Question 1: Although the World Heritage status relates specifically to Neolithic sites, the archaeological landscape is clearly multi-period. What do we know about the later prehistoric landscapes around Skail Bay?
Almost ubiquitously across Orkney archaeological landscapes are composed of a diverse variety of remains, constructed and inhabited over a lengthy period of time during pre-history and in more recent historical times, and the Iron Age is often a highly visible and substantial part of that tendency towards multi-period landscapes. And certainly around the Skail Bay area we have some really stunning examples of the multi-periodicity and indeed of the Iron Age.
To the north of the Bay of Skail there’s a large artificial mound which is known in the official records as the Broch of Veron and it’s actually likely that the site represents a very good example of that kind of multi-period tendency I’ve been talking about in relation to the Orcadian landscape but in miniature form, it’s wrapped up in the site itself. There’s a substantial monumental round house, possibly a broch, located at the Veron site and it’s accompanied, and probably also succeeded, by a range of extramural buildings. And in the early 2000s coastal erosion of the cliff face adjacent to the mound there revealed substantial architectural remains dating we think to the Later Iron Age. And it included rare evidence for substantial and quite specialised metal-working processes, and among bits and pieces of detritus and bits of metal-working that were found then, there was a large stone bowl with a lot of metal working slag adhering to it found on the site. Now, unfortunately, that artefact was almost immediately lost or perhaps went missing at the hands of some parties unknown but nevertheless it hinted at quite specialised metal-working at the Knowe of Veron site.
And a team headed up and funded by Historic Scotland rallied around and did some work on the coastal erosion site, or front, there at the site of Veron and showed that sure enough there’s a very complex multi-period site there. It was only a snapshot, it was only a tidy up of the coastal sections but nevertheless it showed some very substantial Iron Age activity there.
If you move over, to the other side of the bay, slightly nearer to Skara Brae itself and lying close to the south east of Skara Brae, in between Skara Brae and the Loch of Skail, is another location in the landscape that is relevant here and it’s a what seems at first sight to be a much more subtle topographic feature, it’s kind of a raised ridge elevated just a few metres above the surrounding fairly flat and level area of landscape in that vicinity and this is a location with the, I suppose, the unusual name of Loupindessness. Now, geophysics survey undertaken by the geophysics team of ORCA as part of the large survey of the World Heritage area there revealed a really substantial set of geophysical anomalies and there’s remarkable clarity in those anomalies, there’s probably a very very big Iron Age settlement, including the large monumental broch and an associated extramural village and as well as that various ditches and banks that may partly contain the settlement. But there’s also evidence that the settlement over-spilled those boundaries as well. So, a really rich complex and substantial settlement and full of iron Age buildings and activity areas it would seem located just to the south east of Skara Brae. And the interesting thing there, I suppose, in terms of the landscape and human use of the landscape, is that there was a really strong contrast visible in the geophysics so that whilst we had these fairly substantial anomalies in geophysical terms they rapidly gave way to areas of wide quietness around them, that’s to say an absence of anomalies in the surrounding area on that ridge, or just off of that ridge. And that seems to suggest that actually what we’re dealing with here is a location, possibly a natural rise but who knows, possibly also artificially created which just elevated the site above the site of the surrounding boggy area of wetland that would have subsisted there in the Iron Age and that’s just enough to influence the conditions for human activity and turn out a really monumental site that still requires further exploration.
So there’s that site, another very massive site of the Iron Age in that vicinity. And then nearer, even near to Skara Brae itself, we have coastal erosion at the Skara Brae site. And it’s only a few years ago that coastal erosion found just in the Skail Bay and just to the north of the site of Skara Brae itself was found to be revealing traces of another relatively monumental, probably round house-type structure; again, probably dating to the Iron Age. We don’t know an awful lot about that and we may have to wait for further coastal erosion to reveal more of the remains or perhaps one day we might look forward to excavating in more detail but certainly yet again it indicates a fairly busy Iron Age landscape there.
And if that wasn’t enough, there’s also evidence for Iron Age burial in the vicinity as well; with a coastally eroded stone built kist having been located in the Skail Bay area again just to the north of Skara Brae in the mid-1990s. And that kist was found to contain the remains of one adult male, less than about 30 years in age, and the C14 dates indicate that he died sometime between the mid 6th and early 7th century AD, which would make him very late Iron Age or even Pictish in date. And the kist itself was sealed by a small layer of stones which was perhaps was part of a low circular cairn over the burial so indicating that formerly, in the Iron Age, it may have been something of a monument in itself.
So, the Skail Bay area actually is very very rich in how it possesses a really rich set of later pre-historic remains and they present themselves in a whole variety of different ways. Much of them is hidden to the modern viewer and it’s locked away in the sandy links-type landscape and soil formations of the bay but nevertheless those remains are amenable to us through the vagueries of natural agents like coastal erosion and exposure, or in a more positive vein they’re visible to us via modern archaeological techniques like the geophysics and ultimately excavation. And it all seems to be adding up to the idea that the Skail bay area holds out a really tremendous opportunity for studies of the Orcadian Iron Age.
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