In Northern Scotland, the Neolithic Age Never Ended
“The natural assumption with a place like Brodgar is that it was built to last,” Edmonds continued. “If there are stones missing from the circle, it must be due to later interference. In fact, there is a good chance that many of the stones fell in the Neolithic. Some have solid foundations, but others are not very deep. If you cared about long-term stability, you wouldn’t have done it this way. Which tells us that a place like Brodgar is truly a performative space. What matters is how it was made. New stones are added, others are taken away. There is a fluidity in all this that we can never see but must try to imagine.
I followed Edmonds to Ness, where the past returned underground. A civil engineering operator filled in the excavation trenches and restored the Brodgar farm to its previous state. Structure 10, an imposing ceremonial building that I had previously visited with Nick Card, was no longer visible.
“The question of permanence arises here too,” Edmonds said. “After a few generations, Structure 10 suffered from subsidence and had to be partly rebuilt. Over time, it fell out of use. Eventually, around 2400 BC, it was sealed in a huge ceremony that involved a massive slaughter of livestock.” Such “decommissioning” festivals were common in the Neolithic: they involved the destruction of roofs, the trampling of pottery, the breaking of mace heads into gneiss. Now, in a historical recurrence that would have pleased George Mackay Brown, Structure 10 had been sealed once again.
The final redoubt was the majestic Structure 27. After greeting Card and Tam at Dig HQ, Edmonds headed there to take a few final soil samples. “Architecture with a capital “A”, he said, as if he were still surprised by this spectacle. Less subsidence had occurred here. The megalithic slabs that anchor the building differ in level by only a few centimeters.
“The orange dirt is ash from peat fires,” Edmonds said as he scraped the trench wall with a trowel. “There is a layer of burned bones. It is a large slab of pottery, which decomposes back into clay, leaving dark pieces of igneous stone that were used for tempering the ceramics.”
Becky Little, an artist who teaches classes in traditional methods of working with clay, was visiting Ness that day and came to say hello. “We’re in our last days here,” Edmonds told him. “By the middle of next week, it will all be gone.” Little climbed into a trench and leaned over a vertical stone incised with a network of typically Orcadian geometric designs. “I never saw that when I was here before,” Little said.
“The light is just perfect for it now,” Edmonds replied. Orkney was experiencing one of its captivating pastoral hours, the afternoon sun shaping a world of pure green and blue.
I stopped one last time at the Stones of Stenness, which have remained in my memory since I was seventeen. Despite the deluge of new data, the megaliths had not given up any of their enduring strangeness. They may not have been meant to last for millennia, but now that they do, they are stone doors through which the living attempt to touch the dead. I felt like my own life was just a few shadows flickering on the rock. Preoccupied with thoughts of time and death, and also worried about missing the ferry, I got in my car and disappeared. ♦
