CONTENTS
Skara Brae, Orkney
| LATITUDE: 59° 2’ 54.78” N | LONGITUDE: 3° 20’ 38.63” W |
For me, Skara Brae has to rank as one of the most surprising and the most magnificent of all prehistoric structures. True, most people will have to travel a fair distance to see it because Skara Brae is to be found on the island of Orkney, off the north coast of Scotland. It is, at one and the same time, impressive and somehow disquieting because it has a modernity about it that causes most people to change their attitude towards our Neolithic ancestors.
Lost to the Sand
Skara Brae is an entire village and it is built totally out of stone. The reason it survived is because not long after it was abandoned it became covered by sand, which protected it for many centuries until, in 1850, a great storm removed the sand and exposed some of the remains of the village for the surprised locals and experts alike to see. A few of the houses were excavated but by the late 1860s work on the site ceased. After all, it was difficult to get to Orkney in those days and modern archaeology, with its dating techniques, was still a long way off. Doubtless, at the time, historians considered the site to be medieval because the architecture was so advanced it could surely not be truly ancient. Further storms not long after the start of the 20th century revealed more of the dwellings of Skara Brae and caused a flurry of activity. Digging began again and by the start of the 1930s the whole of the site was available for study.
There are, in all, eight houses at Skara Brae. Each is self-contained but all are joined together by low passages, which were protected from the elements by being covered over, allowing free passage from one house to another in the very worst of the Orkney weather, at any time of year.
So, what is so strange about a lost village that is suddenly found again? After all, people since time out of mind have built villages. True, but this one is definitely different. Even the most die-hard sceptics regarding the potential age of Skara Brae were forced, by the 1970s, to admit that people had lived in these strange little houses as much as 5,000 years ago because organic matter from the site, of which there was an abundance, showed radio carbon dates between 3200 BC and 2200 BC.
A Village for Normal People
Perhaps what shocks those who see Skara Brae for the first time is the ultimate realization that it wasn’t giants or mythical races of lost supermen that erected structures such as Callanish or Avebury, but normal people, just like us. We can see for ourselves a great deal about the domestic circumstances of the people. Each of the houses is built out of flat stones that were probably easy to find in the locality. The stones were fitted together skilfully, in a fashion that today would be called ‘dry-stone walling’ (in other words no form of mortar was used to tie them together). Their strength lies in their weight and in the way they are formed into an interlocking whole.
Each house has a large, central, square room. Each possesses a central fireplace and, surprisingly, a stone bed on each side of the room. Perhaps even more surprising is the fact that every house at Skara Brae has an almost identical stone-built dresser. It is this particular aspect of Skara Brae that has always fascinated me the most. It is the thought that people came in at the end of the day and looked at their prized possessions, standing on the dresser, as we might place ours these days. There might have been a particularly impressive animal tooth, an amber ornament from the far-off Baltic, or a polished stone axe left by some distant ancestor – the minutia of life, kept, not because any of it was intrinsically useful, but because it carried memories and emotions. And in this realization alone the people of Skara Brae, divorced from us by so much time, become as close as our next-door neighbours.
Living amidst the Rubbish
When the houses were first excavated, the stone slabs that covered the passageways between the houses were still largely in place. Between the houses, and perhaps acting as further insulation, was the rubbish that the people of the village had discarded. As a result, a mass of animal bones have been found and it is these that have offered such good carbon dating analysis that the age of the settlement could be tied down so accurately.
Figure 42: The inside of one of the houses at Skara Brae
Some experts suggest that this massive accumulation of garbage made the place unhealthy, but is this likely? It would have been simple to abandon the remains of their meals into the sea which, although not as close as it is to the settlement now, was no great distance away, or to have created a midden (rubbish tip) some way from the village. Skara Brae poses many questions. It has been suggested that the weather during the period the village was occupied was significantly better than it is today but the presence of the covered passages and such substantial dwellings tells a slightly different story. On the other hand, if life in this remote spot was so harsh, what were the people doing there at all? Certainly the site was not occupied for more than about 100 years.
