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Note
Date 1983
Event ID 1156247
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Note
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1156247
Links of Noltland HY 428 493 HY44NW 29
Originally recognised by the Orcadian antiquary, George Petrie, in the middle of the 19th century, this Grooved Ware site was rediscovered in 1977. Since then four seasons of excavation have been undertaken to examine the nature and size of the surviving deposits which are being exposed in a rapidly deflating machair system on the N coast of the island. This preliminary work suggests that the deposits may be spread over an area of some 3ha, but there is as yet no evidence to suggest that the remains are continuous over that area. Indeed had that once been the case, previous deflations of the machair system are likely to have eroded some material. The archaeological deposits both lie on and are covered by blown sand. The initial results suggest that the site can be conveniently subdivided into 3 areas; the west midden, the central dunes and the east midden (Grobust). Each has quite distinct structural and artefact characteristics.
The main settlement appears to have been located in the west midden. Although this is not yet confirmed, some features, including a hearth and a possible collapsed oven of Rinyo type, point towards such an interpretation. The midden itself has a compact clayey consistency and at present some 1100sq m is exposed through erosion, though this is not its full extent. Its deposition appears to have been closely· regulated in order to ensure its availability for future use. Work at the edge of this midden has shown that its deposition was preceded by a period of continuous cultivation involving the use of ards; boundaries in the form of ditches occur in the earlier phase of this cultivation. At the end of the period of midden accumulation a low wall, now partly destroyed by later cultivation on the midden, was built and adjacent to it the articulated skeletons of some eleven red deer were discovered. The sequence ends with further traces of cultivation on the midden surface.
Little is exposed in the central dunes and only one small eroding area has been excavated. A low wall with large vertical, upright slabs, regularly spaced, in one face appears to lie on top of earlier cultivation although the evidence for the latter is tenuous. Adjacent to one face of the wall there was a large bone scatter, predominantly red deer, containing both individual bones and small articulated groups. This apparent butchering debris and the wall are covered by a thin midden containing Beaker pottery, hitherto rare in the Northern Isles.
The east midden is an area of high sand-dune with a complex of well-preserved structures. The structures so far excavated have been set into holes dug into the dune, which accounts for the remarkable preservation, with walls still standing to a height of over 1.5m. Work has concentrated on a two-roomed building with the two chambers linked by a narrow passage, the roofing of which survived in situ. The N chamber was rectangular with circular cells off at each of the southern corners although in a later phase modification involved the blocking off of one cell and the construction of a dividing wall. The S chamber has a very irregular lobate plan with a large square recess opposite the entrance from the connecting passage. The whole structure was deliberately and carefully infilled although the nature of the infilling is quite different in each chamber. In plan this building is not paralleled at other Orcadian Grooved Ware sites.
Finds from the excavation have been particularly numerous, in the order of 10,000 artefacts. In general they find ready parallels in the material of Skara Brae and to a lesser extent Rinyo. However, significant differences can be seen in the material recovered from individual areas, although work on documenting these differences is only at an early stage. (D V Clarke)
RCAHMS 1983
(G Petrie Notebook, No. 9, pp. 26-9; RCAHMS 1946, ii, p. 361, No. 1081; DES 1977, 24-5; DES, 1978, 18; Clarke, Hope and Wickham-Jones 1978; DES 1980, 25; DES, 1981, 25-6).
