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 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

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. 

Email jiffynorm@yahoo.co.uk 

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

A Bizarre Idea

 

The Orkney Riddle

The Bizarre Idea

This is a view of the Pentland Firth from a settlement called Skarfskerry, on the North Coast of Caithness in Scotland.

The low headland across the water is a neighbouring piece of Scottish coast and beyond that, at the horizon left of view, and almost invisible, is Orkney, an archipelago that sits beyond the northernmost coast of the Scotland.

It is part of the Northern Isles group, and consists of more than 70, mostly low-lying, islands and islets of which only about 20 are inhabited.

Orkney is renowned as the home of a Unesco World Heritage site. The islands were occupied over 5000 years ago by Neolithic people who created a group of settlements and monuments of a complexity and quality not surviving anywhere else in Britain at such an early date.

The Pentland Firth here that separates Scotland from Orkney is a strait of water about 8 miles wide, and is famously dangerous.

The average speed of water running through the Firth can reach 4 nautical miles per hour, and also a peak speed, in places, of 12 nautical miles per hour.

Watching the waters of the Firth from the safety of a capable boat is disconcerting as there are treacherous whirlpools and glassy surfaces where it is hard to imagine what turbulence might be happening beneath the vessel.

Even today with modern craft, the unpredictable nature of the seaway can cause real problems for seafarers.

Skarfskerry, the village where the above photograph is taken from, is a straggling group of dwellings dotted along the North coast of Caithness.

Caithness, the northern most county in Mainland Scotland, is otherwise a bare, some would say barren, landscape.

Here there are very few people, towns are small, and “Civilisation” is miles away.

In prehistory there is little evidence of any greater density of Neolithic population in Caithness than elsewhere in Britain, yet people are thought to have looked across to Orkney in the early years of the spread of farming practices, and decided to make boats and cross the Pentland Firth to establish communities there.

When these people arrived in Orkney they built settlements where they are thought to have farmed domestic animals, including pigs, cattle, and sheep.

Some of these animals are thought to have been domesticated locally, but others, like sheep would have been brought in to Britain by migrants from Europe.

Neither is Orkney the only offshore island that has hosted Neolithic populations around the British coast.

Known sites of occupation are found in Shetland, the Outer Hebrides, Ireland, the Isle of Man, and the Scilly Isles.

These, and Britain itself, are all places that are presently understood to have been accessed, between themselves and from Europe, by waterborne vessels in early prehistoric times.

The date at which this journeying is calculated to have happened is around 4000BC, a period known as the Early Neolithic, in Britain.

In the absence of actual evidence it is difficult to see how the import of domestic animals across a substantial waterway, like the Pentland Firth or the English Channel, was accomplished, and practicalities are often not discussed.

One of the earliest boats found in Britain is a Neolithic log boat which can be seen sitting in the sand of Grey Abbey Bay in Strangford Lough, Ireland. It is made of oak heartwood, measures 9.1m long by at most 0.89m wide, and would probably carry up to 5 people. A sample of the wood was radiocarbon dated to after 3499BC. (Nationaltrust.org.uk)

Such vessels were clearly being developed in Neolithic times, at least for enclosed areas of water, or for riding, and crossing rivers.

The possibility that a boat like this could cross a piece of water as violent as the Pentland Firth seems unlikely, and the shipping of livestock in it is even more doubtful.

Even now, Orkney is on the edge. It takes a degree of raw determination (and heating) to survive here. High winds and horizontal rain are normal weather conditions for an Orkney winter.

In spite of this, people are thought to have come here, with livestock, on boats, and settled.

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I could never quite believe that Neolithic people came to Orkney by boat.

As it is thought that they brought cattle and sheep with them, I could not envisage any animal, or any human, surviving a sea crossing of any British tidal waters in any prehistoric vessel.

Standard sources tie themselves in knots to persuade us that Neolithic people had boats that could carry beasts of both sexes that, once landed, would reproduce and help their tribe to survive on the unknown territory across the dangerous waters.

However, evidence has recently emerged that added another dimension to the problem. It was discovered that the Orkney Vole, a species that is unique to the archipelago, had been found by DNA analysis, to originate from northern Europe, and that it was not directly related to the common vole in Britain.

“Much debate surrounds the origins of the Orkney Vole Microtus arvalis orcadensis (Yalden 1999; Corbet 1961). It is the only vole on Orkney and is found on eight islands, while in mainland Britain the field vole (M. Agrestis) is the only Microtus species.

M. Arvalis and M. Agrestis occur widely across continental Europe with overlapping distributions (Mitchell-Jones et al 2003). It is therefore clear that M. Arvalis did not colonise Orkney naturally (Haynes et al 2003; Haynes et al 2004), and although modern consensus supports a human introduction during the Neolithic (Hedges et al 1987), their geographic origin and mechanisms of introduction still remain uncertain. “ (Thomas Cucchi et al)

This meant that the animal that arrived in Orkney did not pass through England, Wales or Scotland.

I tried to imagine a boat leaving Ostend with a Vole somehow stowed away on board, with a prehistoric crew paddling, or sailing, to Kent and stopping there overnight at Dover. They would struggle to travel at night, I thought, and would need to rest, and sleep, as well as hunt for food, and find water. If they had a vole on board they would also have to feed it, and restrain it from escape. They would then set off again up the east coast of England stopping off at Lowestoft to sleep the night in a hastily erected tent, and then take off again at first light in the morning.

I was exhausted just thinking about it.

A vole arriving in Orkney, from Europe, without passing through Britain was a clue that all was not as it seems, and that in spite of the insistence of some that voles may have been carried as pets or food items, another possibility was probably more likely.

I therefore rather assumed that it must be necessary to question what places were passable around the coasts of Neolithic Britain, which areas were land, and which places were water, and when did land areas stop being land.

It is understood that much of the southern North Sea area was land at some point in the past. A piece of shallow sea called Dogger Bank has been named Doggerland as artefacts of 8000 years of age, and older, are frequently dredged up there. The rise in sea level which has occurred since the last ice age has clearly flooded lands here, but which lands, where, and when?

