The traditional understanding of the Neolithic period in Orkney has long been of a game of two halves, with each half represented by completely different cultural packages. The ‘early’ phase, in the 4th millennium BC, was associated with simple, single farmsteads and ‘stalled’ burial cairns (so-called because their interiors are divided into compartments using upright stones projecting from the side walls). They also contain Unstan ware pottery, a shallow, round-bottomed form with decoration limited to a collar below the rim. Sweeping in at the turn of the 3rd millennium BC, the late Neolithic apparently brought with it villages, passage-grave tombs, and flat-bottomed, ornately decorated Grooved ware pottery. With no clear sign of a transition between these two phenomena, it was suggested that this break might represent the arrival of a new group replacing the earlier culture. Recent analysis, however, is presenting a more nuanced picture. New dating evidence confirms an idea originally suggested by Colin Renfrew, blurring the lines between ‘early’ and ‘late’ Neolithic categories.
It was to explore the idea of ‘two Neolithics’ further, and to learn more about 3rd millennium BC activity beyond known monuments and settlement complexes such as Barnhouse (CA 131) and the Ness of Brodgar (CA 246) that the Cuween-Wideford Landscape Project was set up in 1994. The University of Glasgow-funded initiative initially focused on Stonehall Farm, Mainland – where promising magnetic signals were found to represent the well-preserved remains of a mid to late 4th millennium BC dispersed settlement that had graduated to a late Neolithic village in the late 3rd millennium BC – but the Project was soon uncovering traces of similarly early activity at other sites. The programme of excavation, fieldwalking, and geophysical survey quickly expanded to investigate the whole of the Bay of Firth – an area of Mainland surrounded by hills, about 7km east of the Stenness-Brodgar ritual complex. Now published in a mighty new monograph, the team’s findings would prove revolutionary.
A tomb of one’s own
A major milestone came while investigating several Neolithic stone structures at Wideford Hill in 2002. On what was intended to be the last day of fieldwork, the team realised that these buildings did not represent the earliest phase of occupation on the site: there were traces of older timber structures beneath. This pattern was repeated across Orkney, emerging at Green, Eday, Ha’Breck, Wyre, and within the Bay of Firth at Smerquoy (CA 291) in 2013, while the stone houses at the Knap of Howar, an early Neolithic settlement on Papa Westray, also appear to represent secondary activity; although no tell-tale postholes have yet been spotted here, the dwellings stand amid the remains of earlier midden material. This was a completely unexpected development, as wooden structures were not previously thought to have been part of the Orcadian Neolithic. Yet here was undisputable evidence of extensive earlier activity.
Unlocking Prehistoric Houses