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Six
thousand years ago, the Orkney Islands were
part of a megalithic tomb tradition that
was found all along Europe’s Atlantic
seaboard. Tomb construction coincides with
the earliest appearance of agriculture in
the region. Farming originated in the Near
East about ten thousand years ago and spread
slowly throughout Europe, eventually reaching
Britain by about 4000 BC. In part its spread
was due to population movement and colonization
but mainly it was a matter of the local
people adopting a new way of life. Recent
research has shown that only about 20% of
the genetic makeup of modern Europeans comes
from outside the region, specifically from
Mesopotamia.
When
the first agriculturalists settled in Scotland
they found a well-established and very sophisticated
economy based on harvesting wild resources.
A numberof Mesolithic sites have been uncoveredlong
the west coast and the islands offshore.
The cliff tops are breeding grounds for
millions of seabirds and these have been
a mainstay of the local diet in the Hebrides
right down to modern times. All manner of
molluscs, including scallops, cockles, mussels
and limpets, can be found in the intertidal
zone or just offshore and huge shell middens
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Regions
with Megalithic Tombs |
been excavated on the small island of Oronsay. Fish
bones were also present in these same middens and
90% of these were saithe, a fairly deepwater fish
that would require boats and either nets or lines
to catch. Sea mammals, especially seals and otters,
provided both meat and fur. There were deer on the
hillsides and wild boar in the forests; salmon and
trout in the streams.
The
reliability of these local resources enabled people
to settle down in more or less permanent communities,
much as the Haida and Nootka of Canada’s
Pacific coast did in more recent times. Like the
latter, the early inhabitants of western Scotland
would have been skilled boatmen—plying the
coastal waters in craft that were probably much
like the leather curraghs of western Ireland.
They are relatively simple to make, light weight
and very sturdy but, unfortunately, they are not
the sort of thing that is likely to survive in
the archaeological record.
Geographically, the Orkney archipelago is a continuation
of Caithness (see map below), cut off by rising
waters during the last great glacial meltdown
about ten thousand years ago. There are about
70 islands altogether making for a decidedly amphibious
environment. The islands are mainly low-lying
apart from some steep hills on Hoy and rugged
cliffs on the western side of the larger islands.
The underlying rock is mainly Old Red Sandstone,
represented by well-bedded flagstones—an
ideal building material. This is fortunate because
the islands are largely devoid of trees and have
probably been so since the Neolithic or even earlier.
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The
Orkney Landscape
The
distance between Orkney and the rest of
Scotland is only a few kilometres but the
intervening stretch of water—the Pentland
Firth—is among the most treacherous
in the world. Violent tidal races flow through
from the North Sea and the Atlantic and
gale force winds are not infrequent. Transporting
cattle in a skin boat can never have been
an easy task but it is certainly possible
and was clearly done not long after 4000
BC. The earliest farming settlement yet
discovered in the Orkneys is Knap
of Howar a small farmstead
dating to about 3600 BC on the island of
Papa Westray. A larger village of seven
or eight buildings has been excavated at
Skara
Brae on the west coast
of the Mainland, the largest of the islands,
that was built four hundred years later.
Populations could be safely reckoned in
the dozens at most. Once established, an
agricultural economy enabled the inhabitants
to increase their exploitation of the landscape
by grazing livestock on the low hills and
planting stands of wheat and barley along
the shore.
A
settled lifestyle encourages population
growth and it may well have been that in
Orkney, as elsewhere, the shift to agriculture
may have been the response. Because of the
time and effort involved in working the
land to make it productive, farming tends
to promote strong notions of community and
territoriality. The tombs were a visible
expression of the group’s ownership
of the land, a home for the ancestral spirits
who won them that right.
The
tomb at Isbister on South Ronaldsay contained
the remains of several hundred individuals,
representing all age groups and both sexes
in roughly the same proportions as you would
expect in life. It was in use for about
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700 years, from c.3300-2600 BC, and
the numbers could easily account for
everyone in the community who died during
that period. However many of the other
tombs contained only a few individuals
and either there was some selection
process involved to decide whether or
not someone was interred or they were
cleared out occasionally.
Grave goods are few and undistinguished—broken
pottery and stone tools for the most
part. Personal ornaments such as pins
and beads are rare, so there is little
to distinguish one individual from
another. For the most part the bones
were scattered and most of the skeletons
are incomplete. In some cases, only
the latest interments are intact.
Apparently, the individual was of
little importance in the cosmic scheme
of things—at least once the
flesh had rotted off the bones—as
far as these people were concerned.
The group was everything.
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Human
Skeletal Remains from Isbister |
Knowe
of Rowiegar. Flint tools, pottery and a
perforated ox phalange
In
all societies there are certain ‘rites
of passage’ that mark the stages in
a person’s life—puberty and
marriage, for example— designed to
integrate them into the group. This is of
enormous importance because the survival
of the group depended on everyone performing
their assigned roles. Death was seen as
one more such rite, celebrating the union
of the spirit of the deceased with those
of the ancestors. The evidence suggests
that burial was a two-fold process. First
the body was exposed until the flesh had
rotted away—a process known as excarnation—and
then the skeletal remains (or as much of
them as could be gathered) were placed in
the tomb. The process would have seemed
entirely logical to farmers who planted
seeds in the ground and watched them sprout
into new plants. Broken pottery and animal
bones indicate that there was some sort
of funeral service—probably involving
ritual feasting and food offerings—to
ensure that the spirit of the deceased was
accepted by the ancestors.
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Over 80 Neolithic tombs have been located
in the Orkneys and these can be divided
into two basic types, broadly corresponding
with the two ceramic styles found in the
islands during the Neolithic. Stalled Cairns
(by far the more numerous) are associated
with Unstan Ware while Grooved Ware is more
common in Maes Howe Tombs.
The
most comprehensive study is The
Chambered Cairns of Orkney
(1989) by J.L. Davidson and A.S. Henshall.
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