Dating the Ness of Brodgar

Dating the Ness of Brodgar 

The Ness of Brodgar 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.  The Ness of Brodgar is a big settlement, It consists of a complex sequence of large, mainly stone, buildings contained within a massive walled enclosure.  

Like Barnhouse, the Ness of Brodgar is a predominantly “Grooved Ware Site”

The Grooved Ware pottery which was found in large quantities in these places reappears, more or less after 3000BC, at places in England. One of the earliest site to which these people may have travelled, taking their experience in making Grooved Ware pottery with them, is at Nosterfield in Yorkshire (3020-2870 cal BC).

Grooved Ware is a style of Neolithic pottery that has spread throughout Britain, and is found in large quantities at Barnhouse. It is a bucket shaped form with a flat bottom, in contrast with the “Carinated” pottery which was the rounded based form of pottery that was made by the shepherds that first occupied the Knap of Howar. 

At the Ness of Brodgar though, evidence of the use of Grooved Ware defines a period during which the buildings themselves were being used as structures with rooves. The dating of carbon residues on sherds of the pottery, is limited to a period between 2950BC, and 2750BC. The residues on the pottery are from either fire or food, indicating a likely direct usage of both vessel and building. 

As these structures are likely to have been constructed and roofed with timber, an estimate of their likely duration would suggest that they are unlikely to have survived much more than 50 years, a hundred at most. 

In “To Cut a Long Story Short: Formal Chronological Modelling for the Late Neolithic Site of Ness of Brodgar, Orkney.” By Nick Card, dates for the structures at the settlement are roughly as follows :-

Structure 1  has dates between 3000BC and 2700BC

Structure 7, between 2965BC and 2880BC

Structure 8, 3005BC and 2910BC

 Structure 12 has dates between 2880BC and  2710BC, but also earlier samples dating from between 3335BC and 2935BC

Structure 14 has dates between 2985BC to 2900BC

Trench R, dates between 3335BC and 2940BC

Trench T, between 2905BC to 2725BC

The foregoing sample dates have a fairly clear division between those that favour 3000BC, and going backwards into the 4th millennium BC, and those that come forward from that date and into the 3rd millennium BC. 

At the Ness of Brodgar, Structure 10, is more complicated. The earliest dates are between 2935BC and 2705BC, and most of those dated samples are from carbonized residues on grooved ware pottery which is likely to have been furniture in a roofed structure.

The square structure is formed as two concentric/parallel walls around a near-square internal space, (Cavity walling!?) and the two concentric walls are separated by a continuous narrow channel.

The outer wall was tall, and functioned as a windbreak. (Neolithic people on Orkney were fond of windbreaks). This may have been 2 or 3 metres high.

The inner wall supported the eaves of a pyramid shaped roof over the internal space, and the narrow channel between the concentric walls of the structure served as a drain for rainwater falling off the roof of the pyramid

The kingpost for the pyramid roof was in the current location of the central firepit, and the height of the peak may have been four or five metres.

This pyramid structure survived in the first quarter of the 3rd millennium BC, and may have been a sweat Lodge. A similar structure, Structure 8 at Barnhouse was definitely a sweat lodge, and hut 8 at Skara Brae may also have been one.

In the second half of the 3rd millennium BC mariners entered the Stenness Loch, beaching their boats at Brodgar and, finding the windbreak around structure 10 there. The roof of the building had collapsed and any usable material long removed. What was left was a sheltered enclosure in which they dug out the firepit.  

They probably came every year and caught and killed an auroch, part of which they cooked on the firepit here, and ate, before removing the majority of the carcase of the animal back to their winter homeland.

These visitors left a dump of animal bones  outside Structure 10, between 2620BC and 2460BC, and between 2465BC and 2360BC a stray bone drifted into the upper fill of the firepit in the centre of Structure 10.