Neolithic Migration to Orkney
The Story of the Neolithic Migration to Orkney
Nomads
The Neolithic people of Britain were a nomadic group of cultures that entered the country from the Dutch region of northern Europe from before 7000 years ago until after 6000 years ago.
They came on foot, across a land bridge that is now shallow water between Holland and East Anglia, in England.
These people brought with them a suite of technologies, including pottery, domesticated animals, landscape structures, economic systems, community activities, timber joinery, structural engineering, and small-scale industries.
They had boats, but these were limited to dugout canoes for use on inland waters, lakes, harbours, and perhaps for crossing rivers.
These were people who had arrived in Northern Europe from the south, gathering in the Scheldt valley. As a group of various peoples we call these the Swifterbant Culture, and it was much later that the various groups included here, having established mobile populations across Britain, arrived in Orkney.
To Orkney
The earliest arrivals in Orkney were in 3500BC, and these people built cairns that are believed to have been designed for the housing of the prehistoric people who had died. Their human habitations for the living were mostly light timber structures that may have looked like teepees or bivouacs. With rare exceptions these structures were not designed to endure an Orkney winter. If the winter wind did not dismantle them the ground around them would have rapidly turned to mush from repeated footsteps in Orcadian heavy rainfall.
In spite of their construction of cairns, these people retained their nomadic lifestyle, at least here in Orkney. They would cross from Caithness to South Ronaldsay along a strand made up of geologically soft ground linking those locations.
They crossed from Scotland to Orkney every summer, returning to the south when the weather turned. As they crossed, from year to year, the people would have noted that the strand of land linking the two regions was narrowing. Sea levels were rising and coastal beaches were being eroded by strong tides.
At the very end of the 4th millennium BC, before 3000BC, when sea-level wasn't yet high enough to cause concern, the summer solstice, and the Orkney Simmerdim, became an annual event, drawing hundreds of people to settle in temporary campsites around the Harray Loch.
While they were temporary residents, camping in Orkney, these huge groups built some of the monuments of the Orkney World Heritage Site. These include the Maeshowe Chambered Cairn, the Stones of Stenness, the Ring of Brodgar, and a couple of other henges in the area.
As seasons progressed, and people returned to Orkney, to continue this great work, the sea rose, and whittled away at the strand that joined Caithness to Orkney.
Castaways
At a critical point in the erosion of the strand between Caithness and Orkney, most people would have read the signs, and realised that Orkney would no longer be a viable meeting place for their summer retreat. Either they would, in future, not be able to cross between the two places, or if they did they might not be able to return to Scotland.
The greater number of people did not return to Orkney. Their campsite was abandoned just after 3000BC, and the stone circles that they were building remained, incomplete.
The very few people that remained in Orkney formed into small co-habiting communities, and built solid structures of stone and timber, with covered drains, and great windbreaks, or covered interconnecting passages.
The buildings that these people constructed were among the most complex and revolutionary structures of the time, but their longevity was distinctly limited by the deterioration of the roofing timbers.
These communities were based at Skara Brae, and the Ness of Brodgar.
Mariners
In the middle of the 3rd millennium BC boats were being developed , and mariners were setting out, from Britain and Europe, to explore offshore islands, like Orkney.
The mariners arrived at several coastal locations in Orkney, where they set up camp in the ruins of the dwellings that had housed the earlier inhabitants of Orkney.
In some places they appear to have visited the islands briefly, pulled their boats onto land, and hunted the wild aurochs and other beasts roaming the landscape. In other places more permant settlements may have been established.
When the mariners in their boats arrived in Orkney in the second half of the 3rd millennium BC it is possible that they met face-to-face with some of the surviving ancestors of the Neolithic Orcadian Founding Population.
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This was my bizarre idea.
Orkney is home to some amazing Neolithic archaeological sites, henges, cairns and habitations. Archaeologists thought that the people who built these monuments must have had boats, they must have migrated to Orkney on boats and lived there, farming sheep.
I didn't believe that, and when I read that the Orkney Vole was a distant relative of the European Vole, and not to the Common Vole of Britain, that revelation added a whole new dimension to my conviction that there must have been land in parts of the North Sea that are now deep water. The European Vole had migrated to Orkney, from Europe, without making landfall on Britain.
