Orkney Riddler

  Orkney Riddle  Pot-Holes    Pot-holes, not to be confused with pot holes on the public highway.... One of the last companies I worked for in Archaeology was Cotswold Archaeology who, in 2008/9 were contracted to run the excavation of sites that were found in the path of a National Grid Liquified Natural Gas pipeline running across the Gloucestershire countryside. The planners of the route of the pipeline had managed to avoid any major archaeological sites leaving some fairly dog-eared ruins for the team that had been assembled for the work, to excavate and record. There was a rambling spread of roman features, pits, kilns and the like in one location, and nearby there were a couple of large round features, one of which I was set to excavate and record This was a circular feature of five metres diameter, and I had enough experience to know that it had not been constructed by the hand of man. This was a natural feature, and I had no idea how it might have happened....

  Orkney Riddle  The Knowe of Yarso Cairn  The Knowe of Yarso is a small stalled cairn on Rousay. The following account was published in the Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries in 1935. It describes the cairn, its location and finds from its excavation. The account is almost unedited. A Long, Stalled Cairn, the Knowe of Yarso, in Rousay, Orkney. By J. Graham Callander and Walter G. Grant. In many parts of the island of Rousay the land rises from the shore in a series of shelves or flat, narrow plateaux, exposing, in places, a face of much weathered flagstone rock of the Old Red Sandstone formation. On the south-western slopes of Blotchnie Fiold, the highest hill in Rousay, 821 feet high, which lies in the south part of the island overlooking Eynhallow Sound, these shelves are prominent features in the landscape. In the area known as Frotoft, about 500 yards slightly east of north of the standing stone on the roadside at Langstane, and about 480 yards west-north-west...

  From:- The Orkneys in Early Celtic Times, Two Lectures, by James M. Macbeath, published by William Peace and Son, in 1892. Page 23 The use of the bow by savages seems to have been almost universal in Europe, and may have suggested itself to man by instinct. It's use gave additional power and value to the arrow, and these , to an expert, were a great increase to maintenance.  The swift bird fled, and the fleet animal ran, and bow and arrow materially aided in their capture, and secured the coveted prey. Universal as the arrow was during the later stone age, and all through these early centuries of savage life, their real use has been so little known during recent times , that up to the present century they were popularly believed to be "Elf arrows" or "fairy darts", and there are numerous incidents in which they were so regarded. Many of them have been for ages safely guarded and kept inviolate, from a deeply rooted conviction that, if parted with, or lost ...

From:- The Orkneys in Early Celtic Times, Two Lectures, by James M. Macbeath, published by William Peace and Son, in 1892. Page 20 Man's first home would be the natural caves and dens he could find in his wanderings; but as these are few he would soon have to betake himself to the construction of such rude and primitive huts as his resources enabled him to fabricate. Tactics furnished us with a description of their type among the Germans. "As caves dug in the earth, in which they laid up their grain,and whether they retired in the winter, or in the advance of an enemy to plunder the open country". Julius Ceasar describes the dwellings of the ancient Romans as similar to those of the Gauls, and these we learn from Strabo and Diodorus Siculus, "were constructed of wood, of a circular form, and with lofty tapering rooves of straw or coarse grass". Sir R. Coalt Hoare, in his work on Ancient Wiltshire rematks:- We have undoubtedly proof from history and from existing...

  Breckness Cairn, Stromness,  Orkney  Abbreviated from:- Notice of the Excavation of a Chambered Mound Near Breckness, Stromness, Orkney. By M. M. Charleson, F.S.A Scot In the summer of 1900, by the kind permission of W. G. T. Watt, Esq. of Skaill, I commenced the excavation of a large mound on the farm of Westerleafea, near Ereckness in Outertown, Stromness. There was no room for doubt as to the artificiality of the mound, which, apart from its symmetry and surroundings, had previously supplied a neighbouring farmer with a quantity of material for building purposes, these operations, more properly depredations, leaving a gap on the south side of the mound in which several upright slabs of some size were noticeable. At this point we began the excavation,........ It will, I think, be seen from the foregoing description that although the chambers excavated bear some resemblance to those structures occasionally met with in Orkney, which have been regarded as sepulchral, and...

Orkney Riddle     Unstan Cairn     Unstan Cairn must be the Orcadian Cairn with the easiest access of them all. It is close to the main road between Kirkwall and Stromness near the Brig'o'waith.  It's also not far from the visitor centre for the Maeshowe Chambered Cairn which is in Stenness Village. It must also be as famous as Maeshowe, having a type of carinated pottery named after it, the pottery that Robert Stewart Clouston found in it when he excavated it in 1884. I am fond of reading the accounts of these pioneer archaeologists. Their words say as much about the excavators as it does about the excavation. It is like being in the cairn with them, sharing their adventure.    Roberts report to the Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries follows:- Notice of The Excavation of a Chambered Cairn of the Stone Age, at Unstan, in the Loch of Stennis, Orkney.  by Robert Stewart Clouston. The " knowe of Unstan " is situated in a piece of land jutting ...