When we look deep into the rubbish tips of Skara Brae we start to understand the components of a life that was at one and the same time very similar to ours and yet quite different. The people of Skara Brae were farmers. They kept cattle and sheep and sowed barley and wheat, and were adept at using whatever bounty nature offered them for free, which in their case was a great deal. They had a diet that was heavy on shellfish, together with whatever fish they could catch from the shore. This included cod and other species. In addition, as has been the case even recently in this part of Scotland, they doubtless raided seabirds’ nests for eggs when they were available and probably caught the birds themselves when they could. In short, by the standards of the time they had a varied and generally healthy diet, though their living conditions may not have been quite as comfortable as these snug dwellings might imply.
Not a Healthy Environment
We know that the houses at Skara Brae had no windows. Any fuel they burned would have been of a very inferior quality – probably low-grade peat and perhaps dried animal dung, since wood has always been at a premium in this part of Orkney. The central fires in the houses would have been very smoky and ventilation limited to one hole in the centre of the room. This would have let in a little light during the day, but in winter the Sun does not rise too high in the sky in these northern climes and so the houses would have been generally dark and fairly unhealthy. With so much rubbish accumulating so close by, it is possible that people became sick, though it also has to be remembered that they would have spent a great majority of each day out of doors, even in the winter. Another point that should be borne in mind is that they had experience on their side. Surely people who were as clever and resourceful as they clearly were at Skara Brae would not have provided themselves with conditions that ensured they would be perpetually picking up infections, parasites and diseases of one sort or another?
What we do know is that the village at Skara Brae was not occupied for a long period of time. After about only a century it was abandoned. It is possible that the area went through a series of extremely harsh winters, with the sea threatening to encroach on the village – we simply don’t know. But, for some reason, people took their prized possessions from the dressers and moved away from this lovely, remote spot, disappearing into the mists of time from which they had emerged. What they left us was a time capsule, and incidentally one that is in constant danger from the sea and from the ravages brought about by so many visitors each year.
People who have a good imagination, which I think would be everyone who takes the trouble to read a book such as this, are sure to treasure memories of a visit to Skara Brae for the rest of their lives. Skara Brae is a Neolithic jewel of indescribable importance and a site that is a must for anyone who has an interest in the way ancient people lived in our islands.
The ancient Orcadians must have been excellent farmers and it is certain they raised cattle because amongst the rubbish that had accumulated between the houses in Skara Brae there were large collections of beef bones.
It is entirely thanks to changing weather patterns and the encroaching sea that Skara Brae was sealed by sand as a time capsule from the past. The people who lived in the settlement seem to have struggled against the all-pervasive wind-borne sand for decades before they finally gave up the struggle and abandoned the site.
Maeshowe Chambered Cairn, Mainland, Orkney
| LATITUDE: 58° 59’ 46.28” N | LONGITUDE: 3° 11’ 13.55” W |
There would be absolutely no point in travelling all the way to Orkney in order to see Skara Brae without also taking in the other undoubted treasures from prehistory that adorn this most wonderful island. Chief amongst these has to be Maeshowe, indisputably the finest chambered cairn to be found in the British Isles (unless we count Newgrange in Ireland (see Newgrange) which rivals Meashowe in many ways). Here, on Mainland, Orkney, is a work of great artistry and intelligence.
The same sort of people who constructed the little stone houses in Skara Brae were also responsible for building Maeshowe and they certainly knew their business when it came to using stone. Whilst other peoples across the British Isles adapted their knowledge of woodworking to the art of building in stone, which they did fairly rarely, the Orcadians had little or no wood but must have become adept at working with what they had at a very early date. In their case it was stone, and plenty of it.