The obvious location, or so I thought, for a route to Orkney from Europe , that would be passable for people, cattle, sheep, and small rodents, on foot, and avoiding England and Scotland, would be somewhere in the middle of the North Sea which, of course, is a bizarre idea.

Indeed, it was such a bizarre idea that I followed it, to see where it took me.

Surely it shouldn’t be too difficult to prove that there was a piece of land, not attached to Britain that joined Dogger Bank to Orkney, in spite of the fact that the area now has seabed at over a 100 metres deep.

It would only take an understanding of the geology of Britain and the North Sea, knowledge of successive glaciations, study of the habits of ice, channel erosion, various dating techniques, and a close inspection of the archaeology of Orkney.

Not so much really, I’m surprised it took so long!

When I started to envisage this idea, that was all it was, an idea. I had nothing but the notion that somehow Doggerland, down in the southern part of the North Sea had once extended northwards to Shetland and Orkney without touching Britain.

I read everything I could find to understand who was where, and when, in prehistoric Britain, and the weight of opinion had it that waves of people came in boats and traded, or brought goods from western France to the western coasts of Neolithic Great Britain. These people bought domesticated animals and the skills to make pottery with them in boats, and every time I suggested in any context that a cow, or a sheep in a boat was not a realistic possibility for Neolithic people I was thoroughly shouted down.

Nobody has found a Neolithic boat that would have crossed the English Channel or the Pentland Firth, but for some people, the existence of such a vessel is an article of faith.

To understand how land was passable, at least by rodents, in the middle of the North Sea, a magical mystery tour had to be taken, beginning in the last ice age.

 Since writing this further research has found that, in fact, the European Vole has actually landed on English soil, as noted in "The Orkney Vole".

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. 

Email jiffynorm@yahoo.co.uk 

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

The Ness of Brodgar Excavation

Orkney Riddle

The Ness of Brodgar Excavation 

Trench P, which includes Structure 10

While, in recent times, the stone circles of Stenness and Brodgar were a present reminder of times past for Orkney folk, Barnhouse was unknown, and completely hidden from view. So also was the Ness of Brodgar, which is now one of the most exciting archaeology projects to explore Neolithic Britain, in recent years.

It is directed by Nick Card, and is best described by him, as follows.

“The Ness of Brodgar (Fig. 49) sits on the south eastern tip of the Brodgar isthmus separating the Loch of Harray to the east, and the Loch of Stenness to the west, at the centre of the large natural bowl of hills of the West Mainland of Orkney. From it the Ring of Brodgar (0.75 km to the NW), the Stones of Stenness (0.5 km to the SE) and Maeshowe (1.5 km to the E) are clearly visible. On the south side of the Bridge of Brodgar, barely 300 m distant, is the Neolithic settlement of Barnhouse (Richards, 2005).

Ness of Brodgar, aerial view

Between 2004 and 2008 trial trenching to investigate the nature of the mound and the threat from agricultural practices gave indications that this massive mound (c. 250 m by 100 m, lying NW–SE, and over 4 M high), previously considered a natural feature of the landscape, was mainly artificial and consisted of a sequence of Neolithic buildings, middens and midden-enhanced soils. Since 2008, area excavation (though still less than 10% of site) has been carried out (Fig. 50). This has revealed a complex sequence of monumental buildings contained within a massive walled enclosure. In it’s latter phases the site is dominated by several large buildings which, judging by their scale and architectural finesse, would appear to be outside the norm for the domestic sphere. This is also reflected in the artefactual assemblage and over 700 examples of decorated stone (Card & Thomas, 2012).

Due to the depth and complexity of the stratigraphy, and the exceptional preservation of the architecture, only the later phases of the site have so far been investigated in detail.

Other activity pre-dating the construction of the large piered buildings is represented by several lengths of walling revealed between, under, and in some cases incorporated into, the buildings presently under investigation. Other earlier buildings are also implied by the subsidence, collapse and the undulating nature of wall lines of later buildings. These earlier buildings where revealed utilise orthostats partially built into wall lines to define internal space similar to stalled tombs and early Neolithic houses. It is presumed that the surrounding walled enclosure is first constructed during these earlier phases.

In the later phases, orthostats are replaced by the use of opposed stone-built piers to create recesses along internal wall faces as in Structures 1, 8, 12, 14 and 21, each of which saw several phases of reuse and remodelling. These buildings (which are the present focus of excavation) can be seen as exaggerated or elongated versions of Neolithic houses of the kind seen, for instance, in the early phase of Skara Brae (Clarke, 1976). A paved area with a standing stone is central to the whole of the walled enclosure at this stage.

The last major construction so far identified, Structure 10 (Fig. 4), is a departure in style and scale from earlier building styles. It partially overlies the collapsed remains of the piered Structure 8. Its internal square chamber with rounded corners bears close comparison with Structure 8 at Barnhouse (Richards, 2005), as does its scale (some 20 by 19 m externally), which mirrors a general trend to monumentality in the Late Neolithic of Orkney. As with the piered structures at the Ness which mirror other house plans but on an exaggerated scale, so too does Structure 10 reflect later house styles, such as House 1 at Skara Brae (Clarke, 1976). Although the foundations of Structure 10 show the overall monumentality of its build, as with the majority of other late structures at the Ness it suffered from subsidence. That may have been the cause of the collapse of its SW corner. It was rebuilt with extensive remodelling of the interior into a cruciform plan with the addition of new wall faces and corner buttressing.

At the end of these monumental phases, the buildings at the Ness were partly demolished and suffocated with layers of midden and rubble. The placing of a structured deposit of mainly cattle bone around Structure 10 has been seen as part of this decommissioning process (Mainland et Al., 2014). This has been suggested as ‘a single depositional event’ or ‘at the least a series of events occurring over a fairly short period of time’ (Mainland et al., 2014: 875). Later, some of the walls of the structures were systematically robbed of stone. Ephemeral activity continued, but on a much reduced scale.

The exceptional architecture, the diversity of structures, and the evident size and spatial complexity of the Ness of Brodgar all emphasise its special character. “(Card)

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. 

Email jiffynorm@yahoo.co.uk 

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

Modern Sweat Lodge Practices

 

Orkney Riddle

Modern Sweat Lodge Practices

At Barnhouse,  Structure 8 has good evidence that it was built to function as a sweat Lodge. There may be as many as three other sweat lodges on the Orkney Archipelago. 

