Scalloway: A Broch, Late Iron Age Settlement and Medieval Cemetery in ShetlandThis excavation report is important for understanding the Early Historic Settlement of the Northern Isles. It contains results and analysis from the 1989-90 excavations on a ridge overlooking Scalloway on Shetland. They revealed a pattern of intense activity since the 1st century BC, and prior evidence of a cremation burial, probably Bronze Age. Successive phases of occupation were identified into the medieval period, including a broch occupied up to the 8th century, which seems to have been a mixed farming community which practised metalwork. No Viking settlement was found on site, but finds suggest one to have been situated nearby. A shortlived cemetery, probably medieval, and the 17th-century site which continues in use today complete the picture. |
Contents
Excavating after a fall of snow diameter B Internal diameter C Wall thickness D Wall | 1 |
The location of Scalloway base as a percentage of overall diameter after Fojut 1981 | 2 |
a Burland b Belmont | 4 |
Copyright | |
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Common terms and phrases
Animal bones antler artefacts Ash layer assemblage barley broch tower broch wall Bronze Age Brough of Birsay casement wall cattle century Ceramics Cetacean clay Clickhimin Cobble group comb contexts and finds copper alloy Crosskirk crucible decoration deposits Disc Schist pelitic distribution ditch Dunadd early phase evidence example excavation Faceted Fish bones fragments g waste grains group A Sandstone hearth indicate inside the broch Jarlshof Kebister Late Iron Age late phase later material metalworking midden Middle Iron Age mould Norse Northern Isles occupation Orkney painted pebbles pelitic perforated Pictish Plain cobble tool Pollachius pottery Pounder/grinder present quern radiocarbon dates recovered red ash Revetment Rubble layer 7.1 samples Sandstone Scalloway scapula Schist Scotland settlement sheep sherds Shetland Siltstone similar skeleton slabs Soil layer species steatite stratigraphic structure suggests Table Upper Scalloway vertebrae vessels whorls wild worn