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The ancient landscape on the promontory of Tofts Ness is typical of the extensive remains that can survive in marginal areas. Before excavation, there was little indication of the date of this great complex of large mounds up to 30m or more in diameter, low enclosure banks and small cairns in their hundreds, apart from some recent kelp kilns and kelp-drying stances. But selective excavation has identified circular houses and fields of two main periods, one neolithic and early bronze age and the other spanning the late bronze age and early iron age. From the earliest settlement on the promontory onwards, people were growing cereal crops (even using manure as fertiliser) and breeding cattle and sheep, and by the bronze age they were importing steatite from Shetland. [...] |
1996 |
1016339 |
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Only the lowest courses of these remarkable houses have survived, partly the result of centuries of ploughing and partly because they appear to have been deliberately demolished at the end of their useful life, but the excavated remains have been rebuilt and visitors are able to walk through them (see p.00). Despite the fact that only the base of each house can be seen, the similarity to the better preserved houses at Skara Brae is striking. There are the same central kerbed hearths, bed alcoves and dressers, and drains run from the settlement into the loch. Two of the houses are far more elaborate than those at Skara Brae, perhaps implying a social or ritual hierarchy. Barnhouse and the Stones of Stenness were in use at the same time, and the stone circle and henge may well have been built and serviced by the people living beside the loch. Only part of the settlement has been excavated, and it was clearly both substantial and long-lived. [...] |
1996 |
1016341 |
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The Ness of Brodgar was a perfect place to choose for a great ceremonial monument, giving the impression of being surrounded by water and sky and yet firmly in the fertile heart of Orkney. Its open location is echoed by the vastness of the circle. In essence, this is a henge monument with two entrances enclosing a prefect circle of standing stones, 103.7m in diameter; there is no trace of a bank, despite the great volume of rock and soil that must have been dug out of the ditch, about 10m wide at ground-level and more than 3m deep (now half-full of silt). In the mid 19th century only fourteen stones were standing, but others have been re-erected so that there are twenty-seven standing, and the positions are known of another thirteen; assuming that the stones were put up at approximately equal distances, it is likely that there were originally sixty stones in the circle. Apart from those surviving as broken stumps, the existing stones vary between about 2m and 4.5m in height. It has been suggested that the circle was designed as a lunar observatory, using the Hellia Cliff on Hoy which is outlined on the horizon as a foresight, but the date at which this could have been possible is calculated at c1500 BC, which is almost certainly much later than the date of construction. As yet there is no precise dating evidence but the early to mid 3rd millennium would be the most likely context. There has been no excavation within the circle to discover whether any trace exists of internal structures. [...] |
1996 |