high, of such frequent occurrence in the Brochs, it has been suggested
that it may have formed the resting-ledge for a conical wooden roof
covering the (lower part of the) central area. Others have supposed
that it formed the support of a narrow roof, sloping downwards like
that of a shed or series of lean-to booths surrounding the wall. It
may be noted that it seems rarely of such massive structure as the
wall proper with which it appears to be bonded only at the
door-corners. This, with the fact that it was found covering what was
almost certainly an original doorway to a wall-chamber at Clickamin,
suggests the possibility of the scarcement being sometimes, if not
generally, a secondary structure."—Rev. J. M. Joass, LL.D., in
_Archæologia Scotica_, vol. v. p. 112.
-----
[Illustration: Fig. 191.—Stone cup from the Broch of Kintradwell (5
inches diameter).]
Again, on the outside of the tower, to a distance of 60 feet from its
base, the ground was covered with the foundations of irregularly-built
constructions, with passages and doorways communicating with an access
leading up to the main entrance to the tower. These outbuildings were
much less massive, much more irregular, and much less carefully
constructed than the main building. They were chiefly clustered about
the entrance to the tower, and a little to the north-west of the
principal group of them was a shallow open cavity lined with flat stones
set on edge, and containing the fragments of a human skeleton and an
iron dagger-blade. In one of the outbuildings also there were found a
human skeleton and an iron spear-head. Portions of eight other human
skeletons were found in and about the ruins, mostly at a depth of from 2
to 2½ feet under the turf which covered the mound, but not in such
circumstances as would necessarily imply that they belonged to the
period of the occupation of the Broch.[83]
-----
Footnote 83:
It is rather suggested by the frequency with which such remains have
been met with in other cases, that burials were occasionally made in
these mounds long after they had become grass-grown hillocks.
-----
[Illustration: Fig. 192.—Oval pebble of quartzite marked by use as a
point-sharpener, from the Broch of Kintradwell (3¼ inches in length).]
The relics found in this Broch included a variety of manufactured
objects in stone and bone, bronze and iron. The stone objects formed a
very considerable and striking group. Among them there were upwards of
fifty querns or hand-mill stones, and an immense quantity of oblong
naturally-shaped stones from 3 or 4 to 15 or 18 inches in length,
water-worn originally, but also wasted at the ends by use as
hammer-stones or pounders. A number of the largest of these were found
set in the ground in rows both inside and outside of the tower. There
were also a large number of stone mortars, irregularly-rounded blocks,
with wide-mouthed rounded cavities, worn smooth by use. Most of the
other stone articles were small. They consisted of the drinking-cup
already mentioned (Fig. 121) as a bowl-shaped vessel, neatly made, with
a handle at one side; a thin smoothly-polished disc of quartzose
sandstone, about 2½ inches diameter, similar to others of mica schist,
and other materials that have been found in Brochs and Crannogs, but of
undetermined use; a small black whetstone or burnisher, smoothed and
polished by use; a small flattish ovoid pebble of quartzite (Fig. 192),
having indentations produced apparently by point-sharpening on its
opposite sides; a quantity of fragments of rings or bracelets of lignite
probably obtained from the Brora beds, and a considerable number of
spindle-whorls of various forms and sizes. The bone implements were
mostly of the nature of handles made of deer-horn, and spatulæ, which
Dr. Joass has suggested may probably have been potter’s tools. No
implements or ornaments of bronze were found, but the presence of the
metal was determined by the finding of three fragments of well-made
crucibles with adhering portions of the melted metal. The iron objects
were a spear-head, a dagger-blade, a knife-blade, a socketed chisel, and
several fragments of implements of indeterminate character. The only
other object of metal discovered was a small and thick ring of lead a
little more than an inch in diameter. The fragments of pottery found
were for the most part portions of coarsely-made vessels, all unglazed
and unornamented. The refuse of the food of the inmates was present in
considerable quantity. The land animals represented among these remains
were the reindeer, the red-deer, the roe, the ox, the sheep, the goat,
the pig, the fox, the wild-cat, and either the wolf or a very large dog.
