In 1883 Joseph Anderson published the first, and until now the last, general survey of the archaeology of Iron Age Scotland – Scotland in Pagan Times: The Iron Age. Since then, although the subject has received treatment as part of more extensive surveys (notably in The Iron Age in North Britain, edited by A.L.F. Rivet in 1966), no book has appeared solely devoted to the subject, which is perhaps strange, given the wealth of impressive remains from the period.

This volume is the last to be published in the period surveys in the Batsford/Historic Scotland series that began with Scotland’s First Settlers and now extends to Medieval Scotland. The series as a whole has been excellent, as have the related subject-studies in the same format. This book is no exception. It is written in no-nonsense English and tells you what you want to know, not what archaeologists feel you ought to know, which unfortunately the writers of most popular books tend to do, conscious of peer-group criticism. The arrangement is logical — after a first chapter trying to set Scotland in a wider Celtic perspective (though do we need to have the statutory map of Celtic Europe, reproduced as fig 3, which with its clear boundaries seems to run a bit contrary to the argument of the text?), the second chapter goes on to look at the Bronze Age background of Iron Age Scotland. Chapters follow on ‘House and Home’, ‘Warring Celts’ (mostly about hillforts), ‘Celtic Cowboys’ (about farms), ‘Identity and Power’, ‘Death and Belief’, ‘The Clash with Rome’ and a Dark Age (and thus Pictish!) ‘Epilogue’ which points out that the early medieval period is really only an extension of later prehistory.

Particularly useful are the reconstruction drawings, which are perhaps less crude than some in the Batsford volumes, though as always in this series many of the pictures are reproduced too large, and others too small. Some of the colour plates seem strange choices, notably the reconstruction drawings in plates 1 and 9, which do not require colour.

There are, inevitably, a few errors, such as the caption to fig. 48 which informs us that the Crichton souterrain was built partly from Roman dressed stone around 150 BC, and areas where not all would agree with the interpretations put forward, but these do not substantially detract from a very useful volume.

Lloyd Laing.