Scenes from Prehistoric Life

by Pryor, Francis;

  Archaeologists have also become increasingly aware of the hazards inherent in many forms of modern dating techniques. Take radiocarbon, which measures the way organic material such as charcoal decays through time. The technique – the science – is becoming more and more accurate, but it still depends entirely on the context of the material being dated. Take oak charcoal as an example. Oak has always been the main timber for buildings, simply because it’s very strong, hard and its heartwood is quite rot-resistant. It’s also a great firewood, when dry, and was often used in domestic hearths and in pyres, where much sustained heat is needed to cremate a body. Oak grows quite slowly and trees used to form the larger timbers – not just in buildings, but in timber circles and other ceremonial structures, such as those found beneath cairns and barrows – may easily be two hundred years old. So if an archaeologist finds a piece of oak charcoal in, say, the remains of a pyre, it could pre-date the cremation by two centuries – or even more if the wood was taken from an old structure or building. This is one of the reasons why modern archaeologists tend to be a little wary of oak-based radiocarbon dates quoted in reports of the 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s. Since then we have become more aware of the problem and generally look for younger oak samples for radiocarbon dating. You can determine the age of a piece of wood by looking at its size, shape and the curvature of its growth rings.

  The dating of Clava cairns and recumbent stone circles has depended quite heavily on oak-based radiocarbon samples and much of the work was carried out in the mid-twentieth century. This was also a time when archaeologists often applied an interpretational framework that was based around the theory that new ideas gradually diffused – spread – from one place to another, rather like an infectious disease such as the Black Death. In certain, very broad instances, this idea works. The concept of farming, for example, spread from its origins in Iraq and the Middle East, around 8000 BC. By 7000 BC it had crossed the Aegean to Crete and from there it spread in two directions: north-west through central Europe and west, through Italy and the Mediterranean, arriving in Britain shortly before 4000 BC.8 All of that seems fairly clear, but the simple idea of gradual diffusion breaks down when one examines the process in greater detail. Take the disease analogy. This works well if you plot the spread of, say, plague across a large inland area, such as continental Europe, but different models must be applied when it comes to maritime trade, where infected sailors can, and did, carry infection across seas and oceans in a very short time indeed. It all depends on the scale one wants to work at. Viewed very broadly, the diffusion model fits well, but seen at the local level, different explanations are needed. And this brings me back to those sites in north-east Scotland.

  The once fashionable idea of diffusion was often applied at too small a scale. It ignored, for example, the fact that even in the later Neolithic, farmers needed to acquire new bloodlines for their sheep and cattle from distant farms, to avoid inbreeding. I think it was for this reason that there were regular contacts, for example, between people living around Salisbury Plain and others as far north as Scotland. Similarly, there were contacts between Bronze Age communities in the Fens and in north-west England. Such long-distance contacts might also help explain how and why the stone axe ‘trade’c developed so readily. The developed societies of later Neolithic Europe were bound together by a system of roads and tracks that aided communication and helped provide boundaries between different communities. So ideas, and indeed diseases, wouldn’t have gradually ‘diffused’ from one group of people to another; instead, they would have jumped quite rapidly, and especially after communal gatherings, for example weddings and funerals, when people from quite widely separated farms and settlements came together. So if we are more cautious about oak-derived radiocarbon dates and no longer assume that ideas simply ‘diffused’ from one community to another, then it becomes far less straightforward to date and sequence the Clava cairns and the recumbent stone circles simply on their appearance.9 A more detailed approach is needed, one that involves excavation and new surveys to acquire fresh and reliable evidence. Fortunately for us, such a study exists. It was carried out by a team led by an old friend and colleague, Professor Richard Bradley.10 For my money, it is one of the most imaginative prehistoric landscape projects undertaken in recent years.