The marine animals were the whale, the grampus, the porpoise, the
dog-fish, and the cod and haddock, while the remains of such edible
shell-fish as the oyster, the mussel, the cockle, the periwinkle, and
the limpet were very abundant.
[Illustration: Fig. 193.—Hammer-marked Plate of Brass found in the Broch
of Carn-liath (11½ by 7½ inches).]
The Broch of Carn-liath, in Dunrobin Park, also excavated by Rev. Dr.
Joass, consisted of a wall 18 feet thick, enclosing a central area of 30
feet in diameter. The doorway was 7 feet high and 3 feet wide. As usual,
it goes straight through the wall; and at a distance of 8 feet within
the outer face of the wall there are checks for a door, and a
guard-chamber opens on the right side of the passage immediately within
them. This Broch differs from that last described in having no chambers
in the thickness of the wall, and it also presents the unusual feature
of having two underground chambers faced with slabs, underneath the
level of the central area. The only opening from the court into the
thickness of the wall is the entrance to the stair, of which 25 steps
remain, but the galleries are gone. Around the outside of the tower are
the foundations of irregularly-formed constructions, of which it is now
difficult to determine the character with certainty. The objects found
in the excavation of this Broch consisted of about a dozen querns, three
large stone mortars, a considerable quantity of hammer-stones or
pestles, a large number of rings of shale or lignite—many in process of
manufacture, two stone cups, scooped out of steatite, and a large
ladle-like dish of the same material, a stone sinker rounded, oblong,
conical at top and flat at bottom, and the top perforated by a hole for
a cord, and another sinker with a longitudinal groove and circular
depressions on either side. Of bone objects, there were two long-handled
combs, and a piece of whalebone like a club, 14 inches long. Among the
objects in metal, the most interesting were two plates of brass, each a
little more than ⅙ inch in thickness, the one (Fig. 193) oblong,
rectangular, 11 inches in length, and 7½ inches in breadth; the other
nearly semicircular, and about 7½ inches in radius. Both were found near
the floor of the interior area of the Broch. They are hammer-marked with
blows of the pin end of the hammer in lines across the surface. Dr.
Joass remarks of them that this perhaps was one of the forms in which
the metal was imported into the northern districts of Scotland for home
manufacture. That they are brass and not bronze is certified by the
analysis made of the one now in the Museum by Dr. Stevenson Macadam. The
composition was found to be 82 parts of copper to 16 of zinc, with one
part of tin, and a trace of lead. This fact is important, because while
the alloy of copper and tin, which constitutes bronze, has been in use
from an indefinitely remote prehistoric period, the alloy of copper and
zinc, which constitutes brass, is not found earlier than the period of
the Roman Empire. A silver fibula of peculiar form was also found in
this Broch.[84] The form is not Celtic, but belongs to a type which is
widely distributed over Central and Southern Europe, and is commonly
associated with objects of a late Roman character. The only article in
iron found in this Broch was a dirk-like blade greatly corroded. The
pottery was abundant, but coarse and fragmentary, and destitute of
ornamentation.
-----
Footnote 84:
It belongs to the class of fibulæ which are often described as bow
shaped and cruciform, and is represented in _Archæologia Scotica_,
vol. v. plate 16.
-----
[Illustration: Fig. 194.—Ground plan of the Broch of Yarhouse,
Caithness, with its Secondary Constructions, on a peninsula in the Loch
of Yarhouse, cut off from the land by a ditch.]
[Illustration: Fig. 195.—Circular Brooch of Brass, found with a burial
in the mound covering the ruins of the Broch (2½ inches diameter).]
