The Northern Exposure project is exploring the changes that occurred at the end of the Neolithic in Orkney.
The time between c.2400-1800BC is a fascinating, but under-investigated, period of Orcadian prehistory. This is mainly because it falls between two well-established archaeological periods – the Neolithic (c.3700–2500BC) and Bronze Age (c.2500–800BC) – and archaeologists have tended to focus on one or the other.
It begins with the abandonment of late Neolithic sites, such as Skara Brae, the Ness of Brodgar complex, and, in Sanday, Pool. From the evidence so far, it appears that these communities fragment, turning their backs on the nucleated settlements that had been their homes for generations, and disperse across the landscape to live in paired or “double” houses – but initially in fairly close proximity to their abandoned “villages”.
The arrival in Britain of new people from the European continent heralded the start of the Bronze Age and the 2400BC date suggests the change in Orkney may be linked to this. But although these metalworkers, with their technologies, ideas and perhaps beliefs, made a major impact on life throughout the British Isles, based on the archaeological evidence their effect on Orkney seems somewhat diluted.
Two artefact types can be said to be typical of Bronze Age Britain – metalworking and the style of pottery known as beaker – both of which are extremely rare in Orkney. While it could be argued that the dearth of metal artefacts might mean we’ve just not found them, their absence, together with the lack of beaker ceramics, suggests something else was afoot.
In the past, climatic deterioration was blamed for Orkney’s apparent Bronze Age isolation. Paleoenvironmental investigations around Orkney, however, suggests this was not the case. Although Orkney’s climate did become wetter, there is no evidence, to date, for a Bronze Age population drop. In fact, there seems to have been a slight increase in human activity.
It is also around 2400BC that links between Orkney and Shetland become apparent, with materials being exchanged and similar architecture occurring in both areas. So the big questions centre on what was going on. Why were the Neolithic villages abandoned? When and why did the people of Orkney begin to look north and engage with communities in Shetland?
And were these Orkney-Shetland connections actually new?
The similarities between later ceramics at Sanday’s Toftsness Neolithic settlement and assemblages from Shetland were recorded during excavation in the 1980s. This and the presence of a single sherd of steatite – the nearest source of which is Shetland – does suggest earlier, Neolithic, contact in Orkney’s North Isles at least. Although perhaps unrelated, it is also interesting to note the complete absence of Grooved Ware pottery – the common ceramic style in Late Neolithic Orkney – at Toftsness.
The Northern Exposure project began in 2018 with the excavation of an Early Bronze Age structure in Spurness, at the south-western end of Sanday. The dig revealed what appeared to be “double house” architecture as well as several other interesting elements.
The Sanday “double house” is not only very similar to Bronze Age houses in Shetland, such as the Benie Hoose and Yoxie, in Whalsay, but had been constructed on top of the remains of what appears to be a Neolithic building.
The excavation site overlooks the Bay of Stove, where the remains of a huge Neolithic settlement were discovered 1980. In 1992, a survey and test excavation confirmed structural remains, pottery, ash and bone dumps eroding from the cliff face and a second area of occupation approximately 80 metres from the first.
There are no secure dates for the Stove settlements but a beautiful macehead found near the cliff site in 1934 is thought to date from the latter half of the third millennium cal BC.