Scotland prior to the Iron Age

Scotland prior to the Iron Age The timespan of some 6,000 years from the first settlement until the Iron Age was once understood only through fleeting interludes of occupation lacking in any kind of cultural continuity. But the record has become more complex and while it remains difficult to prove absolute continuity at specific sites there is more than a hint of stability.1 Records of the Mesolithic Larnian and Obanian cultures are of course fragmentary in the extreme but there is a record of settlement evolving from Palaeolithic groups of c. 8 000-7000 BC which involves several sites in the west soon after 7000 BC (the islands of Arran, Islay, Jura and Rhum) and extends to a considerable number of other coastal locations over the following 2,000 years.2 Considering that sites with occupation before 7500 BC are rare in north-west Europe and the earliest sites in Britain are around 7000 BC the record in Scotland begins quite early and the marginality of the Scottish environment should not therefore be exaggerated.3