Rousay
Rousay is a 'Site of Special Scientific Interest' with notable cliff formations and wildflower colonies, and has an RSPB bird reserve.
Rousay's Wikipeadia entry begins like this:-
Rousay (Old Norse: Hrólfsey meaning Rolf's Island) is a small, hilly island about 3 km (1.9 mi) north of Orkney's Mainland, off the north coast of Scotland, and has been nicknamed "the Egypt of the north", due to its archaeological diversity and importance.
Over 100 archaeological sites have been identified, but only a small
fraction of them have been excavated and researched. The best known and
most spectacular of the island's archaeological sites is the complex of
Midhowe broch and Midhowe Chambered Cairn. Blackhammer Chambered Cairn, Taversoe Tuick, and Yarso are also important tombs on the island.
This is one of the archaeological treasuers of Rousay, it is the two chambered neolithic cairn of Taversoe Tuick. There is only one other known example of a cairn with upper and lower chambers in Orkney. The other is at Huntersquoy, on the island of Eday .
Taversoe Tuick is a fanatstic monument constructed around 5,000 years ago. Not only does it have two chambers it also has a mini-chamber outside, the purpose of which is at the present time still uncertain.
The floor
of the upper chamber at Taversoe is formed by the roof lintels of the lower,
when the cairn was intact there was no communication between the two chambers,
each having its own entrance passage on opposite sides of the cairn. It is
tempting to see the twin chamber arrangement as evidence suggesting a
multi-phase monument, but it is currently believed that the cairn was
deliberately built this way in one round of construction. It is also interesting to speculate that there may have been segregation of
deposition between the two chambers, certainly selective deposition based on sex
or age has been discovered at other British chambered tombs of similar date.
Unfortunately the destruction of most of the upper chamber at Taversoe means
there is not enough material to test this hypothesis, but only cremated bone was
recovered from the upper chamber and only unburnt skeletons found in the lower
(some cremated bone found in lower entrance passage).
Blackhammer Chambered Cairn is another Neolithic cairn on Rousay of around the same age as Taversoe Tuick constructed around 3,000 BCE.
Bones and pottery have been found here. It is an incomparable feeling to stand surrounded by Neolithic workmanship in these passage graves and other structures created at what was in reality the dawn of modernity in these northern latitudes.
Traces of the decorative stonework can still be
seen at either side of the entrance and when the entrance
was finally sealed,
the cairn's users went to great lengths to ensure the
stones used were set flush to the wall and matched the pattern
of slanting stones on either side. The design skills of our Neolithic forebears never ceases to amaze and delight me. The enormous effort that went into building these cairns is especially true of the Knowe of Yarso, which is situated on a patch of moorland about 100
metres above Eynhallow Sound, is an elaboration on the basic tripartite
plan. The remains of 29 adults were found there when it was first excavated in 1934.
Traces of the decorative stonework can still be
seen at either side of the entrance and when the entrance
was finally sealed,
the cairn's users went to great lengths to ensure the
stones used were set flush to the wall and matched the pattern
of slanting stones on either side. The design skills of our Neolithic forebears never ceases to amaze and delight me. The enormous effort that went into building these cairns is especially true of the Knowe of Yarso, which is situated on a patch of moorland about 100
metres above Eynhallow Sound, is an elaboration on the basic tripartite
plan. The remains of 29 adults were found there when it was first excavated in 1934.
There are three compartments but the innermost one is
considerably longer than the other two, so the cairn was made more or
less rectangular to accommodate the additional length of the burial
chamber.
Why are we driven to discover our far distant past? Scrambling around Neolithic passage graves may not be everyone's idea of a good day out, but the lure of archaeology is stronger than just a mere curiosity about the past. Famously or perhaps notoriously archaeology has been pressed into the service of various nationalisms over the past 150 years.
Zionism for example claims archaeological justification for the idea of a historical land of Israel. Many prominent Israelis including some generals became archaeologists, such as Moshe Dayan. When he was asked what he was looking for in excavations, Dayan simply replied, “The ancient land of Israel”.
In the United States the plundering of Native burial sites for museums and exhibitions and all over the world archaeology has been politicised throughout its comparatively short history.
My interests in prehistory is precisely the opposite in motivation as a matter of fact. I am interested in the joined up cohesion of human societies and the remarkable similarities between prehistorical societies around the world. The amount of interaction there was between distant communities of people. The map below demonstrates the distribution of genetic populations as they emerge from Africa during the Paleolithic or 'Old Stone Age' 170,000 years ago identified through their mothers DNA.
Zionism for example claims archaeological justification for the idea of a historical land of Israel. Many prominent Israelis including some generals became archaeologists, such as Moshe Dayan. When he was asked what he was looking for in excavations, Dayan simply replied, “The ancient land of Israel”.
In the United States the plundering of Native burial sites for museums and exhibitions and all over the world archaeology has been politicised throughout its comparatively short history.
