Neolithic Migration to Orkney

 

 The Orkney Riddle

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 built in Britain at 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

Jeffery Nicholls 

South Ronaldsay 

Orkney 

The Orkney Riddle (index here) is a series of blogs promoting the notion that Neolithic people walked from Scotland to Orkney to build the Ring of Brodgar. 

#Orkney #archaeology #Neolithic #prehistory #British #SkaraBrae #NessofBrodgar #BIIS ##Britice-Chrono 

In Conclusion

 

The Orkney Riddle 

Conclusion

The Theory here, begins with people in Early Neolithic times being able to walk from Caithness to Orkney until 3000BC., it continues by suggesting that a land bridge that joined Caithness to Orkney was washed away at that date. 

The evidence that I hope I have demonstrated to support the theory is as follows:-

The population of Orkney drops after 3000BC. 

Barnhouse and many small settlements are abandoned in 3000BC. 

The Stones of Stenness and Ring of Brodgar are abandoned, unfinished, probably at that date. 

The Westray islands are (mostly) abandoned at 3000BC, and not colonised again until the second half of the 3rd millennium BC. 

Skara Brae, and the Ness of Brodgar, both have dated deposits from before 3000BC indicating some kind of occupation, but not till after 3000BC are the revolutionary solid structures with stone lined drains and other necessary amenities designed and constructed. 

The dates of the human bones found in the cairns are largely assessed to before 3000BC, and the dates of the animal bones, which were arguably being eaten by people, are largely after 3000BC, when a few groups of people isolated from mainland Britain, may have sought desperate refuge. 

It is possible that the people of the early Neolithic in Northwestern Europe were wholly nomadic, leaving only footprints before 3000BC. 

As sea levels rose it also likely that Atlantic tides broke through land bridges between Ireland and Britain, and between Britain and Europe. 

It was only after 3000BC that the first features of Stonehenge were installed, and not until the second half of the 3rd millennium BC that seagoing vessels were developed. 

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All views and opinions expressed are my own, but it remains a work-in-progress for which positive criticism and comment is welcomed.

Jeffery Nicholls 

South Ronaldsay 

Orkney 

The Orkney Riddle is a series of blogs promoting the notion that Neolithic people walked from Scotland to Orkney to build the Ring of Brodgar. 

#Orkney #archaeology #Neolithic #prehistory #British #SkaraBrae #NessofBrodgar #BIIS ##Britice-Chrono 

The Swifterbant Culture

 

The Orkney Riddle

The Swifterbant Culture 

The Swifterbant Culture represents the tribes that occupied northern Europe,  and are likely to have interacted with Britain in the 5th millennium BC. 

 

From:-

"New evidence on the earliest domesticated animals and possible small‑scale husbandry inAtlantic NW Europe" by Philippe Crombé, et al

"The coastal lowlands of Northwest Europe are situated at the periphery of the extensive loess belt of Centraland West Europe, which was colonized in the course of the 6th millennium cal BC by migrating farmers from the Near East and Anatolia. The transition from (Mesolithic) hunter-gatherers to (Neolithic) farmers-herders in this coastal lowland area  has been debated by numerous scholars over the past decades. The debate centers around two opposing models. The frst advocates a long-term and gradual transition towards farming and herding starting early in the 5th millennium cal BC, a process in which local hunter-gatherers played asignifcant role (acculturation/cultural difusion model). The second model, on the other hand, considers a rapid introduction of domesticates near the end of the 5th millennium cal BC, more precisely around ca. 4300 cal BC in the Netherlands and ca. 4100/4000 cal BC in theUK, northernGermany and southern Scandinavia. According to some, the speed of transition suggests demic difusion of pioneering farmers from Central Europeinto the lowlands of NWEurope, as recently supported by genetic evidence, although not all scholars agree on this."

"The Neolithization process of the Lower Scheldt basin. 

The presence of domesticated animals and possible small-scale husbandry from ca. 4800–4600 cal BC onwards, implies that farmer/hunter-gatherer interaction along the NW border of the agro-pastoral frontier was much more intense and drastic than previously thought, and may have involved more than mere exchange of “exotic” goods.

