- The Early Celts in Scotland -
that resulted in the emergence of the dynamic kingdom of the Picts two or three
centuries later.
Atlantic Scotland is even more distinct from the southern mainland in the Middle
Iron Age, cut off from it by mountains and sea and having many peculiar, locally
originating dry-stone structures and an array of individual artefacts and pottery
styles which are not matched elsewhere and many of which also seem to be local.
Absent from this array are signs of links with the La Tene provinces in the broadest
sense, except perhaps for the glass beads, spiral bronze finger-rings and curvilinear
ornament on Clettraval jars, which suggest a connection of some kind, perhaps brief,
with the Wessex area. On the other hand the adjustable disc querns and the fluted
everted-rimmed jars might suggest a link with the devolved Hallstatt cultures of
Brittany or even Iberia, and links with Ireland are apparent too (Warner 1983).
Pace Renfrew (1990: 250), the great broch tower residences themselves indicate the
presence of highly organized tribal societies (MacKie 1989 and below), the leading
elements of which may well have arrived from elsewhere (though there are
signs in some places - Caithness and Sutherland for example - of their being adopted
by indigenous cultures). These elites may have spoken p-Celtic dialects but it seems
doubtful if many of their clansmen did; the whole province seems to have been
a world apart from lowland Scotland and the rest of the sub-La Tene provinces - a
mixture of very long-established aborigines and sea-borne tribal elites from the
western fringes of Europe who established themselves among them, anticipating
the Vikings by eight hundred years.
SOCIAL STRUCTURE
As implied above, it may be possible to construct from archaeological evidence a
plausible outline of the basic social organization of some of the iron age tribes of
Scotland even though - since we are dealing with pre-literate times and there are no
known laws linking material culture with social structure - such a feat is normally
considered to be impossible without resorting to analogy (Hodder 1982: I Iff.;
MacKie I977b: Io-I2). Also there is fairly clear evidence for the social structure of
the late medieval highland clans of Scotland with which the iron age evidence may
reasonably be compared. It is unfortunate, however, that our most detailed informa-
tion comes from the Atlantic province - remotest from the iron age Celts in the clas-
sical sense; for the area closest to the La Tene province we can really only argue from
analogy.Iron Age Society
The case has recently been set out in some detail (MacKie 1989) so may be summa-
rized here; in essence there are four independent strands of evidence for social structure
which seem to mesh well together.
The oldest and best known of these strands is the architecture of the hollow-
walled broch towers which must be regarded as a highly sophisticated development
with several ingenious defensive features (MacKie 1965). If the broch builders did