In 1866 and 1867 I excavated the Broch of Yarhouse, situated in the
south end of the loch of the same name, about six miles south of Wick,
in Caithness. The ground plan of the structure is shown in Fig. 194. Its
appearance before excavation was that of a conical grass-covered mound,
200 paces in circumference, and 18 to 20 feet high. It stood on a low
flat triangular projection of the shore of the loch, and was cut off
from the land by a ditch now silted up, and varying from 25 to 30 feet
wide. In the upper part of the mound we found portions of two human
skeletons, at a depth of from 2½ to 3 feet under the turf; and at
different places on the sides of the mound, lower down, the remains of
three other skeletons were met with. Near one of those first found was a
flat circular brooch of brass (Fig. 195), of about 2½ inches diameter.
It was rudely inscribed with letters which appear to be a blundering
attempt at the formula ISVS NAZAR [ENVS], a common and popular
talismanic inscription on the brooches of the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries. These skeletons were not enclosed in cists, but simply
embedded in the earth and stones of the mound. They were not deep enough
to have any determinable relation with the structure of the Broch below.
They were all incomplete and the bones in disorder, though this might
perhaps be accounted for by the movement of the loose material of the
slope of the mound in the course of ages. The inference appeared to be
that they were casual interments made in the mound long after it had
become a grassy knoll. This was also the conclusion to which Dr. Joass
came with respect to the burials in the mound at Kintradwell. It is easy
to see how such a practice might have arisen in remoter districts, where
burial-grounds connected with ecclesiastical sites were distant and
roads were few. In point of fact, there is evidence which seems to
connect the custom with the later Paganism of these northern parts. Mr.
Petrie found a small cemetery of stone cists, containing interments
after cremation, overlying the ruined Broch of Okstrow, in Orkney. In
this case, the mound which covered the ruins must have been chosen as a
place of heathen sepulture because it was a mound. A grave containing
two oval bowl-shaped brooches, and therefore belonging to the heathen
Viking time, was found in the upper part of a mound covering the ruins
of a Broch at Castletown, in Caithness. I found a single burial in a
stone-lined grave laid close to the doorway of the Broch of Brounaben,
not far from Yarhouse; and burials were found in the mounds covering the
ruins of the Brochs of Thrumster and Dunbeath, in Caithness. It is
therefore probable that in all such cases the interments that are found
immediately below the surface of these mounds belong to a time when the
Broch had been so long in ruins that it appeared to those so using it as
a natural grassy knoll.
[Illustration: Fig. 196.—Interior aperture of Doorway in Broch of
Yarhouse. (From a Photograph.)]
[Illustration: Fig. 197.—Entrance to the stair and window-like openings
over it, in the Broch of Yarhouse. (From a Photograph.)]
When excavated, the Broch of Yarhouse consisted of a circular wall, 12
to 13 feet thick, enclosing a central area, 30 feet in diameter. The
height of the wall remaining was about 15 feet. The doorway which passes
straight through the wall is about 6 feet high and 2½ wide, slightly
narrower at top than at bottom, and well built with long flat slabs,
some of which were 8 feet in length. The opening of the doorway into the
interior area and recess above it are shown in Fig. 196. There were no
guard-chambers or bar-holes, and the checks for the door were quite on
the inner side of the wall. But this Broch stood on what was practically
an island, cut off from the land by a ditch 25 to 30 feet wide, and the
access to the doorway was carefully protected by the outworks to be
subsequently described. Opening from the interior area to the left of
the doorway was the entrance to the stair (Fig. 197), which also gave
access to an oblong chamber at the stairfoot. The stair itself was 3
feet wide, and 16 steps up there was a landing, with a light hole or
window looking into the interior of the Broch. Above the entrance to the
stair there were also three windows, placed vertically over each
other—all that remained of a vertical range of windows, such as we have
seen in the case of Mousa, Dun Carloway, and the Glenelg Brochs. On the
side of the area opposite to the doorway was an oblong chamber in the
thickness of the wall, roofed in the usual manner by overlapping stones.
In this Broch, as at Kintradwell, there was an interior wall, of
inferior masonry, built against the main wall, and partially bonded into
it at the door openings. This inner wall was 2½ feet thick, and rose to
a height of 8 feet, where the wall-head formed a level scarcement all
round the interior. Partition walls (shown at B in ground plan, Fig.
