First Vikings in Orkney didn't trade with locals

The earliest Scandinavian settlers in Orkney, a group of islands in northern Scotland, may not have had as much contact with local inhabitants in the Early Middle Ages as previously thought, say NERC-funded scientists.

Archaeologists previously believed there was contact between the two peoples before the Vikings conquered Orkney, after finding earlier hair combs in Scottish styles but made of reindeer antler, in a region where reindeer aren't native. Archaeologists assumed this was evidence for trade and contact between the Scandinavian settlers and those from Scotland.

But a new non-damaging test that identifies the species of a bone or antler by matching the collagen from an artefact to a species on a database has shown that this is not the case.

The new research, led by researchers at the University of York, looked at loose teeth from hair combs found in Orkney from the pre- Viking era. They found that all those in Scottish styles are in fact made of red or roe deer, species that were found in Scotland at the time, whilst all those in Scandinavian styles were made from reindeer.

"We were doing this blind - we were expecting deer. We knew some would be reindeer and some wouldn't but didn't know which would be which," says Isabella von Holstein, a PhD student at the University of York, who led the study . "It overturns previous findings, where people have used a microscope to look at the combs, and it means very exciting things for interpreting how people were behaving in these times.."

The method of using collagen to test which animal an artifact originated from had never been done before, and some of the researchers on the project were skeptical of how accurate the technique would be.

"We were very surprised to find there was a piece of whale in the middle of our samples, which was very puzzling," von Holstein explains. "But we double-checked and another researcher from the project, Dr Steve Ashby from the University of York, was delighted because he had put that in as a test piece and we found it! It was from a completely different type of comb."

Since collagen testing doesn't damage the samples and is relatively cheap to conduct, it is likely to be used in the future on other archaeological artifacts. Particularly since bone and antler have always been common materials for humans to make things from.

While the study shows that early Scandinavian settlers in Orkney didn't trade with the Scottish inhabitants, it still raises interesting questions over trade within Scotland, particularly in areas like Orkney where deer antler combs have been found, but the deer in the area were scarce.

The study was funded by NERC, the European Union, and the Catherine Mackichan Trust.
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References:

Jarlett, Harriet. 2013. “First Vikings in Orkney didn't trade with locals”. Planet Earth Online. Posted: September 17, 2013. Available online: http://planetearth.nerc.ac.uk/news/story.aspx?id=1519&cookieConsent=A

A new sub-sea survey of Scapa Flow at Orkney has mapped nearly twenty important historic wrecks, revealing previously unseen detail and contributing valuable information about the history of this important wartime naval base.

Historic Scotland commissioned Wessex Archaeology to carry out the survey over two days in partnership with Netsurvey, contractors for the Ministry of Defence. Remarkable new details have been found on scuttled merchant ships from the First and Second World Wars, a German submarine, and a trawler used to operate boom defences at the entrance to Scapa Flow.

The results, available online at: www.wessexarch.co.uk/reports/83680/scapa-flow-wreck-survey were derived from high resolution sonar surveys on the sea bed, and build on earlier work from the ScapaMap project in 2001 and 2006, and Ministry of Defence studies undertaken to record the wreck of the battleship HMS Royal Oak.

Philip Robertson, Historic Scotland’s Deputy Head of Scheduling and Marine said:

“The surveys are adding significantly to our understanding of what remains of the famous history of the wartime naval base of Scapa Flow, and the defence of the naval anchorage.

“We hope the results will be of interest to the thousands of recreational divers who visit Scapa Flow every year, and that those who don’t dive will also enjoy this insight into the heritage that survives beneath the waves.”

Paul Baggaley, Wessex Archaeology’s Head of Geophysics, said:

“We hope this survey of 18 sites has helped bring new information to light, and that it will provide a useful basis for efforts to monitor the condition of the wrecks in Scapa Flow, and conserve them for future generations to enjoy.

The survey findings will help Historic Scotland to consider the case for a Historic Marine Protected Area, to improve protection for Scapa Flow’s most important marine heritage sites under the Scottish Parliament’s new marine legislation.

