🕰️ ARCHAEOLOGY NEWS 🕰️

Ancient settlements in Shetland are in the running to join the Unesco World Heritage tentative list.

Collectively known as the Zenith of Iron Age Shetland, they are among five sites put forward by the UK government to join the prestigious list.

Lying roughly 100 miles off the north east coast of Scotland, the Shetland Islands are the northern-most tip of Scotland. The islands separate the Atlantic Ocean, on the west, from the North Sea on the east.

Zenith of Iron Age Shetland is made up of Mousa, Old Scatness and Jarlshof.

These three distinctive sites, located at the south end of Shetland: are outstanding in terms of their original construction and in surviving the ravages of time, and they provide some of the most significant examples of the European Iron Age in an area outside the Roman Empire.

The sites are all known for their Brochs (meaning strong or fortified places in Old Norse) which are massive, circular, double skinned, drystone towers that would have dominated the landscape of Iron Age Northern and Western Scotland.

Brochs in Mousa, built more than 2,000 years ago, were exceptional feats of engineering for the society of that period.

Old Scatness provides clear evidence of the immensely large, single walled, stone built roundhouses that succeeded brochs. Iron Age society lasted here for a period of more than 1,000 years and remarkably details how broch society developed and flourished.

Jarlshof, meanwhile, is internationally renowned for its well preserved, multi period remains that span over 4,000 years of human achievement and provides the best surviving examples anywhere of Iron Age wheelhouses.

If successful, sites on the Unesco tentative list would join the 33 other world heritage sites already based in the UK including Stonehenge and Hadrian’s Wall.

The UK government's "tentative list" is published about every 10 years and sets out the locations it is felt have the best chance of being recognised by Unesco as World Heritage sites.

If you want to learn more about Brochs, check out our Scoch Broch episode below:

Scotch Broch (Applecross, Wester Ross, near Skye, Highlands)

https://youtu.be/zdaEddnq1l0

[Credits: Unesco, Visit Scotland, Gov.uk, Shetland Amenity Trust, Historic Environment Scotland]

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