Description: In this book, the author gives the first comprehensive, illustrated account of the progress of human occupation of North Briton in prehistoric times. This great natural region comprises the north of England and the Lowlands of Scotland, extending northwards from Cumberland and Northumberland to the Forth – Clyde isthmus. Here, some nine thousand years ago, the first nomadic hunting bands penetrated, and the author traces the story of its peoples down to the last prehistoric phase, when the Celtic-speaking inhabitants of settlements varying in size from small pastoralist homesteads to walled towns up to as much as 40 acres in extent became involved with the Roman armies. 

After the departure of the Romans, the North Britons were invaded from all directions, and were engaged for centuries in the Dark Age wars. Most of the territory was subsequently incorporated into the Kingdom of Scotland, of which Edinburgh became capital. From then onwards the greater part of North Britain became, to all intents and purposes, ‘Scotland’.

Only during the last fifty years, however, has the necessary large-scale fieldwork and excavation been carried out to place the monuments of North Britain on record as fully as those of other areas of Great Britain. The author has himself played a leading part in this work, his own excavations having contributed particularly to knowledge of the circular timber houses that were in use throughout the entire region. His whole account is based on intimate first-hand knowledge of the countryside, the existing remains, and the people, and gains an additional appeal from the striking photographs and reconstructions which illustrate the text.