Download or read book Investigations in Sanday Orkney Excavations at Pool Sanday a multi period settlement from Neolithic to late Norse times written by John Hunter and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 616 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Excavations at Pool Sanday written by John Hunter and published by Ocarina Books. This book was released on 2007-09-14 with total page 558 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sanday is one of the most fertile of the Orkney islands, and these two volumes explore an unusually complete cultural landscape of prehistoric times. Together they demonstrate that the risk management strategies, subsistence base and related social arrangements of people living on islands on the North Atlantic fringe were different to those of populations in other areas of mainland Britain. Coastal erosion threatening the site at Pool on the west coast of the island led to its excavation during 1983-8, revealing a long structural sequence from the mid fourth millennium BC to the Norse period of the 9th to 11th centuries AD. The long settlement sequence at Pool means that it is possible to see long-term change in the subsistence base, as new crops and new animals are added to it, and yet there is a striking continuity in the basic way of life over almost five millennia that demonstrates a successful adaptation to island life, for if the harvest failed, there was always the sea and the cliffs to provide food. Substantial Neolithic stone-built structures represented a permanent settlement, housing perhaps more than one family group and, unusually, both Grooved Ware and Unstan Ware were included in the material culture of the inhabitants. The latest Neolithic building was absorbed into a subsequent Iron Age village as a core structural unit and survived through into the Viking period in modified form. Outstanding finds include a securely-dated Pictish symbol stone and an ogham inscription. By the time of the Norse arrival, probably in the eighth or ninth centuries at the very latest, the settlement had contracted substantially, but had not been abandoned completely. A native population of unknown size or status survived in association with the Norse incomers until sometime in the 10th or 11th century, when the distinction became less obvious. A notable innovation of Norse times was the cultivation of flax.
Download or read book A Norse Settlement in the Outer Hebrides written by Niall Sharples and published by Oxbow Books. This book was released on 2019-12-19 with total page 1013 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The settlement at Bornais in the Western Isles of Scotland is one of the largest rural settlements known from the Norse period in Britain. It spans the period from the fifth to the fifteenth century AD when the Atlantic seaboard was subject to drastic changes. The islands were systematically ravaged by Viking raiders and then colonised by Norse settlers. In the following centuries the islanders were central to the emergence of the Kingdom of Man and the Isles, played a crucial role in the development of the Lordship of the Isles and were finally assimilated into the Kingdom of Scotland. This volume explores the stratigraphic sequence uncovered by the excavation of Bornais mounds 2 and 2A. The excavation of mound 2 revealed a sequence of high status buildings that span the Norse occupation of the settlement. One of these houses, constructed at the end of the eleventh century AD, was a well preserved bow-walled longhouse and the careful excavation and detailed recording of the floor layers has revealed a wealth of finds that provides invaluable insight into the activities taking place in this building. The final house in this sequence is very different in form and use, and clearly indicates the increasing Scottish influence on the region at the beginning of the thirteenth century. The excavation of mound 2A provides an insight into the less prestigious areas of the settlement and contributes a significant amount of evidence on the settlement economy. The area was initially cultivated before it became a settlement local and throughout its life a focus on agricultural activities, such as grain drying and processing, appears to have been important. In the thirteenth century the mound was occupied by a craftsman who produced composite combs, gaming pieces and simple tools. The evidence presented in this volume makes a major contribution to the understanding of Norse Scotland and the colonisation of the North Atlantic in a period of dramatic transformations.
Download or read book Excavations at Milla Skerra Sandwick Unst written by Olivia Lelong and published by Oxbow Books. This book was released on 2019-03-31 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the late 1st millennium BC into the early 1st millennium AD, the small island of Unst in the far north of the Shetland (and British) Isles was home to well-established and connected farming and fishing communities. The Iron Age settlement at Milla Skerra was occupied for at least 500 years before it was covered with storm-blown sand and abandoned. Although part of it had been lost to the sea, excavation revealed many details of the life of the settlement and how it was reused over many generations. From the middle of the 1st millennium BC people were constructing stone-walled yards and filling them with hearth waste and midden material. Later inhabitants built a house on top, with a paved floor and successive hearths, and more domestic rubbish accumulated inside it. Outside were new yards and workshops for crafts and metalworking, which were remodelled several times. The buildings fell into disrepair and became a dumping ground for domestic waste until the 2nd or 3rd century AD, when sand buried the settlement. Within a few generations, a man was buried beside the ruins along with some striking objects. Thousands of artefacts and environmental remains from Milla Skerra reveal the everyday practices and seasonal rhythms of the people that lived in this windswept and remote island settlement and their connections to both land and sea.
