These are not simple structures: they are hollow-walled towers, some reaching more than ten meters in height, with internal galleries and intramural stairways built into the walls.

The engineering knowledge required to build a stable hollow-walled circular tower to this height is not negligible, and the labor required — both for the initial construction and for the quarrying and transport of the stone — would have required a community with the organizational capacity to mobilize and direct significant collective effort.

What this means for understanding the social context of the Loch Borralie burial is that the communities of Iron Age Sutherland were not simple or primitive.

They were communities with the engineering knowledge to build complex structures, with the social organization to mobilize collective labor, and — as the DNA evidence suggests — with the social networks to maintain relationships across substantial distances, including across the sea.