Sweat Lodges in present cultures may help us to understand better the culture of Neolithic people in Orkney. 

“Sweat lodges are heated dome-shaped structures used by Indigenous peoples during certain purification rites and as a way to promote healthy living. The intense heat generated — often by steam created from pouring water onto heated rocks — is meant to encourage a sweating out of toxins and negative energy that create disorder and imbalance in life. In this way, the sweat lodge ceremony cleanses the body, mind and soul.

Each sweat lodge is slightly different, depending on the community or person who operates it, and the purpose for which it is used. For example, some sweat lodge ceremonies are restricted to men, women, children or members of certain clans; at other times, the lodge is open to all. There are also sweats specific to fasting rituals, or in celebration of the Sun Dance and other cultural traditions.

Despite these differences, there are important commonalities among sweat lodge ceremonies. Most importantly, the sweat lodge is a sacred place, likened to the womb of Mother Earth. Sweats are therefore deeply spiritual and cultural experiences for many people. For this reason, sweat lodges are run by special operators — sometimes called keepers, and oftentimes an elder or healer — who are well versed in traditional healing and sweat lodge practices. The operator knows how to conduct sweats safely and effectively, and for various purposes. The great majority of conductors do not charge a fee to participate in the sweat lodge, although it is customary to offer them cloth or tobacco for their services. The purpose of the sweat lodge is not to generate revenue, but to heal and cleanse. Elders strongly caution against those who disguise themselves as healers, but are not trained in the sacred teachings. Non-traditional sweats can be dangerous. On 8 October 2009, for example, three sweat lodge participants died at a New Age “Spiritual Warrior” retreat near Sedona, Arizona.

Historically, there were two sweating techniques reflected in lodge construction. Indigenous peoples in Alaska, California and parts of Central America used a system of direct exposure to fire within the confines of a small, often semi-subterranean (partially underground) structure. The more common system, used by most Indigenous peoples in Canada, was to heat stones in a fire, place them inside a small, domed structure draped with buffalo or deer hides, and pour water on them to produce steam. Direct fire sweathouses doubled as men’s houses, but steam lodges were often used by a single person.

Today, sweat lodges heated by the steam of hot rocks are the most common. The majority of modern structures are made out of wood, covered with tarps and blankets. Tobacco is usually placed somewhere underneath the structure’s base. Altars and the sacred place where the heated rocks are kept before the ceremony are kept outside the structure. The direction of the lodge’s doorway often faces east, but this differs depending on the conductor; some teachings indicate that the doorway should face another direction or that its direction should change throughout the year. 

Conductors will indicate how to best prepare for a sweat. Usually, participants will be told to abstain from alcohol and drugs beforehand. After making an offering to the conductor, participants also make offerings to the altar outside the lodge, and to the Grandmothers and Grandfathers — the heated rocks — before entering the sweat lodge. The fire keeper is in charge of heating the rocks and placing them inside the fire pit in the centre of the lodge. Other items are also placed inside the lodge, such as water (used to pour onto the rocks, thereby creating steam), tobacco (a sacred offering), medicines (certain herbs), and musical shakers and drums (used during prayers).

Once inside, participants sit in a circle around the fire pit for a length of time determined by the conductor and depending on the purpose of the sweat; often, this is a few hours. The fire keeper closes the door before the ceremony begins. Music is played and prayers are recited throughout the ceremony, inviting healing spirits into the lodge. In turn, participants are asked to talk about themselves and their reasons for using the lodge — this is their opportunity to speak to the Creator, to share their personal stories and to meditate on life. At the end of the ceremony, the conductor says prayers to thank the Creator and spirits. Elders might also smoke sacred pipes at this point. The fire keeper then opens the door to the lodge.”

René R. Gadacz in the Canadian Encyclopedia  

“In one form or another, the sweat bath has been practiced in many Native North American Tribes, from the Inuit in the north, to the Navajo in the Midwest, the Sioux/Lakota/Cree in the plains, the Mickmaq in the East and all the way down south into the land of the Mayans (Bruchac). This sacred religious/healing ceremony has been in practice for thousands of years. The purpose usually went far beyond cleaning the body. The sweat bath (Sweat lodge) provided a cure for illness, revitalization for aching muscles, and a sense of identity for Natives participating in and reclaiming their culture. It heals the mind, the body, the emotions and the soul. Finally the Sweat lodge is a holy place where we can connect and communicate with Creator (God), the Spirit Helpers (comparable to the angels and others depending on your spiritual or religious practices) and our ancestors (our grandmothers and grandfathers and all the generations who came before us).

The Sweat lodge is used as a place of teaching, planning, praying, singing, and communing with others. Furthermore, a sweat is often performed in preparation for other rites, and as a means of returning to the non-ritual world after the completion of other holy ceremonies such as the Sun Dance, the Ghost Dance or the Winter Dance ceremonies. “ 

(The author continues, describing in detail the building of the Sweat Lodge and the process and management of the ceremonies) 

The Eagle Spirit Society

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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. 

Email jiffynorm@yahoo.co.uk 

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

Barnhouse Sweat Lodge

Orkney Riddle

The Barnhouse Sweat Lodge

Structure 8

Some time after the initial establishment of the Barnhouse Settlement, this building was added, Structure 8.

The inner part of Structure 8, the near-square building, is surrounded by a clay platform within the circular surrounding wall.  

Stone hearths, boxes, pits, and spreads of ash suggest that the outer clay platform around the outside of the square building was used for a range of activities, that might have included cooking and food preparation

Barnhouse, Structure 8, plan

 

Barnhouse, Structure 8, entrance

The above photograph shows the entrance into Structure 8 with a fire hearth in the foreground, and what may or may not be a second hearth in the middle of the room beyond. 

The stonework has been designed to survive Orkney weather, but it does not accurately depict the design of the building that Neolithic people built. 

The above image shows a plan of the entrance to the structure, as it was excavated. At the middle of the entrance feature is a lobby which links the sweat lodge interior to hearth in which stones are heated for the sweat lodge ceremony. On either side of the lobby are entrances into the lobby, and threrby into the sweat lodge room.

