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.