Guthlac: Crowland’s saint. Edited by Roberts Jane and Thacker Alan. 240mm. Pp xlvi + 594, 64 figs, 53 col pls. Shaun Tyas, Donington, 2020. isbn 9781907730818 (hbk), 9781907730832 (pbk). £45 (hbk), £28 (pbk).

Abstract

vived to be excavated is a complex settlement comprising large circular houses and more irregular structures that infill the spaces between the round houses, the broch and the surrounding rampart. In the Middle Iron Age most of the houses were wheelhouses. Wheelhouses, like brochs, are a regionally distinctive tradition of stone-walled roundhouses found in Atlantic Scotland. They are characterised by a peripheral area around a central open space that is divided into rooms defined by stone-built piers that protrude from the inner wall face. They are architecturally sophisticated structures but, unlike the brochs, the sophistication is only visible to those allowed to enter the structure. The presence of the circular houses distinguishes the village at Scatness from the well-known broch villages of Orkney where the constraints of circularity were discarded, and it confirms the pattern observed at nearby Jarlshof where a very similar, though much smaller, broch village of circular houses was excavated. The presence of a substantial village reflects the agricultural fertility of this district of south Shetland where the windblown sands encourage arable agriculture. They do not seem to be a feature of many of the Shetland brochs, though most of these brochs are surrounded by additional boundaries and the occasional external structure is not unusual. It is difficult to make an accurate estimate, given the amount of destruction caused by the airport road, but a village of at least sixteen separate buildings could have been present in the area surrounding the broch. Not all of the structures were domestic dwellings occupied by a household; structure , a rectangular building attached to a wheelhouse, was clearly providing specialist facilities for the adjacent household. The broch itself seems to be partially restructured, possibly late in this phase, but remains the focal point of the settlement with an entrance facing west. The site provides an extremely valuable sequence that demonstrates the development of wheelhouses from the last centuries BC through the first millennium AD, and provides important new information on how they were used. The early wheelhouses have isolated rectangular stone piers separate from the internal walls of the house. Close observation of the wear on the architectural stones reveals that the narrow gap between the pier and the wall was used as a doorway that allowed movement between the peripheral rooms. These movements may later have been regarded as problematic and the spaces were blocked up; later houses had long piers that ran up to the surrounding walls. The final wheelhouses were much smaller structures withmassive triangular piers fully bedded into the house walls. It is clear that early wheelhouses had an upper floor and though in some cases this may have been a mezzanine gallery in others it is argued that the first floor spanned the interior and was likely to have been the main living space. The later wheelhouses are structurally much more secure buildings, but the reduction in size clearly indicates a shift in the social significance of the house interior. The large early wheelhouses provided an arena for social interaction within the household and between the household and visitors, which simply wouldn’t have been possible in the later smaller structures. This change can be related to the increasing importance of material culture and personal ornament in the later periods that culminates in the Pictish period. The finds from the site demonstrate the important connections that Shetland had with areas further to the south; important connections with the Pictish kingdom are emphatically demonstrated by the discovery of the Scatness bear: a strikingly lifelike carving of a bear done in a typically Pictish style. It is carved on an orthostat placed at the end of a pier on one of the wheelhouses. Much could and should be written about this carving; the style of the art, the symbolism of the animal, the selection of the stone, the original location and the way it was treated at the end of the life of the house. However, it is just one of several pieces of art and one of a multitude of finds from this exceptional site. The volumes published provide the end of the beginning of the work at Scatness. My review is limited and has had to ignore many important and fascinating aspects of the archaeology. The site itself has yet to be consolidated and laid out to the public, and there is still much work to be done to appreciate fully the significance of this monument and the work that has been carried out and documented here.