Within the structure a group of artefacts was found :-

 

 

“A series of pits and hollows were dug into the floor on the left side (north-east). One of these contained a hoard of 14 prepared large flint nodules... “ (Richards) 

 

 

“a complete Grooved Ware vessel (that) was set into the clay floor adjacent to the eastern wall (left side on entry). The vessel was undecorated except for two horizontal grooves directly below the rim. Interestingly, the decorated portion was the only visible area of the pot projecting above the floor surface.” (Richards) 

Also, a tiny pinch-pot was found in a stone sided channel that drained water from the Structure. 

In the hearth outside the entrance to the Sweat Lodge, prepared stones like the large flint nodules would have been heated. They would then have been carried to the pit in which they were found, and water sprinkled over them to create steam. 

The water for the ceremony would have been stored in the Grooved Ware vessel, and the pinch pot would have been used to carry small amounts to the heated stones. 

The building has a hearth-like feature at the centre of the room, but it is far from certain that this was indeed a hearth. 

 

 

 

It is possible that this is a base pad for a centre post at the centre of the room that may have supported sloping roof beams leaning in from boundary edges of the structure to an apex at the top, a pyramid shaped building. 

An assistant to the Conductor of the meeting may have been stationed in the external lobby to manage the fire, heat the stones, and attend at the entrance while the Sweat Lodge Ceremony was ongoing. The fire pit was probably in open air to allow combustion without smoke getting into the lodge.

The structure that is represented by circular bank around the exterior of Structure 8 would have been tall enough to act as a windbreak for celebrants before and after the ceremony,  but chiefly to protect the fire in the hearth.

The outer stones of the inner structure would have supported the pyramid roof, and the inner stones would have been a bench for participants to sit on.

 

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. 

Email jiffynorm@yahoo.co.uk 

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

Archaeology in the North Sea

 

The Orkney Riddle

 Archaeology in the North Sea 

The Orkney Vole is thought to have been imported, by uncertain means, to the archipelago from mainland Europe without setting foot on mainland Britain. 

How this happened is a bit of a mystery. 

  

At present, the scope for a small rodent to migrate between Denmark, Germany,  the Netherlands,  or France,  and Orkney,  without touching Britain seems a bit limited.

"Orkney voles have evolved their own particular dental phenotype, likely the result of human agency influencing its evolutionary trajectory in different ways over the last 5000 years. This human influence began with its Neolithic introduction to the Orkney Mainland at a time when there were no terrestrial predators and only one competing species (the wood mouse). The Orkney vole population rapidly diverged from continental European M. arvalis to reach a new ecological optimum, that included evolutionary changes in morphology of the molar teeth. Neolithic farmers then dispersed the species to other islands of the archipelago—from Mainland to Westray and during the Bronze Age to Sanday—generating several founding events contributing to idiosyncratic differences in dental characteristics." (Cucchi et al)

"M. arvalis is not a species currently associated with arctic or even moderately high latitude conditions. Its range extends eastward beyond Lake Baikal and yet barely traverses north of the 60th parallel (Fig. 2; Shenbrot & Krasnov2005).....

"M. arvalis is not currently found in Britain(Fig. 2)......

"It is conceivable that there could have been sweepstake colonization of Orkney from Doggerland, the landmass connecting Britain, the Low Countries and Denmarkuntil about 8000 BP (Weninger et al. 2008) – but this would require the survival of small mammals on floating mats of vegetation over a substantial marine gap between Doggerland and Orkney. Thus, human introduction is by far the most likely explanation for the occurrence of M. arvalis on Orkney......

"From the IMa and ABC dates, this introduction at about 5000 BP fits well with the earliest radiocarbon dates for archaeological M. arvalis from Neolithic contexts (5100 years old: Table 2) and the beginnings of the Neolithic culture on Orkney (5600 BP: Ritchie 2001; Schulting et al. 2010). Voles could have been brought to Orkney by Mesolithic hunter-gatherers, as early as c. 9000 BP, but no vole remains have been found in the one excavated Mesolithic site on Orkney (Lee & Woodward2009), in contrast to their abundance at Neolithic and later sites (Yalden 1999; Thaw et al. 2004). If, as appears most likely, the voles were introducedby Neolithic settlers about 5000 BP, various other implications flow from our molecular data, which are of considerable archaeological interest. First, the introduction implies long-distance maritime travel by Neolithic people between continental Europe and Orkney, extending on findings from elsewhere (e.g.Broodbank 2006). Our study highlights the Belgian coastline as the most reasonable source of the Orkney voles on the basis of available genetic data. This suggests Neolithic cultural linkages between Belgium and Orkney, of worthwhile focus for future archaeological investigation. Microtus arvalis were not introduced successfully into mainland Britain, which is consistent with relatively direct transport to Orkney from the continental source area. Second, if the introduction occurred about 5000 BP, then, because the tMRCA for the Orkney voles is so long (15 400 years), substantial numbers of femalevoles must have been introduced." (Martinkova et al)

The possibility that walkable land was present in the middle of the northern North Sea has not been addressed. To  establish this possibility that land was present in the middle of the North Sea in prehistoric times the undersea features there need to be recognised.  These are in simple terms, Dogger Bank,  the Witch Ground and the Norwegian Channel. 

Fig. 1, The British Isles and North Sea (Emodnet)

The Norwegian Channel is a deep water trench that follows the Norwegian Coast from the Skaggerak, (an even deeper section of the same trench), between Norway and Denmark, out to the North Atlantic Ocean. 

Dogger Bank is an area of shallow water in the southern North Sea known to have been walkable land in prehistoric times, Doggerland. 

The Witch Ground is one of a group of deep water features in the North Sea. These gullies are cut into older sediments, and are all the result of impact erosion.  Ice sheet edges collapsed,  between around 21,000BP and 17,000BP,  cutting valleys in underlying ground that was at that time mostly dry land.

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The Norwegian Channel is an impact valley that has for millions of years been cut out by ice sheets on Norway and scoured by mobile ice streams rolling off from Sweden, into the Skaggerak, and out to the Atlantic Ocean. 

The sea level charts for changes in relative sea-levels for points along the Norwegian Coast, are published in "Post Glacial Relative Sea Level Change in Norway" by Roger C. Creel. These charts are attached to the map of the Norwegian Channel below.

