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Broch of Gurness (Aikerness Broch)

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Broch of Gurness (Aikerness Broch) Property in Care (PIC) ID: PIC277 Designations: Scheduled Monument (SM90157) Taken into State care: 1931 (Guardianship) Last reviewed: 2003 HISTORIC ENVIRONMENT SCOTLAND STATEMENT OF SIGNIFICANCE BROCH OF GURNESS (AIKERNESS BROCH) We continually revise our Statements of Significance, so they may vary in length, format and level of detail. While every effort is made to keep them up to date, they should not be considered a definitive or final assessment of our properties. Historic Environment Scotland – Scottish Charity No. SC045925 Principal Office:Longmore House, Salisbury Place, Edinburgh EH9 1SH Historic Environment Scotland – Scottish Charity No. SC045925 Principal Office:Longmore House, Salisbury Place, Edinburgh EH9 1SH BROCH OF GURNESS BRIEF DESCRIPTION The monument at Broch of Gurness (Aikerness) comprises an excavated Middle Iron Age broch, associated village and later structures. The settlement is surrounded by a series of massive rock-cut ditches and earthworks. Gurness can be interpreted as the residence and associated settlement of one of the most important leaders in Orkney in a predominantly agricultural society that also had extensive maritime contacts with the outside world. This settlement complex is sited on Aikerness, a headland on the north side of Mainland Orkney that juts into Eynhallow Sound and looks over towards the island of Rousay. Part of the site has been lost to coastal erosion. Some of the later Iron Age structures, the so-called ‘Shamrock’ house, a sub- rectangular (Late Iron Age or possibly Norse) building, plus a small single-cell with a tank, are rebuilt to the west of the site, near the Site Museum. CHARACTER OF THE MONUMENT Historical Overview • There is a rich and fascinating antiquarian and later history associated with the discovery and interpretation of brochs/complex roundhouses as a whole. • 1929-1939 excavations, first by tenant, then under auspices of Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, finally Historic Environment Scotland’s predecessor body when the site comes into care in 1932. The excavators had only a rudimentary understanding of stratigraphy, no access to modern scientific techniques, including dating. Record keeping was also poor, although the site was well planned. This means that we have a limited capacity to reinterpret the exceedingly complex structural remains that were encountered and that much other archaeological knowledge is irretrievably lost. • 1987 retrospective publication of 1920s/1930s excavations. This, and excavations at a number of related monuments in Orkney, prompted a radical reassessment not just of Gurness but of the development of brochs and Atlantic roundhouses as a whole, and the place of Orkney in this development. Archaeological Overview • Sometime before around 200 BC: layout of enclosure within ditches and ramparts; presume earlier settlement of which nothing yet known. c. 200 BC- 200 AD, arguably early centuries AD: ditches recut and reworked; broch, ‘well’ and associated village constructed. Broch needs series of remedial works after partial collapse; various alterations to broch interior include complex, well- preserved stone internal fittings. 200-800 AD, arguably from 3rd or 4th centuries AD: series of later Iron Age polycellular and sub-rectangular buildings built over and into collapsed remains of earlier settlement. At least one of the recognised structures may be Norse. It is thought that much of the evidence relating to this and later periods was not properly recognised. 9th century: pagan Viking woman’s grave dug on perimeter of site, probably one of many. • Broch towers were probably erected to reflect the prestige and status of their inhabitants. While they may also have some defensive qualities their inhabitants were farmers like nearly everyone else at this time. None the less, there would have been something else, perhaps control over land, people or other resources, that singled broch tower inhabitants out from others. Gurness would appear to have been one of the highest status sites in Orkney at this time, if its leaders were not, in fact, supreme rulers. Considerable resources, not least muscle- power, would have been required to construct the site. • Midhowe is one of at least nine brochs, including Gurness, that stand sentinel over both sides of the narrow and dangerous stretch of water known as Eynhallow Sound that runs between Rousay and Mainland Orkney. The inter- visibility of Midhowe and Gurness is likely to be deliberate: these may have been the main sites on each side of the Sound, although this interpretation is biased by the fact that the other sites are unexcavated. The coastal distribution of settlement shows how important the sea and coastal travel must have been. • The nature of broch tower construction may argue for the existence of specialist broch tower builders. If so, this raises interesting question about how society was organised and the role that such people played. • The main centre for the development