a later mutilation so this tentative dating could only provide a terminus ante quem for construction at that site. The feature is, furthermore, paralleled by sites of probable first millennium AD date in Argyll, such as at Dun Kildalloig (RCAHMS 1971:88; see Chapter 8).

close cultural contacts throughout the Irish Sea zone. No excavation has been carried out at any of the other ‘dun’ sites, though provisional dating to the later Iron Age or Early Historic periods of the sub-rectangular site at Killantringan Bay based on morphological similarity with sites in Argyll might be tentatively suggested. In the absence of excavated material culture, commenting on the social status of the occupants of the Atlantic sites in Galloway necessarily hinges on our assessment of how indigenous or otherwise they are considered to be. As discussed above, it seems unnecessary to invoke the same explanations for the appearance of Atlantic roundhouses in Galloway as is suggested for the other outlying ‘brochs’, since a settlement tradition in the small, stone walled building style was in existence in the region anyway, evidenced by the layout and construction of many of the homesteads and promontory forts considered elsewhere in this chapter. As such, the Galloway Atlantic sites are probably best viewed as exceptionally accomplished expressions of a local tradition, no doubt inspired by the architecture of the north and west, but carried out within the established local configuration- making use of promontories and hilltop locations, close to coastal interaction zones but separated symbolically (if not practically) by the use of inaccessible locations (cf. Toolis 2003:69). In this way the occupants of the Atlantic sites demonstrated their autonomy and authority (Armit 1997), and it may well be a reflection of localised elevated status that they are almost equidistant within the study area, particularly along the west Rhinns coastline (see figure 7.16).

The other small drystone settlements in the study area (often referred to as ‘duns’ to distinguish them from the ‘broch’-like structures considered above) at Castle Haven, Borgue, Killantringan Bay and Craigoch, High Milton should perhaps be assigned to a later horizon, if only based on analogy with comparable sites in Argyll and the Isles. Castle Haven at Kirkandrews, Borgue is an intriguing site, where a sub-rectangular, complexwalled structure appears to overlie an original D-shaped stone enclosure (Barbour 1907; and see figure 7.18). Excavation at this site in the early 20th century recovered spiral finger rings among other artefacts indicating an earlier Iron Age horizon, as well as an assemblage datable to around the 8th/9th centuries AD. A parallel for the D-shaped enclosure might be Kildonan in Argyll, which has an occupation sequence spanning the first millennium AD (Fairhurst 1938; Peltenburg 1982) (though the earlier finds might be expected to relate to this structure), and it would perhaps therefore be reasonable to suggest that the smaller galleried structure represents the early medieval phase at the site. If this is the case, then Castle Haven indicates the construction of drystone architecture based on the ‘Atlantic’ theme of galleried walls well into the Early Historic period in Galloway. There are also indications of parallels with sites in Ulster, particularly galleried cashels like Giant’s Sconce, Co. Derry, with its D-shaped, complex walled enclosure and surrounding outworks (Warner 1983:181), indicating

It is significant that all of the sites classifiable as ‘Atlantic’ in Dumfries and Galloway are located in coastal locations with only two sites located further than a stone’s throw from the seashore (see table 7.1). At Teroy, located just over 1500m from the coast (and elevated on a prominent shoulder), the site commands an imposing position overlooking Loch Ryan, with clear lines of site to the coastal zones of interaction. It is perhaps also worth noting that all but one of the Atlantic sites (the exception being Craigoch) face westward on western coasts or toward the sea, often with striking views across the sea to Ireland and the Isle of Man. While this may be a factor of the suitability of the topography of the western coastline- providing the preferred rocky promontories- it may equally reflect a conscious decision of the builders to acknowledge and display their maritime identity, perhaps deliberately facing in the direction of groups they interacted with most frequently and considered culturally similar The Crannogs of South West Scotland In view of the fact that the South West of Scotland, and particularly Dumfries and Galloway and Ayrshire are 90

SOUTH WEST SCOTLAND

. Name

Class

Doon Castle Crammag Head Teroy Stair Haven Killantringan Bay Castle Haven Craigoch Fell of Barhullion

AR AR AR AR ‘Dun’ ‘Dun’ ‘Dun’ Fort

Intramural Cells? Y N? Y Y N Y N Y

Staircase

Shape in plan

Aspect

N? N? N Y N Y N N

Circular Circular Circular Circular Sub-rectang. Sub-rectang. Sub-rectang. Oval encl.

W W W,N,S W W SW N,S,W S, SW

Dist. to coast (m)