Figure 43: Maeshowe chambered cairn
The mound that covers the tomb at Meashowe is 115ft (35 metres) in diameter and at its highest point it is 24ft (7 metres) tall. This makes it an impressive structure, even when seen from a relative distance, and there is no doubting that this is an artificial construct, though anyone without knowledge of its contents might be astonished at its composition or what its interior looks like. Maeshowe probably isn’t too different from any of the chambered cairns of its type. Its fame lies in the fact that it has remained generally intact and that we can actually enter it and gaze with wonder at what the prehistoric Orcadians were capable of achieving.
Within the centre of the mound is a veritable maze of passages. These were built out of sizeable flat stones before the mound was eventually raised over them. The work must have taken an age and it has to be remembered that some of the stones weigh as much as 30 tonnes!
The entrance of Maeshowe was carefully placed so that at the time of the winter solstice (around 21 December) the light of the Sun rising at dawn would pass down the passage and illuminate the wall at the far end. Why should this be the case? The most likely explanation has something to do with death and rebirth. Those who built Meashowe and the other monuments of the period clearly understood the year very well. They knew that the Sun travels south on the horizon after the autumn equinox and that it achieves its most southerly position at dawn by the winter solstice. After that it begins to move north again, through the spring equinox and onto midsummer. It could be reasonably suggested that the winter solstice represents the ‘death’ of the year. The weather in the northern hemisphere is at its coldest, days are at their shortest (especially in northern Scotland) and nature is caught in the iron fist of winter.
This is probably why the midwinter period was of the greatest importance to the prehistoric people of the British Isles. If the right ceremonies were carried out, the gods would relent once more and the world would gradually be freed from the icy hand of winter; if the world could reawaken, then why not the dead ancestors? Whether it was considered that they would be reincarnated into this world, or into some alternative existence, we cannot know, but there is surely no doubt that some idea of the sort prompted the builders of Meashowe (and Newgrange in Ireland) to create tombs with this specific orientation.
The Central Chamber
The passage at Meashowe is long and leads ultimately to a central chamber that is about 15ft (4.6 metres) square. The roof is corbelled, which means that slightly overlapping stones rise gradually upwards and inwards until they eventually meet in a beehive-shaped structure. The expert way the tomb was built shows just how conversant the Orcadians were with corbelled structures, of which there were once many in Orkney and the north of Scotland.
Unfortunately, when Maeshowe was first excavated in relatively modern times, in 1861, there was very little to find there. Even if there had been we might not have known about it because the man who conducted the ‘dig’ was a treasure seeker rather than a scientist. But in any case the tomb had been robbed many centuries earlier by the Vikings. They left runic inscriptions within the tomb that can still be seen by visitors today.
Figure 44: Drawing of the interior of Maeshowe in section
Estimates vary as to how long it actually took to create a tomb as large as Meashowe. The archaeologist Colin Renfrew has estimated 100,000 man-hours, though an edition of TV’s Time Team a few years ago showed a reconstruction of a fairly small corbelled tomb that was actually completed in a staggeringly short period of time. In the case of the television programme, stone was brought to the site for the team to use, whereas with Maeshowe it had to be sought and dug out from the surrounding ground. This would certainly have increased the timescale considerably but I, for one, think that these prehistoric engineers were not in any particular rush to get their structures finished. I am sure the job was done mainly in winter when there was little else to do; it kept people warm and built social cohesion, and any particular project such as this one might have taken years to complete.
A Place for the Dead
When we consider tombs these days we tend to think of structures that are sealed after an interment and which stay that way more or less forever. It is likely that these large tombs from remote antiquity were slightly different in that they were probably re-entered on a fairly regular basis. Unlike the later round barrows that contained high-status burials with many grave goods, the earlier tombs started out as repositories for parts of many skeletons. These had often been de-fleshed in some way prior to placing them in the tomb within central chambers or side chambers. They may have been visited on many occasions and were certainly added to across time. This might make such tombs in a way more akin to temples, or places of ceremonies and celebrations, associated with a death cult about which we know little or nothing. It is very unlikely that the Vikings who raided the tomb six centuries ago, despite their thirst for treasure, found nothing much more than bones for all their efforts, though they were probably left with a sense of wonder that anyone would go to such trouble to protect anything that was so valueless, at least as far as they were concerned.
