Hacker News'Extraordinary Discovery' at Orkney's Ness of Brodgar Neolithic Site
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c7836wvx4q4o
#HackerNews #ExtraordinaryDiscovery #Orkney #NessOfBrodgar #Neolithic #Archaeology #History #News
The Orkney News
Reed Mideke👀 "The latest work has again been made possible by funding from Time Team … last summer we conducted several types of geophysics and what that has showed up is something quite extraordinary"
Eclectic HumanA replica of the Neolithic carved stone ball unearthed at the Ness of Brodgar in 2013. Some 500 carved stone balls have been found, mostly in Scotland.
The purpose of these enigmatic and beautiful pieces of Neolithic art is still unknown. This one feels lovely in the hand — and it works rather well as a darning egg.
#Orkney #petrosphere #Neolithic #Archeology #Scotland #NessOfBrodgar
The purpose of these enigmatic and beautiful pieces of Neolithic art is still unknown. This one feels lovely in the hand — and it works rather well as a darning egg.
#Orkney #petrosphere #Neolithic #Archeology #Scotland #NessOfBrodgar
Orkney RiddlerOf 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
@shezza_tI’ve had this article open in a tab for so long I’ve forgotten who I got it from. If you’re interested in prehistory it’s a cracking read: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/discover-astounding-secrets-scotlands-stone-age-settlements-180985627/
I could never quite believe that Neolithic people came to Orkney by boat.
As it is thought that they brought cattle and sheep with them, I could not envisage any animal, or any human, surviving a sea crossing of any British tidal waters in any prehistoric vessel.
Standard sources tie themselves in knots to persuade us that Neolithic people had boats that could carry beasts of both sexes that, once landed, would reproduce and help their tribe to survive on the unknown territory across the dangerous waters.
However, evidence has recently emerged that added another dimension to the problem. It was discovered that the Orkney Vole, a species that is unique to the archipelago, had been found by DNA analysis, to originate from northern Europe, and that it was not directly related to the common vole in Britain. (Thomas Cucchi et al)
This meant that the animal that arrived in Orkney did not pass through England, Wales or Scotland.
A vole arriving in Orkney, from Europe, without passing through Britain was a clue that all was not as it seems, and that in spite of the insistence of some that voles may have been carried as pets or food items, another possibility was probably more likely.
I therefore rather assumed that it must be necessary to question what places were passable around the coasts of Neolithic Britain, which areas were land, and which places were water, and when did land areas stop being land.
It is understood that much of the southern North Sea area was land at some point in the past. A piece of shallow sea called Dogger Bank has been named Doggerland as artefacts of 8000 years of age, and older, are frequently dredged up there. The rise in sea level which has occurred since the last ice age has clearly flooded lands here, but which lands, where, and when?
The obvious location, or so I thought, for a route to Orkney from Europe , that would be passable for small rodents, on foot, and avoiding England and Scotland, would be somewhere in the middle of the North Sea which, of course, is a bizarre idea.
Indeed, it was such a bizarre idea that I followed it, to see where it took me.
The result of my research can be seen in my blog:-
http://orkneyriddler.blogspot.com/2025/04/the-orkney-riddle.html
#Orkney #Neolithic #archaeology #prehistory #Brodgar #nessofbrodgar #Skara #skarabrae #barnhouse #knapofhowar #linksofnoltland #Noltland #cairns #Maeshowe
At the Ness of Brodgar, Structure 10, is more complicated. The earliest dates are between 2935BC and 2705BC, and most of those dated samples are from carbonized residues on grooved ware pottery which is likely to have been furniture in a roofed structure.
The square structure is formed as two concentric/parallel walls around a near-square internal space, (Cavity walling!?) and the two concentric walls are separated by a continuous narrow channel.
The outer wall was tall, and functioned as a windbreak. (Neolithic people on Orkney were fond of windbreaks). This may have been 2 or 3 metres high.
The inner wall supported the eaves of a pyramid shaped roof over the internal space, and the narrow channel between the concentric walls of the structure served as a drain for rainwater falling off the roof of the pyramid
The kingpost for the pyramid roof was in the current location of the central firepit, and the height of the peak may have been four or five metres.
