Scottish hillforts – hierarchies or heterarchies?
Channel: Recording Archaeology
Date: 2016-05-11

Studies focusing on the Iron Age of Scotland continue to see social structure in hierarchical ways, where hillforts are interpreted as being at the top of a social triangle, with smaller sites, often in low-lying positions regarded as being of lesser social status (e.g. Banks 2002; Harding 2004; Ralston 2006). When one examines settlement sites in detail, however, particularly in terms of their size, shape, form and entrance orientation, a different pattern of social structure begins to emerge, especially when the artefacts used and created at these sites are considered (Murtagh 2014). As a result social hierarchy, as traditionally understood, becomes
difficult to sustain, and consequently new ways of exploring social structure needs to be examined. In this paper the ways in which things, be they the trees used to construct palisades, the rocks used to construct houses or the stones used to make jewelry, help
assemble communities (Harris 2012; 2013) will be explored. By thinking about material and communities in these ways, new ways of understanding how power and status were negotiated during the Iron Age can be advanced, and different social structures imagined.

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B. and Banks, I. (eds.) In the shadow of the brochs: the Iron Age in Scotland. Stroud: Tempus, 27-35.
Harding, D. (2004) The Iron Age in Northern Britain. Celts and Romans, natives and invaders. Oxford: Routledge.
Harris, O.J.T. (2012) (Re)assembling communities. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 21: 76-97.
Harris, O.J.T. (2013) Relational communities in Neolithic Britain. In Watts, C. (ed.) Relational archaeologies: Humans, animals, things. London: Routledge, 173-189.
Murtagh, P.J. (2014) Materiality, community and identity: The Iron Age of west central Scotland. Unpublished PhD thesis: Durham University.
Ralston, I. (2006) Celtic fortifications. Stroud: Tempus.

Paul MURTAGH (Northlight Heritage)