Prehistoric Orkney: The People of the Lochs

By Mark Patton.

In my previous blog-posts, I looked the the earliest human colonisation of the Orkney Islands, between 4000 and 3700 BC; and at the development of small farming communities on the islands, often with communal tombs, between 3700 and 3300 BC. In this, the final posting in this series, I will focus on one specific community that flourished between 3300 and 2200 BC, around a narrow peninsula of land that separates the saltwater Loch of Stenness from the freshwater Loch of Harray, on the largest island of the archipelago (Mainland).

The Brodgar Peninsula. Photo: Jim Richardson.

The Heart of Orkney World Heritage Site. Image: Islandhopper (licensed under GNU).

When I first visited the islands, as a Cambridge undergraduate, in the winter of 1983/4, I cycled back and forth across this peninsula many times: to the north was the great stone circle of the Ring of Brodgar; to the south, the Stones of Stenness, less well-preserved, but no less impressive; and the passage grave of Maes Howe, the largest of Orkney's megalithic monuments, which reminded me of similar sites that I had seen, for example at Gavrinis and Barnenez, in Brittany, and at La Hougue Bie in Jersey.

The Ring of Brodgar. Photo: Renata (image is in the Public Domain).

The Stones of Stenness. Photo: Stevekeiretsu (licensed under CCA).

The passage grave of Maes Howe - the passage is aligned towards the Winter Solstice sunset. Photo: Rob Burke (licensed under CCA).

The concentration of these particularly impressive monuments in such a small area suggested the emergence, in the late Fourth and early Third Millennia BC, of a community on an altogether larger scale than those represented by the earlier settlements of the Knap of Howar, or Barnhouse. One of my university tutors, Professor Lord (Colin) Renfrew, who had excavated several of the islands' prehistoric sites, interpreted this as evidence for the evolution of a powerful chiefdom, and I was already beginning to formulate a similar hypothesis to explain the development of megalithic monuments in the Channel Islands.

Not far to the north of the Brodgar Peninsula, where all of these large-scale monuments are located, is the most remarkable prehistoric settlement on the Orkney Islands, the coastal village of Skara Brae. There are few trees on the Orkney Islands, but the local sandstone splits into flat slabs deal for building, so that features such as hearths, beds, and even elaborate "dressers" are preserved.

The Neolithic settlement of Skara Brae. Photo: Dg-505 (licensed under CCA).

Neolithic house at Skara Brae. Photo: John Allan (licensed under CCA).

The Australian archaeologist, Professor Gordon Childe, who had excavated Skara Brae, was a "diffusionist," who believed that most cultural change could be explained in terms of the movement of people and the spread of ideas: generally from the south and east, to the north and west. "The sole unifying theme of European prehistory," he argued, "is the irradiation of European barbarism by Oriental civilisation." Renfrew thought nothing of this theory, and neither did I, and we seemed to have the (relatively) new scientific evidence of radiocarbon dating on our side.

Professor Gordon Childe. Photo: National Library of Australia (image is in the Public Domain).

We were both unaware, however, as Childe had been before us, of what lay in the unexcavated ground beneath our feet. Over the past few years, archaeologists have been revealing the remains of an elaborate complex of stone buildings on the northern side of the Brodgar Peninsula, the site known as the Ness of Brodgar. Unlike Skara Brae, this does not seem to have been a settlement, but rather a temple complex, with many phases of construction, dismantling, and reconstruction. This seems to have come to an end in around 2200 BC, when the remaining buildings were systematically dismantled in an elaborate ceremonial, involving the slaughter of around 400 cattle.

Excavations at the Ness of Brodgar. Photo: www.orkney.com.

The people who built the Ring and Ness of Brodgar, the Stones of Stenness, and Maes Howe, clearly had connections that extended well beyond their islands. Similar stone circles appeared across much of Britain in the later Neolithic period, and people as far apart as Orkney and Wiltshire were using the same type of pottery ("grooved ware"). Passage graves comparable to Maes Howe are found in Ireland, and on Anglesey, sometimes with the same astronomical alignments.

