Scotland in the Iron Age

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Scotland in the Iron Age concerns the period of prehistory in Scotland from about 800 BCE to the commencement of written records in the early Christian era. As the Iron Age emerged from the preceding Bronze Age, it becomes legitimate to talk of a Celtic culture in Scotland.^[1][2] It was an age of forts and farmsteads, the most dramatic remains of which are brochs some of whose walls still exceed 6.5 m (21 ft) in height. Pastoral farming was widespread but as the era progressed there is more evidence of cereal growing and increasing intensification of agriculture. Unlike the previous epochs of human occupation, early Iron Age burial sites in Scotland are relatively rare although monasteries and other religious sites were constructed in the last centuries of the period. The Stirling torcs are amongst examples of high quality crafts produced at an early date and the Pictish symbol stones are emblematic of later times.

Some authorities consider the Iron Age to have ended with the first century invasions by the Romans. However much of Scotland remained outside of the Roman world and after the departure of the legions the Celtic Iron Age way of life, often troubled but never extinguished by Rome, re-asserted itself for several centuries more.^[3]