Indeed, local stock breeding demands a transmission of knowledge e.g. through training by skilled specialists which implies direct and prolonged involvement of farmers/herders from the loess areas. This is corroborated by the material culture, which also underwent drastic changes at precisely the same moment. Between 4800 and 4600 cal BC new knapping techniques appeared within the local “Mesolithic” lithic traditions, focusing on the production of thick fakes and new tool types, such as splintered and facetted tools. This was accompanied by new activities, as indicated by new types of micro- and macroscopic use wear traces on lithic tools, e.g. crushing and grinding of animal bone. The start of local pottery production by hunter-gatherers of the Scheldt river valley (Swiferbant Culture), using local clays, must have started during this same period. These new technologies present clear affities with post-LBK cultures, in particular with the Blicquy/Villeneuve-Saint-Germain Culture (ca. 5000/4950 – 4750/4650 cal BC) and later the Rössen Culture (ca. 4700 – 4450 cal BC). 

As such, these changes point to increased infuence of farmer-herders from the loess area. The transfer of technological know-how must have required close and long-term interactions between the farmer-herders and hunter-gatherer population groups, which might have involved the migration of specialists or even inter marriage. This is certainly the case for the pottery production, which represents an entirely new technology in hunter-gatherer context, that required new knowledge of raw materials and the development of new motor habits, i.e. motions and body postures that were previously not used for other activities. The same holds for keeping local livestock consisting of diferent species.At first glance, all this seems in contradiction with genetic evidence from the Central European loess area mainly from central and southern Germany, which points to limited (< 10%, max. 17%) interaction and admixture between both populations before ca. 4000 cal BC, and thus genetic continuity over a period of ca.1500 years. 

However, the first recently published genetic evidence from northern France, demonstrates much more hunter-gatherer ancestry in early farmer’s genes in western Europe compared to central and SE Europe,which fits the conclusions of the present study. Interestingly, the predominance of cattle over sheep/goat within the assemblage of Bazel perfectly mirrors the livestock within the different succeeding agro-pastoral Cultures of the loess region, characterized by a cattle-based economy in which sheep/goat only played a minor role (ca.6/10% to 20%). This cattle-based economy has been linked to increased milk consumption based on the recurrent detection of dairy residues associated with early Neolithic pottery, traces of which have recently also been detected in some Swiferbant Culture potsherds from Bazel (research in progress).

Conclusions. The present study irrefutably proofs the presence of domesticated sheep/goat and most likely also cattle from ca.4800/4600 cal BC along the NW margins of the agro-pastoral frontier, and hence supports the model viewing the neolithization of NW Europa as a long-term process. In addition the isotope data, although not yet fully conclusive, seems to be in favor of small-scale husbandry from the very beginning. If this is confrmed by future, more in-depth isotope analyses, it demonstrates that farmer-herders had a considerable impact on hunter-gatherer’s subsistence as early as the frst half of the 5th millennium cal BC. Clearly before 4800/4600 cal BC contact and interaction with farmer-herders from the LBK was limited to the exchange of “exotic” commodities, such as decorated pottery. This changed markedly with the development of the subsequent Blicquy/Villeneuve-Saint Germain and Rössen Cultures. Contact intensifed resulting in a transfer of knowledge on pottery production,the production of new stone tools (with new functions) and likely also herding. In this sense the frst half of the 5th millennium cal BC was a turning point for hunter-gatherers living in the lowlands along the margins of the agro-pastoral frontier, corresponding to the “substitution phase” or “Introduction phase”. It was the start of a totally new lifeway which probably would culminate into a fully agrarian society in the course of the second half of the 5th millennium cal BC, around 4000 cal BC at the latest. The latter might have been triggered by the tidal fooding events in the Lower Scheldt valley which certainly will have reduced the availability of edible plants and wild game considerably. On the other hand flooding might have offered better conditions for local agriculture, through the deposition of more fertile tidal mud, including clay and silt, in an overall sandy environment."

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Jeffery Nicholls 

South Ronaldsay 

Orkney 

The Orkney Riddle (index here) is a series of blogs promoting the notion that Neolithic people walked from Scotland to Orkney to build the Ring of Brodgar. 