Download or read book Orcadia written by Mark Edmonds and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2019-10-03 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Orcadian archipelago is a museum of archaeological wonders. The Orcadian Neolithic is home to some of the best-preserved Neolithic sites in Europe: here we can find evidence of a dynamic society with connections binding Orkney to Ireland, to southern Britain and to continental Europe. Yet there is much that remains unknown about the societies that created these sites. In Orcadia, Mark Edmonds traces the development of the Orcadian Neolithic from the early fourth millennium BC through to the end of the period nearly two thousand years later, using artefacts, architecture and the wider landscape to recreate the lives of Neolithic communities across the region.
Download or read book The Development of Neolithic House Societies in Orkney written by Colin Richards and published by Windgather Press. This book was released on 2016-04-30 with total page 593 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Considering that Orkney is a group of relatively small islands lying off the northeast coast of the Scottish mainland, its wealth of Neolithic archaeology is truly extraordinary. An assortment of houses, chambered cairns, stone circles, standing stones and passage graves provides an unusually comprehensive range of archaeological and architectural contexts. Yet, in the early 1990s, there was a noticeable imbalance between 4th and 3rd millennium cal BC evidence, with house structures, and ‘villages’ being well represented in the latter but minimally in the former. As elsewhere in the British Isles, the archaeological visibility of the 4th millennium cal BC in Orkney tends to be dominated by the monumental presence of chambered cairns or tombs. In the 1970s Claude Lévi-Strauss conceived of a form of social organization based upon the ‘house’ – sociétés à maisons – in order to provide a classification for social groups that appeared not to conform to established anthropological kinship structures. In this approach, the anchor point is the ‘house’, understood as a conceptual resource that is a consequence of a strategy of constructing and legitimizing identities under ever shifting social conditions. Drawing on the results of an extensive program of fieldwork in the Bay of Firth, Mainland Orkney, the text explores the idea that the physical appearance of the house is a potent resource for materializing the dichotomous alliance and descent principles apparent in the archaeological evidence for the early and later Neolithic of Orkney. It argues that some of the insights made by Lévi-Strauss in his basic formulation of sociétés à maisons are extremely relevant to interpreting the archaeological evidence and providing the parameters for a ‘social’ narrative of the material changes occurring in Orkney between the 4th and 2nd millennia cal BC. The major excavations undertaken during the Cuween-Wideford Landscape Project provided an unprecedented depth and variety of evidence for Neolithic occupation, bridging the gap between domestic and ceremonial architecture and form, exploring the transition from wood to stone and relationships between the living and the dead and the role of material culture. The results are described and discussed in detail here, enabling tracing of the development and fragmentation of sociétés à maisons over a 1500 year period of Northern Isles prehistory.
Download or read book The Chapel and Burial Ground on St Ninian s Isle Shetland Excavations Past and Present v 32 written by Rachel C. Barrowman and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-12-02 with total page 488 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This volume is the definitive account of the excavation which led to the discovery of the magnificent hoard of 28 pieces of Pictish silverware on St Ninian's Isle, Shetland in 1958. It includes a reassessment of the original archives and finds, including an ogham stone found on the site in 1876 and a fantastic collection of glass beads, as well as several new small-scale excavations on the site of the chapel and its burial ground. Taken together, this work reveals a long sequence of settlement beginning in the Iron Age. The first church was built on the site in the 8th century, and accompanied by a long cist cemetery with cross-incised stones and shrine sculpture. The church may have continued in use into the 9th or 10th centuries, and the recent work has confirmed that the famous hoard was buried into its floor. There was a degree of continuity between the pre-Christian and Christian burials, with evidence that the site was a special place for burial before the advent of Christianity. The report describes these burials in detail, ending the story sometime between the 11th and end of the 12th centuries, when an adult male who had died a violent death was moved to be buried on the site. Thereafter the site was inundated with wind-blown sand. A new chapel with an accompanying long cist cemetery was then built above the earlier church, and a chancel was added later. The associated graveyard continued in use until around 1840, long after the building was demolished."