Fig. 2, Sea level charts for the Norwegian Coast (Creel)

There is, on the charts, a consistent pulse of 10 metres higher water level onto the Norwegian coast at 12,000BP when the ice sheets on Sweden were melting and draining into the Skaggerak. Evidence of high temperatures in Scandinavia during this period is reported in:

"Floral evidence for high summer temperatures in southern Scandinavia during 15kaBP-11kaBP" by Frederik Schenk et al

".....we compiled and quantified N ¼ 96 climate indicator plant species from 15 sites that allowed us to reconstruct minimum July temperatures in Denmark and SSweden for ~15 to 11 ka BP. Although the number of sites and hence indicator species is very low during the pre-BØ, BØ and OD, the presence of indicator species with high thermal requirements such as Herniaria glabra (TJuly  16.5
C), Silene nutans (15.1
C) or Alisma plantago-aquatica (14.4
C) at Bjorker € odsmosse and possibly € Lotus corniculatus (14.5
C) at Slotseng, indicates near-modern July temperatures even by ~15 ka BP in close vicinity to the FIS margin at that time. We also find clear evidence for equally high July temperatures during the YD stadial of at least ~14
C and possibly up to ~16
C consistent with high summer temperatures found in previous studies (e.g. Birks and Birks, 2014; Schenk et al., 2018)."

Elsewhere I calculate that the amount of meltwater entering the sea, off the coast of Norway, Sweden,  or Britain,  any time may have been half or a whole cubic kilometre of water, ice and sludge. This would significantly raise local sea-level at coastlines. 

The  sea level in the Norwegian Channel, inferred from  "Global sea-level rise in the early Holocene revealed from North Sea peats" by Marc P. Hijma, et al, was 60 metres below present at 12,000BP, but the peak of the meltwater  surge out of the Skaggerak was then 10 metres above 60, therefore 50 metres below our sea level. 

This surge of 50 metres below sea level was supported at the Skaggerak between  the coasts of Norway and Denmark,  and not diminished in any way until it had followed the Norwegian Coast and reached the Atlantic.

This means that there was land along the west bank of the Norwegian Channel at better than 50 metres below current sea level, where the seabed is now over 100 below.

This suggests that there was land at the west coast of the Norwegian Channel at shallower that 50 metres below sea-level that people and animal may have used to walk from Doggerland north to the Atlantic coast of the North Sea. 

Figure 3, a flint found in a borehole drilled in the seafloor of the northern North Sea. 

To confirm this possibility, There is evidence of human activity in the middle of the North Sea. 

In a report entitled "A flint artifact from the northern North Sea" .  Caroline Wickham-Jones discusses a struck flint artefact found in a borehole in the North Sea, half way between Shetland and the North Sea, ("A flint artifact from the northern North Sea" By Long, D., Wickham-Jones, C.R. and Ruckley, N.A. 1986).

The location of the find, the "Findspot", is indicated in the map above, and the artefact itself is drawn. This may indicate that people were foraging in this area in prehistory. It is certainly difficult to conceive how a knapped flint got to that place otherwise. 

 

Figure 4, bathymetry maps of the northern North,  3 slices, deepest at the top, shallowest at the bottom.

The bathymetry maps above are slices of seabed depths across the northern sector of the North Sea. 

The upper chart shows purple, 190m, to yellow 150m.

The middle chart shows purple 150m to yellow 120m

The lower chart shows purple 120m to yellow 90m.

The 120 metre depth of the lower chart delineates a potential coastline that may have joined the findspot of the flint to both Doggerland in the south and Orkney/Shetland in the east. The coast encircles a huge embayment.  Some of this embayment will have been cut out by the impact erosion of collapsing ice sheets, but during human prehistory would have been a marine feature. 

Evidences combine to suggest that a lagoon was present off the east coast of Aberdeenshire,  an area of shallow "estuarine" water, this appears not to have frozen over during the last glacial maximum,  and may have retained vegetation and fauna populations around its perimeter. This may be one source of migrant species that may have colonised Orkney. 

Whether this lagoon was connected with the Shetland embayment is moot, but at some stage the lagoon filled sufficiently that waters in it flowed out in a southerly direction,  along the coasts of England, Holland, Germany and Denmark,  into the Norwegian Channel 

During the cold period of the last glacial maximum, all of eastern Britain  from Dover to Orkney was ice covered. Thick ice also covered Dogger Bank/Doggerland,  and the peninsula that extended north from there to the findspot, and the Atlantic Ocean. 

There are then the two routes by which the Orkney Vole may have migrated to Orkney.  The first is as a population surviving through the last glacial maximum on yhe shores of a lagoon, and the second, perhaps more plausible, would have been north from Doggerland,  and around the south coast of the Shetland embayment.

The materials that built up the peninsula would have arrived in their current locations by deposition from large volumes of mobile sludge waves derived from the collapse of ice sheets on Shetland. As the deposits on the peninsula would not have been overlaid by a great thickness of ice they would have been reasonably soft. It was only when sea levels rose that these, otherwise stable deposits began to collapse.  

The Inundation of the North Sea 

  

The ridge of land that joined the "Findspot" to Doggerland has been removed as a result of rising sea levels. 

The date at which this happened may be found in a report of excavations of raised beaches on the Norwegian Coast that was carried out by Lisbeth Prøsch-Danielsen (Sea-level studies along the coast of south-western Norway, by Lisbeth Prøsch-Danielsen) At the "Stavanger Airport Sola Site"

Fig, 5. The Rogaland coast of Norway (Prøsch-Danielsen)

Danielsen demonstrated that there were a couple of transgressive rises in sea level after the end of the last ice age. She also found an anomalous event which she could give no explanation for, in which an alder tree was ripped from its roots at a site in Rogaland, near Stavanger. “The layer consisted of organic and sand (mica schist) lenses sandwiched on top of each other, dipping towards the east.  Between layer 3 and layer 4 there is an erosional angular unconformity. Also roots of black alder (Alnus glutinosa) (identified by Aud Simonsen) penetrating into the upper part of the marine gyttja have been cut of discordantly. A piece of root has been dated to 4320±70 yr BP (ß-171185).”. The  date was calibrated to just after 3000BC, and I interpret that the roots may have been stripped of their tree by a very local tsunami wave, rolling  across the Norwegian Channel from the collapse of cliffs along the west coast of the channel. 