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  Archaeological research is never straightforward, for the simple reason that it has to take place in the real world. This means that inevitably any conclusions and observations that may be made can be heavily influenced by practical constraints. Early in my own career my team discovered a large, deep ditch that we had good grounds to suspect was pre-Roman, but for practical reasons we weren’t able to examine more than a short length of it. As so often happens, it was also near the end of the dig and we didn’t have the money to continue any longer. We needed a good story to tell the people who had funded us – and which would help guarantee future excavations. So I announced that the ditch was part of a prehistoric defensive system. The idea was plausible, and was well received, even if I personally had my doubts. The following season, when we were able to open up much larger trenches, we proved beyond any doubt that the big ditch wasn’t anything to do with defence, but actually formed part of an elaborate four-thousand-year-old (Bronze Age) field system. So the truth was more exciting than my short-lived fiction, which arose because of the non-archaeological constraints we were then facing.

  I mentioned that short fable from my past (and any archaeologists who have ever achieved anything worthwhile will have similar tales to tell) to illustrate the extent to which practical considerations can colour or curb the interpretation of archaeological fieldwork. In that example, we were facing constraints of space, time and money, but the sites we were investigating were all below ground and were about to be destroyed by the development of a large industrial estate. Researchers into sites like the Clava cairns and recumbent stone circles face very different obstacles. Almost always, such sites are listed under Ancient Monuments legislation, which is designed to assure their survival into the future. This means they are protected against developers and others who would demolish them. However, archaeological research can also harm them, so sensitive, and often very difficult, decisions must be made by the officials who are charged with their care. These curators, as they have come to be known, would also be aware that archaeologists, especially in the mid-twentieth century, had a terrible reputation for excavating, and then not publishing the results of their work.11

  I think it was the late great Sir Mortimer Wheeler (who published everything he dug) who said that without full publication, excavation is merely methodical destruction. How right he was – and that’s why curators are somewhat loath to allow researchers to dig trenches into intact and protected ancient monuments, such as the Clava cairns or recumbent stone circles. But they also know that without more knowledge, we won’t realize the true importance of such sites. In order to carry out further archaeological investigation of a site or monument, it may, for example, prove necessary to enlarge the protected area – defined by the wonderfully archaic-sounding word ‘curtilage’ – that surrounds Scheduled Ancient Monuments.d Were they not politically hot potatoes, such enlargement should have been effected years ago at places like Avebury, Stonehenge and the foreshores of the River Thames as it passes through London.

  Bearing in mind similar curatorial and practical constraints, Richard Bradley and the team decided to concentrate their efforts on three recumbent stone circles, all with splendidly evocative names: Tomnaverie, Cothiemuir Wood and Aikey Brae. In addition, they carried out large-scale field walking (where the ground surface is closely examined for flints, pottery, bone fragments and any other evidence for ancient activity) around Tomnaverie and Cothiemuir Wood. Such surveys aren’t always a lot of fun to do (especially if finds are rare and the weather is wet!), but they often play a key role in explaining how and why certain monuments were placed where they were.

  Tomnaverie was chosen as the principa
l excavation and I shall concentrate on it here, because the meticulous work carried out there revealed fascinating insights into the way it was used, and how people would have regarded it some four and a half thousand years ago. Professor Bradley’s team were allowed far greater freedom to excavate this protected monument because the stones of the outer stone circle had been disturbed in the not-too-distant past. The disturbance had been caused by a neighbouring stone quarry, whose working face was immediately alongside the site. So one of the aims of the dig was to make good the recent damage and restore the site to its original condition.12

