A New Type of Megastructure

Two thousand five hundred years ago, a new type of megastructure was spreading across

the north of the British Isles. Giant, drystone towers, the bros. They are the pinnacle of Scotland's

prehistoric architecture, absolutely stunning structures that have fascinated archaeologists

and enthusiasts for centuries. Much about these Iron Age skyscrapers remains shrouded

in uncertainty in debate, but more information has started to emerge about bros in recent

years thanks to a series of excavations. We're learning more about their function, their

construction and what life would have been like for those prehistoric people who called

these towers home during Scotland's Iron Age. And recent work at one particular

brosite, very close to my heart, where it has a truly fascinating and fiery story.

There was a fire and everything began to burn very, very quickly. And that's helped preserve

a whole array of materials, some of which we don't normally see within archaeological

assemblies. What we found were all things to do with farming. Basically we think this

is a farm. This gives us a fantastic insight into the kind of economy of the Brock and what

people were eating. We so rarely ever see the textile itself, so this just gives us a fantastic

insight into some of the craft processes that we know are going on, but we so rarely see.

We got this sudden picture of the whole of the interior at one phase in its life and

that is more or less unique. That is all to come in today's very special

episode. So without further ado, let's rock and roll. What is a brach? Well a brach is a

circular drystone tower. It's a roundhouse, unique to present day Scotland. And although

they do at first glance, they're quite similar to the massive drystone towers that dominated

Bronze Age Sardinia, the Nuraggi of the second millennium BC, while they don't seem to

...