ABSTRACT
The topic of urban origins in Scotland has provoked controversy partly due to the difftculty of deciding when a settlement developed sufftcient functions to be considered truly urban.1 Such problems can be as hard to resolve for the 1. B. Dicks, The Scottish medieval town, a search for origins, in G. Gordon and B. Dicks (eds), Scottish Urban History (Aberdeen 1983), pp. 23-51.