The Rollright stone circle, Oxfordshire. Photo: Ian Freeman (licensed under CCA).

Grooved ware pottery (image is in the Public Domain).

These connections led the makers of a recent BBC documentary, "Britain's Ancient Capital - Secrets of Orkney," to conclude that the culture that gave us Stonehenge might well have originated in Orkney, but this suggested reversal of Gordon Childe's diffusionism (from west and north to south and east, rather than vice versa) seems to me to be premature: archaeologists have yet to reach or date the earliest levels at the Ness of Brodgar, and the dating evidence from stone circles across the British Isles, is patchy, at best.

The excavations at the Ness of Brodgar are among the most exciting currently in progress anywhere in the world, and there can be little doubt that much remains to be discovered.

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Mark Patton is a published author of historical fiction and non-fiction, whose books can be purchased from Amazon.

Prehistoric Orkney: The People of the Stones

By Mark Patton

In an earlier blog-post, I examined the evidence for the earliest human settlement of the Orkney Islands, between 4000 and 3700 BC. Using stone axes (since they had no knowledge of metals), these Neolithic settlers rapidly cleared the islands of whatever tree-cover they may once have had, in order to create fields in which they might grow barley and oats, and graze their cattle and sheep. The islands have been almost entirely devoid of woodland ever since, the strong westerly winds, laden with salt, being hostile to any potential regeneration. Across much of prehistoric Europe, wood was an important building material, but on these northerly islands, stone took its place: the sandstone of the Orkneys fractures into flat-faced rectangular blocks, giving these buildings, among the most ancient in the world, a surprisingly modern appearance.

The settlement of Barnhouse, dating to around 3400 BC, is significantly larger than the earlier one at the Knap of Howar, with fifteen houses. Its inhabitants seem to have fished, as well as growing cereal crops, and keeping cattle, sheep and pigs. The finds from the village include several elaborately carved stone balls: quite what significance these had is unclear, but similar artefacts have been found across the Scottish mainland, as well as in Ireland and northern England, showing that the island populations were by no means cut off from what was happening elsewhere.

One of the Neolithic houses at Barnhouse. Photo: Martin McCarthy (licensed under GNU).

Neolithic carved stone balls, Kelvingrove Art Gallery & Museum, Glasgow Photo: Johnbod (licensed under CCA).

The people who lived at Barnhouse (and doubtless at many similar settlements which either have not survived the ravages of time, or have yet to be discovered) buried their dead in stone-built tombs. A visitor to Orkney will encounter many of these, but I will focus on just two, both of which are located on the small island of Rousay (one of the less-developed islands in modern times, on which more of the prehistoric sites have consequently been preserved).

The tomb of Midhowe is what is termed a "stalled cairn:" an elongated stone chamber, divided into "stalls" by stone slabs, with most stalls containing human remains, in some cases complete skeletons, in other cases disarticulated bones. The remains of at least twenty-five people were found at Midhowe, together with bones of cattle, sheep, and seabirds. "Stalled cairns" are distinctively Scottish, but not uniquely Orcadian (there are many examples across Caithness), although the island tombs are, in some cases, larger and more elaborate than those on the mainland.

The Midhowe chambered cairn. Photo: Lawrence Jones (licensed under CCA).

Plan of the Midhowe chambered cairn, showing the position of burial deposits. Image: Fantoman400 (licensed under CCA).

The tomb of Taversoe Tuick, by contrast, is a "passage grave," or "passage tomb," with a narrow stone passage leading to a larger chamber, covered by a mound. In architectural terms, it represents a variation on a theme more widely distributed along the Atlantic coast of Europe, with examples found in Iberia; western France; the Channel Islands; Wales; Ireland; the Hebrides; Denmark; and Sweden. Taversoe Tuick is unusual, perhaps unique, as a "double-decker" passage grave, with two tombs, one on top of the other, and entered from opposite sides of the mound.

The chambered cairn of Taversoe Tuick. Photo: Colin Smith (licensed under CCA). The entrance shown leads into the lower tomb. 

