Barnhouse village, a Neolithic village contemporaneous with the Stones of Stenness, indicating that the nearby monuments were not just ritualistic, and that people lived and worked amongst them.

#barnhousevillage #stenness #neollithic #orkney

The Stones of Stenness have seen better days!

Of the 12 original stone positions around the circle of the #henge three survive as placed, one has been collapsed and re-erected, several have broken off at the base, and a couple of holes exist where it is not certain that they ever held a stone at all.

It appears that the Stones of Stenness may have been abandoned, unfinished.

#neolithic #orkney #brodgar #archaeology #prehistory #Stenness

https://orkneyriddler.blogspot.com/2025/06/stones-of-stenness-graham-ritchies.html

The excavation at #Barnhouse uncovered a #Neolithic #sweatlodge.

#Orkney #Brodgar #Stenness #prehistory #Britain

https://orkneyriddler.blogspot.com/2025/06/barnhouse-sweat-lodge.html

In Neolithic Orkney, before 3000BC, people stayed in temporary encampments along the shoreline of Harray Loch.

Surviving structures from this settlement are to be found at Barnhouse.

#neolithic #orkney #Stones #stenness #brodgar #prehistory #Britain #archaeology

https://orkneyriddler.blogspot.com/2025/06/barnhouse.html

Of course, Neolithic people had boats to get them from Europe to Britain, Ireland, and Orkney.
Everybody says it, so it must be true. Mustn't it?

https://orkneyriddler.blogspot.com/2025/07/they-must-have-had-boats.html

#neolithic #Britain #Orkney #archaeology #prehistory #Brodgar #Stenness #north-sea #skarabrae #harrayloch #nessofbrodgar

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.

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 sediments between those locations. 

They came 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 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, 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, and the Ring of Brodgar.

As seasons progressed, and people returned to Orkney, to continue this great work, the sea rose, and whittled away at the strand that joined Caithness to Orkney. 

At a critical point in the erosion of the strand between Caithness and Orkney, most people no longer returned 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. 

These communities were based at Skara Brae,  and the Ness of Brodgar.

In the middle of the 3rd millennium BC boats were being developed , and people were setting out to explore offshore islands, like Orkney. 

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.

https://orkneyriddler.blogspot.com/2025/07/neolithic-migration-to-orkney.html

#neolithic #Britain #Orkney #archaeology #prehistory #Brodgar #Stenness #north-sea #skarabrae #harrayloch #nessofbrodgar

A traveller in 18th century Orkney describes the fun and games of love and marriage in the Brodgar henges.

https://orkneyriddler.blogspot.com/2025/06/a-custom-among-lower-class-of-people.html

#Orkney #matrimony #marraige #history #Brodgar #henges #neolithic #Stenness #prehistory

The Stones of Stenness are part of the Brodgar group of monuments in the Orkney World Heritage Site. They consist of a group of standing stones within a circular ditch. The entrance to the ditch enclosure is oriented to the north pole. Owing partially to human interference, only four of the original twelve stones placements still contain a stone. Six more stone positions are marked by broken off stones or evidence that a stone has been removed somehow. Two positions suggest that although holes were dug, no stones were raised in them.
Does this mean that the Stones of Stenness were never really finished?
Why?
What happened? Why was the construction abandoned?

https://orkneyriddler.blogspot.com/2025/06/stones-of-stenness-graham-ritchies.html

#Brodgar #Stenness #Orkney #henges #archaeology #neolithic