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Although Greek and Roman authors wrote of the Celtae or Keltoi, they never referred to the natives of Britain or Ireland as ‘Celts’. The Greek writer Pytheas referred to Britain as the ‘Pretanic islands’ and Orkney as the ‘Orcas’ (Orkney is one of the oldest recorded place names still in use).The Roman historian Tacitus described the Scots as ‘Britons’, but he noted their reddish hair and the fact that they were taller than those of the south. All spoke a variant of Celtic, which we could call British.
The Roman conquest and later exposure to the Roman colony of Gaul changed southern Britain during the first century AD. The British aristocracy in the south adopted Roman names, fashion and architecture. The peoples of the north were less exposed to Roman influence because they proved harder to conquer – a fact borne out by the later building of the Antonine Wall from the Clyde to the Forth and Hadrian’s Wall from Solway to the Tyne (see Chapter 3). Thus, Celtic culture continued largely untouched in the north.
What Life Was Like for Scotland’s First Settlers
The problem with archaeology is that we can only talk of peoples and rarely individuals. So much of what we know about how these people lived their lives, how they toiled, played and worshipped, we know from archaeology. But archaeology can’t tell us anything about what they thought or discussed.
In this section, I give you a composite picture of the economy and culture of these undoubtedly complex worlds.
Tools and toil
Population levels are hard to guess during the ages of man, but there were no concentrations of people in towns – they were far more dispersed. The New Stone Age and Bronze Age populations of the northwest Highlands and islands were potentially larger than in any period before the 18th century.
How did people survive? Hunting had given way to farming, so agriculture was the main occupation. But agriculture wasn’t based on private property. The culture was communal – there was little distinction between people based on wealth or birth. A New Stone Age tomb discovered at Isbister, on Orkney, shows that there were no social distinctions in death – there weren’t any individual graves.
People probably didn’t live long enough to accumulate much in the way of wealth – death rates were high and average life expectancy was only about 30 years. However, there were gender differences: Unlike today, men lived longer than women. But as a whole, it was a young community with very few old people.
Over time, the creation of a food surplus enabled social elites to come to prominence. So, we find prestige goods, such as jewellery, in the Bronze Age, suggesting that not everyone was working the land. The evidence of surplus also suggests that people did more than just survive and that their standard of living was comparable to levels found in northern and western Europe.
Wealth and power
From about 3,000BC, a more elaborate hierarchical social structure began to emerge. We can tell this from examining the contents of graves. During the Bronze Age, the chambered tombs of individuals point to the existence of a heavily armed warrior aristocracy whose power came from their control of the bronze trade.
But this powerful aristocracy seems to have disappeared at the begi
Accommodation was also communal. People lived in what were called
broch towers.
These towers were found in the north and west of Scotland and were round in shape, with cone-like roofs, and capable of housing large numbers of people. In the east and south, the communal roundhouse, which was around 16 metres (52.5 feet) in diameter, was the main type of dwelling.
It was really only when the Romans invaded Britain and tried to extend their rule to northern Scotland that societies emerged that were of the same hierarchical nature as those found in the Bronze Age. Hill forts were built anew, with strictly graded layouts and walled citadels surrounded by terraces and enclosures, with an emphasis on hierarchy, division and exclusion. These forts were monuments to the power of war leaders and dynastic groups. As a result, farmhouses became more modest, and in the first few centuries of the first mille
Death and religion
Iron Age Britain believed in more than 400 gods. Most were of the local variety, and some were animals, such as horses, bulls and deer. Rivers and lakes were considered sacred too. Burial monuments and places of worship dominate the records for the New Stone Age, while graves and grave goods constitute the material culture of the Bronze Age.
Before the adoption of Christianity in the post-Roman period, the detail of religious belief is entirely lost to history. But through archaeology, we can gain some insight into their beliefs. The big bones, like skulls and legs, found in chambered tombs suggest that flesh was allowed to decompose (as opposed to corpses being mummified) to allow the spirit to escape the body. Unlike modern society, the dead were venerated and visited at certain times of the year (for example, the winter solstice). There was also ritual sacrifice – virgins wanted!
Close links between religion and political power were pretty much unknown at this time, and it was only with the spread of Christianity that those links were strengthened. But there is evidence to suggest that organised religion existed. This was more obvious in the later New Stone Age (3,000 to 2,000BC) than before, as evidenced by the construction of hundreds of religious centres throughout Britain. Stone circles and ditched circular enclosures, known as henges (for example, the Ring of Brodgar and the Stones of Ste