One of the earliest habitations on Orkney is a group of lightweight huts on the shore of Harray Loch, in an area that is central to the monuments, the Stones of Stenness, the Ring of Brodgar, and the Maeshowe Chambered Cairn, Heart of Orkney Neolithic monuments.
This early habitation is called Barnhouse, and consisted of a group of bender type structures, an oblong pitcghed roof hut, and a large Sweat Lodge.
Finding evidence of a sweat lodge at Barnhouse, it was interesting to research Modern Sweat Lodge Practices to understand the mindsets of Neolithic peoples.
The last date for these structures was radiocarbon dated to 3000BC, and I found in my research that there was significance in this date, in that there were differences between the archaeology that was found for before that date, and for after that date.
At first I looked for evidence that something happened in the North Sea related to that date, 3000BC, I found the evidence, but this was not really enough to prove that there was ever land connecting Orkney to Caithness.
People that came to Orkney before 3000BC had, through their ancestral time-lines travelled from Europe, through England and Scotland, to arrive at Orkney, and beyond that to Shetland.
The nomads of northern Europe who migrated north are now known as the Swifterbant Culture, and they probably crossed the English Channel on land, now washed away between Holland and Norfolk, in England.
These were the people, who built the Cairns of Orkney, the Stones of Stenness, the Ring of Brodgar, and the Maeshowe Chambered Cairn. They also lived in small lightweight settlements dotted across Orkney Mainland, and the bones of the people who lived in these structures are analysed in Dem Bones, Dem Bones.
In late summer these people harvested the seeds of Bere Barley, sometimes storing it for longer term use. This grain is sometimes thought to have been brought to Orkney by Neolithic farmers, but it is a very adaptable species, and has adapted to a short Orcadian growing season naturally.
After 3000BC the few tribes that had decided to remain on the islands as castaways built structures that were different to anything that had been built before. Necessity was a very creative master.
They built the Ness of Brodgar, and Skara Brae Both these settlements were designed to protect their inhabitants from the Orkney wind and weather, the Ness of Brodgar by the use of huge walls, and Skara Brae by covered passageways connecting between houses.
Gordon Childe’s excavation report of Skara Brae's Hut 7 makes fascinating reading, and the dating of Skara Brae shows a sharp distinction between those structures built before 3000BC, and those built after.
The same analysis puts the construction of almost all of the Ness of Brodgar structures (Ness of Brodgar Dating) to be after 3000BC.
Some time in the middle of the 3rd millennium BC boats started to arrive on Orkney beaches. Some seem to have come to mainland Orkney where they camped around the ruins of the Ness of Brodgar, hunting aurochs, feasting around structure 10 there, and taking the majority of the animal carcases back across the seas to their winter homes.
On the islands north of the Westray and Stronsay Firths a group settled throughout the 2nd millennium BC at the Links of Noltland. This settlement was associated with a burial ground which tends to suggest year round occupation.
My purpose here, has been to research, and to write about what I can reasonably prove to have happened in a period in prehistory when the effects of glaciations formed a landscape that people and animals migrated into.
I'm not sure that I have proved anything, but i have drawn a few Conclusions about Neolithic Orkney, from hundreds of sources, and from these i can offer what might really have happened in Neolithic Britain.
Three further blogs describe the development of the geology of Britain through the last glacial period. This is important because it attempts to describe and define how the land and seascape were created.
During this time thick ice sheets settled on Britain's mountains while extensive, thinner ice fields spread out over the rest of Britain and the North Sea. These gave rise to the landscape topography that we live with now, and allowed the movement of flora, fauna, and latterly people across Britain.
"Ice-sheet Britain" describes the main driver for landscape creation, the impact valley.
"Ice Age Beginnings" is a general guide to the climate of the last ice age.
"Interpretations " is laying out and explaining the evidence for the controversial views expressed.
None of the three blogs here noted, are yet available.
All views and opinions expressed are my own.
Jeffery Nicholls
South Ronaldsay
Orkney
Jiffynorm@yahoo.co.uk
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