New Viking Discoveries in Orkney
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ORKNEY Viking longhouse Settlement under the At the Bay of Skaill, on Orkney’s West Mainland, sand a massive Norse long- house lay lost to memory, beneath a deep blanket new Viking of windblown sand – until it was re-discovered and excavated by Oxford ABOVE caption to go in discoveries University archaeologists. here over a few lines if possible xxx xxxx xxxx xxx David Griffiths and Jane xxx xxx xxxxx xxxxx xxx xxxx xxx xxxx xxxx xxx Harrison report on the xxxx xxxx xxxx xxx xxxxx in Orkney life and death of a major xxxxxx. xxx xxx xxxxxx. Viking settlement. he Bay of Skaill is best-known as the location of Skara Brae, Griffiths David OTO: OTO: H Orkney’s best-preserved Neolithic P village, and part of the Orkney World Heritage Area. With ABOVE RIGHT Aerial view away by storms, it can also cover up and stifle houses upstanding to their full of the excavations. The them. The landscape around the bay is domi- longhouse lies east-west wall-height and stone furniture intact inside, it nated by wind-blown sand, which is now largely across the main trench Thas rightly claimed its place as Scotland’s most grassed-over to form what, in the Gaelic-speaking with its western end in evocative prehistoric settlement. These ancient the small trench on the Hebrides, is called a machair. In 1989 a prehistoric sandstone flag-built buildings once lay under a right (see plan on p.16). rock-cut cist grave was found under 5m (16ft) of large sandy mound that was opened up by the sand during quarrying in the bay’s hinterland. combined effects of wind, sea, and rain in the How many other ancient or Medieval sites lie Great Storm of 1850. under the sand dunes? And can we detect these Today, even Skara Brae’s 1930s protective using geophysical or remote-sensing techniques? concrete sea-wall looks vulnerable. The sea is a persistent antagonist, and a selective revealer The Birsay-Skaill Landscape Project of secrets. The power of the ocean exposes and destroys fragile traces of the past; but by releasing Beginning in 2003, with support from Orkney vast quantities of mobile sediment to be carried Islands Council and Historic Scotland, we began 12 current archaeology | www.archaeology.co.uk April 2011 | the Birsay-Skaill Landscape Archaeology Project to answer this question. Our aim was to use geophysical techniques, coupled with targeted excavation, to investigate the coastal hinter- lands of three bays on Orkney’s West Mainland, characterised by ‘soft’ erosive sandy landforms: Birsay, Marwick (CA 234), and Skaill. These bays have famous excavated sites exposed by sea ero- sion, but little more was then known of their surrounding landscape contexts. So, the project aimed to find out more by looking wider as well as deeper. Orkney College Orkney OTO: OTO: At the southern side of the perfect semicircle H P that forms the Bay of Skaill, Skara Brae has ben- ABOVE Geophysical survey of the mound sites. efited from a World Heritage-sponsored | Issue 253 www.archaeology.co.uk | current archaeology 13 ORKNEY Viking longhouse Crown Copyright/database right 2011 right Copyright/database Crown P: P: A M ABOVE Map of the Bay of Skaill (inset, Orkney) showing mound sites (shaded) across the northern side of bay. programme of geophysics undertaken by Orkney College, so we concentrated our work on the comparatively little-studied northern side of the bay, with its low-lying grassy links and the small, only one to bear a name: Old Norse in origin, it white early 19th-century parish church (or kirk) may link Snus or Snoos (‘prominent’) with garðr of St Peter, standing on a more ancient church TOP Aerial view of the (‘dwelling’ or ‘enclosure’). The name Snusgar site, possibly dating back to Viking – or even Bay of Skaill (with north was first recorded in the 18th century, when at the bottom), showing Pictish – times. some stone walling was visible in the side of the the excavation site to the The north side of the bay is ringed with several left, St Peter’s Kirk to the mound, a feature that was then rather fancifully large sandy mounds, none of which had previ- right, and the Mound of described as the ‘Castle’ of Snusgar. ously been investigated. Limited contemporary Snusgar in the centre. Somewhere around here, in March 1858, the records indicate that one of these (the furthest Skaill Hoard, a stunning Viking treasure of silver west, nearest the sea) produced buildings and ABOVE A small part of ornaments and coins deposited c.AD 950–970, burials when the road was straightened and cut the Skaill Hoard of more was found by a boy who was out kelping (gath- through it in the 1930s. Snusgar, another large than 100 items, the ering seaweed). He placed an iron hook in a rabbit largest Viking hoard yet mound on the inland side of this road, is the burrow and unexpectedly brought out a piece of found in Scotland. 