Around the roundhouses: What the remains of the Birnie roundhouses tell us about Iron Age architecture

Never mind the coin hoards or the "Birnie Budgie". The real stars at Birnie are the roundhouses, or rather the well-preserved remains of them. From the ashes of burnt down houses or the postholes of abandoned ones we can speculate on how these houses would have looked 2000 years ago. We can even identify their building materials, which, perhaps not surprisingly, seem to match the local vernacular architecture of later periods. Built with the same materials that the environment offered to protect against that same environment, these are no humble dwellings, but substantial, prestigious houses to match the status of the inhabitants that is reflected in their material possessions.