Similar results to those at Stavanger airport Sola site, were found at other archaeological sites in Rogaland, where tsunami-type deposits are found.

Talking to Bård Amundsen, a journalist for sciencenorway.no , Svein Vatsvåg Nielsen and his German colleague Martin Hinz say:- "We now consider it certain that the sea level rise was brief. It also seems likely that a tsunami struck the Stone Age people in Rogaland – and probably also Vest-Agder – sometime between 3445 and 3396 BCE,"

Nielsen and Hinz suspect that it may have been the Garth tsunami, named after the Garth Loch lake in Shetland.

Jåsund 2 is the name archaeologists have given to one of the most well-known Stone Age settlements in Rogaland. It is located on the Tananger Peninsula in Sola municipality, just outside Stavanger. Evidence suggests Jåsund 2 was flooded by a wave possibly as high as 10 metres. 

They have also discovered evidence of the Garth tsunami, which may have hit southwestern Norway 5,400 years ago, on Shetland. The sediments left behind by this tsunami are similar to those from the Storegga tsunami. In this case, the wave run-up on land is over 10 metres. 

Håkon Glørstad, who first proposed the tsunami theory in the 1990s, is pleased that Nielsen and Hinz have now confirmed it in a new scientific article. "At the time, much of what we uncovered in archaeological digs in Rogaland didn’t make sense," Glørstad tells sciencenorway.no. "But I realised something dramatic must have happened, something involving water, that was unique to Rogaland. It had to be a fairly local phenomenon," he says. (Amundsen, edited)

The last ice age is not well understood at present, but the research that has been necessary to plot a path by which the European Vole transformed itself into the Orkney Vole required a series of shifts in my perception of Quaternary landscapes.

The theories of how the ice-sheets affected the land upon which they rested, as they are proposed by scientists in existing polar science,  often bear no relation to the actual conditions as they survive. A common feature of these theories is that ice-sheets are believed to move, and in some circumstances can move uphill. Although there may be some truth  in these statements,  they are generally physically impossible. 

I have completely redefined the processes that modified the geological landforms, and submarine seascape of Britain.  I cannot say that this applies to other regions, or to what is happening now, but the geology tells its own story.

Find out more in "Ice-sheetBritain". 

All views and opinions expressed are my own. Many assertions stated have not been thoroughly justified here, simply because space prohibits it in this format. The evidence exists elsewhere to demonstrate that these assertions are, at their core, valid.

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. 

Email jiffynorm@yahoo.co.uk 

#Orkney #archaeology #Neolithic #prehistory #British #SkaraBrae #NessofBrodgar #BIIS ##Britice-Chrono #EarthSciences #LastGlacialMaximum #IceSheets #RelativeSeaLevel #Glaciers

Walkable Land in the North Sea

 The Orkney Riddle

Walkable Land in the North Sea

There is an area of shallow sea that links Holland with East Anglia. It is likely that this passage would have provided walkable land between England and Holland until a time when Neolithic people were exploring Northern Europe. 

The bathymetry chart above indicates this broad area of shallow water joining Lincolnshire, and Norfolk, in England to Holland. Elsewhere, to the south of this region deep water gullies would have prevented any migration by animals, people, or plants.

The Norfolk Banks (above) are a series of ridges on the floor of the North Sea, beside the Norfolk coast.

Detailed chart, above shows bathymetry of ridges and troughs of the Norfolk

 

The location of this section of the Norfolk Banks, above, is indicated on the plan above it.

The main features of the Norfolk Banks that can be seen in the plan and section are as follows 

1- the high ridges of these banks are parallel to each other. 

2- the ridges rest on a flat surface which is about 35 metres below sea level here.

3- the ridges are also parallel to Bathymetric lows, gullies that are also linear, and run immediately beside the ridges. These gullies are cut into the flat surface upon which the ridges rest.

4- the gullies lead off in a southwestern direction, attaching to , and becoming part of the Lobourg Channel, a deep water channel in the middle of the Dover Strait. 

5- the Norfolk Banks have not moved in the last 100 years, and are unlikely to have ever moved. 

6-at nearly 2 kilometres wide these features are massive. 

My assumption is that the peaks of these ridges were once part of a land surface that joined Holland to East Anglia. Subsequent sea level rise here has partially removed seabed sediments, leaving these ridge Formations, the Norfolk Banks. 

The Lobourg Channel which merges with the Norfolk Banks is a deep gully in the floor of the Dover Strait. It connects with the Norfolk Banks at the North and with similar features in the floor of the English Channel between Dover and Southampton. 

The gullies between the banks of the Norfolk Banks are continuous with the gullies in the Dover Strait, (the Lobourg Channel, below) and also with gullies in the English Channel which have been dated to 21,200BP.

 

This date , 21,200BP, is generally accepted to be close to the coldest point in the last ice age, and the start of the process of deglaciation of ice sheets over the northern hemisphere, and the group of gullies represents the southern limit of the ice sheet over Britain that melted at that date. 

The chart of the southern North Sea, above, indicates a plausible sketch of contours for the likely depth of ice as it lay on Kent, East Anglia, the Dover Strait, and southern North Sea before 21,200BP.

The contours are for 100, 50, and for 5 metres of ice depth.

The actual weight of ice on the 100 metre contour line would have been 90 tons per square metre. The weight of ice on the 50 metre contour would have been 45 tonnes per square metre, and the 5 metre contour, 4.5 tonnes per square metre.

The effect of the thick ice on the Dover Strait would have been to compress pre-existing  sediments there. This compression of sediments squeezed out all the air and water held in them, causing a condition which geologists describe as "overconsolidated". From personal experience I can say that this overconsolidated material is as hard as hell!.

This means that sediments against the Norfolk coast would have been a rock hard material, while the sediment under the areas closest to the Dutch coastline would have remained relatively a great deal softer.

