That tower of Scottish prehistory—the broch

Abstract

MacKie, the foremost Scottish scholar to address himself in recent years to the study of brochs, has said, with characteristic firmness, that ‘brochs are among the most striking of all the prehistoric monuments of Europe’ (1975, 72). Certainly this is so, and ever since the first real awakening of interest in Scottish antiquities around the midnineteenth century the broch has always been felt to be Scotland’s archaeological show-piece. Yet, close on a hundred years after Alexander Rhind set the ball rolling with his excavations at the broch of Kettleburn, Wick, Sir Lindsay Scott was forced to admit that ‘No ancient sites have been more excavated than those of the broch and, unfortunately, none with less result’ (1947, 3). In the 30 odd years since Scott, the full excavation reports of only three brochs have appeared. With this consideration it is perhaps less surprising to see so little space devoted to brochs in Cunliffe’s recent major review of the British Iron Age (1974a, 219–22; 2nd ed. 1978, 235–8) and their total omission from British prehistory (1974b) is marginally less startling; such summary treatment is a result of a dearth of the right kind of information, which itself derives from the whole approach to brochs throughout most of the history of Scottish archaeology.