Maeshowe might be quite late in construction, and certainly later than many tombs of its class. It is thought that it was completed around 2800 BC, which still makes it very nearly 5,000 years old. It is a stunning achievement of planning and execution and sure proof that whatever religion these people did possess, it captivated them every bit as much as did the Christianity of the medieval church and cathedral builders. It must have represented a central and deeply important part of their lives. And just as surely as the men who threw up the massive bastions of Canterbury and York went home at the end of the day to their small hovels, so the people of the Neolithic period in Orkney would have lived generally in small and fairly squalid dwellings, in no way comparing with the artistry and solidity of Maeshowe. Despite this the existence of Skara Brae bears testimony to the fact that building domestic structures in stone was not unknown to the Orcadians, who after all had little or no wood to use for any purpose. That they became so good at constructing in stone is therefore not too surprising. Nevertheless, the determination, planning and persistence that went into any one of the tombs of the Maeshowe sort was colossal. It shows without doubt that although we may have advanced in terms of technology, our overall intelligence has not altered much across what seems to us to be a vast period of time.
The Legacy of Orkney
There was clearly something very special about the island of Orkney. In terms of the monuments it possesses from our prehistoric past it is rivalled only by the structures of Salisbury Plain in England, the ritual landscape around Thornborough in North Yorkshire, England and the Boyne Valley in Ireland. There are so many tombs, ruined and still standing, in Orkney that it is entirely possible that people, or their bones, came from far off to be interred there. Maybe the island had the same sort of importance in Neolithic Britain as Anglesey did to the later Celtic people of the British Isles. Slowly but surely our knowledge of these lost cultures grows, and with refined techniques and ever greater scientific skills, we may yet learn more about a remarkable people whose only real legacy to us so far has been the fantastic structures they created. Maeshowe is amongst the best of these.
The Ring of Brodgar, Orkney
| LATITUDE: 59° 0’ 7.5” N | LONGITUDE: 3° 13’ 44.7” W |
The third of the prehistoric structures in Orkney I want to mention is the standing stone circle at Brodgar, which is not very far away from the tomb at Maeshowe. Brodgar is extremely impressive, probably partly because it is so remote it has not suffered much at the hands of man, even though it has been buffeted by the elements for so long.
Brodgar stands in an impressive location on an isthmus between the lochs of Stennes and Harray. All around it are the most stunning views imaginable and the site may have been chosen because of these, or on the grounds that there are good views of the sky on all sides, which would have increased its potential as an observatory and marker of astronomical events. Brodgar is within a natural bowl, with mountains on virtually every side, offering a multiplicity of backsights for would-be naked-eye astronomers to use.
A Very Large and Impressive Circle
Brodgar is the third-largest stone circle in Britain. The only bigger ones are at Avebury and Stanton Drew in England. Brodgar has a diameter of 341ft (104 metres) and though it originally contained 60 stones only 27 are to be seen on the site these days. However, the stones that do remain are extremely impressive and significant sentinels when seen at any time of year, but somehow especially so in the gloom and dark of the short Orcadian winter days.
Around the stones at Brodgar is a circular ditch that is about 9ft deep (3 metres) and which is 397ft (121 metres) in diameter. We might refer to this as a henge, except for the fact that there is no attendant bank, as is always the case with henges further south. The effort required to create this ditch was enormous. Whereas in the south, henges were often dug into gravels or relatively soft chalk, at Brodgar the surrounding ground is solid sandstone under a very narrow band of earth. Since the ditch is around 30ft (9 metres) wide, a great deal of rock had to be smashed and shifted to create such an impressive ditch. Despite the absence of a mound – which surely means that all the material excavated had to be taken away – the ditch has two entrances and has therefore been referred to as a Class II henge.