  The site at Tomnaverie consisted of two principal elements: a circular cairn, whose edges were clearly defined by a substantial kerb of closely set larger stones, and an outer circle of even larger standing stones. The kerb of the inner cairn was approximately 15 metres (50 ft) in diameter. The recumbent stone and the most southerly of its two flankers lay to the south-west, in what was plainly a slight extension to the outer stone circle. The northern flanker to the recumbent stone lay nearby and was accurately repositioned by the excavators. This superb photograph (fig. 5.2), taken at night during the excavation, shows how the recumbent stone and its two flankers frame a view towards the distant hills. It is hard not to think that this beautiful nocturnal vista would have been enjoyed by the people who built and used the site, and that the dramatic nature of the views from it was one important reason why the stone circle was erected here. Were they looking towards the realms inhabited by their ancestors, or were they thinking about their own journey through life? Whatever their thoughts might have been, the recent research project leaves little doubt that their religious and social worlds were closely united. Enduring beliefs, monuments and a profound sense of place would have provided communities with the inspiration to continue and the motivation to avoid conflict with their neighbours. The more we research, the more we realize that these were not simpler societies in a less complex world. Indeed, we underestimate them at our peril.

  The excavation at Tomnaverie revealed a far more complex monument than had previously been supposed.13 It proved to be larger, with an overall diameter of 23 metres (75 ft) rather than 17 metres (56 ft). It was also one of the first archaeological field projects to use digital photography as part of its survey. In an excavation involving thousands of rocks of different sizes, together with loose rubble, the position of every stone was potentially crucial; so accurate digital plans were essential and they helped the team untangle the site’s complex history of construction, modification and later reuse.

  5.2 A view across the portal of the stone circle at Tomnaverie with the recumbent stone and the two flankers at either end. On a moonlit night the stones frame the moon over the mountain of Lochnagar, some 30 km (19 miles) to the south-west.

  Silkie / Wikimedia

  The earliest evidence for activity consisted of a low mound, mostly within the topsoil buried beneath the rocks of the cairn. This mound was made up of burnt soil, a mass of broken-up pieces of charcoal and numerous small fragments of burnt human bone. Burnt human bone almost invariably means a cremation pyre, as human bodies take a lot of heat and fire to burn off the muscle, and particularly the fat, to get down to the bones beneath. Bodies found in most accidental house fires are rarely, if ever, cremated. Funeral pyres aren’t just bonfires, either: they are carefully constructed from dry wood and must burn with real intensity for at least an hour and a half to cremate a corpse thoroughly. Cremated bones are very distinctive: they lose their resilience and become white and brittle; soon they break up into tiny pieces. So that shallow mound of cremated bones and charcoal is telling us that the low hill, which was later selected for the stone circle, was already a special place where funeral pyres were built.

  Today, we tend to see cremation as a reasonably inexpensive way of avoiding the cost of a coffin, gravestone and permanent grave. But many communities in the world still see it in a more traditional light, as a process by which the soul is released from the body by the flames. Because of these beliefs, funeral pyres were often placed close by rivers or in special places thought to have had ready access to those realms beyond the world of mere mortals, where the souls of the ancestors dwelt in perpetuity. This might help to explain why the site at Tomnaverie crowns a low mound that rises quite prominently from the otherwise gentle, rolling landscape around it – and why it has such striking views of the distant mountains, which may well have been seen as special places for the ancestors. Ironically, the steep working faces of the modern quarry, which so nearly destroyed this remarkable site, actually increase its prominence. Its restoration is therefore symbolically important because it demonstrates that conservation and imagination can triumph over the needs of commerce. We must never forget that ancient sites have modern relevance, too.

  The first phase of the monument that was then built over the pyre area was a platform-like raised stone cairn of about 15 metres (50 ft) diameter, which was carefully edged by large kerbstones and a drystone wall. Initially, this cairn seemed circular, but on closer inspection the team could see that it had been laid out in a rough polygon with some eight sides. A very similar arrangement of about eight wooden ‘panels’ was observed at the slightly later (2049 BC) timber ‘circle’ at Seahenge. This segmented pattern would suggest that both sites may have been constructed by workers from a number of different communities or families.14 All the people involved were clearly motivated by the same concept of the sites’ general layout and both monuments have their broadest segments or panels along a south-west–north-east alignment. The narrow entranceway through the oak uprights at Seahenge was from the south-west, which is precisely where the recumbent stone and its two flankers were placed at Tomnaverie.

