Gurness and Midhowe brochs in Orkney: some problems of misinterpretation

Abstract

Since 1980 a new view about the nature and development of the Scottish iron age broch towers has emerged among younger prehistorians in the north—one which emphasizes their purely local origin and development, wider range of architectural features and long period of construction and use, over half a millennium or more. This contrasts with the author's earlier views which supposed these hollow-walled dry stone towers to have been built over a fairly limited time span in the middle Iron Age, as being structurally homogeneous and as having enough exotic elements among their associated finds to justify the belief that influential immigrants had a hand in the emergence of important elements of the ‘broch cultures’. Crucial to the new view is a reinterpretation of the Orkney broch of Gurness which in effect links its architecture to the late bronze age roundhouse site at Bu and supports the theory of local evolution. The evidence reviewed here shows that this view can be sustained neither at Gurness nor at the very similar Midhowe broch nearby. A significant part of the ‘new wave’ hypothesis about brochs—which has been endorsed by several senior colleagues—is therefore based on doubtful evidence and a new synthesis is urgently required. This episode seems to be another example of the instability which can afflict some modern British prehistoric archaeology, which tends to embrace new ideas too easily and to ignore existing evidence which is inconvenient.