- The Early Celts in Scotland -
There are hints in the local late bronze age metalwork and pottery of strong
contacts between Aberdeenshire and north Germany in the seventh century BC
(Coles 1960) and the timber-framed hill-forts are now known to be suitably early to
be part of that foreign influence brought directly across the North Sea. Such origins
would perhaps explain the early presence in the north-east of a p-Celtic dialect,
later to become Pictish, which is distinct from other such in north Britain and
appears to have closer links with Gaul Oackson 1955) although the picture is not at
all straightforward (MacKie 1970: 17-21).
However, signs of the influence of the classic iron age La Tene cultures are absent
except, as we have seen, for some late items which can explained as the result of
Roman conquests further south and which are not associated with the hill-forts
mentioned. Likewise at a late date appear the distinctive underground galleries or
sou terrains, concentrated immediately north of the river Tay and in central
Aberdeenshire; Stevenson has persuasively argued that these also represent the
activities of proto-Pictish tribes galvanized by the influx of tribal elites from the
south (1966). In early historic times the area evolved the distinctive Pictish kingdom
with its unique art style (Henderson 1967). Thus the iron age tribes of the area
- Maeatae, Caledonii and the rest - could be described as Celtic-speaking but with a
distinctive cultural and genetic ancestry (Mackie and Mackie 1984); they seem to have
had no links with the La Tene cultures until very late.
The Atlantic Province
This is the name given to the maritime highland and island zone west and north of
the highland massif, an area always open to invasion and settlement by sea and one
of the last places except Iceland to which a fugitive from further south or further east
could go. This is well seen in Early Neolithic times in the distribution of the
chambered cairns (Henshall 1972, end maps) and in early historic times by that of
Norse place-names, indicating where the Vikings settled (Nicolaisen 1976: ch. 6). In
the Middle Iron Age the province is equally well, though slightly differently, defined
by the distribution of brochs - a form of defended wooden round-house with a high,
thick dry-stone wall containing a remarkable series of hollow-wall architectural
features unique to Scotland and giving the whole tower-like proportions (MacKie
1965). By contrast with the rest of Scotland the associated material culture is rich and
informative and the pottery styles numerous and well made.
The hollow-walled brochs, with superimposed tiers of galleries inside the wall,
appear to constitute the great majority of the sites about the architecture of which
anything useful can be said (themselves a small proportion of all known and
suspected brochs) and none have been plausibly dated to before the first century BC.
A few broch-like buildings, and some slimmer stone round-houses, have been
explored in Orkney and Caithness and the latter do go back to the end of the Bronze
Age (Hedges and Bell 1980; Hedges 1990). Likewise there are plausible hollow-
walled broch prototypes in the Western Isles which go back somewhat earlier
(MacKie 1992). However the crucial point here is that all these stone structures seem
to have been locally developed; only the two-or three-storeyed wooden round-
house enclosed by the hollow-walled brochs (but not by the others) could be said to661