Scalloway A Broch, Late Iron Age Settlement and Medieval Cemetery in Shetland

This excavation report is important for understanding the Early Historic Settlement of the Northern Isles. It contains results and analysis from the 1989-90 excavations on a ridge overlooking Scalloway on Shetland. They revealed a pattern of intense activity since the 1st century BC, and prior evidence of a cremation burial, probably Bronze Age. Successive phases of occupation were identified into the medieval period, including a broch occupied up to the 8th century, which seems to have been a mixed farming community which practised metalwork. No Viking settlement was found on site, but finds suggest one to have been situated nearby. A shortlived cemetery, probably medieval, and the 17th-century site which continues in use today complete the picture.