The Vole at Skara Brae
The Vole at Skara Brae
There follows edited extracts from a research document about the bones of rodents that were found at Skara Brae.
It details the volumes of vole and mice bones found in midden materials, both inside and outside the monument, drawing conclusions about the possible utilisation of the vole as a food item.
The report is :-
Rodents: food or pests in Neolithic Orkney, by
Andrzej A. Romaniuk, Alexandra N. Shepherd, David V. Clarke, Alison J. Sheridan, Sheena Fraser, László Bartosiewicz, and Jeremy S. Herman.
The Orkney archipelago, situated to the north of the British mainland, is renowned for its outstanding collection of Neolithic sites, a core group of which have been recognized with World Heritage status.
Among the wealth of material recovered from the Orcadian Neolithic sites are copious rodent remains from two settlements, one the celebrated site of Skara Brae, and the other Links of Noltland, Westray.
These remains are from contexts that have been radiocarbon-dated to the late fourth and early third millennium BC, using either the rodent remains themselves or other associated bone material.
Most are from the Orkney vole, a form of the European common vole Microtus arvalis (Pallas, 1778) that is found on some islands of the archipelago, where it is isolated from its nearest conspecifics in mainland Europe. The rest are from the wood mouse Apodemus sylvaticus (Linnaeus, 1758), a common species found throughout western Europe and mainland Britain.
Neither could have survived the Pleistocene glaciations in this location and it is generally accepted that small mammals were subsequently introduced to Orkney by human agency.
The excavations in 1972–1973 and 1977 at Skara Brae yielded over 1.1 kg of sieved micromammal bone material, of which 815 g could be attributed to rodents. The excavations comprised four trenches (I–IV; figure 1), whose location and good preservation provide a remarkable opportunity to study both the human and natural deposition of remains.
Trench I and its stratigraphy represents an undisturbed area inside the settlement complex, covering three phases (phase 0, 1 and 2) of human inhabitation, lasting from ca 3360 to ca 2440 cal BC, with a hiatus of some length (possibly as much as 300 years) between phase 0 and phase 1. Trench II represents the build-up of deposits at the northeastern edge of the settlement, dating from ca 2900 to ca 2490 cal BC. Unlike Trenches I and II, which are located within the core and periphery of the main settlement, respectively, Trenches III and IV were excavated 30–45 m to the west of the modern guardianship area around the settlement. These latter trenches showed only basal survival of in situ occupation deposits; otherwise they mainly comprised natural accumulations of sediments, principally sand with some redeposited anthropogenic material associated with interludes of plough cultivation. The dating reflects this, with dates for the basal in situ deposits lying between 2880 and 2470 cal BC, with later material from around 2300 to 2040 cal BC and much later activity still between cal AD 600 and 900.
The sieved microskeletal material included 816 g of identifiable rodent remains. These comprised 30 524 skeletal fragments, including 8369 isolated teeth, attributable to at least 1674 individual animals. Only two species were identified, Orkney vole and wood mouse, supporting the notion that only these two rodents had been introduced to Orkney by the time of the Neolithic.
The evidence from Skara Brae indicates that the accumulation and burning of Orkney vole remains were most likely the result of deliberate actions by the inhabitants of the settlement, carried out over a considerable period of time, and the most plausible explanation is the utilization of the voles as a source of food. It is notable that the rodent remains were not found in isolation, but within deposits that contained waste products from a range of other foods, including mammals, fish and shellfish. The presence of bones within the hearth deposit itself may be due to roasting of voles between the embers, as previously seen in two other regions of the world, South Africa and Patagonia. Another possibility is cooking or boiling of animals in a pot, known from some ethnographic studies and also suggested for assemblages from the Pampean region in Argentina. In all of these cases, the burnt elements include mandibles and teeth, as in the case of the Skara Brae material. The predominance of older individuals in the sample from Skara Brae may point towards selective or seasonal ‘hunting’, which would not require any more sophisticated techniques than pit-trapping.
It is also possible that the vole remains are the outcome of agricultural pest control, although it is unlikely that this was their only source, given their location and intermingling with household refuse.
The presence of Orkney Voles on Orkney in prehistory has only been noted in archaeological contexts where the primary question is to establish the presence of humans.
I have suggested elsewhere that it is likely that the vole was surviving in cold, but ice-free locations east of Scotland and Orkney through the last glacial maximum, and the following deglaciation.
It is possible therefore that the vole may not have been brought to Orkney by humans, but arrived on its own feet at any time after the retreat of the ice sheet over Orkney.
The relative abundance of mice and voles, as demonstrated in the graphic suggest that there are background populations of voles in external areas around Skara Brae, in areas where there are relatively few mice.
In contrast, the background population of mice is in the structures of Skara Brae.
There are also high intensity populations of voles also within the buildings.
Initially I was skeptical about the idea that voles were a potential food item, but as the idea that these people were likely to be comparatively underresourced survivalists as castaways on Orkney developed, I began to reconsider.
Finding that mice were a common co-inhabitant of Skara Brae dwellings suggests that they were a very present feature of life in neolithic Orkney. It is highly unlikely that this mouse population was a welcome guest, and more likely to have been an outright pest.
In light of that ,some interesting features of the architecture of the dwellings suggest how neolithic people adapted to the invasion of rodents.
Besides the risk of being walked over by tiny feet in the middle of the night, the major risk from the mice would have been two-fold, firstly, eating their stored food, and secondly defacating in the stored food that they didn't eat.
As a result of this very real threat they may have developed a couple of counter measures which we find at Skara Brae.
The other major defence against rodent transgression was the lidded container.
Fixed versions of these were the cut into the floor of Skara Brae dwellings. These would have been designed with a lid which would be lifted to access the contained food within.
A more obvious example of the lidded container is the bucket shaped pottery that was developed at around this time.
These vessels were also furnished with lids, finely worked stone discs of thin stone, like the item that is propped up against the bedding place wall in the image below.
It's quite likely that the development of the dresser and the development of flat based pottery are not entirely coincidental.
The pottery that precedes bucket shapes was round based which would not sit well on a dresser, and it is possible that for some reason mice were a less serious problem in the earlier years of the Neolithic migration into Orkney.
A different approach to food is also possible, flat based pottery intended for long term storage, while round based pottery was used for freshly gathered ingredients.
This might tell us much about the lives of the people who lived in grouped settlements, as compared to those who lived in the more isolated mainland settlements.
Jeffery Nicholls
South Ronaldsay
Orkney
Jiffynorm@yahoo.co.uk
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