medieval-atlas/events-to-about-850/48

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Pictish and earlier archaeological sites Aerial survey has intensified the conarast between Iron Age patterns north and south of the Forth. and it has clarified the situation in Fife and Tayside. In the past decade the unenclosed villages of round timber houses that are typical of ruml settlement in E. Scotland from the siluh century BC 10 the Roman period have been identilied in great numbers. appearing from the ai r as clusters of circular or annular cropmark.ings: a handful of excavnlions has revealed that these distinctive traces are formed by a characteristic ring-shaped or lunale hollow. 6-15m (20-50 feet) across lhe interior of the house. Ring-ditch houses are also found in appreciable numbers in Grampian and Highland Regions. where they appear 10 foml a natural extension of a distribution pallem whose northern limits arc not yet known, but whose southern limit coincides wilh that of square-barrow cemeteries (which arc shown in a later map). Of even greater interest. perhaps, has been the discovery that unenclosed seulements of the later Iron Age in those parts were frequently associated with souterntins and that these could also be identified from the ai r. The potential impact of this on Iron Age archaeology may be gauged from a comparison of the tOlal number of souterrains identified in southern Pictland by a century of anl i~ quarian endeavour, (fifty-five). wi th the lOO-odd sites recorded by the aerial surveyor in only the past decade. Even more impressive is the quality of information thus acquired. for it is now possible to see that many settlements incorporate several souterrains. some of them of conloiderable size and structural complexity. AI pre