Within the circle at Brodgar there appear to be no other stones, though we cannot be certain that this is the case because the site has never been excavated to any great extent. This also means that dating is difficult. Most estimates place the Ring of Brodgar at around 2500 BC, though I for one would not be remotely surprised if it was subsequently discovered to be a good deal older.
A Lunar Observatory?
It is likely that Brodgar, like many of the northern Scottish circles, was used for lunar observations. Investigations of these circles by Alexander Thom (see Thom, Alexander), showed that this was clearly the case. The Neolithic and Bronze Age inhabitants of this part of Britain seem to have had a particular fascination for the tortuously difficult movements of the Moon, which they may have used as part of an assessment of the frequency of eclipses, or for maritime purposes since a good knowledge of the interactions of the Moon and the Sun allow a better understanding of spring tides.
As we have seen already, Brodgar is set within a landscape rich in prehistoric structures and it somehow seems appropriate that such a fine standing stone circle was erected on the island. The stones at Brodgar are quite peculiar in comparison with their more southerly counterparts. Builders of stone circles generally used what was available to them and in the case of this part of Orkney it was very flat stones, which vary in height between 7ft (2.1 metres) and 15ft (4.7 metres).
This is a wild, lonely and evocative place. Anyone viewing it after a visit to Skara Brae and a nosey around Maeshowe is sure to be suitably impressed. Maybe it’s the colour of the stone but the large, flat megaliths of Brodgar always feel warm to me, no matter what time of year one touches them. I stand for ages, looking out across the lonely hills and I imagine the care that was taken in choosing the right stones for the site and then the physical exertion necessary in moving them to their places within the ditch. Where did all the stone and earth from this fairly massive ditch go? Was it cast into the loch? This seems like the most likely explanation but if so, why did the builders of Brodgar depart from the usual method of henge building, which kept the bank on site, at the far side of the ditch. Were there practical reasons, maybe to do with backsights, that meant the mound was not to be considered here? So many questions and so few positive answers. But then that is part of the appeal of the prehistoric structures across the British Isles. You can dream up your own answers, and if you think hard they are likely to be just as reasonable and likely as those put forward by any expert.
It is often suggested that the reason northern Scotland, and Orkney in particular, has so many Megalithic monuments is because the population of the area was quite high in prehistoric times. Climatologists sometimes suggest that the general climate of the British Isles was much warmer around the time the stone circles and burial mounds were being created and that the Scottish growing season was therefore longer and subsistence farming easier than it proved to be in more modern times.
Who am I to argue? I am definitely not a climatologist but, on the other hand, we are now beginning to realize that our species managed to survive in Britain way back at a time when the climate was extremely harsh, either just before or just after ice ages. True, the picture may have been different once farming became the norm but until very recently extremely isolated communities on the Scottish Isles managed quite well with crop growing and raising sheep and cattle. It should also be remembered that the Highlands of Scotland were not abandoned because it was impossible to farm them, but rather because greedy, mostly English, landlords wanted the land for sheep. Maybe our ancient ancestors were able to cope with Orkney’s climate and also recognized that they were living in one of the most beautiful places on our planet?
Kilmartin, Argyll
| LATITUDE: 56° 8’ 0.84” N | LONGITUDE: 5° 28’ 58.47” W |
If Orkney is rich in prehistoric sites, another area of Scotland, this time slightly more accessible, that is of equal interest is the region around Kilmartin in Argyll. The prehistory enthusiast could spend a considerable time wandering round this area and there is much to wonder at in a region that must always have been a special place of reverence for its inhabitants.
Part of the area is clearly a city of the dead because there are a number of burial cairns in Kilmartin Glen. Some of these have been excavated and all are attributable to the Bronze Age. However, probably the most fascinating structure in this most extraordinary area is the standing stone circle of Temple Wood. We don’t know what our ancient ancestors called these stones and the name Temple Wood is extremely recent. Late in the 19th century a circle of trees was planted outside the circuits of the stones and that is when the name Temple Wood came into use.