The passage of the lower tomb at Taversoe Tuick (Photo: Stephen McKay (licensed under CCA). 

The junction between the upper and lower tombs at Taversoe Tuick. Photo: Stephen McKay (licensed under CCA).

Plan of the chambered cairn of Taversoe Tuick. Image: www.aroundrousay.co.uk. 

Neolithic pottery ("Unstan Ware") from Taversoe Tuick. Image: Fantoman400 (licensed under CCA).

Both "stalled cairns" and "passage graves" have been seen as "territorial markers" ("this land is our land, because it was cleared and cultivated by our ancestors, whose bones stand as witness to the fact"), and both are constructed in such a way as to facilitate ongoing "communication" between the living and the dead. This may reflect a belief system in which death was seen, not as a journey from one world to another, but rather as a changed state of being ("the dead remain among us, but, as ancestors, they differ from elders, just as elders differ from adults, and adults differ from children"). This "communication," however, seems to have been a largely private affair, the narrow entrances of the passages, and the small size of the chambers, limiting the number of people who could participate in whatever rituals were conducted within.

Some archaeologists, notably Lord [Colin] Renfrew, have seen, in the structure of these tombs, a reflection of a "segmentary lineage society:" a form of social organisation observed by ethnographers in tribal societies in Africa and elsewhere, in which a tribe is made up of clans; which themselves are made up of major lineages; which in turn are made up of minor lineages; each division defined by descent from a historical or mythical ancestor.

Diagram of a segmentary lineage society (adapted from E.E. Evans-Pritchard).

Such societies may have been widespread in Neolithic Europe, but are, perhaps, more easily imagined in a context such as Orkney, where both the houses and the tombs are built in durable stone, and have been relatively undisturbed by later agricultural and industrial development.

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Mark Patton is a published author of historical fiction and non-fiction, whose books may be purchased from Amazon.

Prehistoric Argonauts of the North Sea: The Human Settlement of the Orkney Islands

By Mark Patton.

Readers living in the United Kingdom may have been following a new series on BBC Television recently, entitled "Britain's Ancient Capital: Secrets of Orkney" (those elsewhere may very well have the chance to see it at a later stage). Britain is unlikely to have had a "capital," in anything like the modern sense, before Roman times, or to have existed as any form of unified political entity: but some specific places are identifiable, from the archaeological record, as having had a social, political, or religious significance extending beyond the local level. The archaeological site around which the series is structured, the Ness of Brodgar, is certainly one of these, and the excavations currently being undertaken there have provided some of the most exciting archaeological revelations of my lifetime. Taken on their own, however, these revelations tell only part of the story.

Viewers of the first programme in the series were introduced to an enigmatic little rodent, the Orkney Vole (Microtus arvalis orcadensis), a subspecies of the Common Vole which exists nowhere except on the Orkney Islands.

The Orkney Vole. Photo: Hauke Koch (licensed under GNU).

It is quite common for animals separated from their parent populations, and stranded on small islands, to evolve in their own distinctive directions (the giant tortoises of the Galapagos Islands, and the lemurs of Madagascar, are among the most famous examples), but the voles cannot have made their own way to the islands. Since their bones have been found on prehistoric sites, it has long been assumed that their ancestors were accidental stowaways on the boats that brought the first human colonists, between five and a half and six thousand years ago.

It used to be thought that these human colonists traveled to the Orkney Islands from Iberia and western France, via the Irish Sea, and some may, indeed, have done precisely this, but the most recent DNA sequencing of the voles themselves suggests that their ancestors probably came from Belgium. We must therefore imagine a series of voyages around the coasts of the North Sea. Having made the crossing from the continent to southern England, these people could have followed the eastern coast to the northernmost tip of Scotland without venturing out of sight of land.

The English Channel and North Sea. Photo: NASA (Public Domain).