  The cairn at Tomnaverie was far more than just a flat heap of stones. Within the cairn, and reaching about halfway to the centre, was a series of spoke-like smaller walls, which further subdivided the mound into another twelve or so segments, whose layout resembled slightly uneven slices in a round cake. This might hint at two levels of organization, the ‘cake slices’ lying within the larger group represented by the outer segments. Maybe this arrangement reflects a social structure in which families formed part of wider tribes or communities. The arrangement of the ‘cake slice’ walls was more prominent and therefore easier for the excavators to discern towards the north-east, i.e. towards the ‘back’ of the monument (if the slightly later recumbent stone can be assumed to have been its front). The excavators were also able to discern another arrangement of curved drystone walls that were clearly a part of the cairn and would have helped to provide structural stability, but they were not essential. More likely they were part of the monument’s overall design as, like the radial ‘cake slice’ walls, they would have been clearly visible in the top of the cairn. They provide hints that there was more to the belief system behind these monuments than the simple lunar and solar alignments suggested by the layout of henges or the south-west–north-east alignment. We must be careful not to oversimplify in our search for explanations. Medieval churches were indeed aligned east–west, towards Jerusalem, but the belief system underlying Christianity was, and is, vastly more complex and subtle.

  We are given further glimpses of complexity in the colour of the stones used at Tomnaverie. Stonehenge is famous for its bluestones, dragged there from the Preseli mountains of South Wales. By contrast, the excavators at Tomnaverie found that the builders there had deliberately selected stones of a red hue for the cairn and its kerb. This colour contrasted markedly with that of natural stone outcrops nearby. As a general rule, the colour of stonework often fades with time (the Stonehenge bluestones are today a drab brown), so we must assume that the reds at Tomnaverie have also faded. A paler, more sparkly, quartz rock was selected for the part of the ramp that extended around the cairn’s kerbstones; this was clearly intended as a support or revetment, to prevent them leaning outwards.

  The second main phase of building at Tomnaverie is represented by the outer stone circ
le of twelve uprights and one horizontal, recumbent, stone. The holes to receive these were clearly cut through the stones and soil of the ramp that supported the cairn’s kerb. So they have to be of a later date. The outer stone circle may have been slightly later than the cairn, but it was clearly intended to form a part of it – and a very important, final part, at that. The recumbent stone and its flankers had been moved by quarrymen, possibly as late as the 1920s, but they hadn’t moved them very far and in the process they had simply lifted them out of the ground, or rolled them over, without causing disturbance to the rest of the site. So the two sockets that held the flankers could be recognized and excavated. The same went for a shallow depression that accommodated the underside of the recumbent stone. With these clues to guide them, the excavators were able to replace all three stones with considerable precision.

  Excavation of the flanker sockets and the recumbent stone’s foundations revealed that the kerb of the central cairn had been disturbed during the erection of the two flankers, but the damage had been made good and the kerb had been modified to veer slightly outwards to join up with the flankers. The result was a seamless join that proved beyond any doubt that the slightly later stone circle had always been intended to form part of the earlier monument.

  The excavations revealed a detailed plan of the stone circle. The upright stones were arranged in six pairs, starting with the two flankers on either side of the recumbent stone. The pairs of stones comprising the main circle were arranged on either side of a central axis that ran south-west–north-east through the centre of the recumbent stone. The pairs of matching stones on opposite sides of the circle were unevenly spaced, with narrower spacing towards the rear of the monument, on the other side of the circle from the recumbent stone. The stone pairs were matched for size and were graded in height, being larger towards the recumbent and smaller towards the north-east and the rear of the circle. With one exception, the uprights of the stone circle were made from the distinctive red-coloured stone that matched the colour of the cairn’s kerbstones. The exception was the recumbent stone, which was in white quartz and was clearly selected to stand out.