Download or read book The Economy of a Norse Settlement in the Outer Hebrides written by Niall Sharples and published by Oxbow Books. This book was released on 2020-11-23 with total page 1225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the economic evidence for the settlement at Bornais on South Uist. It reports in detail on the large assemblages of material found during the excavations at mounds 2 and 2A. There is important evidence for craft activity, such as bone and antler working and this includes the only comb making workshop from a rural settlement in Britain. A large proportion of the copper alloy, bone and antler assemblages comprise pieces of personal adornment and provide important information on the dress and thereby social relations within the settlement occupation. There is a large assemblage of iron tools and fittings, which provides important information on the activities taking place at the settlement. The information derived from the artefact assemblages is complemented by that provided by the ecofactual material. Large amounts of animal, fish and bird bones plus carbonised plant remains provide detailed information on agricultural practices, and the processing, preparation and consumption of foodstuffs. It is clear that the Norse inhabitants of the settlement had access to a much richer variety of resources than had been exploited before the Viking colonisation of the region. The settlement also had a significantly wider range of connections; material culture indicates contacts to the south with the Irish Sea ports and Bristol, and to the north with Shetland and the Viking homelands of Norway. The evidence produced by these excavations is exceptional and provides an unparalleled opportunity to explore medieval life in the Scandinavian kingdoms of Western Britain.
Download or read book The Birsay Bay Project written by Christopher D. Morris and published by Oxbow Books. This book was released on 2021-06-23 with total page 1229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Brough of Birsay was the power-center of the Viking earldom of Orkney and is one of Historic Environment Scotland’s key monuments and visitor attractions on the islands. This publication is the culmination of 60 years of investigations that took place on the site between 1954 and 2014. This new volume incorporates comprehensive accounts of work undertaken by Dr Ralegh Radford and Mr Stewart Cruden between 1954 and 1964, excavations by the Viking and Early Settlement Research Project under the direction of the author on site between 1974 and 1981, a rescue excavation in 1993, a geophysical survey in 2007 and archival research up to 2014. Specialist artefactual and palaeobiological studies of metallurgical material, ogham inscriptions and a gilt-bronze mount of Insular origin are included, together with re-analysis of the radiocarbon dates from all sites in Birsay Bay, and a re-assessment of the architecture and dating of the church and related buildings on the Brough itself. The final two chapters put the Brough, as both a Pictish power-center and the hub of the Viking earldom, in the overall context of Birsay Bay and Viking and late Norse Orkney, and the wider world between the Pictish and late Norse/Medieval periods. As well as being the author’s third and final volume reporting on work for the Birsay Bay Project, this volume completes a trilogy of studies of the Brough itself, alongside Mrs Cecil Curle’s and Prof John Hunter’s earlier monographs.
Download or read book Art and Architecture in Neolithic Orkney written by Antonia Thomas and published by Archaeopress Publishing Ltd. This book was released on 2016-09-26 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a groundbreaking analysis of Neolithic art and architecture in Orkney, focussing upon the incredible collection of hundreds of decorated stones being revealed by the current excavations at the Ness of Brodgar.
Download or read book Viking encounters written by Anne Pedersen and published by Aarhus Universitetsforlag. This book was released on 2020-09-25 with total page 636 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Viking Congresses bring together scholars of archaeology, philology, history, toponymy, numismatics and a number of other disciplines to discuss the Viking Age from a variety of viewpoints. This volume contains 44 peer-reviewed papers selected from those presented at the 18th Viking Congress held in Denmark in August 2017. The contributors take up the interdisciplinary challenge, and the papers cover a wide range of subjects, rooted in the past, but also connecting to the present.
Download or read book The Viking Diaspora written by Judith Jesch and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-06-05 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Viking Diaspora presents the early medieval migrations of people, language and culture from mainland Scandinavia to new homes in the British Isles, the North Atlantic, the Baltic and the East as a form of ‘diaspora’. It discusses the ways in which migrants from Russia in the east to Greenland in the west were conscious of being connected not only to the people and traditions of their homelands, but also to other migrants of Scandinavian origin in many other locations. Rather than the movements of armies, this book concentrates on the movements of people and the shared heritage and culture that connected them. This on-going contact throughout half a millennium can be traced in the laws, literatures, material culture and even environment of the various regions of the Viking diaspora. Judith Jesch considers all of these connections, and highlights in detail significant forms of cultural contact including gender, beliefs and identities. Beginning with an overview of Vikings and the Viking Age, the nature of the evidence available, and a full exploration of the concept of ‘diaspora’, the book then provides a detailed demonstration of the appropriateness of the term to the world peopled by Scandinavians. This book is the first to explain Scandinavian expansion using this model, and presents the Viking Age in a new and exciting way for students of Vikings and medieval history.