The Orkney Islands are visible from Scotland's Dunnet Head and John O'Groats, but the stretch of water between the mainland and the islands is among the most dangerous in Europe: the Atlantic tides coming in from the west meet the North Sea tides coming from the east to create treacherous eddies and whirlpools in the narrow channel of the Pentland Firth.

The Pentland Firth. Image: Kelisi (licensed under GNU).

The Orkney Islands seen from Dunnet Head. Photo: Posedlf (licensed under GNU).

The Neolithic ancestors of the Orcadians, however, not only crossed the water, but brought with them domesticated cattle, sheep and pigs (as well as the probably accidental voles), and seeds of wheat and barley. In the second programme of the television series, it took members of the production team, together with local volunteers, five hours to cross the Pentland Firth in a skin-covered boat similar to that which may have been used by prehistoric colonists (and almost identical to those used by the Neolithic characters in my novels, Undreamed Shores and Omphalos). These latter-day argonauts, however, carried no animals in their boat (a bull, boar or ram would present quite a significant challenge)!

A skin-covered boat (currach) of the sort that may have been used by Neolithic colonists. Photo: Simon Speed (Public Domain).

It is, perhaps, significant, that one of the earliest dated settlements on the islands, The Knap of Howar, is in one of the most remote locations, the tiny northern island of Papa Westray, suggesting that, by around 3700 BC, these colonists had fully mastered their island environment. Unlike their counterparts in many other parts of Europe, their embrace of the "Neolithic" way of life, with crops and domestic animals, did not lead them to abandon the resources on which their hunter-gatherer ancestors would have depended: the rubbish heaps at the Knap of Howar include oyster-shells, and the bones of fish and marine mammals, as well as the bones of cattle, sheep and pigs.

The Knap of Howar Neolithic settlement (c3700 BC). Photo: Me677 (Public Domain).

The Knap of Howar Neolithic settlement (the stone in the foreground is a quern, for grinding grain). Photo: Drewcorser (licensed under GNU). 

These people may have ferried the bodies of their dead across to the neighbouring island of Holm of Papa Westray, building elaborate communal tombs for them, which endure to this day. Their reliance on a broad spectrum of resources, and their mastery of stone architecture and engineering, would allow their descendants to establish a civilisation that would last for the best part of a thousand years.

Neolithic tomb on the Holm of Papa Westray. Photo: Adam Ward (licensed under CCA).

Neolithic tomb on the Holm of Papa Westray. Photo: Hayley Green (licensed under CCA).

Mark Patton blogs regularly on aspects of history and historical fiction at http://mark-patton.blogspot.co.uk. He is a published author of historical fiction and non-fiction, whose books can be purchased from Amazon.

The Isles' First Gold Rush

By J.S. Dunn

What was daily life like in prehistoric Prydain (Britain) or Eriu (Ireland)? Now that the Isles' academics are busily digging in their own back garden, rather than the Mideast or Greece per the 19th century, exciting local discoveries seem to pop up every week. A drastically revised picture of the ancient Isles emerges, and with it a new paradigm for the Isles that contrasts with the old construct for 'Celts' and the origin of Gaelic language and culture.  In order to write convincingly of that ancient setting, one should have an overview of the years 3000 BCE forward, well before the Iron Age or any Roman influence. The Isles' tribes were hardly the backward brutes depicted by Roman authors as of the late Iron Age. The neolithic era rocked! By around 3000 BCE, little Orkney held sway as a north Atlantic power center, at its massive temple complex of expertly fitted stone. Excavation at Orkney continues; exciting finds include painted walls and a humanistic figure (both firsts in Isles prehistory).

In fact, the Isles had sophisticated marine trade networks with the Continent as early as the neolithic. Jadeite stone axes from the Alps have been found in the UK and Ireland.  A cultural influence from Iberia was the megalith.  Megaliths played a focal role and dramatically changed the landscape. The passage mounds range from Iberia, to the Morbihan, and Bru na Boinne/Newgrange, and up to Maes Howe at Orkney. Megaliths erected during the neolithic reveal a culture of astronomy lovers. The intricately carved boulders and inner orthostats are acknowledged to be engineered observatories for movements of sun, moon, and constellations.