The Circles of Temple Wood
There are actually two circles at Temple Wood. The southernmost example is around 40ft in diameter (12 metres) and presently has 13 standing stones, though there were undoubtedly more at one time, probably 22. Within the circle the ground is covered in polished river stones. This is not something I have personally seen at any other site and it seems to be a peculiarity of this location, since the northern circle also has them.
The northern circle is smaller, has far fewer stones and is generally of less interest than its large neighbour. Carved onto some of the stones of the southern circle are quite precise markings. One of the stones contains two spirals, which were used by Alexander Thom in order to demonstrate the geometric knowledge of the people who built these sites. There are also concentric rings and the ubiquitous cup marks.
Many burials have been associated with the circles of Temple Wood but the majority of them are much later than the stones (though most of them are, by definition, prehistoric). There is a cist burial at the centre of the large ring and many associated burials in the vicinity, making this just about the most used and reused site I have ever seen. This is a really strange place and well worth a look, especially since there is so much else to see in the district. Within striking distance of Kilmartin there are literally dozens of cairns, masses of carvings of one sort or another, hill forts, sacred places, standing stones and little fairy rings of stones nearly up to their necks in peat. It would be quite possible to spend a week or more simply wandering round with a good guidebook of the area. The whole area has an ambience that is unique, the locals are more than accommodating and the whiskey is especially good.
It is worth noting that the ‘mystical’ nature of the Kilmartin area does not restrict itself to the prehistoric period. Historians with a particular interest in a mysterious order of fighting monks that appeared in the 12th century have looked at Kilmartin with interest. Some suggest that the Knights Templar, who rose to become one of the most important religious orders ever created, retreated to Scotland when their order was betrayed and made illegal by the Roman Catholic Church in 1307.
Why the fleeing knights might have chosen this area could be partly due to its isolation in the early 14th century, and could also have something to do with the fact that the king, Robert the Bruce, was no fan of either the Catholic Church or its popes. The story goes that the escaped Templars began to live non-religious and fairly normal lives once they came to Scotland, and many of them, and their sons, were buried within the Kilmartin area in graves that are easily recognizable as being Templar graves.
Hardly prehistoric, but it does add to the fascination of the place. It is even suggested that some of these escaped Templar knights fought for Robert the Bruce and helped to win a great battle against the English at Bannockburn in 1314.
Mousa Broch, Shetland
| LATITUDE: 59° 59’ 45.37” N | LONGITUDE: 1° 10’ 50.46” W |
If the journey to Orkney or indeed the more remote Highlands is long, getting to Shetland is even harder. I mention Mousa Broch because it is by far and away the most well preserved of this species of fortified roundhouse, of which there are or probably were around 500 throughout Scotland. When seen from a distance a broch might look something like a ruined stone windmill and the gaunt and weathered stumps of these truly remarkable buildings can be seen all over the far northeast, as well as in the west and many of the islands.
There are brochs and parts of brochs numerous enough to comprise a lifetime’s study for someone – and in fact that is precisely what they have done. However, the most complete and impressive broch is almost certainly that of Mousa, on the Island of Shetland.
Mousa Broch is of hollow-wall construction and created, as are all brochs, without any mortar. Perhaps fortunately for this particular tower, it is somewhat smaller in diameter than many of the brochs of Scotland. This makes it a good deal more solid and so it has stood the test of time, earth tremors, high winds and rain that are typical of these remote areas, much better than some of its fellow structures.
Climb to the Top
It is possible to climb right to the top of Mousa Broch and the view from the summit certainly makes the effort worthwhile. Mousa is only one of over a hundred brochs that were built in Shetland alone and is probably about the same age as most of them. It dates back to a period not so long before the Roman invasion of Britain but of course remote Shetlanders may never have even heard of the Romans, and certainly did not fear them as their southern neighbours must have done. Mousa is one of two brochs that seem to have guarded Mousa Sound.
