Luffness: Chapter 4

The Iron Age

The Scottish Iron Age has traditionally been defined as lasting from 700 BC to 500 AD and merges into the Early Historicⁱ. There is a lot of debate about when it finished, that is to say, do you include the Romans, the Vikings or go right up to the medieval period. I don't think entering into this debate will add anything to this piece, so for our purpose these dates will suffice.

So, what defines this period from the Bronze Age? The main distinction is the introduction of new technologies and materials; most notably iron. This period also saw the introduction of the rotary quern, the lathe, the potters wheel and the first widespread use of glassⁱⁱ.

RCAHMS SITE NUMBER	LOCATION OF FIND	SITE TYPE
NT47NE 25	Luffness Mains	BARROW(S) (POSSIBLE), LINEAR FEATURE(S), RIG AND FURROW, SETTLEMENT
NT47NE 43	Luffness Mains	ENCLOSURE
NT47NE 72	Luffness Mains	SETTLEMENT, UNENCLOSED SETTLEMENT
NT48SE 56	Gullane	CAULDRON (COPPER)(IRON AGE)
NT48SE 18	Gullane, Seton Court	ROTARY QUERN
NT48SE 26	Gullane	COIN (ROMAN)
NT48SE 25	Gullane Golf Course	COIN (ROMAN)
NT48SE 85	Aberlady	BROOCH(S) (ROMAN)
NT48SE 24	Gala Law	UNIDENTIFIED POTTERY (ROMAN)

Table 1: Iron Age finds in the Luffness area

Now let us look at what physical evidence has been found in the Luffness area that relates to life in this time period.

Small finds dated to the Iron Age period (Table 1) include a pottery sherd on Gala Law (NT48SE 32 and 53) and a bronze cauldron (NT48SE 56) which is thought to have had an iron rim (illustration 1). The cauldron is dated to between 100 BC and 200 AD. and is in the National Museum of Scotland (NMS)ⁱⁱⁱ.

Illustration 1: These pieces of a bronze vessel or small cauldron were found at Gullane in East Lothian. Such cauldrons were expensive and prestigious items, presumably used in feasts given by important leaders. The pieces are made of sheet bronze. Remains of rivet holes are visible at the top, where the rim would have been attached. On cauldrons of this type, the rims were usually of iron. Feasting was one form of conspicuous consumption, designed to show off the power, wealth and status of the giver. Some cauldrons were also buried as gifts to the gods, probably symbolic of food and feasting.

A bone spindle whorl (illustration 2)^iv found at Gullane and dated to between 200 BC and 200 AD was not a prestigious item like the axeheads or feasting vessel but it was a necessary one. It also shows that iron or even metal had not replaced all the old technologies.

Illustration 2: Pictured here are stone spindle whorls from Cairnconan in Angus and Freswick Sand in Caithness, a bone example from Muirfield in East Lothian and a ceramic example from Coalhill in Ayrshire. They were used between 200 BC and 200 AD.The spindle whorls are of different shapes, but all have central perforations where the wool was tied on. The top example, from Freswick Sands has seven small cup-like depressions on one face and six on the other. Spindle whorls were hung at the end of wool, to act as a flywheel as it was spun into yarn using a spindle. They occur in a range of shapes and materials, as illustrated here. Spindle whorls are often the only evidence preserved of spinning.

Even when there are no small finds, Iron Age Luffness can reveal itself in other ways.

Illustration 3: RCAHMS Aerial Photography Luffness Mains, oblique aerial view, taken from the NE, centred on the cropmarks of a square enclosure. SC624577 Copyright RCAHMS . The wide dark linear mark is the old railway track bed.

The remains of settlements can appear as areas of contrasting colours of the soil; soil marks, or in a field of crops; crop marks. Luckily these crop marks are best seen in areas where cereals are grown, such as East Lothian^v. In fact with the introduction of aerial photography an extensive array of settlements in East Lothian, that had not been recognised before, have been revealed to us. Most of these can be dated to 1000 BC to 500 AD^vi. Crop marks can be seen at Luffness mains (NT47NE 25, 43 and 72) which show features that are associated with settlements. There are a number of crop mark sites that provide evidence of prehistoric settlements in the form of enclosed and unenclosed settlement (NT47NE 72) and a ring ditch (NT47NE 25 and 43) (illustration 3 and 4).