Image - public domain via Wikipedia

Most still accurately track celestial events of solstice, equinox, lunar phases, and other phenomena. The great passage inside Newgrange, the central mound at Bru na Boinne, runs over nineteen meters (60 feet) in length, and still welcomes the rays of winter solstice sunrise after more than 5,200 years. Stone circles such as Stonehenge reflect a later tradition emphasizing solstice, a solar event. Further study at Orkney may indicate why the culture shifted from emphasizing passage mounds and use of interior sunlight, to stone circles where the megalith casts a shadow. Obviously, more of the people could attend and witness an outdoor ritual than inside a passage mound chamber. Stonehenge has evidence of large feasts. We might not understand what the ancients believed or worshiped, but we can count the bones they left behind after feasting!

Note that at this time, Troy did not exist or was a few rudimentary huts; certainly, Carthage and Rome did not exist. The rivals for astronomy, if any, would be in Egypt but the Giza pyramids had not been constructed. Feel that paradigm shifting?

Around 2400 BCE, showy gold neckpieces – GOLD!– called lunulae due to the wide crescent shape, spread from Eriu to Wales and Cornwall,  and to Brittany and the Continent. One such lunula is shown below. A gold rush began in the Isles.  During that time the massive stone-lined passage mounds from Orkney, Newgrange, Anglesey/Ynys Mon, the Morbihan, and down to the Tagus river in Iberia, fell into disuse. What happened to the neolithic starwatchers?

https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15931350
Author - Johnbod

The answer appears to be: warriors. Metal daggers of copper made their first appearance in the Isles, again in Eriu then along Wales and Cornwall coasts.  The introduction of metal smelting brought great social changes. Genetically, the metal-using newcomers have been identified with archaeology's Beaker people. They used distinctive flat-bottomed pots and drinking cups, the latter being part of a warrior's equipment. These brave lads jumped onto little more than a bread board in northern Spain and set off for Eriu and the Isles to scout for gold and copper and tin. The warrior culture they brought with their long knives of copper and bronze remained with the Isles up to the Iron Age.

Try this: imagine you stand on Iberia's northwest corner ( on the costa verde) looking due north. Sailing north lands your vessel on the southwest corner of Ireland.  That is where northern Europe's earliest copper mine, circa 2500 BCE, has been excavated. Shortly after the copper find, a flood of gold was moving around the Isles; from Irish sources and later, gold also in Wales and Cornwall. It is possible the early mariners moved along the Bay of Biscay and up around Brittany (Ar Mor) and then to Ireland's southwest.  At any rate, a Beaker pot when analyzed showed chemical traces from Brittany; that pot was found at Lough Lein, Ireland.

Welsh and Irish mythology, the oldest in western Europe, contain embedded clues to cultural origins and dating. These heroes are not ethereal figures lolling on clouds and directing the fate of mortals below; these are sweating, swearing, fornicating, men and women who live to the fullest. There is rebellious Cliodhna, who left the 'copper coast' of Eriu in a boat with a lover only to be drowned; her myth says the boat had a copper stern.  And the myth of the smith Lein, who worked at the Lake Of Many Hammers.  When archaeologist William O'Brien dug in at Lough Lein (Ross Lake) in county Kerry,  he discovered the oldest copper mine in the Isles.  The myths' references to copper dates to the second millennium or very ancient folk memory in Cork and Kerry; after around 1600 BCE copper was no longer mined there! That date is well before the prior paradigm for when Gaelic was spoken in Eriu or Wales. So what language was being spoken, by the newcomers who mixed with the indigenous tribes?

Linguist John Koch asserts, with others, that Gaelic language and culture were incubating in the Isles, and carried from the Isles to the Continent by marine traders. Gaelic thus began on the coasts, that is to say in the west and in the Isles.  Protogaelic language and culture moved from west to east.  Trade moved on rivers like the Loire from west to east.  Also, Gaelic developed much earlier than had been imagined by 19th century theorists; Gaelic developed during the Bronze Age from the early second millennium forward, and not during the later Iron Age.  Research by Koch on inscriptions in southwest Iberia has shown that rudimentary Gaelic was in use well before the Romans came along and prior to any 'invasion' of Celts.

