Neolithic Migration to Orkney

 

 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 it does shift the discussion in different ways.

The following is an outline to demonstrate how the occupation of Orkney by Neolithic migrants may have developed over time.

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 level of 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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 Map of Orkney,  showing Neolithic sites

Next blog:- "Pentland Firth"

Back to the beginning of the Orkney Riddle

All views and opinions expressed are my own.

Jeffery Nicholls 

South Ronaldsay 

Orkney 

Jiffynorm@yahoo.co.uk