After 21,000BP the surface of Britain thawed, and the ice sheet retreated. By about 15,000BP the ice sheets were mainly restricted to the Highlands of England and Scotland, and the walkable land between Norfolk and Holland permitted the migration of herbs and trees, and animals to move north across the whole of the country.

At 7000BC the British Isles were forested, and in Orkney "A charred hazel nutshell from the mound at Long Howe produced a radiocarbon date (SUERC-15587 7900±35 BP 7030–6640 cal bc 95% confidence)." Also in Orkney there were Willow, Birch, Heather, hawthorn, Pignut. Plum/Cherry charcoal scraps present in the hearths of people living in the late 4th millennium BC. 

Herbivores, followed the plant life, while carnivores followed the herbivores.

Those animals that are known to have made this journey and to have visited Britain in around 5000BC, are recorded in "The Mesolithic mammal fauna of Great Britain", by Maroo and Yalden.

 

....and in Orkney Animal bones radiocarbon dated to the Neolithic period include:-- sheep, wild pig, auroch, Red Deer, possible wolf, dog, pine marten, wood mouse, and Orkney Vole. 

In "New evidence on the earliest domesticated animals and possible small‑scale husbandry in Atlantic NW Europe" by Philippe Crombé et al, the authors provide evidence that people in Neolithic Europe were developing forms of agriculture, including herding or shepherding of domesticated animals into the late 5th millennium.

 

The growth of herder communities in Northern Europe, described above neatly merges, in timescale, with the plan of Neolithic movement in Britain in the 4th millennium BC, as outlined by Alasdair Whittle , in "Whittle, A., Bayliss, A. & Healy, F. 2011. Gathering Time:Dating the early Neolithic enclosures of southern Britainand Ireland." See image below...

 

Crombe dates the presence of people in the Swifterbant as follows:- "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."

He also suggests that the Neolithic people who crossed from northern Europe to south east England were animal herders, and the presence of both sheep and dogs in Neolithic Orkney rather confirms that theory. In his discussion he also offers that there was a transition away from hunter-gatherer behaviour occurring, but this is not borne out by the evidence from the middens of the Knap of Howar in Orkney where it is clear from animal bones, bird bones, and molluscs found in them that the people who lived there would eat anything that came to hand.

At a date during the 4th millennium BC sea-level rose sufficiently that it would erode soft sedimentary deposits against the Dutch coast of the North Sea. Hard deposits that had been overconsolidated by the ice sheet over England were not eroded, but remained as the ridges of the Norfolk Banks.

The woodland that had grown on this land between Norfolk and Holland was then washed away as the waters of the Atlantic Ocean pushed through to the newly developing North Sea. 

As the English Channel was scoured out ,only the compacted ridges of the Norfolk Banks remained in the floor of the southern North Sea. 

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Recent research into the Mesolithic landscape of Doggerland is published in:-

Multi-Proxy Characterisation of the Storegga Tsunami and Its Impact on the Early Holocene Landscapes of the Southern North Sea. By Vincent Gaffney et al 

And....

"Early colonization before inundation consistent with northern glacial refugia in Southern Doggerland revealed by sedimentary ancient DNA" by Robin Allaby et al. 

The Southern River System in Doggerland

"To understand the late glacial and early Holocene environment of Southern Doggerland, the Europe’s Lost Frontiers (ELF) team undertook seismic surveys and recovery of marine sediment samples for environmental and geochemical analysis between 2016 and 2019.

Topographical reconstruction of the landscape characterized a river system, the Southern River , suitable to track the environmental changes that occurred from the Late Pleistocene to the period of inundation.

 The Southern River is around 30 km in length with a headwater area to the north close to the limit of the southern-most ice advance . The river system opened into an estuarine mouth in the south between headlands which could have been suitable for human occupation, with likely plentiful freshwater and marine resources available to inhabitants . Recently, on the basis of this topography speculative dredging of the sea floor was under-taken in the estuarine mouth area leading to the discovery of a worked lithic from the early Holocene. Consequently, the Southern River is an area of particular interest with respect to its potential to support early Mesolithic occupation. By integrating sedimentological and sedaDNA data, we distinguish secure samples in which sedaDNA derives predominantly from a local source from those in which the signal derives from influxed and reworked sediments. Secure taxonomic profiles show the transition of the landscape from one supporting temperate trees from before a time contemporaneous to the Allerød, to an inundated environment dominated by sea grass (Zostera ). The presence of thermophilous tree species too early and too far north given tree migration rates to have originated from classic glacial refugia, signal the existence of closer refugia in North-West Europe across glacial advances."

The southern river location is shown in the plan above, north of Norfolk. 

Just one boring core is examined in close detail in "Multi-Proxy Characterisation of the Storegga Tsunami......", ELF001A.

The depth of seafloor from which the core ELF001A is drilled is 24.70 metres below sealevel. The core is 3.5 metres deep. The lowest sediments (ELF001A-7) are dark grey finely laminated silts and fine sands from 3.5 to 1.52 metres depth below the sea floor. 

At 1.52 m there is a very sharp contact boundary suggestive of an erosional event, and from approximately 1.50m to 1.10 m the core suggests that the material is from a different origin to the local sediment supply.

The environment prior to this dramatic event, and recorded in the underlying stratum Unit ELF001A-7, was an estuarine mudflat with organisms consistent with brackish water nearby, including marine eelgrass and mostly freshwater pondweed as well as "Frog's Bit" and Arum. 

This mudflat was surrounded by an area of meadow influenced flora, including buttercups, orchids, mallows and asterids, with a possible open woodland close by.

Between 150 metres and 110 metres deep there is a grey, medium grain sand (ELF001A-6) with freshly broken shell fragments, whole shells and small stones (up to 3 cm in size). This unit dates to 8.04ka BP ± 0.43 ka. It is "characterized by an abrupt change in both microfossil and sedaDNA evidence. There is an absence of diatoms and pollen; an increase in outer estuarine or marine taxa of ostracods and foraminifera; the appearance of fractured molluscan shells from different and incompatible habitats including sublittoral, intertidal and brackish species; and the sudden and significant influx of all woody taxa." At 1.19 m this sequence fines to a dark grey silty sand that is moderately compact (unit ELF001A-5). Dated to 8.22ka BP ± 0.43 

(ELF001A-4) At 1.09 metres depth another sharp contact is encountered after which dark grey very well laminated silty sands once again show horizontal laminations of 2–4 mm thickness. The base of unit ELF001A-4 at 105 cm depth in core is dated to 7.16ka BP ± 0.50 ka, and at 1.00m depth to 6.03ka BP ± 0.22 ka. "Together, these proxies indicate a violent event that brought with it the terrestrially derived debris of surrounding woodland."