Finally, the genetic evidence shows no big wave of invaders swamping the natives at any time.  There is a substrate from the neolithic; a new blip occurs on the genetic radar with the Beaker people in the mid third millennium BCE, and then no new genetic infusion until the Vikings and Saxons. Many areas of Ireland, and west Scotland and Wales, have retained a strong neolithic genetic signature.  If your father's or brother's genetic Y haplotype is R1b1b2 (also termed M269), congratulations: you're stone age.  The old model of waves-of-invading-Celts just doesn't hold up in the Isles or in Iberia.

Chasing down the details of prehistory need not be dull and not all the research is serious; for example, on the subject of the fulacht fiadh (pronounced foolah fee). This item is a wooden trough sunk into the earth and usually associated with a nearby pile of cracked and burned rocks. For years, academics debated whether the trough was used for a) cooking a joint of beef by adding red hot stones to hot water, or b) having a bath either after or in lieu of the beef feast, or c) brewing beer.  Since these cooking pits are almost all found in Ireland, research eventually explored option c, the brewing, with happy results duly written up and reported in a professional journal.

That grinding hum in the background is the old paradigm shifting. 'Celtic' as a term may survive with reference to a swirling, organic style of surface decoration that was widespread during Europe's Iron Age, and for certain US sports teams. Sir Barry Cunliffe, emeritus head of European Archaeology, Oxford, advocated for Celtic-from-the-west as a new model beginning in his 2001 volume, Facing The Ocean: The Atlantic and Its Peoples 8000BC-AD 1500.  Cunliffe's monograph is hefty and costly, but totally worth the read if not indispensable.  Reading old material on 'Celts' or prehistory of the Isles that was published prior to this decade is risky. The new finds in field archaeology, the archaeolinguistics, and archaeogenetics, are just that stunning and deserve awareness if not understanding. Similarly, it pays to keep up with current archaeology noting that individual sites and finds should be put into the larger context as they arise.

The gold said to be hidden in the Isles' ancient mounds can be seen as renewable, for it is the inspiration from the starwatchers and the brave marine voyagers.


[image of knife and shield courtesy of Both images courtesy of Neil Burridge, Cornwall bronze craftsman.
See Burridge website at  http://www.bronze-age-swords.com/]

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J. S. Dunn resided in Ireland during the past decade, and from there pursued early Bronze Age culture along the Atlantic coasts of Spain, France, Wales, Cornwall where the author poured a bronze sword, Orkney, and Ireland. The author is a huge fan of RyanAir for jetting around to unusual places.
Numerous archaeologists and experts vetted the details of BENDING THE BOYNE. A second novel set at 1600 BCE, STEALING TARA, is forthcoming.
See updates at:  https://www.facebook.com/BendingTheBoyne 

Pathways for the Sun – Britain’s Neolithic Monuments

By Lynne Kristine Thorsen

Ah, the sky. The sun signals the return of seasons. The stars provide direction. The moon is a harbinger of events, a teller of tales. We see so little of the celestial secrets today. But eons ago, the signals from the sky meant everything.

Consider the sun. With its warmth comes the seasons of planting, of fecundity. How could we, as early agronomists, know when to plant, know when the seasons would begin to change? And once we had that knowledge, how could we celebrate that change and encourage its continuation?

I started considering these questions the first time I saw Silbury Hill. It was in late June in 1991 and it was my first visit back to England in years. Silbury Hill is really quite startling. It’s obviously man-made and huge. It is part of the Avebury and Kennet Long Barrow group of Neolithic monuments. The day was drizzly and overcast, and I remember just standing and staring at the hill.

