Orkney Riddler

   Series Title:- The Orkney Riddle 4/29 Blog Title:- The Story of the Neolithic Migration to Orkney  There are a large number of reports, large and small, that have been written following excavation of Neolithic sites on Orkney.   These reports include plans, sections, find reports, bone reports, dating reports, and any other data investigations that are relevant to the site.  At the end of the report, the findings are discussed, and sone tentative conclusions are drawn.  In discussing the conclusions that could reasonably be drawn from the data supplied by the work of excavation, many odd features are, very sensibly left in a kind of limbo. Better to conclude nothing than to assert something that no qualifying evidence supports. Across the mass of evidence derived from the excavations of Neolithic Orkney there are enough of these archaeological peculiarities, that if collected together, they form a pattern. The pattern does not prove the concept, but...

  Series Title:- The Orkney Riddle  26/29 Blog Title:- Conclusion The Theory here, begins with people in Early Neolithic times being able to walk from Caithness to Orkney until 3000BC., it continues by suggesting that a land bridge that joined Caithness to Orkney was washed away at that date.  The evidence that I hope I have demonstrated to support the theory is as follows:- The population of Orkney drops after 3000BC.  Barnhouse and many small settlements are abandoned in 3000BC.  The Stones of Stenness and Ring of Brodgar are abandoned, unfinished, probably at that date.  The Westray islands are (mostly) abandoned at 3000BC, and not colonised again until the second half of the 3rd millennium BC.  Skara Brae, and the Ness of Brodgar, both have dated deposits from before 3000BC indicating some kind of occupation, but not till after 3000BC are the revolutionary solid structures with stone lined drains and other necessary amenities designed and construct...

  Series Title:- The Orkney Riddle 3/29 Blog Title:- They Must Have Had Boats ! The persistent belief is that Neolithic people had boats. Sheridan (below) and others, have confidently detailed where the maritime trade routes went between Europe and Britain. So, it must be right, mustn't it? The map of Neolithic trade routes appears in:- "ScARF Summary Neolithic Report June 2012: Kenny Brophy & Alison Sheridan (editors) " However, the only mention of boats in that report is the following:- " Much more direct evidence is needed regarding organic artefacts and structures of all kinds: while we can see that organic resources were skilfully used, we only have a tiny snapshot of the full range of materials and uses. For example, we suspect that curragh-like boats had been used to transport the first farmers and their resources to Scotland, and that logboats had been used for onshore and inland water transport, but so far the earliest dated example of a logboat is Early...

  Series Title:- The Orkney Riddle 7/29 Blog Title:- The Swifterbant Culture   The Swifterbant Culture represents the tribes that occupied northern Europe,  and are likely to have interacted with Britain in the 5th millennium BC.    From:- "New evidence on the earliest domesticated animals and possible small‑scale husbandry inAtlantic NW Europe" by Philippe Crombé, et al "The coastal lowlands of Northwest Europe are situated at the periphery of the extensive loess belt of Centraland West Europe, which was colonized in the course of the 6th millennium cal BC by migrating farmers from the Near East and Anatolia. The transition from (Mesolithic) hunter-gatherers to (Neolithic) farmers-herders in this coastal lowland area  has been debated by numerous scholars over the past decades. The debate centers around two opposing models. The frst advocates a long-term and gradual transition towards farming and herding starting early in the 5th millennium cal BC, a proc...

  Series Title:- The Orkney Riddle 17/29 Blog Title:- 'Dem Bones, Dem Bones   A study of the bones and consequently, of the people who owned the bones has been carried out by David Lawrence, in his thesis, ”Orkneys First Farmers, Reconstructing biographies from osteological analysis to gain Insights into life and society in a Neolithic community on the Edge of Atlantic Europe”. At Isbister, he studied a group of skeletons who represented a group of 85 people, half of whom were younger than 25 years old, and half older. In those that he could establish a gender, 15 were probably female, and 28 probably male.  The most striking feature of David’s and other studies of Orkney skeletons is the high prevalence of evidence of violence, as 20% of those skulls that survived at Isbister Cairn carried evidence of injuries that might have been caused by direct blows to the head using various types of weapon. Both sexes and all ages were affected.  Another fracture wound which wa...

  Series Title:- The Orkney Riddle 23/29 Blog Title:- Aurochs  The following commentary is from:- "Excavation of a Neolithic farmstead at Knap of Howar, Papa Westray, Orkney" by Anna Ritchie And is in :- "APPENDIX 4: ANIMAL BONE FROM KNAP OF HOWAR, B A NODDLE, Department of Anatomy, University College, Cardiff" There, the author discusses the dimensions and probable sizes of cattle bones found on the site, suggesting that they are close to aurochs in size. "As Watson stated in his Skara Brae report, the cattle are indeed large. The measurements set outin fig 20 are considerably larger than the writer has encountered at other periods, being roughly similar toa collection of Friesian beef cattle in her collection (these were not fully grown animals). Fig 20 also contains an estimate of body weight reduced from various measurements on the astragalus which originallyderived from these same Friesian cattle in part (Noddle 1973). The lightest of these animals overlap...

  Series Title:- The Orkney Riddle 1/29 Blog Title:- The Bizarre Idea This is a view of the Pentland Firth from a settlement called Skarfskerry, on the North Coast of Caithness in Scotland. The low headland across the water is a neighbouring piece of Scottish coast and beyond that, at the horizon left of view, and almost invisible, is Orkney, an archipelago that sits beyond the northernmost coast of the Scotland. It is part of the Northern Isles group, and consists of more than 70, mostly low-lying, islands and islets of which only about 20 are inhabited. Orkney is renowned as the home of a Unesco World Heritage site. The islands were occupied over 5000 years ago by Neolithic people who created a group of settlements and monuments of a complexity and quality not surviving anywhere else in Britain at such an early date. The Pentland Firth here that separates Scotland from Orkney is a strait of water about 8 miles wide, and is famously dangerous. The average speed of water runni...