Orkney Riddler

Vere Gordon Childe   The most famous monument on Orkney is Skara Brae, dubbed the “Neolithic Village” and excavated by, among others, the equally famous V. Gordon Childe. His excavation was undertaken between 1927 and 1930. He wasn’t the first to excavate the site, but he did become the most famous and influential archaeologist to be linked to Orkney at the time, and the account of his work gives an interesting impression of the decline of the settlement. Vere Gordon Childe (1892-1957), was born in North Sydney, Australia, the son of London-born parents Rev. Stephen Henry Childe, and his second wife Harriet Eliza, née Gordon. He was to become an archaeologist and political theorist. Known as Gordon, he was educated at Sydney Church of England Grammar School, and the University of Sydney. He graduated as a Bachelor of Arts in 1914 with first-class honours in Latin, Greek and philosophy. He then won a scholarship to Oxford, in Great Britain, where he studied classical archaeology ...

Extract from "Report on the Excavations at Skara Brae. The Excavations in 1927, by J. Wilson Paterson." "At the back of pen Y we had at once been struck by a large upright slab against the north-west wall which, on examination, proved to be firmly built in. On clearing out the floor of the pen it was seen that this slab rested on a horizontal slab that passed beneath it under the wall behind, but also projected forwards some 2 feet in the red clay of the floor and partially covered thereby. At the front edge of this slab was found another slab on edge, running almost parallel to the wall. The horizontal slab had been broken in antiquity, and the front fragment, less than one-fifth of the whole was at once raised. Its removal disclosed a skull and other human bones lying in loose earth. Fearing to undermine the chamber wall if we removed the rest of the cover-stone, we took out the slab on the edge that formed the front side of the tomb and extracted the skeleton sideways...

Examination of a chambered long barrow at West Kennet, Wiltshire communicated to the Society of Antiquaries by John Thurnam ,  In medieval times, and earlier, there must have been little speculation about the purpose of barrows and burial monuments on the British landscape. They were subject of myths and fairy tales, the homes of hobgoblins, and places where lover’s trysts, and the illegal exchange of contraband goods might have might taken place. It may have been only in the 19th century that people began to explore them and develop explanations for their existence, as just one of an enormous variety of landscape features that some 5000 to 10,000 years of human occupation have left behind. The people who started to wrestle with this history, the first archaeological pioneers, were members of an educated elite, reasonably wealthy, well read, well travelled, and often well placed in society. They drew their inspiration for the findings of the archaeological work that they were u...

Doggerland   Looking for evidence in the southern North Sea that might suggest that habitable land once linked Norfolk to Holland?  Shallow seas in the southern North Sea,  Doggerland and between Norfolk,  Lincolnshire and Holland.  Summary:- Two research documents are re-framed here to provide proof that a land corridor once joined Norfolk to Holland allowing the migration of woodlands, vegetation, insects, reptiles, mammals,  and people between Europe and Britain,  until the Neolithic period of human prehistory.  The analysis of deposits sampled in the "Europe's Lost Frontiers" project records two major erosional events.  The first of these occurs as sea levels rise to drown wetland peats at around 9000BP,  or later. The second is between 7000BP and 5000BP,  a period when prehistoric people were still moving between the two places. The two published papers are :- Multi-Proxy Characterisation of the Storegga Tsunami  and Its I...

  Series Title:- The Orkney Riddle  29/29 Blog Title:- Quaternary Addendum  " Archaeology in the North Sea " is intended to demonstrate that a spine of land connected Dogger Bank to a location in the northern North Sea that was accessible to Mesolithic people 10,000 years ago when sea-level was 50m below present. " Walkable Land in the North Sea " defines an area of land that would have been available for hunting, foraging, and transit for Neolithic people.  Here, I relate the geology of the North Sea to demonstrate that in a period between 60,000BP and 30,000BP,  a time in which an ice age is thought to have weighed heavily upon Britain,  in fact , although it was a bit chilly there were significant numbers of animals,  plants and people roaming the territory. The sequence of events that created the undersea landscape of the North Sea is roughly as follows :- Initially, in the last interglacial, 140,000 BP to 120,000BP, the North Sea may have been a r...

  Series Title:- The Orkney Riddle 5/29 Blog Title:- The Pentland Firth  The Pentland Firth is the channel of water that separates the Orkney archipelago from Caithness,  the northern most county of Scotland. It is deep, wide, and famously dangerous to cross,  even with modern boats and navigation systems. From the ferry crossing from Caithness to South Ronaldsay interesting surface phenomena indicate what is happening beneath the hull of the boat. Flat shiny areas of water commonly suggest an upwelling mix of currents , while whirlpools imply water being drawn down into the murky deeps.   "The Pentland Firth’s eastern approach hosts intricate sediment transport pathways. Time-averaging the modelled flow field revealed the recirculatory nature of the residual flow also reflected by the inferred sediment transport field identified via timeseries bathymetric analysis.  The Pentland Firth (PF), located between mainland Scotland and Orkney, is an area of the UK...