Ancient Tap O' Noth hillfort in Aberdeenshire one of 'largest ever'

[Imperial Dave]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-52660032

latest article on the subject

[Anton]

A good sized population there.

[Imperial Dave]

yes, actually enormous really especially for the period

[Jim Webster]

That is virtually a city

[Imperial Dave]

for that time period it is Jim! There must be a huge amount of archaeology in that area both within and without of the main site

[Erpingham]

My only caution is that you can't do this by counting hut circles and multiplying by 5.  Other excavated hill fort sites have shown that you have to account for replacement rate.  Probably needs some more test excavation to be sure.  But an impressive site.

[Imperial Dave]

yes, good point. There would be some progressive building and replacement and getting the right kind of balance will be tricky in terms of accurate number.

[aligern]

And did people live there?  Or were the huts occupied seasonally or when danger happened?  Its a lot of people to subsist on one location...does it have a water supply for the max potential population? If its fully occupied then many are going to have a long walk to work.
Roy

[Dangun]

And did people live there?  Or were the huts occupied seasonally or when danger happened?  Its a lot of people to subsist on one location...does it have a water supply for the max potential population? If its fully occupied then many are going to have a long walk to work.
Roy

That sounds perilously close to how many Persians can you squeeze around a Thessalonian waterhole?

[aligern]

Though there I suspect that the commanders of the time had a fair idea of how many men could fill their gourds at a particular size of well.  Its a problem when archaeologists extrapolate from the numbers of dwellings without giving us the data that supports their calculations.  I tend to suspect that, when we get a very crude calculation of size/ population that leads to a claim of  'Largest in' or bigger than London or Paris  at the time or whatever, that there is motive involved.
But I am only an old  cynic.
Roy

[DougM]

I think we are also in danger of lensing through our own sensibilities. So we know that London and Paris are big cites, and implicit in this is 'of course they are, and their location makes it inevitable'. Whereas there's this view that of course the rural hinterland of Aberdeenshire isn't the place for a big city, simply because it isn't nowadays. 

[Imperial Dave]

I think we are also in danger of lensing through our own sensibilities. So we know that London and Paris are big cites, and implicit in this is 'of course they are, and their location makes it inevitable'. Whereas there's this view that of course the rural hinterland of Aberdeenshire isn't the place for a big city, simply because it isn't nowadays.

correct Doug. In the context of the 'Dark Ages' this was a huge site irrespective of where in the British Isles it was found

[Nick Harbud]

There is plenty of precedent for building cities/towns on the top of relatively inaccessible mountains.  In addition to the obvious example of Edinburgh, one can find any number of Italian towns (such as Agrigentum/Agrigento) that moved upslope to avoid the boisterous neighbours.

[DougM]

I think one of the points implicit in my post was that we assume that Northern Scotland has always had low population numbers. When in fact this isn't necessarily the case. The highlands of Scotland and the isles were previously much more densely populated than now. The Brough of Birsay, and other areas like Fortingall were major population centres. The factors that depopulated them were political rather than any other determinant.