This pyramid structure survived in the first quarter of the 3rd millennium BC, and may have been a sweat Lodge. A similar structure, Structure 8 at Barnhouse was definitely a sweat lodge, and hut 8 at Skara Brae may also have been one.
In the second half of the 3rd millennium BC mariners entered the Stenness Loch, beaching their boats at Brodgar and, finding the windbreak around structure 10 there. The roof of the building had collapsed and any usable material long removed. What was left was a sheltered enclosure in which they dug out the firepit.
They probably came every year and caught and killed an auroch, part of which they cooked on the firepit here, and ate, before removing the majority of the carcase of the animal back to their winter homeland.
These visitors left a dump of animal bones outside Structure 10, between 2620BC and 2460BC, and
between 2465BC and 2360BC a stray bone drifted into the upper fill of the firepit in the centre of Structure 10.
#nessofbrodgar #archaeology #Orkney #prehistory #Neolithic
The square structure is formed as two concentric/parallel walls around a near-square internal space, (Cavity walling!?) and the two concentric walls are separated by a continuous narrow channel.
The outer wall was tall, and functioned as a windbreak. (Neolithic people on Orkney were fond of windbreaks). This may have been 2 or 3 metres high.
The inner wall supported the eaves of a pyramid shaped roof over the internal space, and the narrow channel between the concentric walls of the structure served as a drain for rainwater falling off the roof of the pyramid
The kingpost for the pyramid roof was in the current location of the central firepit, and the height of the peak may have been four or five metres.
This pyramid structure survived in the first quarter of the 3rd millennium BC, and may have been a sweat Lodge. A similar structure, Structure 8 at Barnhouse was definitely a sweat lodge, and hut 8 at Skara Brae may also have been one.
In the second half of the 3rd millennium BC mariners entered the Stenness Loch, beaching their boats at Brodgar and, finding the windbreak around structure 10 there. The roof of the building had collapsed and any usable material long removed. What was left was a sheltered enclosure in which they dug out the firepit.
They probably came every year and caught and killed an auroch, part of which they cooked on the firepit here, and ate, before removing the majority of the carcase of the animal back to their winter homeland.
These visitors left a dump of animal bones outside Structure 10, between 2620BC and 2460BC, and
between 2465BC and 2360BC a stray bone drifted into the upper fill of the firepit in the centre of Structure 10.
#nessofbrodgar #archaeology #Orkney #prehistory #Neolithic
As these structures at Ness of Brodgar are likely to have been constructed and roofed with timber, an estimate of their likely duration would suggest that they are unlikely to have survived much more than 50 years, a hundred at most.
In “To Cut a Long Story Short: Formal Chronological Modelling for the Late Neolithic Site of Ness of Brodgar, Orkney.” By Nick Card, dates for the structures at the settlement are roughly as follows :-
Structure 1 has dates between 3000BC and 2700BC
Structure 7, between 2965BC and 2880BC
Structure 8, 3005BC and 2910BC
Structure 12 has dates between 2880BC and 2710BC, but also earlier samples dating from between 3335BC and 2935BC
Structure 14 has dates between 2985BC to 2900BC
Trench R, dates between 3335BC and 2940BC
Trench T, between 2905BC to 2725BC
The foregoing sample dates have a fairly clear division between those that favour 3000BC, and going backwards into the 4th millennium BC, and those that come forward from that date and into the 3rd millennium BC.
#neolithic #Nessofbrodgar #archaeology #prehistory #Orkney
In “To Cut a Long Story Short: Formal Chronological Modelling for the Late Neolithic Site of Ness of Brodgar, Orkney.” By Nick Card, dates for the structures at the settlement are roughly as follows :-
Structure 1 has dates between 3000BC and 2700BC
Structure 7, between 2965BC and 2880BC
Structure 8, 3005BC and 2910BC
Structure 12 has dates between 2880BC and 2710BC, but also earlier samples dating from between 3335BC and 2935BC
Structure 14 has dates between 2985BC to 2900BC
Trench R, dates between 3335BC and 2940BC
Trench T, between 2905BC to 2725BC
The foregoing sample dates have a fairly clear division between those that favour 3000BC, and going backwards into the 4th millennium BC, and those that come forward from that date and into the 3rd millennium BC.
#neolithic #Nessofbrodgar #archaeology #prehistory #Orkney