194) ran half way across the area from both sides of the doorway, and
that on the right of the entrance bent at a right angle towards the
Broch wall. These partitions were partly built, and partly formed of
long slabs set on end. They rose to about 8 feet—the same height as the
scarcement. The partitions and the inner wall forming the scarcement
were founded on an accumulation of rubbish largely mixed with ashes and
food refuse, which covered the original floor of the Broch to the depth
of 12 to 14 inches. They were therefore clearly secondary constructions,
made to adapt the Broch to the purposes of a secondary occupation.
Outside the Broch wall are two long irregularly-shaped enclosures, and
several smaller cells. The outer enclosure (D in plan, Fig. 194) is 100
feet in length, and varies in width from 6 to 20 feet. The length of the
inner enclosure (C) is 70 feet, and its width about 12 feet. They have
each a little cell, provided with door checks opening off them. In some
places their walls remained entire to the height of 10 feet, without
showing any sign of overlapping for a roof. Both these large oblong
enclosures had irregular rows of long slabs set on end in their floors,
as if to divide them into cattle stalls. A long covered way (A) leading
to the entrance of the Broch traversed the N.E. end of these enclosures.
It varied from about 3 feet wide at the door of the Broch to about 5
feet wide at the outer end, and had checks for doors at four different
places in its length. The secondary character of all these exterior
constructions was obvious from the fact that underneath their
foundations there was a considerable depth of stones overlying the
original soil, and mingled with ashes and food refuse. It was also
evident that various occupations of the interior of the Broch had taken
place from time to time, when the original floor had become covered with
rubbish to a considerable depth. Partition walls were met with at three
different levels, dividing the internal area on three different plans;
the last being a partial partition, utilising only one side of the area,
at a time when the original floor had become covered with 8 feet of
stones and rubbish. The relics obtained in the course of the excavation
were few in number compared with the size and apparent importance of the
structure. No querns were found, but about a dozen grain rubbers and
stones hollowed like mortars, large numbers of stone pestles, pounders,
or hammer-stones, abraded at the ends by use; several whetstones (Figs.
198, 199), a large number of thin circular discs of slaty sandstone,
from 2½ inches up to 14 or 15 inches in diameter, many stone balls 2½ to
3 inches diameter, a small rounded pebble of quartz, with a hole through
it, a number of spindle-whorls of stone, and one of burnt clay. The
objects in metal were a ring of bronze, half an inch in diameter, an
armlet of bronze (Fig. 200), made of a wire 1⁄16-inch in diameter,
square for half its length, and twisted so that the corners form a
spiral pattern, the other half being the plain round wire. A few
fragments of iron knives, and some indeterminate objects of small size,
greatly corroded, were all the remains of iron implements that were
found. The pottery was very abundant, but the fragments were in general
small. Some were coarse and thick, others thin and fine; all unglazed,
and entirely without ornament, except that some pieces showed a slightly
everted lip. The animal remains included those of the reindeer (Figs.
201, 202) and red-deer, the horse, the ox, the sheep, the pig, the dog,
and some undetermined birds and fish. Although the site is a long way
from the sea, there was a considerable accumulation of the common shore
shells, chiefly periwinkles and limpets. The occurrence of the remains
of the reindeer among the refuse of the food of the occupants of the
Brochs of the North of Scotland is a fact of much interest in various
ways. It establishes the correctness of the statement made incidentally
in the _Orkneyinga Saga_,[85] when, in recording the movements of Harald
and Rognvald, Earls of Orkney, in the year 1158, the writer says that
“every summer the Earls were wont to go over to Caithness, and up into
the forests to hunt the red deer or the reindeer.” It also shows that in
Scotland at least the association of reindeer remains with those of
prehistoric man does not of itself or necessarily indicate extreme
antiquity.
-----
Footnote 85:
The _Orkneyinga Saga_ (Edinburgh, 1873), p. 182. See also Dr. J. A.