Silbury Hill

Silbury Hill is part of the neolith monuments around Avebury in Wiltshire, Britain. It is the tallest human-made prehistoric mound in Europe. Its construction dates to around 2500 BC, and calculations suggest it may have taken 500 men working for 15 years to deposit and shape the chalk and clay that it’s made from. It’s a mound. No tunnels have been found. It took technical skill and an amazing amount of labor to create this structure. It must have meant something.

Farming reached Britain around 4500 BC. It has been calculated that it took around 2000 years before farming spread across most parts of the British Isles. The advent of an agrarian society meant that people stayed pretty much where they were. They build settlements, defenses, and with agriculture, discovered new gods.

So, what does Silbury Hill look like? A mound -- a swollen belly – a pregnant earth? What could be more life-bringing than to actually see the earth as a pregnant source about to give birth to crops, to domesticated animals, to their own young. What could be a more important blessing – a visual prayer?

As crops took on a more important role so did ensuring, by whatever method they could, the best harvest. There was now time to consider how to best support this new lifestyle, how to more clearly celebrate and encourage its continuance. Something permanent and predictive was needed. Between 3200 B.C. and 2500 B.C., elaborate mounds with chambered central rooms and passageways were constructed all over Britain.

Maeshowe

Maeshowe is a Neolithic chambered cairn in the Orkney Islands. It is referred to as a burial tomb because a skull was found during early excavation. It was constructed around 2800 BC. The mound is 115 feet in diameter and rises to a height of 24 feet. There is a 45 foot long ditch that leads to the chambered mound. There is an entrance passage that is 36 feet long and leads to the central almost square chamber measuring about 15 feet on each side. The current height of the chamber is 12.5 feet high. The central chambers are built of carefully crafted slabs of flagstone weighing up to 30 tons each. Estimates of the amount of effort required to construct the cairn range from 39,000 to 100,000 man hours. That’s a lot of time.

Maeshowe Passage
Courtesy of Rob Burke
Creative Commons

Here’s the interesting bit. The mound is aligned so that the rear wall of its central chamber is illuminated during the winter solstice as the solstice sun passes down the entrance passage and into the chamber. So, not only did they have the manpower, drive, and technology to construct the cairn, they also had the calendric knowledge to allow it to serve as a signifier of the turning of the seasons, which clearly was of high significance for them.

A similar display occurs in Newgrange.

Newgrange

Newgrange is a prehistoric monument in County Meath, Ireland. It is also referred to as a passage tomb because of human bone fragments and ash that were found during the various excavations. It was built in the Neolithic period around 3200 BC, making it one of the oldest monuments of its kind. The site consists of a large circular mound with a stone passageway and interior chambers. The mound has a retaining wall at the front and is ringed by engraved kerbstones.

The mound is 249 ft across and 39 ft high. Within the mound is a chambered passage, which can be accessed by an entrance on the southeastern side of the monument. The passage stretches for 60 ft or about a third of the way into the center of the structure. At the end of the passage are three small chambers off a larger central chamber, with a high vault roof. It is estimated that it would have taken a workforce of 300 men 30 years to construct the monument.

Lit passage way during the
winter solstice at Newgrange
Courtesy of Dentp at Wikimedia

As with Maeshowe, once a year at the winter solstice, the rising sun shines directly along the long passage, illuminating the inner chamber and revealing the carvings inside, notably the spiral on the front wall of the chamber. This illumination lasts for about 17 minutes. Considerable planning and technical skill were required to construct this spectacular site.

And again, a similar observation, but this time during the summer solstice, is found at Bryn Celli Ddu on the Welsh island of Anglesey.

Bryn Celli Ddu

Maes Howe Burial Chamber
Photo courtesy of Stephen McKay
Creative Commons

Bryn Celli Ddu is a stone-chambered prehistoric monument on Anglesey in Wales. Again, it is generally referred to as a passage tomb. Bryn Celli Ddu was built with a complete passage and chamber that is buried under a mound or cairn. As it now stands, the passage is 28 ft long. The first 11 feet of the passage are not roofed. The formal entrance is flanked by a pair of portal stones.

