The Iron Age inhabitants of Scotland did not, of course, live in a previously-empty landscape. Various studies have looked at continuity and change over the long term in settlement patterns through later prehistory (e.g. Barber 1997; McCullagh & Tipping 1998), and there has been more limited work on ancient concepts of past landscapes (especially early prehistoric sites and their reuse; e.g. Hingley 1996. This idea of the inherited landscape remains a significant area for research. So too does a comparative approach between different periods. The character of mid-late Bronze Age settlement seems markedly less regional than that of the Iron Age, and while some regional units seem to recur at different periods (e.g. the two-fold division of north-east Scotland at the Mounth; Maxwell 1990, fig 6), others show very different patterns; a long view of regionality issues would be very valuable.
