Alone on an uninhabited island, Hugo Anderson-Whymark crouches within a Neolithic tomb. Crammed into a claustrophobic corbelled cell and covered from head to toe in mud, he hears nothing but the repetitive click of his equally mud-spattered camera. This is his second day of fieldwork inside the echoing depths of the 22m-long chambered cairn on the Orkney islet of Holm of Papa Westray – and over the course of two visits in the summer of 2017, Hugo has probably spent more time examining the drystone masonry than anyone else in the millennia since this Neolithic structure was last in use. Glimpses of the tomb’s interior come in intense bursts, as his camera flash illuminates the otherwise dark walls, focusing the eye on ancient artwork pecked into the faces of the stones.
Hugo had been commissioned by Historic Environment Scotland (HES) to create three-dimensional photogrammetric models of ten Neolithic tombs (and two Iron Age souterrains) across the archipelago, and his final visit to the Holm of Papa Westray brought the data-gathering stage of the project to a close. But the work was not over. Some days later, he was back exploring the chambered cairn, only this time the familiar stonework was digitally reconstructed in remarkable detail.
Chambers of secrets
They say that if you scratch Orkney’s surface it bleeds archaeology – and the present torrent of discovery does seem to be unrelenting. The islands boast exceptional preservation of remains from almost every stage of their human past, but those from the Neolithic are particularly well represented, offering some of the richest resources for understanding this period anywhere in Britain.