Illustration 4: RCAHMS Aerial Photography Luffness Mains, oblique aerial view, taken from the W, centred on cropmarks of a settlement enclosure and unenclosed settlement traces. SC1250821 Copyright

These sites are indicative of Iron Age settlement but there has been no definitive dating evidence. Two archaeological evaluation digs were carried out in the near vicinity. One of which found pottery that appeared to be from the later prehistoric period and a small amount of iron slag^vii. The presence of iron slag would mean it could date to no earlier than the Iron Age but it could be later, because the people of East Lothain were still using enclosures in the first millennium AD^viii. This lack of finds may in itself be an indicator of the date of settlement activity. If the activity was early prehistoric it is likely there may have been more domestic debris, such as flint and pottery.

The other dig at Luffness Mains^ix interpreted all the features they discovered to be ditches, furrows or drains relating to post-medieval land use. Although this dig didn't find any Iron Age evidence, what it did do was to show us a continuity of agricultural land use. The land of East Lothian is famous for its farm land, which has provided food for the masses near and far. It was this ability to provide that allowed the people of East Lothian to form a complex and rewarding relationship with the first literate civilisation that they met; the Romans.

There is a school of thought that the people of Scotland were all bumbling about in the dark until the Romans came and turned the lights on. However, what we have seen in the previous chapters shows that this was not the case. What is not in dispute is that with the Romans came the written record.

The Romans came to Scotland in 79 AD lead by the general and governor of Britain; Agricola. He was the father in law of the historian Tacitus, who wrote about Agricola's campaigns. The Romans had a presence in Scotland intermittently until they left Britain in 410 AD^x. Apart from a few coin finds there is no evidence of Roman activities in Luffness. However there is a lot of evidence for a special relationship that was centred around Traprain Law; which is famous for its hoard of Roman silver that was found there in 1919^{xi xii}.

Why did Traprain Law become so prominent in the Roman period?

The site has tended to be seen as the fortified Iron Age capital of the Votadini. The Votadini were a tribe whose territory was south-east Scotland and north-east England. The upper strata of the Votadini society enjoyed a special relationship with Rome and had access to high quality Roman goods. The fact that the Romans allowed the Votadini capital at Traprain to survive suggests that the natives were not considered a threat. It has been suggested that a lack of Roman marching camps and military installations in the agricultural landscape of East Lothian suggests that the Votadini had allied themselves with Rome and may even have been, at certain times, a buffer state on the edge of the Empire^xiii.

Perhaps the relationship was not just as a buffer to northern tribes but that the local populous could provide the food needed to keep the Roman armies on campaign north of the Fourth. I must add that this is conjecture on my behalf and many academics are still trying to answer the question of why Traprain became so prominent in the Roman period^xiv.

So what happened when the Romans left?

Did they turn the lights out and leave every one to grovel about in the dark?

When the Romans left, life and society were undoubtedly changed and it is this change that we will investigate in the next period; the Early Historic or Dark Ages.

i http://tinyurl.com/d24fbpr (Page 10)

ii http://tinyurl.com/d24fbpr (Page 43)

iii http://nms.scran.ac.uk/database/record.php?usi=000-100-326-058-C&scache=4q0kg2uti8&searchdb=scran

iv http://nms.scran.ac.uk/database/record.php?usi=000-100-040-677-C&scache=1q1172uti4&searchdb=scran

v http://tinyurl.com/d24fbpr (Page 19)

viThe New Penguin History of Scotland: From the Earliest Times to the Present Day
edited by: R. A. Houston, W. W. J. Knox
London, Allen Lane, The Penguin Press in association with the National Museums of Scotland, 2001, ISBN: 9780713991871 Page 15.

viihttp://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archsearch/record.jsf?titleId=1951105

August 2010, Page 5.

viii http://tinyurl.com/d24fbpr (Page 76)

ixhttp://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archsearch/record.jsf?titleId=1947689

xhttp://www.historic-scotland.gov.uk/roman-scotland.pdf

xihttp://www.nms.ac.uk/collections__research/early_historic_scotland/traprain_law_dish.aspx

xiihttp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-21244147

xiii http://www.archaeologyuk.org/ba/ba57/feat1.html

xiv http://tinyurl.com/d24fbpr