The walls of the broch are incredibly thick, which visitors can appreciate when they walk down the passage that leads through them. Once inside there isn’t all that much to see, except the construction of the inner walls and the staircases that lead upwards. Having said that, there is always a sharp intake of breath from visitors as they first gaze up at the stonework, which is still in remarkably good condition and which has stood the test of time incredibly well.
There never seems to have been a sizeable community of people living close to the broch, so it has probably always stood more or less alone. Exactly why it was built, and even absolutely when, is not known since no detailed excavation of the site has ever taken place.
Mousa is just one of 500 examples of brochs and it seems incredible that they still retain their basic secrets, despite the fact that there were so many of them. Somewhere in the mists of myth and legend the answer to the massive effort that went into broch building lies waiting to be rediscovered.
Many of the brochs occupy fantastic locations. One cannot help thinking that if they had been built in more accessible locations, for example in southern England, they would either have not survived the intervening period, or else more effort would have gone into uncovering the secrets of their construction and why they were built.
It isn’t out of the question that if we were able to go back in time and ask the man who planned and built Mousa Broch why he had undertaken the project in such an isolated spot, we may have received the answer ‘Because I could.’ In other words, anyone who had designs on invading a particular area, and who scouted around first, would have seen the brochs and been impressed at the tenacity and also the obvious wealth of anyone who could create such a structure. In their original state all the brochs said the same thing – ‘I am very powerful; I have many people at my disposal and my defences are virtually impregnable. Occupy my land at your own peril!’
In this respect the brochs were similar to Iron Age hill forts, many of which were so large there simply could not have been enough warriors to defend their banks. In other words, both hill forts and brochs dealt partly in bluff, but it was probably good enough to do the trick.
Ballymeanoch Stone Row, Argyll
| LATITUDE: 56° 6’ 39.8” N | LONGITUDE: 5° 29’ 2.73” W |
Just about a mile southeast of Slockavullin is an impressive row of four large standing stones. The tallest stones in the row are 12ft (3.6 metres) and 13ft (4 metres) respectively. They are aligned northwest–southeast across 49ft (15 metres). This is one of the best stone rows in Scotland and as with most prehistoric sites in this spectacular country they stand in the most breathtaking landscape imaginable. Look carefully on the western side of the stones and you will see a wealth of cup markings. Despite their frequency all over the British Isles these never cease to amaze me. Why did people take so much time and trouble to make them and what are they trying to tell us? After over three decades of looking and thinking I am really no wiser than I ever was.
The stone row at Ballymeanoch was aligned to the midwinter sunrise but as my own investigations (together with my friend and colleague Christopher Knight) show, that means they are also aligned to the rising point of the star Sirius, which seems to have been particularly fascinating to the Neolithic people of our islands. This alignment to Sirius may have been coincidental in the case of Ballymeanoch but was certainly not the case at other sites, and especially not at Thornborough Henges in Yorkshire, England.
Alexander Thom was fascinated by this row and he also pointed out that the alignment in the opposite direction was to the most northern setting of the Moon at the time the stones were erected. Thom’s original fascination with the Scottish standing stones and stone circles revolved around his absolute belief that ‘Moon-tracking’ was a major pursuit of our ancient ancestors and especially so in these most northerly sites.
About 140ft (42 metres) to the southwest of the stone row there are another two sizeable stones. Alexander Thom thought that these were aligned with the most southerly rising position of the Moon.
Stone rows still represent a significant mystery because if they were not created for astronomical purposes, what was their true function? Could they have been way-markers, telling travellers that they were on a particular route (practical or ritual) or were they built to commemorate specific individuals, perhaps priests or tribal chiefs? This has certainly been a popular explanation for the extremely long stone rows to be found in Brittany. The truth is that we don’t know, but isn’t it the mysteries of all prehistoric sites that make them so appealing?
Hauling huge stones around the landscape was certainly not easy, and we tend to forget about the logistics necessary to achieve the objective. For example, nobody could have moved stones such as these any distance without the aid of ropes and significant amounts of timber. Even if, as I have suggested, many of the largest stones in the British Isles were moved in winter, utilizing snow to make them easier to shift, a great deal of timber and many, many metres of rope would also have been necessary.