Any proposals to create a Marine Protected Area for sites in Scapa Flow would be subject to discussions with stakeholders in Orkney, and formal consultation processes.
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References:

Historic Scotland. 2012. "New marine survey reveals Scapa Flow wrecks in unprecedented detail". Past Horizons. Posted: July 11, 2012. Available online: http://www.pasthorizonspr.com/index.php/archives/07/2012/new-marine-survey-reveals-scapa-flow-wrecks-in-unprecedented-detail

Archaeologists and pagans alike glory in the Brodgar complex

Let's not jump to conclusions about ritual significance, but this site is clearly immensely important to ancient British history

Archaeologists are notoriously nervous of attributing ritual significance to anything (the old joke used to be that if you found an artefact and couldn't identify it, it had to have ritual significance), yet they still like to do so whenever possible. I used to work on a site in the mid-1980s – a hill fort in Gloucestershire – where items of potential religious note occasionally turned up (a horse skull buried at the entrance, for example) and this was always cause for some excitement, and also some gnashing of teeth at the prospect of other people who weren't archaeologists getting excited about it ("And now I suppose we'll have druids turning up").

The Brodgar complex has, however, got everyone excited. It ticks all the boxes that make archaeologists, other academics, lay historians and pagans jump up and down. Its age is significant: it's around 800 years older than Stonehenge (although lately, having had to do some research into ancient Britain, I've been exercised by just how widely dates for sites vary, so perhaps some caution is called for). Pottery found at Stonehenge apparently originated in Orkney, or was modelled on pottery that did.

The site at the Ness of Brodgar – a narrow strip of land between the existing Stone Age sites of Maeshowe and the Ring of Brodgar – is massive: the size of five football pitches and circled by a 10ft wall. Only a small percentage of it has been investigated; it is being called a "temple complex", and researchers seem to think that it is a passage complex – for instance, one in which bones are carried through and successively stripped (there is a firepit across one of the doors, and various entrances, plus alcoves like those in a passage grave, which are being regarded as evidence for this theory – but it's a bit tenuous at present). Obviously, at this relatively early stage, it's difficult for either professional archaeologists or their followers to formulate too many firm theories.

When it comes to the pagan community, I don't think that its sounder members will be leaping to too many conclusions too soon; as discussed in a previous column, some of us would prefer to rely on the actual evidence rather than rushing off at a tangent. I cannot help wondering whether the relatively muted response across the pagan scene to the Brodgar findings has to do with the fact that the central artefact discovered so far – the "Brodgar Boy" – is apparently male rather than female. I am cynical enough to wonder whether, if it had been a northern Venus, there would be much more in the way of rash speculation about ancient matriarchies. Will we see the pagan community flocking to Orkney at the solstices? I doubt it. Orkney is a long way off and rather difficult to get to, whereas Stonehenge and Avebury are with a reasonably easy drive if you happen to live in the south of the country. In the days when the site was at its peak, most traffic would have been coastal, and remained so for hundreds of years to come. (And to be fair, many modern pagans aren't actually too keen on trampling over ancient sites, sacred or otherwise, due to awareness of their relative fragility).

With regard to the "boy" himself, and other ancient representations of the human form, we simply don't know why people made them. Maybe they are gods, goddesses, spirits. Maybe they're toys, or lampoons of particular individuals, or just someone doing some carving in an idle moment. It's hardly a startling theory that, throughout history, people have made stuff for fun: I've always been very amused by Aztec pots made in the shape of comical animals, looking for all the world like the early precursor to Disney and somewhat at variance with the sombre bloodiness of other aspects of that culture.

As soon as the Bronze Age arrived, Brodgar was completely abandoned. There was apparently a mass slaughter of cattle, which would have fed as many as 20,000 people on the site; this is being taken by some experts as evidence of a complete and sudden cultural replacement. But whether it has ritual significance or not, the sheer size, age and numbers involved with the Orkney site make it of immense importance to the history of ancient Britain.
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References:

Williams, Liz. 2012. "Archaeologists and pagans alike glory in the Brodgar complex". . Posted: January 31, 2012. Available online: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2012/jan/31/archaeologists-pagans-brodgar-complex

A henge beneath the water of the stenness loch? Time will tell

Survey work in the Loch of Stenness has revealed what could be a massive prehistoric monument lying underwater to the south of the Ring of Brodgar.



The underwater “anomaly” has come to light in a project looking at prehistoric sea level change in Orkney. The project, The Rising Tide: Submerged Landscape of Orkney, is a collaboration between the universities of St Andrews, Wales, Dundee, Bangor and Aberdeen.

But although it is tempting to speculate that the ring-shaped feature, which lies just off the loch’s shore, is the remains of a henge — a circular or oval-shaped flat area enclosed and delimited by a boundary earthwork (usually a ditch with an external bank) — or perhaps a prehistoric quarry, at this stage the project leaders are urging caution.