14 current archaeology | www.archaeology.co.uk April 2011 | ‘white metal’. Word got around and many more the productivity of the soil. Their pinkish-grey ABOVE LEFT Snusgar people found pieces of silver from the hoard in the deposits contained numerous Viking-period excavations in 2006. The depth of overlying sandy burrows over the next few weeks – much finds of bone pins, comb fragments, blue/grey sand complicates the of it subsequently collected by the antiquary soapstone known as steatite, worked stone, and excavation process, George Petrie, and now in the National Museum iron objects. Radiocarbon dating of carbonised because the trench sides of Scotland. The hoard’s precise location was not grain by SUERC shows these layers were created have to be elaborately stepped to avoid section recorded, but we were intrigued to find out more relatively rapidly in the period AD 900 to 1050. A collapses. about the contemporary landscape and political cormorant bone from a layer much lower down context surrounding this exceptional discovery. inside the mound produced a calibrated date of ABOVE Midden layers AD 700, perhaps disappointing those in our team under excavation in 2006. Geophysical survey who hoped the core of mound might produce Iron Age or Neolithic evidence. This possibility Walk-over surveys revealed that three more large is not altogether ruled out, as we only dug a deep mounds lie on either side of Snusgar, making five excavation trench in one quadrant. in all. These are arrayed along a freshwater burn, or stream. Geophysics has confirmed that the Opening up the East Mound mounds stand out strongly as clusters of mag- netic ‘noise’ against a ‘quiet’ background. The Another large sandy mound lies 100m inland effects of the blanketing wind-blown sand and along the Burn to the east of Snusgar. It does superimposed layers within the mounds mean not have a local name, so we simply called it the that it is difficult to get a full picture of their ‘East Mound’, which we now rather regret as yet internal structures and deposits using conven- another probable settlement mound has now tional gradiometry, so we have also experimented been identified yet further to the east! A small with resistivity, ground penetrating radar, and trench was dug in 2005 to test the source of the electromagnetic conductivity (EM) survey to try geophysical signals. A large rabbit-warren erosion to achieve deeper and more three-dimensional scar in the western face revealed little of obvious results. Several relatively small-scale excavations archaeological interest, and our initial hopes were were undertaken in short summer seasons, begin- not high. After a few days of digging nothing but ning in 2004, to test what was producing the undifferentiated brown-stained sand, we nearly geophysical signals, and to extract dating and closed down the trench, but we decided to carry environmental evidence. on to the end of the week. Snusgar mound itself was our first target, and The next morning, diggers Andrew Ferrero and we discovered that a large structure with 1.5m Chris Hornig came across large flat stones. These thick double-faced walls (now very fragmentary subsequently proved to be the top of an intact and robbed-out) had once existed on top, and drystone wall, the lower courses of which carried also that the structure of the mound itself was on down into the deep sand. Within days, the composed of a series of layers of midden (organic corner of a remarkably well-preserved building debris) and ash, contained by flat spreads of stone. had been exposed, with fine vertical stone slabs, The midden layers were deliberately laid down, or orthostats, forming partitions inside, accom- apparently to stabilise surfaces and improve panied by midden layers rich in Viking finds. | Issue 253 www.archaeology.co.uk | current archaeology 15 ORKNEY Viking longhouse Mike Athanson Mike : : G WIN A R D ABOVE The longhouse Further exposures in 2006–2008 showed that Viking longhouse shape comparable to examples excavations in 2010. this building was rectangular, measuring 5.8m from Pool on Sanday (Orkney), Jarlshof (Shetland) by 2.8m, and formed the latest of a series of con- and further afield in Norway and Iceland. ABOVE RIGHT Plan of the longhouse. struction phases. It was too small to be a dwelling in its own right, and we suspected it was probably A classic Viking longhouse an outbuilding to something larger that still lay deep under the sand. The longhouse has strongly built stone walls A larger wall with a wide stone-flagged entrance which (protected by the overlying sand) still was exposed in 2007 to the north of the small stand to their full height of 1.5m in places, upon building, and which seemed to be of significantly which the now-vanished wooden rafters needed more impressive build.