Smith’s Notice of “Remains of the Reindeer in Scotland,” in the
_Proceedings of the Soc. Antiq. Scot._, vol. viii. p. 186.
-----
[Illustration: Figs. 198, 199.—Whetstones from Broch of Yarhouse (3
inches in length).]
[Illustration: Fig. 200.—Bronze Armlet from the Broch of Yarhouse (2½
inches diameter).]
[Illustration: Figs. 201,202.—Portions of Horns of Reindeer found in the
Broch of Yarhouse, Caithness.]
The Broch of Old Stirkoke, which I watched during its removal by the
farmer for drains and top-dressing, was a grass-covered mound 120 paces
in circumference, 12 feet high, and nearly 40 feet diameter across its
level summit. The wall of the Broch was 13 feet thick and the enclosed
area 30 feet diameter. A square drain ran under the floor. The objects
casually recovered from the rubbish were a bone bodkin 8 inches long, a
polished bone needle 3 inches in length, a thin polished disc of mica
schist 2½ inches diameter similar to other objects of the same character
(of which the intention is not obvious) found in Brochs and Crannogs, a
stone lamp, a few spindle-whorls, two whetstones, hammer-stones, thin
circular discs of slaty stone, a fragment of bronze and a portion of the
hilt end of an iron sword with a very broad double-edged blade.
The Broch of Bowermadden, also removed by the farmer, had a well in the
area with steps leading down to it. It was impossible to obtain with any
degree of precision the general dimensions of the structure, but so far
as I could ascertain it differed in no feature of importance from the
others which have been described. The objects found in it were a number
of stone balls similar to those found in the Broch of Yarhouse, a stone
mortar, a small oval vessel of red sandstone (Fig. 203), a number of
spindle-whorls, and several stone vessels of large size which I did not
see. The farmer said that the largest one was 3 feet deep, and that as
they were always in his way he smashed them up and saved only
[Illustration: Fig. 203.—Vessel of Red Sandstone (6 inches in length).]
a few of the smaller ones to be utilised as hen troughs, etc. A bead of
vitreous paste enamelled with a yellow spiral ornament (Fig. 204), a
very pretty small comb of bone (Fig. 205), with an open semi-circular
handle, and a bronze pin having an open circular head with ribbed
ornamentation on the upper part of the circle (Fig. 206), were also
found. A few fragments of iron implements occurred, but they were
greatly corroded and indeterminable.
[Illustration: Fig. 204.—Bead of Vitreous Paste (actual size).]
[Illustration: Fig. 205.—Small Comb of Bone (actual size).]]
[Illustration: Fig. 206.—Bronze Pin. Front and side views (actual
size).]
The Broch of Dunbeath, situated in the angle formed by the confluence of
the Burn of Houstry with the Water of Dunbeath, which was excavated by
Mr. Thomson Sinclair, jun., of Dunbeath, had larger and loftier chambers
in the thickness of its wall than any of the others. One of these
measured 12 feet 6 inches by 6 feet 6 inches, and 13 feet high. Among
the relics found in this Broch were an iron spear-head 5 inches in
length, a whetstone, and some bone implements. A quantity of charred
grain, bere, and oats was found on the floor.
These examples will suffice to convey a general idea of the nature and
contents of the Brochs of Sutherland and Caithness, and to show how
closely they resemble one another alike in the style of their
construction, the nature of their arrangements, and the general
character of their contained relics. I now proceed to notice briefly a
few of those which have been excavated in Shetland and Orkney. They all
exhibit the same typical structure, with variations in their details
which need not be minutely specified. It is necessary, however, to
examine the groups of relics which have been obtained from them in order
to complete the general view of the evidence from which we arrive at
conclusions as to the nature and quality of the culture and civilisation
of their occupants.
[Illustration: Fig. 207.—Ground plan of the Broch of Levenwick,
Shetland. (From a plan by Mr. Gilbert Goudie.)]