Download or read book Maritime Societies of the Viking and Medieval World written by James H. Barrett and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-11-25 with total page 492 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a study of communities that drew their identity and livelihood from their relationships with water during a pivotal time in the creation of the social, economic and political landscapes of northern Europe. It focuses on the Baltic, North and Irish Seas in the Viking Age (ad 1050–1200), with a few later examples (such as the Scottish Lordship of the Isles) included to help illuminate less well-documented earlier centuries. Individual chapters introduce maritime worlds ranging from the Isle of Man to Gotland — while also touching on the relationships between estate centres, towns, landing places and the sea in the more terrestrially oriented societies that surrounded northern Europe’s main spheres of maritime interaction. It is predominately an archaeological project, but draws no arbitrary lines between the fields of historical archaeology, history and literature. The volume explores the complex relationships between long-range interconnections and distinctive regional identities that are characteristic of maritime societies, seeking to understand communities that were brought into being by their relationships with the sea and who set waves in motion that altered distant shores.
Download or read book Northscapes written by Dolly Jørgensen and published by UBC Press. This book was released on 2013-11-08 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book argues that the unique environments of the North have been borne of the relationship between humans and nature. Approaching the topic through the lens of environmental history, the contributors examine a broad range of geographies, including those of Iceland and other islands in the Northern Atlantic, Sweden, Finland, Russia, the Pacific Northwest, and Canada, over a time span ranging from CE 800 to 2000. Northscapes is bound together by the intellectual project of investigating the North both as an imagined and mythologized space and as an environment shaped by human technology. The North offers a valuable analytical framework that surpasses nation-states and transgresses political and historical borders. This volume develops rich explorations of the entanglements of environmental and technological history in the northern regions of the globe
Download or read book Far from Equilibrium An archaeology of energy life and humanity written by Michael J. Boyd and published by Oxbow Books. This book was released on 2021-03-03 with total page 522 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Archaeology is in crisis. Spatial turns, material turns and the ontological turn have directed the discipline away from its hard-won battle to find humanity in the past. Meanwhile, popularised science, camouflaged as archaeology, produces shock headlines built on ancient DNA that reduce humanity’s most intriguing historical problems to two-dimensional caricatures. Today archaeology finds itself less able than ever to proclaim its relevance to the modern world. This volume foregrounds the relevance of the scholarship of John Barrett to this crisis. Twenty-four writers representing three generations of archaeologists scrutinise the current turmoil in the discipline and highlight the resolutions that may be found through Barrett’s analytical framework. Topics include archaeology and the senses, the continuing problem of the archaeological record, practice, discourse, and agency, reorienting archaeological field practice, the question of different expressions of human diversity, and material ecologies. Understanding archaeology as both a universal and highly specific discipline, case-studies range from the Aegean to Orkney, and encompass Anatolia, Korea, Romania, United Kingdom and the very nature of the Universe itself. This critical examination of John Barrett’s contribution to archaeology is simultaneously a response to his urgent call to arms to reorient archaeology in the service of humanity.
Download or read book CLACHTOLL written by and published by . This book was released on 2022 with total page 399 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Revisiting Grooved Ware written by Mike Copper and published by Oxbow Books. This book was released on 2023-11-23 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Following its appearance, arguably in Orkney in the 32nd century cal BC, Grooved Ware soon became widespread across Britain and Ireland, seemingly replacing earlier pottery styles and being deposited in contexts as varied as simple pits, passage tombs, ceremonial timber circles and henge monuments. As a result, Grooved Ware lies at the heart of many ongoing debates concerning social and economic developments at the end of the 4th and during the first half of the 3rd millennia cal BC. Stemming from the 2022 Neolithic Studies Group autumn conference, and following on from Cleal and MacSween’s 1999 NSG volume on Grooved Ware, this book presents a series of papers from researchers specializing in Grooved Ware pottery and the British and Irish Neolithic, offering both regional and thematic perspectives on this important ceramic tradition. Chapters cover the development of Grooved Ware in Orkney as well as the timing and nature of its appearance, development, and subsequent demise in different regions of Britain and Ireland. In addition, thematic papers consider what Grooved Ware can contribute to understandings of inter-regional interactions during the earlier 3rd millennium cal BC, the possible meaning of Grooved Ware’s decorative motifs, and the thorny issue of the validity and significance of the various Grooved Ware sub-styles. The book will be of great value not only to archaeologists and students with a specific interest in Grooved Ware pottery but also to those with a more general interest in the development of the Neolithic of Britain and Ireland.
