Neolithic Migration to Orkney
The Story of the Neolithic Migration to Orkney
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.
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 sediments running alongside , and linking, both 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 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, 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.
At the same time, the once great area of land that had surrounded Orkney was cut away by the same tidal erosion, beginning the process of dividing islands from each other.
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 no longer returned 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.
While they were developing their shelters, the land around, and to the north of Orkney was being lost to the sea. Wildlife that had until very recently roamed over huge territories became restricted to sometimes very small islands.
At the same time that people were living in special purpose structures that they had built, people were also visiting cairns. At this time few additional dead bodies were being added to cairns , but the structures were being visited, fires were being set in them, and food was being cooked and eaten in them.
In the middle of the 3rd millennium BC boats were being developed , and people were setting out 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, 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.
*
"Neolithic Migration to Orkney" is one of a series of articles which provide accounts describing the development of British geography in the Quaternary period.
The full series is as follows:-
"Parallel Valley Arrays" defines the prime event , the glacial impact valley, that formed the major landscape features of the British landscape.
"Ice Age Beginnings" describes what happened in the ice ages that created Britain as we know it.
Archaeology in the North Sea describes the route by which the Orkney Vole will have been able to migrate from Europe to Orkney without setting foot on mainland Britain.
"Walkable Land in the North Sea" charts the existence of a land bridge from Holland to Norfolk which allowed flora, fauna, and people, to commute between Europe and Britain.
"Neolithic Migration to Orkney" tracks the occupation of Orkney from Neolithic to Bronze Age.
All views and opinions expressed are my own.
Jeffery Nicholls
South Ronaldsay
Orkney
Jiffynorm@yahoo.co.uk
Comments
Post a Comment