APOPHENIA & BROCH RESEARCH

It had been begun previously, but had been put aside with some frustration. The Shetland Amenity Trust publication of 2008, Tall Stories? 2 Millennia of Brochs edited by Val E Turner, Steve J Dockrill, Rebecca A Nicholson, and Julie M Bond, was purchased because of the subject matter. It is a collection of papers prepared by broch researchers, writings that began as a conference in Lerwick in 2000. After the first attempt to read what turned out to be academic texts, one discovered that the strict format of research rules and the narrow analysis of specialisation stifled the easy read with a stilted formalism that delved into specific detail in a most annoying manner that seemed to ignore the real issue of what a broch was.

Oddly, the expert research seemed to always spin around the core substance of the subject and stray off into a self-perpetuating complexity that looked like an indulgence. The book was put aside with some exasperation, while one’s own thoughts on brochs were explored in various blogs that attempted to grasp and understand the core issues – the reality of the broch; the broch as part of life.

After deconstructing the John Stewart text on brochs, see: https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2025/02/on-fanciful-cliche-broch-visions.html, the bold title of the Turner broch book was noticed in the set of spines on the bookshelf. The original indignation had been forgotten; the book was taken out with a renewed enthusiasm, the papers were perused, and the reading began. It took no time at all to rediscover the original frustrations. The desire to have the broch clarified as a building with an everyday function was constantly left lingering as detail after detail circumscribed what seemed to be the core issue. Precise, formal analysis of intricate, itemised descriptions that touched on assessments of optional variations, complete with references, all seemed to indulge in a formatted approach that appeared to accept the physicality of the broch without question. Only Ian Tait’s paper seemed to involve the reality of the broch, but this was its destruction. Why did the broch’s construction and its functions not capture any researcher’s attention?

Fojut’s paper looked promising, but while it delved into the precise details of the quantity of timber needed for a roof, (assuming there was one), it was careless about other realities like the engineering, and the flow of water. Like the other researchers, Fojut seems to become an ostrich with his subject, burying his head in his singular matter of interest and all of its specific detail, irrespective of other realities.

If we are going to discover more about brochs, we need to engage in a comprehensive understanding that specialises and articulates with an open, inclusive mind intent on integration. If this has to be done by using methods considered ‘unacademic,’ then so be it. We cannot have method driving process and understanding, and outcomes.

One gets the impression that the authors of these papers belong to a private ‘broch,’ mate’s club that has its own secret set of rules for precise communication; that one cannot write fluently and clearly about an enquiry, but has to turn the research into a tedious process of stifled, referenced logic that treads its own path into a unique reveal shaped by the rules of the game. This rigour has such an internal intensity that it easily ignores simple, everyday positions and propositions that might readily transform the result of the thoughtful technique of required recording that circles around proof, while ignoring what can be called ‘common sense,’ for want of a better phrase for this state of mind, knowing that it is neither common nor immediately sensible; (as in able to be sensed). The silent excitement of the tracking of ideas seems to drive the hunt on regardless of potential obstacles that the process leaps over with a distracting, but admirable elegance.

So it is that we get in-depth discussions on the word ‘broch,’ what it means; its origins; what it refers to; its general use; its location; its context; its fields; its roof, or not; its interior, or not; even its demolition: its actual, everyday reality and function is danced around obliviously. The stair is ignored; the method of construction is glanced over; it is as though everything starts with the ruins as the given, and goes on from there.

It is strange, because one of the nicest paragraphs about broch living was written by Armit in his Towers of the North; see - https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2016/09/how-architecture-shapes-and-moulds.html:

For the inhabitants, too, this would have been a remarkable place, revolutionary perhaps for people whose parents and grandparents most probably farmed independently from scattered farmsteads in the surrounding countryside. This was a closed community. You either lived within the walls or you did not. There was no middle ground. It was a place where people's movements and actions could be watched and controlled, and where social norms would be hard to break. Only one path led in and out; the houses shared common walls, and were often simply subdivisions within a larger building. Entering or leaving the village would have taken on a processional quality, passing the doors of neighbours, squeezing past others on their way home or out into the fields. This was not a place to keep secrets. The comings and goings of each inhabitant and family group would have been obvious to all. It was a sheltered, covered, protected environment, but one where common values, communal lifestyles and co-operative ventures would have been hard to challenge.

Ian Armit Towers in the North The Brochs of Scotland The History Press. Gloucestershire 2003

p. 105-106 (on the broch village at Gurness in mainland Orkney).

It is this type of understanding/enquiry that needs to be made more explicit in all its detail, matched and mapped to a broad canvas, assembled like the border of a jigsaw into which all of the other research can be tested for its fit. Without an overall empathetic perception, to continue the analogy, we are left with a set of bits and pieces being assembled in the hope that they might be parts of the same jigsaw.

One has to be beware of the human facility to read patterns into situations, the desire to order circumstance when nothing might be there. Consider Robyn Williams explaining why he believed Doris Lessing had chosen a particular passage to read to her audience. Williams pontificated that it had to do with the idea of the story as a parable, holding the message that the effort to try, and try, and try again might be worthwhile, desirable for success. The story was about the dung beetle. Lessing replied bluntly that she had chosen to read this particular short story because of its size; she had only a fixed time available to her for her presentation.

Might brochs be on their sites because these locations might be easier to defend rather than seeing them as aggressive, ‘military’ lookout sites? Might they be near water because, again, this fragments and frustrates the attack, making the defence more manageable? Or might it be for the fishing? There is a name for pattern reading like this: see – https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2011/02/chance-and-design.html:

Apophenia (Wikipedia) -

Apophenia is the experience of seeing patterns or connections in random or meaningless data. The term was coined in 1958 by Klaus Conrad, who defined it as the "unmotivated seeing of connections" accompanied by a "specific experience of an abnormal meaningfulness".

For the reading of meaning into forms, the word is Pareidolia: see also - https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2024/11/pareidolia-cave-painting-theory.html

We have to be careful with our enthusiasm for a subject. The question that needs attention is not only what the broch might really  be, but, if these sites were important to defend, why might this be so? One proposition has been explored in: https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2023/03/the-broch-its-intramural-stair.html and https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2023/03/the-broch-symbol-place.html.