Old Scatness Broch

Found by accident in 1975 when the road to Sumburgh Airport was being widened, Old Scatness turned out to be an Iron Age broch surrounded by a complete village — wheelhouses, byres, smithies — occupied from about 200 BC well into Pictish times. The site sat undisturbed under farmland for fifteen centuries. A summer of full-scale excavation ran from 1995 to 2004 and turned up everything from a copper alloy stud bearing a Pictish symbol to charred barley still in the souterrains.