SQA Advanced Higher History

Evidence and its limits

The peoples of Iron Age Northern Britain (roughly the centuries from 700 BC to the arrival of Rome) left no writing of their own, so everything known about them comes from two kinds of source that need to be read against each other. Archaeology supplies settlements, tools, weapons, burials, hoards and the remains of food and farming; literary evidence is almost all written by outsiders, Greek and Roman authors who described Celtic peoples in general, and Tacitus, whose account of Agricola's campaigns in the 80s AD is the first sustained description of the north.

Each has weaknesses. Classical writers wanted to portray barbarians as a foil for Roman civilisation, often borrowed from earlier accounts of Gaul, and rarely saw the north themselves, so their stress on head-taking, sacrifice and constant fighting may reflect what a Roman audience expected. Archaeology is silent on belief and on the political relationships between groups, and what survives depends on soil conditions, so wood, textiles and leather are mostly missing and metalwork, stone and pottery are overrepresented. The usual approach is to treat the literary picture as a hypothesis and ask whether the ground confirms it.

The term 'Celtic' is itself debated. It describes a family of related languages and a shared style of decorated metalwork (La Tène art) more safely than it describes a single people or a migration, and some archaeologists, Ian Armit among them, have argued that the societies of the north should be understood on their own terms as products of long local development rather than as the western end of a Celtic world defined by Roman ethnography.

The nature of society

Iron Age society in the north was overwhelmingly rural. People lived in farmsteads and small settlements, with few places that could be called towns, and the economy rested on mixed farming: cereals (barley above all, with some wheat), the keeping of cattle, sheep and pigs, and in some regions fishing and the gathering of shellfish. Cattle counted as wealth, and raiding for them was a recognised source of prestige.

The standard dwelling was the roundhouse, built of timber and thatch, or of stone in the north and west where timber was scarce. In Atlantic Scotland (Orkney, Shetland, the Western Isles and the north mainland) the drystone broch, a tall hollow-walled tower, appeared in the later centuries BC (from perhaps the third century BC); Mousa in Shetland is the best-preserved. Other regions had crannogs (artificial islands in lochs), souterrains (underground stores) and enclosed hillforts such as Traprain Law in East Lothian and Eildon Hill North in the Borders. Whether brochs were fortified homes of a local elite or simply imposing farmhouses, they are the clearest evidence that some households wished to display status.

Society was hierarchical and tribal. Rank depended on kinship, and a chief or king headed each group, supported by a warrior elite; below them were free farmers and craftworkers, and at the bottom those who were dependent or enslaved. Ptolemy's second-century geography names tribal groups across the north, among them the Caledonii, Votadini, Selgovae, Novantae and Damnonii, but the tribal names are a Roman record and the real units of loyalty were probably smaller and more fluid, shifting with the fortunes of leading families.

Power and prestige were bound up with generosity and display. A leader's standing came from distributing gifts, hosting feasts and rewarding followers, and the objects that survive are consistent with this: fine metalwork such as armlets, brooches and the decorated Torrs pony cap, imported Roman goods in the later centuries, and weapons made to be seen as well as used. Control of farmland, cattle and labour underpinned the system.

Way of life

People wove wool and flax into clothing, fastened with brooches and pins; the ordinary diet was bread or porridge from grain, dairy products and meat, with wild foods added; tools were of iron, bone, wood and stone, and querns ground the grain. Skilled craftworkers (smiths, potters, jewellers) worked metals and made goods whose design shows contact across Britain and Europe. Weapons included spears, swords, shields and, from the evidence of Tacitus and later sculpture, chariots in some contexts. Farming was productive enough in the east and south to support settled communities with some surplus; the north and west was more marginal.

Belief systems

Evidence for belief is mostly indirect. Many deposits seem to have been made on purpose and not lost: votive offerings, valuable objects such as weapons, cauldrons and ornaments placed in lochs, bogs, rivers and pits, apparently as gifts to gods or spirits. Natural features such as springs, groves and watery places were treated as numinous places (settings felt to hold a divine presence), and hoards found in them point to ritual practice. Greek and Roman writers described the Druids as a learned priestly class that presided over sacrifice, taught and judged disputes; the evidence for Druids in northern Britain itself is weak, since the accounts concern Gaul and Anglesey.

The Cult of the Head is the belief, reported by classical authors and supported in part by sculpture and finds across the Celtic world, that the head was the seat of the soul and of power. Writers described warriors taking the heads of enemies and displaying them; in the north the evidence is thinner than in Gaul, though carved stone heads and imagery of heads recur in later Roman-period contexts. Human sacrifice is also reported by classical writers; direct evidence in the north is scarce, and Roman authors had reason to exaggerate it.

Many scholars therefore read the Roman picture of the Iron Age tribes as 'extremely warlike and bloodthirsty' with caution. Warfare mattered (weapons, hillforts and the prestige of the warrior are all attested), but the same finds show farmers, craftworkers and traders, and the Roman accounts were written to justify conquest. A balanced view sees a society in which violence was one route to status among several.