Camp Barnhouse

 Camp Barnhouse  

The Barnhouse neolithic "village" contains numerous features  and over half of these are simple circular groups of stones around hearth-like structures. 

These are very shallow features, and as there is no abundance of  surface stones, it is likely that the structure they represent was either a tent, a teepee, a bivouac, a bender, or some other light structure easily erected for temporary occupation.

Colin Richards, in his reporting of the excavation says that these structures were patched, rebuilt and repaired on a frequent basis during their existence. 

Doubtless, rebuilding would have been necessary after any high wind event. No structure with a large surface area, but with little weight,and poor attachment to ground survives an Orkney winter.

Hardy these people may have been, but tents like these would have been blown away in any orcadian winter.

This means that the inhabitants of the Neolithic Barnhouse, who were present on the Harray Loch shoreline a couple of hundred years before many Ness of Brodgar structures were fair weather migrants,  going somewhere a little bit less "exciting" for winter.

So, who were these people, and where did they come from? Could they have come from somewhere on Orkney, or would they have had to come from Scotland?

That would make them semi-nomadic, moving to Orkney just for their summer holidays.

If they weren't here permanently,  why did they build cairns?

Did the Barnhouse people build the Stones of Stenness?

Jeffery Nicholls 

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