Lines on the Landscape, Circles from the Sky: Monuments of Neolithic Orkney
by Trevor Garnham
In attempting to gain an insight into how Neolithic man thought about and conceived of the physical and cosmological world around him, Trevor Garnham looks at the houses, burial monuments, feast-halls and stone circles of Orkney. This book collates a great deal of information on the sites and monuments of Orkney, interpreted from a fresh perspective. Evidence from other areas and research from a range of scholars, from Levi-Strauss and Cassirer to Renfrew and Bradley, forms an important part of this study, as Garnham teases out his own thoughts on how to access the idea of a cosmos through the buildings of Neolithic Orkney. Treating the buildings of Orkney as `architecture with inherent meaning' he argues that early architecture functioned as `simple and closed containers' against taboo, giving way to `complex and open "temples"' that actively engaged with the cosmos.
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The Northern Isles: Orkney and Shetland
by Alexander Fenton
Originally published in 1978, this is a masterly and comprehensive (720 pages) account of the material
culture of Orkney and Shetland.. More information and prices from:
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Knap of Howar, Papa Westray
Construction of the buildings
The Knap of Howar - main entrance, inside aspect
You can see from the photographs
that the stonework is skillfully constructed and similar to that employed
in building dykes (field walls) and 18th-19th century houses on Papay.
The rock which underlies the island splits naturally into flags and blocks
and requires little in the way of dressing.
Post-holes were found which once housed the roof-supports.
These were upto 120 mm (over 7 inches) wide. It seems difficult to believe
today that such solid posts could have come from a virtually treeless island.
Perhaps the climate was a little more favourable, or the posts came as
driftwood. They may even have been traded across the sea. No roof debris
remained within the buildings, suggesting that they had been covered with
turf or thatch.
The buildings were surrounded by layers of midden (waste)
covering some 500 square metres. The surviving remains had been built into
the oldest layer of waste (suggesting even older habitation). The midden
was made of decomposed domestic waste, including fishbones, shells (mainly
limpets, but also cockles, winkles and razor shells). The fish were inshore
rockling, ballan wrasse and young saithe, together with cod, larger saithe
and other deep-water species which could only be caught at least 2 miles
out at sea.
Main entrance from south-west
The Knap could not have been built by primitive hunter-gatherers.
They were 'the products of a confident farming society' according to Anna
Ritchie. What were they like, these confident farmers? Evidence from the
chambered cairns shows them to have been similar to modern Orcadians (inhabitants
of Orkney). But, on average, they were slightly shorter and few lived into
their fifties. They were probably descendants of mesolithic (middle stone
age) people who followed the retreating ice caps through north-east Scotland,
Caithness and across the Pentland Firth.
Modern humans may favour a Mediterranean-type
climate but Orkney provided ideal conditions for neolithic civilisation:
'land suitable for mixed farming, building materials for permanent settlements,
natural food resources and a reasonable climate' (Ritchie). The inhabitants
of the Knap farmed cattle and sheep in addition to their fishing. The pottery
found at the Knap of Howar is known as Unstan ware - Unstan being the site
where such pottery was first found.
Source:adapted from Anna Ritchie,
'The first settlers' in Renfrew, Colin (1990), The Prehistory of
Orkney: BC4000-1000AD, Edinburgh University Press.
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- photographs and information about Papa Westray, how to get
there and where to stay.
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Northern Scotland, Orkney and Shetland (Road Map S.)
Ordnance Survey
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Scottish Islands: Orkney and Shetland Bk.2 (Scottish Islands)
by James Penrith, Deborah Penrith
Orkney & Shetland's history goes back over 5,000 years creating the richest archaeological legacy in the British Isles. With stunning coastal scenery and unique flora and fauna, the islands are a spectacular and unspoilt destination.
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