The oldest archeological evidence from the site are ashes from postholes that date to 4000 B.C. These are thought to be the remnants of a wooden henge. Around 1000 years later, a stone henge supplanted the original wooden one. The passage monument followed, constructed around 2000 B.C.

Several unusual stones are at the site. Inside the burial chamber is a free-standing six foot high smooth stone pillar with a very rounded shape, which is quite rare.

Bryn Celli Ddu is accurately aligned to coincide with the rising sun on the longest day of the year. At dawn on midsummer solstice, shafts of light from the rising sun penetrate down the passageway to light the inner chamber. Norman Lockyer, who published the first systematic study of megalithic astronomy, was the first to notice the alignment. Later research conducted in 1997-1998 provided evidence that the site contained year-round alignments which allowed the site to be used as an agricultural calendar.

Bryn Celli Ddu
Courtesy of Wolfgang Sauber
Creative Commons

Precession of the Sun

These three separate illustrations of British Neolithic monuments designed as designators of the solstice of the seasons represent a few of the larger, more recognizable agrarian calendars. One can imagine that these sites were ceremonial, with displays and rituals to formally recognize the seasons. And one can just as easily imagine that there were many more sites with similar displays for smaller more remote communities that are no longer available. Many have been destroyed or forgotten. But some still standing may no longer function as a solar calendar.

During a full year, the sun traces a path through the stars known as the ecliptic. Anyone investigating possible architectural alignments upon the sun, moon, or planets would need to take into account the way the obliquity of the ecliptic of the sun changes over the centuries.

The last five thousand years represent a small segment of this cycle of the sun. During this time the obliquity has been gradually decreasing. One practical effect of this is that the ranges over which the rising and setting position of the sun swings during the year were somewhat wider in, say, Neolithic times. In particular, the rising and setting positions of the sun at the solstices were about one degree (two solar diameters) further away from each other then than now. In a more straightforward manner this means that smaller solstice markers would not mark the solstice today because of the difference of the position of the sun today as opposed to 5,000 years ago.

Not Burial Tombs

Significant time and effort created these monuments and many others like them. Ancient observers of the position of the sun as it related to the change of seasons knew, down to the minute, when the seasonal changes occurred. It was clearly important, extremely meaningful to their daily life, and needed to be consecrated in stone, in an immovable monument that would serve as a signifier for the ages to come.

Within and around these monuments, rituals would be performed and traditions passed down. And what could be more symbolic than a monument to the womb of the earth with a birth canal that leads out from the interior of the earth to the light of the sun. Imagine the shamans waiting inside the chamber for the solstice sun and then emerging, through the passage as if reborn, into the light of day.

It seems to be a world-wide practice among many archaeologists and laymen to label any historic puzzle that is not understood with the words, “It must have been religious.” And we tend to put our modern beliefs on top of past ritualistic sites that we don’t understand. “Oh, there are bones and ashes. It must be a tomb.” We believe in ritualistic burial, so they must have.

For me, a few bones and ashes do not turn these amazing structures into a place for the dead. It would be more appropriate to say, “Oh this was an example of their extraordinary research, science, and architecture.”

This could just be an argument about semantics. But, it illustrates a very important point, which is, as we approach the past we must discard the prejudices of the present. We need to reach back, as much as we can, and consider what their primary considerations might have been and how these considerations informed their lives and their landscape.

Sources

Ancient Astronomy, Obliquity of the ecliptic
Silbury Hill – Council for British Archeology, English Heritage, Wikipedia
Newgrange – World Heritage Ireland, Newgrange Stone Age Passage Tomb, Wikipedia
Maeshowe – Orkney’s finest chambered cairn, Wikipedia, A spectacular Neolithic chambered cairn
Bryn Celli Ddu – Cadw Welsh Government, Stones of Wales, Ancient Wisdom, Wikipedia

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Lynn Kristine Thorsen’s two short story collections, “Fever Dreams” and “Mischief” will be published later this fall. She is also hard at work on an Elizabethan novel. She enjoys travel in Northern Wales, castles, the American Southwest, and good fiction.