Orkney Riddler

  The Orkney Riddle  "A Custom Among the Lower Class of People" George Low, describing the Orkney Isles, in his travels, tells of the customs that local people attached to the stone circles before the 1770s. He writes that, “ There was a custom among the lower class of people in this country which has entirely subsided within these 20 or 30 years. Upon the first day of every new year the common people, from all parts of the country, met at the Kirk of Stainhouse, each person having provision for four or five days; they continued there for that time dancing and feasting in the kirk. This meeting gave the young people an opportunity of seeing each other, which seldom failed in making four or five marriages every year; and to secure each other’s love, till an opportunity of celebrating their nuptials, they had re- course to the following solemn engagements: The parties agreed stole from the rest of their companions, and went to the Temple of the Moon, where the woman, in presen...

The Orkney Riddle The Ness of Brodgar Excavation   Trench P, which includes Structure 10 While, in recent times, the stone circles of Stenness and Brodgar were a present reminder of times past for Orkney folk, Barnhouse was unknown, and completely hidden from view. So also was the Ness of Brodgar, which is now one of the most exciting archaeology projects to explore Neolithic Britain, in recent years. It is directed by Nick Card, and is best described by him, as follows. “ The Ness of Brodgar (Fig. 49) sits on the south eastern tip of the Brodgar isthmus separating the Loch of Harray to the east, and the Loch of Stenness to the west, at the centre of the large natural bowl of hills of the West Mainland of Orkney. From it the Ring of Brodgar (0.75 km to the NW), the Stones of Stenness (0.5 km to the SE) and Maeshowe (1.5 km to the E) are clearly visible. On the south side of the Bridge of Brodgar, barely 300 m distant, is the Neolithic settlement of Barnhouse (Richards, 2005). Ne...

3000BC ?  The coast of south-western Norway showing bathymetry of Norwegian Channel and North Sea  Rogaland coastline with sites discussed by Lisbeth Prøsch-Danielsen in her report. Rogaland is a county of Norway which is centred around a complex water inlet from the Norwegian Channel called Bocknafjord. It is at the most southerly end of the west coast of Norway. This piece of coastline exceeds 150 kilometres in length, and is generally relatively low lying. In this locality, there are over a dozen sites, which have been observed and excavated over many years. At these places evidence was found that sea levels have risen here and dumped beach type sand and gravel deposits onto inland areas. All these beaches have arrived since the deglaciation of Norway, often at times, and locations, when animals, plants, and people of the Mesolithic and Neolithic Ages were present. Lisbeth Prøsch-Danielsen in her report entitled “Sea-level studies along the coast of southwestern Norway w...

  The Orkney Riddle Modern Sweat Lodge Practices At Barnhouse,  Structure 8 has good evidence that it was built to function as a sweat Lodge. There may be as many as three other sweat lodges on the Orkney Archipelago.  Sweat Lodges in present cultures may help us to understand better the culture of Neolithic people in Orkney.  “ Sweat lodges are heated dome-shaped structures used by Indigenous peoples during certain purification rites and as a way to promote healthy living. The intense heat generated — often by steam created from pouring water onto heated rocks — is meant to encourage a sweating out of toxins and negative energy that create disorder and imbalance in life. In this way, the sweat lodge ceremony cleanses the body, mind and soul. Each sweat lodge is slightly different, depending on the community or person who operates it, and the purpose for which it is used. For example, some sweat lodge ceremonies are restricted to men, women, children or members of ce...

The Orkney Riddle The Barnhouse Sweat Lodge Structure 8 Some time after the initial establishment of the Barnhouse Settlement, this building was added, Structure 8. The inner part of Structure 8, the near-square building, is surrounded by a clay platform within the circular surrounding wall.   Stone hearths, boxes, pits, and spreads of ash suggest that the outer clay platform around the outside of the square building was used for a range of activities, that might have included cooking and food preparation Barnhouse, Structure 8, plan   Barnhouse, Structure 8, entrance The above photograph shows the entrance into Structure 8 with a fire hearth in the foreground, and what may or may not be a second hearth in the middle of the room beyond.  The stonework has been designed to survive Orkney weather, but it does not accurately depict the design of the building that Neolithic people built.  The above image shows a plan of the entrance to the structure, as it was excav...

The Orkney Riddle   Cairns and the people in them In “Beside the Ocean of Time: a chronology of Neolithic Burial Monuments and Houses in Orkney”, Seren Griffiths lists the carbon dates of human bones from 10 Orkney cairns. The cumulative data for these skeletal remains demonstrates that about 75% of the people lain in the cairns died roughly before 3000BC, the rest of them died later, mostly through the 3rd millennium BC. Similar findings are suggested by dating of skeletons in Scotland and England, and it is likely that the fall in numbers of bodies in cairns is, as much as anything, because after a couple of hundred years of existence the cairns were in poor condition, and often collapsing, making them sometimes risky places to enter. Audrey Henshall, in “Neolithic cairns of Orkney” finds that there are around 80 cairns in Orkney, of which half are stalled cairns, linear structures with an oblong space within a great mound. The name refers to upright stones that divide the side w...

  The Orkney Riddle Archaeology in the North Sea   The Orkney Vole is thought to have been imported, by uncertain means, to the archipelago from mainland Europe without setting foot on mainland Britain.  How this happened is a bit of a mystery.     At present, the scope for a small rodent to migrate between Denmark, Germany,  the Netherlands,  or France,  and Orkney,  without touching Britain seems a bit limited. " Orkney voles have evolved their own particular dental phenotype, likely the result of human agency influencing its evolutionary trajectory in different ways over the last 5000 years. This human influence began with its Neolithic introduction to the Orkney Mainland at a time when there were no terrestrial predators and only one competing species (the wood mouse). The Orkney vole population rapidly diverged from continental European M. arvalis to reach a new ecological optimum, that included evolutionary changes in morphology of...

The Orkney Riddle Walkable Land in the North Sea There is an area of shallow sea that links Holland with East Anglia. It is likely that this passage would have provided walkable land between England and Holland until a time when Neolithic people were exploring Northern Europe.  The bathymetry chart above indicates this broad area of shallow water joining Lincolnshire, and Norfolk, in England to Holland. Elsewhere, to the south of this region deep water gullies would have prevented any migration by animals, people, or plants. The Norfolk Banks (above) are a series of ridges on the floor of the North Sea, beside the Norfolk coast. Detailed chart, above shows bathymetry of ridges and troughs of the Norfolk   The location of this section of the Norfolk Banks, above, is indicated on the plan above it. The main features of the Norfolk Banks that can be seen in the plan and section are as follows  1- the high ridges of these banks are parallel to each other.  2- the ridge...