#Orkney #archaeology #Neolithic #prehistory #British #SkaraBrae #NessofBrodgar #BIIS ##Britice-Chrono 

Stones of Stenness, Graham Ritchie's Excavation

Orkney Riddle

Stones of Stenness, 

Graham Ritchie's Excavation 

Plan, indicating locations of Stones of Stenness and Barnhouse,  between Stenness and Harray Lochs.

"The henge monument known as the Stones of Stenness comprises an outer bank, an inner ditch with a single causeway in the N quadrant, a stone circle and a central rectangular box-like structure which contained cremated bones, charcoal and sherds of pottery. 

Cultivation has almost completely removed traces of the bank and ditch, although these could still be seen in the middle of the 19th century. 

At the time of the destruction of the Stone of Odin in 1814, one stone of the circle was felled and another broken up, leaving only two upright throughout the last century.

After the monument was taken into the guardianship of the Office of Works in 1906, the toppled stone was re-erected, another stone was discovered and put up, and a 'dolmen' was built, following the then accepted interpretation of a number of stones in the N of the interior of the circle. 

The capstone of this 'dolmen' was pushed over in October 1972."(Ritchie)

At the Stones of Stenness, Graham Ritchie directed an excavation that found that this circle of stones consisted of twelve in number, of which he explored those stone positions where no standing stone was present. Expressing some reservations about the presence and/or absence of some of the monoliths from the circle of stones, he writes that, “Stone-hole 9 was about 1-6 m by 1-6 m (though the W side was not excavated as it was covered by a balk) and about 0-75 m in depth. The fill was re-deposited till with only a few small slabs and no sign of either stone stump or chocking stones. If there had been an upright, it and Its supporting stones had been very systematically removed. There is likewise no good evidence for stone no. 12, for, although a sharp-sided hollow existed in the surface of the till, it is very slight compared with the other stone-holes and, had the pointed base of an upright been crammed Into the natural at this point, the stone must have been carefully supported by surface stones. This sector of the site has been most severely denuded by ploughing, and while this could not explain the greater destruction of stone-hole no. 12 compared to nos 1 or 9, it might help to explain the absence of any surface chocking stones at this point.”

The observation regarding stone-hole 12, which was hardly more than a stake hole, might lead to the interpretation that the stone circle itself may have remained unfinished. This might mean that the builders only managed to erect ten, or eleven, out of the twelve intended standing stones. It might also mean that the reason that the Stones are unfinished is because people could see that high winter tides were beginning to erode the passage between Caithness and Orkney. Seeing this, the people abandoned their annual gatherings at Brodgar.

Further, discussing the effort required in cutting the ditch of the circle Ritchie observes that, “The visible architectural feat of the raising and positioning of the monoliths is fully matched by the excavation of the rock-cut ditch. The physical effort required for the entire operation of the construction of the Henge has been evaluated as being some 50,000 man-hours. The original depth and width of the Stenness ditch must have given the stones an impression of greater height and aloofness. The ditch of the adjacent Henge monument of the Ring of Brodgar, as revealed by excavation, is an even greater engineering feat; it measures no less than 10 m in width and 3-4 m in depth from the outside surface, and was, like that at Stenness, cut into solid bed-rock. Renfrew, using data on traditional quarrying methods in Orkney, suggests that the effort required (to dig the Brodgar ditch) might indicate a figure of 80,000 man-hours. Clearly such estimates can give no more than a tantalising impression of the complex organisation of Neolithic society in Orkney”.(Ritchie) 

If all that the Neolithic people had done was dig ditches then we might decide that there were just about enough habitations in Orkney to supply the workforce for these projects. In fact though, these were almost the least of the Neolithic people's achievements. 

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All views and opinions expressed are my own, but it remains a work-in-progress for which positive criticism and comment is welcomed.

Jeffery Nicholls 

South Ronaldsay 

Orkney 

The Orkney Riddle (index here) is a series of blogs promoting the notion that Neolithic people walked from Scotland to Orkney to build the Ring of Brodgar. 

#Orkney #archaeology #Neolithic #prehistory #British #SkaraBrae #NessofBrodgar #BIIS ##Britice-Chrono