Analysis of spatial patterns in buildings (access analysis) as an insight into social structure: examples from the Scottish Atlantic Iron Age

Clearly the pattern of space in buildings can be expected to relate to the way that buildings are used to structure and reproduce social relations. As an archaeologist, wishing to infer social structure by its reflection in the building pattern, one may hope the relation may be reasonably direct. Here the formal geometrical method of access analysis is used to elucidate the pattern in a distinctive kind of prehistoric settlement form, and thence to elucidate the social structure which both produced it and was structured by it.