ABSTRACT
The romantic notion of ‘Ultima Thule’ conjures up images of remote and uncharted lands, but it is a concept that has a particular resonance when applied to the Iron Age communities of Atlantic Scotland and Ireland. In a very real sense these coastal communities sat on the edge of the then known world and marked the northwestern limits of European Iron Age culture: beyond them lay the seemingly infinite Ocean and the unknown. Academic studies have in turn tended to regard Atlantic Scotland and Ireland as rather mysterious lands that were peripheral to the main developments of the European Iron Age.The communities of these regions are often considered, at best, conservative and, at worst, culturally retarded when compared to their continental European counterparts. However, the settlement evidence, when studied on its own merits, reveals the existence of highly distinctive and lively communities capable of producing the most sophisticated and complex architectural structures known in Iron Age Europe. Strong regional identities are reflected through traditions of monumental drystone architecture that have more to do with the existence and cultural importance of maritime connections along the Atlantic seaboard than with developments in La Tène Europe.
