THE GAME OF BROCHS

There are charming, persuasive ideas that seem to gain such traction that they obscure reality. It might be something perceptual, conceptual, like looking at a table in a flea market – see: https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2019/03/the-little-bowl-importance-significance.html  Here there is such a shambles of varying interest that one is not really able to see what is literally before one’s eye. Broch thinking seems to have much of the same quality. When the issue is finally seen for what it truly is, one wonders why it was even considered, not previously questioned and immediately discarded. One is astonished that the matter was ever held as a reasonable proposition at all. The issue that has come to mind is the debate over scaffolding, the construction method. One proposition has it that the dry stone walls were built without scaffolding, from the space between the walls.

Now this idea might appear to be reasonable, something like thinking outside of the square when one is looking at the tiny cross sectional illustration of Mousa or the typical broch. The Lateral Thinking author, Edward de Bono, might be pleased. Diagrammatically it looks to be an excellent proposition - creative too: but one only has to look up Wikipedia to see that Mousa Broch is 15.3 metres diameter at ground level externally, 6.1 metres diameter internally, and 13.2 metres high. Simple maths tells us that the base walls are 4.6 metres thick. It is self-evident that this mass must have been erected by workers on both sides of this form, on top and between. A couple of attempts have been made to build a replica broch to get a feel for the possibilities of process, but these have not gone much higher than the scarcement level, the ‘base’ height of the broch. Above this mass that has a variety of open spaces of various forms modelled into it, the walls become a twin element. The section of Mousa makes this very clear.

Dimensionally, one can guess that the thickness of these dry stone walls has to be about one third of the width of the base – that is, about 1.5 metres, making each lift a square mass of stones that narrows progressively with height, perhaps being about 1 metre wide at the very top. Once the actual sizes of these various elements are realised, it must become clear that any theory about building from the centre alone, from between the walls, must be questioned and abandoned, just as the process of placing the stones from one side only has to be queried and dismissed. There is a limit to the reach of one person that the years have not changed.

see: https://thestonetrust.org/resource-information/how-to/

One has to come to understand that these structures were built from scaffolding and from the in-between zone: from anywhere and everywhere. Trying to imagine the handling of the stones to get them into place makes one speculate that the twin walls were erected separately and did not rise in parallel as the neat mind might like to envisage. Could the inside wall have been completed first to the limit of its lift – about 1500mm – with the outer wall being finished next? The walls could easily be set out separately given the central reference. Once the outer wall was completed, the final layer of stones and bridging stones could then be put in place on both walls, providing a base for the next lift. This process would minimise the awkward process of handling the stones to get them over the work into the interior of the broch. While some stockpile of stones would still be required inside, the progressive building of the twin walls would mean that most stones could be lifted from an exterior source, direct to the workplace that would require planking to be placed on top of the bridging stones to make a work platform.

see: https://thestonetrust.org/resource-information/how-to/

This sample twin wall looks straight and scaled down - ?

So it seems likely that the linear spacing of the walls was also used for building access, along with external and internal scaffolding. Workmen must have accessed the in-between space from the open end of the twin structure. Just why any other process might be contemplated remains a mystery, such is the size and scale of these structures – that mystery of not seeing exactly what is before one’s eyes. Brochs have to be thought of a structures built by people and used by people, in fact, in the real world, in order to interpret them successfully.

We need much more clear thinking about brochs. Muddled thinking makes impossible dreams hopeful, like the structure spanning 6.1 metres being illustrated as two, narrowly-spaced parallel lines. Such fuzzy nonsense only confuses and confounds. Rigour is required, that scientific questioning and testing that challenges theories with facts, because it is too easy to promote silly fictions. Are we programmed to be deluded by fantasies? Why are we so persuaded by wistful dreams? Does our era spend too much time drooling over fictions - The Game of Brochs?