[76]. It is to be observed that the type of Round Tower peculiar to Scotland, and known by the name Broch, differs totally, and in all its essential features, from the tall, slender, round Towers of Ecclesiastical construction in Scotland and Ireland. The Brochs are dry-built, the Ecclesiastical Round Towers are lime-built. No hewn stone is used in the construction of a Broch; the doors and windows of the Ecclesiastical Round Towers are often of hewn stone, and sometimes ornamented with sculptures. The Brochs have their chambers, stairs, and galleries in the thickness of the wall enclosing the central area; the lime-built Round Towers possess none of these features. The Brochs have their doorways always on the ground and their windows opening to the interior area; the Ecclesiastical Round Towers have their windows opening in the exterior wall, and their doors placed at a considerable height above the ground. There is thus no point of similarity between the two types of structure except their external roundness.
[77]. In some Archæological Notes contributed to the Academy of March 25, 1882, on the Terra d’Otranto in the South of Italy, M. Lenormant mentions a peculiar usage still kept up by the inhabitants of the provinces of Bari and Lecce of constructing in their fields structures of uncemented stones called truddhu, which exactly reproduce on a smaller scale the type, arrangements, and mode of building characteristic of the Nuraghi of Sardinia, the Sesi of the island of Pantellaria, and the Talayots of the Balearic Islands. Like the Nuraghe, the Truddhu is a massive conical tower of uncemented stones with a central circular chamber rudely vaulted by the overlapping of the successive courses of its masonry. A low door gives access to the chamber. Sometimes a second chamber is constructed over the first, and approached by a narrow flight of steps winding along the side of the tower. These steps are present even when there is no second chamber, and forming a spiral round the outside of the tower, they give access to the paved platform on the top of the structure. The Truddhu serves as a shelter in bad weather and as a dwelling-place by night in the agricultural season, as the peasant proprietors often live in the towns and travel to and fro in bands for fear of brigands. Sometimes this structure is changed into a permanent home, and the village of Alberto-Bello consists wholly of houses of this form. Thousands of these constructions stud the plains. Some are being built, others are in all stages of dilapidation and decay. Although it is almost impossible to distinguish those that are ancient from those that were made but yesterday, M. Lenormant is of opinion that the origin of the custom must be referred to prehistoric times. A similar custom of constructing stone-built towers of refuge also prevails in the Caucasus, and Mr. Freshfield speaks of having as many as sixty of these structures in view at one time.
[78]. The ideal Broch is composed of a series of galleries like those of the earth-houses, superimposed upon a basement with a ground plan like that of the structure at Bodinar, and connected by a stair. Although the stone forts of Ireland occasionally exhibit chambers within the thickness of their walls and have double stairs placed against the interior face of the wall to give access to the wall-head, they never have galleries superimposed on each other, and stairs in the thickness of the wall.
[79]. An account of the excavation, with plans and drawings, was given by Mr. Rhind in the Archæological Journal, vol. x. p. 212; and also in the first volume of the Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, vol. i. p. 265.
[80]. Bronze tweezers are not uncommon accompaniments of female interments of the Bronze Age in Denmark, and it has been suggested that they were used as sewing implements when the material to be sewed was skin and the thread a thong. This supposition is strengthened by the fact that small awls of bronze are occasionally found with them, and it is obvious that the end of a thong hardened in the fire, and pushed partially through the holes bored by an awl, could be readily seized by such a pair of tweezers and so dragged tight. But the tweezers found in the Kettleburn Broch do not belong to the Bronze Age. Their ornamentation is that of the Iron Age, and they were found in association with objects of iron.
[81]. See a paper by Rev. Dr. J. M. Joass, in Archæologia Scotica, vol. v. p. 95, entitled “The Brochs of Cinn Trolla, Cairn Liath, and Craig Carril, in Sutherland,” etc., with plans and drawings.
[82]. "As to the scarcement or facing wall, about 1 foot thick and 8 feet high, of such frequent occurrence in the Brochs, it has been suggested that it may have formed the resting-ledge for a conical wooden roof covering the (lower part of the) central area. Others have supposed that it formed the support of a narrow roof, sloping downwards like that of a shed or series of lean-to booths surrounding the wall. It may be noted that it seems rarely of such massive structure as the wall proper with which it appears to be bonded only at the door-corners. This, with the fact that it was found covering what was almost certainly an original doorway to a wall-chamber at Clickamin, suggests the possibility of the scarcement being sometimes, if not generally, a secondary structure."—Rev. J. M. Joass, LL.D., in Archæologia Scotica, vol. v. p. 112.
[83]. It is rather suggested by the frequency with which such remains have been met with in other cases, that burials were occasionally made in these mounds long after they had become grass-grown hillocks.
[84]. It belongs to the class of fibulæ which are often described as bow shaped and cruciform, and is represented in Archæologia Scotica, vol. v. plate 16.
[85]. The Orkneyinga Saga (Edinburgh, 1873), p. 182. See also Dr. J. A. Smith’s Notice of “Remains of the Reindeer in Scotland,” in the Proceedings of the Soc. Antiq. Scot., vol. viii. p. 186.