A commodity such as rope does not make itself, and there are no native vines in the British Isles, such as the ones employed by Tarzan to swing from tree to tree. From the most remote times in the British Isles rope had to be made by extracting and spinning fibres from various plant species. Presumably this would have been work undertaken by women and children, though it is likely that men took part too, probably around the fire in the evenings, when there was little else to do. Communities may have worked for months or years, simply to put together enough strings to make the massive ropes necessary to shift stones weighing so many tons.
Meanwhile many trees and saplings would have had to be cut to make the sledges and other timbers necessary for such a procedure. This undertaking too would have been no mean feat at a time when there was no metal and when axes were made of flint or other hard stones. Such timber then had to be trimmed and prepared.
All of this goes to prove that the people concerned were not only dedicated, but extremely hardworking. Surely they would never have gone to such trouble unless they considered the objective to be important?
Arthur’s Seat, Prehistoric Edinburgh
| LATITUDE: 55° 56’ 37.09” N | LONGITUDE: 3° 9’ 16.22” W |
It might surprise readers to learn that regal Edinburgh, Scotland’s wonderful capital city, is about as prehistoric a location as one can find anywhere in Britain. This is because it was first inhabited by hunter-gatherers as long ago as 8500 BC. These hunters stayed for some time in and around Cramond, close to modern Edinburgh, and they seem to have set a trend that has shown the area to be inhabited by humans ever since.
Part of the reason people were drawn to this location was its defensible nature. Right in the centre of modern Edinburgh is a hill known today as Arthur’s Seat (there’s that semi-mythical king again).
Now part of Holyrood Park, Arthur’s Seat is the largest of a group of hills in the vicinity, being 823ft (251 metres) in height and extremely defensible. The view from the top of Arthur’s Seat is stunning, and there is no better way to experience Edinburgh, old and new, than from this location. But people were looking down from here long before any sort of city, town, or even village existed where Edinburgh stands today. This was the site of a significant and no doubt impressive hill fort. Remnants of the once strong defences can still be seen on Dunsapie Hill and above the area known as Samson’s Ribs (so called because of the ditches and banks).
An Iron Age Defensive Structure
These ruined fortifications date back to the Iron Age, a period of history in the British Isles when it seems that everyone was taking up arms and sealing themselves into more or less impregnable fortresses of one sort or another. The idea amongst historians, and particularly teachers of history, used to be that when trouble threatened in the form of invading forces from elsewhere, everyone in the vicinity, including the livestock, would be corralled into the hill fort, which could be defended more easily than remote farms and tiny hamlets. The combined effort of all the locals, now turned warriors, would see off the threat, or else sit out a siege that could not have been maintained for too long at such a remote period.
Whether this really represents what hill forts were for during the Iron Age is now in some doubt. It is possible that, like other structures such as brochs, hill forts were really more of a ‘statement’ than a practical way of dealing with an invading army. It has to be remembered that many of the Iron Age hill forts, including that around Arthur’s Seat, were extremely large. It would have taken a substantial number of defenders to guard their perimeters, and if this was not possible the attackers could always find an undefended area where the banks and ditches could be stormed. It is known that the legions of Rome attacked and overran a number of even the most fiercely defended hill forts in England, Wales and throughout Gaul.
Even if Arthur’s Seat is not as impressive as some of the hill forts further south, Cadbury or Old Oswestry for example, it is amazing to think that people have lived in this area for so long. One can also reflect on the fact that whilst at the top of Arthur’s Seat, as is the case at Edinburgh Castle, one is literally on the top of a volcano. True, these ceased to be active a very long time ago, but how different the landscape must have looked when they were spewing forth steam and magma.
Most people who love prehistory are also fascinated with more recent periods and there surely could not be a better or more historic location than Edinburgh, whose very cobblestones reek of an often difficult but always fascinating past.
