Archaeology Notes

Event ID 642917

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Archaeology Notes

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/642917

HU43NW 5 4455 3607.

(HU 4455 3607) Brough of Burland (OE)

O.S.6"map, Shetland, 2nd ed., (1903).

The site of this broch is bounded on three sides by precipitous cliffs, and the only approach from the north, is barred by three cross-walls with external ditches. The broch wall is 15' thick and the courtyard 35' in diameter. The entrance, remarkably, is in the SW where it now opens only a few uncertain feet from the brink of the cliff. Various later walls and piles of debris indicate secondary occupation.

RCAHMS 1946, visited 1930; R W Feachem 1963.

Broch of Burland as described.

Re-surveyed at 1/2500.

Visited by OS (NKB) 16th May 1968.

In 1983 a section was cut across the ramparts along the W cliffs by the Central Excavation Unit, as part of an SDD-funded programme of excavation at five Iron Age sites in Shetland threatened by coastal erosion. The work was intended to define the nature of the outer and central ramparts and to seek dating evidence for their construction. Both the outer and central ramparts were shown to have stone faces to rubble and soil cores, suggesting that all three ramparts are of similar construction. The excavations revealed evidence of chronological complexity: the central rampart was constucted after the adjacent ditches had, at least partially, infilled and may have replaced an earlier bank. The other rampart may be a later addition, although this is less certain. The only artefact type found was pottery, which was chronologically undiagnostic. The excavation was supervised by Peter Strong.

S Carter, R McCullagh and A MacSween 1995

The excavation archive from the 1983 investigation has been catalogued.

Historic Scotland Archive Project (FD) 1996.