Neolithic discovery: Why Orkney is the centre of ancient
Britain
By Robin McKie | Guardian.co.uk
Long before the Egyptians began the pyramids, Neolithic man built a vast temple complex at the top of what is now Scotland. Robin McKie visits the astonishing Ness of Brodgar.
Drive west from Orkney’s capital, Kirkwall, and then head north on the narrow B9055 and you will reach a single stone monolith that guards the entrance to a spit of land known as the Ness of Brodgar. The promontory separates the island’s two largest bodies of freshwater, the Loch of Stenness and the Loch of Harray. At their furthest edges, the lochs’ peaty brown water laps against fields and hills that form a natural amphitheatre; a landscape peppered with giant rings of stone, chambered cairns, ancient villages and other archaeological riches.
This is the heartland of the Neolithic North, a bleak,
mysterious place that has made Orkney a magnet for archaeologists, historians
and other researchers. For decades they have tramped the island measuring and
ex- cavating its great Stone Age sites. The land was surveyed, mapped and known
until a recent chance discovery revealed that for all their attention,
scientists had completely overlooked a Neolithic treasure that utterly eclipses
all others on Orkney – and in the rest of Europe.
This is the temple complex of the Ness of Brodgar, and its
size, complexity and sophistication have left archaeologists desperately
struggling to find superlatives to describe the wonders they found there.
"We have discovered a Neolithic temple complex that is without parallel in
western Europe. Yet for decades we thought it was just a hill made of glacial
moraine," says discoverer Nick Card of the Orkney Research Centre for
Archaeology. "In fact the place is entirely manmade, although it covers
more than six acres of land."
Once protected by two giant walls, each more than 100m long
and 4m high, the complex at Ness contained more than a dozen large temples –
one measured almost 25m square – that were linked to outhouses and kitchens by
carefully constructed stone pavements. The bones of sacrificed cattle,
elegantly made pottery and pieces of painted ceramics lie scattered round the
site. The exact purpose of the complex is a mystery, though it is clearly
ancient. Some parts were constructed more than 5,000 years ago.
The people of the Neolithic – the new Stone Age – were the
first farmers in Britain, and they arrived on Orkney about 6,000 years ago.
They cultivated the land, built farmsteads and rapidly established a vibrant
culture, erecting giant stone circles, chambered communal tombs – and a giant
complex of buildings at the Ness of Brodgar. The religious beliefs that
underpinned these vast works is unknown, however, as is the purpose of the
Brodgar temples.
"This wasn’t a settlement or a place for the living,"
says archaeologist Professor Colin Richards of Manchester University, who
excavated the nearby Barnhouse settlement in the 1980s. "This was a
ceremonial centre, and a vast one at that. But the religious beliefs of its
builders remain a mystery."
What is clear is that the cultural energy of the few
thousand farming folk of Orkney dwarfed those of other civilisations at that
time. In size and sophistication, the Ness of Brodgar is comparable with
Stonehenge or the wonders of ancient Egypt. Yet the temple complex predates
them all. The fact that this great stately edifice was constructed on Orkney,
an island that has become a byword for remoteness, makes the site’s discovery
all the more remarkable. For many archaeologists, its discovery has
revolutionised our understanding of ancient Britain.
"We need to turn the map of Britain upside down when we
consider the Neolithic and shrug off our south-centric attitudes," says
Card, now Brodgar’s director of excavations. "London may be the cultural
hub of Britain today, but 5,000 years ago, Orkney was the centre for innovation
for the British isles. Ideas spread from this place. The first grooved pottery,
which is so distinctive of the era, was made here, for example, and the first
henges – stone rings with ditches round them – were erected on Orkney. Then the
ideas spread to the rest of the Neolithic Britain. This was the font for new
thinking at the time."
It is a view shared by local historian Tom Muir, of the
Orkney Museum. "The whole text book of British archaeology for this period
will have to be torn up and rewritten from scratch thanks to this place,"
he says.
Farmers first reached Orkney on boats that took them across
the narrow – but treacherously dangerous – Pentland Firth from mainland
Scotland. These were the people of the New Stone Age, and they brought cattle,
pigs and sheep with them, as well as grain to plant and ploughs to till the
land. The few hunter-gatherers already living on Orkney were replaced and
farmsteads were established across the archipelago. These early farmers were
clearly successful, though life would still have been precarious, with hunting
providing precious supplies of extra protein. At the village of Knap o’Howar on
Papay the bones of domesticated cattle, sheep and pigs have been found
alongside those of wild deer, whales and seals, for example, while analysis of
human bones from the period suggest that few people reached the age of 50.