"After the event in units ELF001A-4 to ELF001A-1, the foraminifera and ostracod signal indicate a return to estuarine mudflats with a greater abundance of marine taxa such as Ammonia batavus indicating a more established marine signal than prior to the event. The sedaDNA signal also indicates estuarine taxa such as Zostera (seagrass) and a meadow influence, although the biogenomic mass appears greatly reduced suggesting more distant proximity of the flora. A faunal signal considerably weaker than the floral was present throughout the core, but shows a significant elevation in count towards the top units, indicating the presence of rodents and larger animals such as bear, boar and cloven hoofed ruminants, as well as higher orders of fish (Acanthomorpha, Eupercaria, Osteoglossocephalai)."

(ELF001A-3 to ELF001A-1) From 0.90 m to the surface grey to yellow medium sand is loosely consolidatedand, and shows evidence of bioturbation.

*

Two abrupt changes in the environment in the location of ELF001A are marked in the evidence presented here. These events occur at ELF001A-6, and at ELF001A-4. Dating of these events are 8000BP, and 7000BP to 6000BP, respectively 

In ELF001A-6 there is "an abrupt change in both microfossil and sedaDNA evidence". This change is dated to just after 8000BP , and is coincident with the rising of sea levels which drowned peat bogs in several other locations in the Southern Valley area. (ELF 020, ELF007, ELF009, ELF002, ELF005, ELF003, ELF 034, ELF 019, ELF 031)

Between 7000BP and 6000BP, in ELF001A-4, "a violent event that brought with it the terrestrially derived debris of surrounding woodland" occurred. 

This event coincides with significant additional sediment supply (of 2 to 3 metres thickness) to three other locations in the Southern River Valley (ELF 042, ELF 054, and ELF 059).

Sea level at 7000BP to 6000BP had risen to 5 to 7 metres below present levels, and the event that occurred between those dates is described in the report as "a violent event that brought with it the terrestrially derived debris of surrounding woodland"

Put simply, .like this, the two events found in the evidence are likely to be a two-part process in which the Atlantic Ocean, in the English Channel, and the North Sea began to nibble at land that occupied the coastal region of Lincolnshire and Norfolk which may have extended across the southern border of the North Sea. 

Breaking through from the English Channel to the North Sea may well have been a "violent event" and the timing of the second event is exact to the period in which we know that people were still moving between Britain and Europe. 

Hitherto that movement has always been attributed to boats and amphibious transport in spite of the lack of actual evidence for seagoing vehicles at the time in prehistory. 

Understanding that land that has been removed from the earth’s surface is very difficult to verify as ever having existed at all, the foregoing explanation is probably the best evidence for land between Europe and Neolithic Britain that is possible.

*

Finally,  the dates of the violent event interpreted at the Southern River Valley,  7000BP to 6000BP, and possibly later, find some agreement with strontium dating from Whitwell Cairn. 

The source is:- The Isotopic Evidence for Human Movement into Central England during the Early Neolithic by SAMANTHA NEIL CHRIS SCARRE, JANE EVANS , JANET MONTGOMERY. 

In their conclusions they write:-

"The majority of the individuals buried in the Whitwell cairn have strontium isotope ratios higher than 0.7170. High values are rare in human enamel in burials found inBritain (Evans et al., 2012), and all current evidence suggests that such values do not originate from the biosphere of central England (Evans et al., 2018).

Based on present understanding of the methodology employed and the way in which strontium isotope ratios within human enamel are derived, the results suggest that these individuals obtained the majority of their dietary resources from a geographical area in which high 87Sr/86Sr values are routinely bioavailable: for example, on granite or ancient basement gneisses. 

British bioavailable values higher than 0.7170 have been recorded in plants growing in Scotland and on granites in Dartmoor in south-west England. In these regions, however, the appearance of Neolithic features does not significantly pre-date the Whitwell burials: current modelling of radiocarbon dates suggests that Neolithic material culture and practices only began to appear in southwestern England and Scotland in the decades around 3800 cal BC (Bayliss et al.,2011: 736, 822–24, 835–40). Strontium isotope ratios higher than 0.7170, comparable to those exhibited by the group at Whitwell, have been recorded in the biosphere on the Armorican Massif in northwestern France (Négrel & Pauwels, 2004;Willmes et al., 2013, 2018). 

Recent analysis of Early Neolithic material culture found within Britain has been used to argue that there may have been population mobility between this area and Britain from approximately 3800 cal BC (Pioffet,2015; see also Sheridan, 2010a, 2010b).

Strontium isotope analysis cannot, on its own, determine the geographical source of the 87Sr/86Sr values found within human enamel at Whitwell: competing arguments for links to different source areas must, therefore, be evaluated on the basis of present archaeological and radiocarbon dating evidence. Based on current understanding of British biosphere 87Sr/86Sr data, the results do, however, provide evidence for individual human mobility over long distances during the thirty-eighth century BC, a period associated with the rapid spread of new cultural practices across Britain (Bayliss et al., 2011: 801)."

*

If i have successfully suggested that Neolithic people walked from Holland to Norfolk without getting their feet wet, it makes sense to reconsider whether the same could not be true for land between Caithness and Orkney.

For a more detailed discussion of the effect of the last ice age, see Ice Sheet Britain 

Sources

"The geology of the southern North Sea. United Kingdom offshore regional report" By T D J Cameron, A Crosby, P S Balson, D H Jeffery, G K Lott, J Bulat and D J Harrison

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

*

All views and opinions expressed are my own.

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. 

Email jiffynorm@yahoo.co.uk 

#Orkney #archaeology #Neolithic #prehistory #British #SkaraBrae #NessofBrodgar #BIIS ##Britice-Chrono #EarthSciences #LastGlacialMaximum #IceSheets #RelativeSeaLevel #Glaciers