Orkney-based archaeologist, Caroline Wickham-Jones, a lecturer at the University of Aberdeen, explained: “The preliminary results from the high-resolution geophysical sensing are suggesting that there is an unusual ‘object’ in the shallow water just off the shore, but more work is needed before we can identify it or even confirm whether it is a natural, perhaps geological, feature, or something man-made.”

When prehistoric Orcadians started to build the stone circles in Stenness, the landscape would have been much different to what it is today and the sea would have been about a metre below current levels. Prior to the sea coming in, the loch area was stands of open freshwater, with reed beds — probably much like the landscape around the Loons, in Birsay, today.

Previous studies have shown that the sea around Orkney reached its present level about 2000BC, but even then, because there is a rock “lip” at the Brig o’ Waithe which held the sea back, the impact of the rising water in the Loch of Stenness was a bit slower.

Caroline Wickham-Jones added, “Archaeologists study what’s there, but sometimes it’s more interesting to ask what’s not there. The early Neolithic tombs around the bay for example: where are they? Many other early Neolithic tombs in Orkney — such as Unstan — are found near present sea level, on low-lying land. Were the earliest tombs around the Bay of Firth built on land that has since been covered by sea?”

The surveys have detected two intriguing anomalies in the bay, one of which is visible in aerial photographs by the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS) and also appears on the remote sensing results.

A seismic survey in the bay has helped to shed light on the possible structure of one of these, and now the team plans more diving work to confirm the results.

Read the original story at the Orkney Jar
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References:

Past Horizons. 2011. "A henge beneath the water of the stenness loch? Time will tell". Past Horizons. Posted: October 12, 2011. Available online: http://www.pasthorizonspr.com/index.php/archives/10/2011/a-henge-beneath-the-water-of-the-stenness-loch-time-will-tell

Rising seas 'clue' in sunken world off Orkney

A unique discovery of submerged man-made structures on the seabed off Orkney could help find solutions to rising sea levels, experts have said.

They said the well preserved stone pieces near the island of Damsay are the only such examples around the UK.

It is thought some of the structures may date back thousands of years.

Geomorphologist Sue Dawson said that people have survived and adapted in the past and it is that adaption to climate change that needs to be learned from.

One of the team, archaeologist Caroline Wickham-Jones, of the University of Aberdeen, said of their freezing investigations under the December seas off Orkney: "We have certainly got a lot of stonework. There are some quite interesting things. You can see voids or entrances.



"There's this one feature that is like a stone table - you've got a large slab about a metre and a half long and it's sitting up on four pillars or walls so the next thing we need to do is to get plans and more photographs to try and assess and look for patterns.

"The quality and condition of some of the stonework is remarkable. Nothing like this has ever been found on the seabed around the UK."

Geophysicist Richard Bates, from the Scottish Oceans Institute, said: "We've got other sites down on the south coast of England where we have got submerged landscapes, meso-neolithic landscapes as we have here but what we haven't got anywhere else is actual structures.

"I don't say that's unique - that we'll never find that anywhere else, but so far we haven't seen such things before."

In general Scotland's mainland has been getting higher - but the surrounding islands have been sinking.

Sue Dawson, a geomorphologist from the University of Dundee, has been studying how and why the coast line is constantly changing.

She said: "One of the key premises behind a lot of the study of the past is that the past is a key to the present and the future.

"So we can look to times when maybe environmental changes have been much more rapid and much more catastrophic in some instances and people have survived and adapted and it's that adaption to climate change is one of the key things that we need to get to grips with."

The experts said the seabed around Orkney may be littered with man-made structures.

Richard Bates added: "We can look at the terrestrial landscape around here and see how man's occupied that.

"Pretty much anywhere in Orkney you can see a vista which has part of man within it, ancient man in the environment.

"The similar case is going to be in this drowned landscape so the few places we have seen so far are the biggest features but we expect to see much more as we dissect that landscape in finer and finer detail."

And they believe that while looking at an uncertain future it may pay to look into the past.

Caroline Wickham-Jones said: "The really interesting thing about this bay is the stories relating to things under the sea and sea-level change. Our ancestors were dealing with similar problems to ourselves and we'd like to see how they coped with it."
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References:

Anonymous. 2009. "Rising seas 'clue' in sunken world off Orkney". BBC News. Posted: December 17, 2009. Available Online: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/north_east/8416600.stm