Those who survived childhood usually died in their 30s.
Discarded stone tools and shards of elegant pottery also
indicate that the early Orcadians were developing an increasingly sophisticated
society. Over the centuries, their small farming communities coalesced into
larger tribal units, possibly with an elite ruling class, and they began to
construct bigger and bigger monuments. These sites included the 5,000-year-old
village of Skara Brae; the giant chambered grave of Maeshowe, a Stone Age
mausoleum whose internal walls were later carved with runes by Vikings; and the
Stones of Stenness and the Ring of Brodgar, two huge neighbouring circles of
standing stones. These are some of the finest Neolithic monuments in the world,
and in 1999 they were given World Heritage status by Unesco, an act that led
directly to the discovery of the Ness of Brodgar.
"Being given World Heritage status meant we had to
think about the land surrounding the sites," says Card. "We decided
to carry out geophysical surveys to see what else might be found there."
Such surveys involve the use of magnetometers and ground-penetrating radar to
pinpoint manmade artefacts hidden underground. And the first place selected by
Card for this electromagnetic investigation was the Ness of Brodgar.
The ridge was assumed to be natural. However, Card’s
magnetometers showed that it was entirely manmade and bristled with features
that included lines of walls, concentric pathways and outlines of large
buildings. "The density of these features stunned us," says Card. At
first, given its size, the team assumed they had stumbled on a general site
that had been in continuous use for some time, providing shelter for people for
most of Orkney’s history, from prehistoric to medieval times. "No other
interpretation seemed to fit the observations," adds Card. But once more
the Ness of Brodgar would confound expectations.
Test pits, a metre square across, were drilled in lines
across the ridge and revealed elaborate walls, slabs of carefully carved rock,
and pieces of pottery. None came from the Bronze Age, however, nor from the
Viking era or medieval times. Dozens of pits were dug over the ridge, an area
the size of five football pitches, and every one revealed items with a
Neolithic background.
Then the digging began in earnest and quickly revealed the
remains of buildings of startling sophistication. Carefully made pathways
surrounded walls – some of them several metres high – that had been constructed
with patience and precision.
"It was absolutely stunning," says Colin Richards.
"The walls were dead straight. Little slithers of stones had even been
slipped between the main slabs to keep the facing perfect. This quality of
workmanship would not be seen again on Orkney for thousands of years."
Slowly the shape and dimensions of the Ness of Brodgar site
revealed themselves. Two great walls, several metres high, had been built
straight across the ridge. There was no way you could pass along the Ness
without going through the complex. Within those walls a series of temples had
been built, many on top of older ones. "The place seems to have been in
use for a thousand years, with building going on all the time," says Card.
More than a dozen of these temples have already been
uncovered though only about 10% of the site has been fully excavated so far.
"We have never seen anything like this before,"
says York University archaeologist Professor Mark Edmonds. "The density of
the archaeology, the scale of the buildings and the skill that was used to
construct them are simply phenomenal. There are very few dry-stone walls on
Orkney today that could match the ones we have uncovered here. Yet they are
more than 5,000 years old in places, still standing a couple of metres high.
This was a place that was meant to impress – and it still does."
But it is not just the dimensions that have surprised and
delighted archaeologists. Two years ago, their excavations revealed that
haematite-based pigments had been used to paint external walls – another
transformation in our thinking about the Stone Age. "We see Neolithic
remains after they have been bleached out and eroded," says Edmonds.
"However, it is now clear from Brodgar that buildings could have been
perfectly cheerful and colourful."
The men and women who built at the Ness also used red and
yellow sandstone to enliven their constructions. (More than 3,000 years later,
their successors used the same materials when building St Magnus’ Cathedral in
Kirkwall.) But what was the purpose of their construction work and why put it
in the Ness of Brodgar? Of the two questions, the latter is the easier to
answer – for the Brodgar headland is clearly special. "When you stand
here, you find yourself in a glorious landscape," says Card. "You are
in the middle of a natural amphitheatre created by the hills around you."
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