of complex roundhouses and broch towers would appear to be Orkney, which begs a series of questions about the relationship between the élite groups here and those who lived elsewhere in the Atlantic province. If Gurness was one of the most important such sites in Orkney what was the relationship of its inhabitants with the rest of the Atlantic province? Artistic/Architectural Overview • The broch tower largely survives to first floor level and contains many of the usual broch features, but particularly good examples of entrance passage, door-check, bar-holes and guard-cells. The surrounding houses also contain many clues as to where doors could be opened and shut. Gurness therefore presents an unparalleled opportunity to understand how access between different areas might have been used to control or limit the activities of visitors, as well as the site’s inhabitants, and what such relationships might therefore have entailed. The ordered radial layout of the village is rare and suggestive of the imposition of a strong centralised authority, presumably by the inhabitants of the broch. The result of this design control is that the monumental qualities of broch and the processional nature of its approaches, through a fortified gatehouse, over a series of ramparts and down a long (probably covered) passage, were enhanced. • The internal fittings within the broch interior are exceptionally well-preserved and convey a vivid appreciation of what it might have been like to live in here. Much of what can be seen is likely to represent secondary use of this space. As at Midhowe, and a few other brochs, the interior is decisively divided across the middle into two main compartments of approximately equal size. The social process that led to such a division can only be a matter of speculation, but the fact that this occurs on some other brochs perhaps raises interesting issues regarding inheritance and division of authority. • Broch towers, drystone structures built with a hollow wall construction containing superimposed galleries and a range of other distinctive architectural features, are a form of roundhouse found exclusively in north and west Scotland. (A small number of monuments in southern Scotland are clearly also influenced by this style of architecture.) They belong to what is known as the Atlantic roundhouse tradition, with origins (in N Scotland so far only) in massive simple roundhouses (dating around 800-400 BC) and more widespread, complex Atlantic roundhouses (dating around 500-200BC). Dating of the ultimate expression of this architectural form, broch towers, is problematic, but they seem to appear around 200 BC, occupation often being at its peak in the 1st-2nd centuries AD and sometimes continuing until as late as the mid 1st millennium AD. • This building form is unique to Scotland. Atlantic roundhouses are difficult to classify in the absence of excavation and because they have usually lost their upper levels, but the best estimate is that there may be 500 examples in Scotland of which less than 100 fall into the category of broch towers. • There is considerable debate about what form the roof of broch towers, indeed most Atlantic roundhouses, took. This is only one of the many perplexing questions about broch tower construction that make their study so fascinating. For instance, where was the main floor level? At Gurness evidence can be seen for the scarcement that is thought to have supported the first floor level. The design of the external wall structure shows a knowledge of structural engineering. As with all brochs the outer wall is too thin to stand alone to the height that it would originally have been. To stand alone to this height would require a massively thick wall and a huge amount of material. Employing two thin walls each giving mutual support to each other via the gallery floors allows for a tall stable structure without the need for a massive amount of material i.e. it is structurally very efficient. This technique is akin to a modern technique known as a ‘diaphragm wall’. In addition to structural ingenuity the broch builder showed a great degree of three-dimensional spatial understanding by spiralling the gallery floors. Thus the structural ties, the gallery floors, not only acted in a structural way but also as stairs between levels. Further, in some sections the galleries were flat providing intramural accommodation. In this way the floor space described by the walls was not used up with circulation space and further accommodation was provided in the walls. Social Overview • Gurness is a much photographed icon of Orkney’s rich archaeological heritage. Spiritual Overview • Within the interior of the broch, one of the earliest features to be constructed was a large and complex subterranean chamber that has water at the bottom of it. The 1999 rediscovery at Mine Howe, Orkney, of an elaborate subterranean cistern at the apparent centre of a large, Iron Age ritual and industrial complex has awakened archaeologists to the possibility that ‘wells’ on contemporary ‘settlement’ sites, such as Gurness, also had ‘ritual’ connotations.
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