The lack of trees on Orkney has meant that generations of people have relied upon driftwood and whalebone for building materials. Orkney’s Neolithic settlements had driftwood and whalebone roofs covered in turf over 5,000 years ago. Here’s a whalebone from a 50ft Sperm Whale washed onto one of Westray’s beaches. This one’s not much use [...]
Coastal erosion at the Links of Noltland leaves scattered stones over a neolithic settlement quicky disappearing with the wind.
The dunes at the Links of Noltland show their erosion by the wind – the grass tufts left are six feet above the current sand surface and a complete neolithic settlement and bronze age village lie just inches below the surface of the shifting sands.
I’m standing next to a 5000 year old house looking at a bead from a 5000 year old necklace. It was made from a cow’s tooth by someone who lived on this spot in the neolithic age. Someone who wore animal skins, who farmed barley and kept cattle. Someone who worked bone and antler and [...]
The most important archaeological find of last year was found on the remote Orkney island of Westray; or at least it was until someone unearthed a massive hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold treasure in Staffordshire. Now only a few archaeologists – and last night, watchers of BBC2′s Digging for Britain – know about the Orkney Venus [...]
In 1136, Earl Rognvald went to church at Pierowall in Westray at the start of his campaign to subjugate Orkney. Or at least that’s what the Orkneyinga Saga says. In the 13th Century, Lady Kirk was built and then extensively remodelled in the 17th Century. Today it lies in ruins. There are still fascinating remains [...]
Today is an important day in Orkney. It’s a Thursday so it’s the publication day of The Orcadian and Orkney Today newspapers. On my first trip to Orkney I asked which one I should buy. I was told very firmly that both contained exactly the same information so I must buy both for fear of [...]
Looking out across the Knowe o’ Skea where an important Iron Age burial site gives tantalising clues about the culture of our ancestors.
Archaeologist Sean Rice holds a piece of neolithic grooved ware on the Links of Noltland.
Wandering along the beach at Grobust on Westray in Orkney I spot a group of people with wheelbarrows kneeling in the sand dunes. It can only be the archaeologists. Neolithic grooved-ware pottery, worked bone objects, stone tools and flint abound, with a series of interconnecting buildings revealed in the unstable dunes.
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