My interests in prehistory is precisely the opposite in motivation as a matter of fact. I am interested in the joined up cohesion of human societies and the remarkable similarities between prehistorical societies around the world. The amount of interaction there was between distant communities of people. The map below demonstrates the distribution of genetic populations as they emerge from Africa during the Paleolithic or 'Old Stone Age' 170,000 years ago identified through their mothers DNA.
This journey of mankind suggests to me that there are some forgotten (or at least largely ignored) truths that emerged through this vast period of human social evolution that are worth attempting to catch a glimpse of. One of those to me is the eminentlty materialist notion of ancestor veneration and sometimes ancestor worship. It seems sort of proto-rationalist to include ancestors in the ongong life of fragile societies, bearing in mind that life expectancy is not what it is today, ancestors came along and disappeared a lot more frequently back then.
From Paleolithic hunter gather societies to sedentary farming communities during the transition to the Neolithic 'The New Stone Age' the survival rate for adults actually went down.
The archeological record of the Eastern Mediterranean region reveals that male hunter gathers who reached adulthood had a life expectancy of 33 years, while females who reached adulthood had a life expectancy of 29 years. After the so-called Neolithic Revolution, the life expectancy of adult males fell to 32 and adult females fell to 25 years. During the same time peole got smaller males stature fell from 177 centimeters (5ft.10ins) to 165cms (5ft.5ins) and women from 165cms (5ft.5ins) to 152cms (5ft.0ins) as life became more labourious for the early farmers.
The archeological record of the Eastern Mediterranean region reveals that male hunter gathers who reached adulthood had a life expectancy of 33 years, while females who reached adulthood had a life expectancy of 29 years. After the so-called Neolithic Revolution, the life expectancy of adult males fell to 32 and adult females fell to 25 years. During the same time peole got smaller males stature fell from 177 centimeters (5ft.10ins) to 165cms (5ft.5ins) and women from 165cms (5ft.5ins) to 152cms (5ft.0ins) as life became more labourious for the early farmers.
The idea of an age of comparative innocence where the co-operation required to bring down large animals with only stone tools meant a more harmonious society than the rivalries that subsequently emerged and remain with us today. This may be a romantic fantasy rather like Jean-Jacques Rousseau's notion of the Noble Savage, but I prefer to think of that achetypal person as being my ancestor, than any less gracious view of those who paved the way to the world we have now inherited today.
So archaeology remains a political activity, but the flavour of the politics depends upon where we start the clock running from. For me I like the idea that it should be at the very beginnings and that is what keeps taking me back to the things these ancestors made with their own hands and thereby comuning with them in the only way possible, by the fruits of their labours that made them (and us) human in the first place.
If you want to see the evolution of these northern people of the sea, Orkney is very good place to do that and Rousay is an equivalent of an Egypt of the north where secrets lie buried and where there is the lure of clues still waiting to be found and interpreted.
Fantastic blog, AA! This chronicle of Neolithic Architeture on Rousay has to rank as one of your best ever. The video is quite a treat as well. The part in the middle where your shadow falls on the entrance to a chamber is quite a visual symbol of the power the past holds over so many of us, a quest either in travel or in books to find our collective and/or family or singular past.
ReplyDeleteIt is a drive that has been used as a wedge in the past to help divide us as "races" for another in the past, but count me as
one who wants to sign on with your post-modern view that these archaeological treasures should set us out to find the clues and the solutions that will UNITE us all, not give us claims to our neighbors lands or to hold our heads up when others cross our paths. It is a world I want to live in so our future humans (God or Nature willing) can look back on our civilizations and see that we at least had some people who cared about the great timeline of human history and preserving its general good for all.
What you write here reminds so strongly of a famous quote that I feel sums up my appreciation of your recorded travels and reflections.
"We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time."
---T. S. Eliot
Thanks again...
doug
Thanks for you kind remarks here Doug, they are most appreciated. Thanks for the T.S. Eliot quote as well, this exactly encompasses the idea that if we travel far enough forward we will always arrive back at the start hopefully a bit wiser than when we set out. It is my firmly held belief that the co-operation required in hunter gather societies points to a more harmonious social group than we have today on the whole. One thing that really fascinates me is the evidence that these upper Paleolithic/early Neolithic ("Epipaleolithic" or "Mesolithic") communities constructed great feats of civil engineering like Gobekli Tepe in Anatolia, southern Turkey (which war prevents me from visiting now unfortunately). But this incredible find nevertheless means all statements about the site must be considered preliminary, as less than 5% of the site has so far been excavated, and Schmidt plans to leave much of it untouched to be explored by future generations (when archaeological techniques will presumably have improved). While the site formally belongs to the earliest Neolithic (PPNA), up to now no traces of domesticated plants or animals have been found. The inhabitants are assumed to have been hunters and gatherers who nevertheless lived in villages for at least part of the year. So far, very little evidence for residential use has been found. Through the radiocarbon method, the end of Layer III can be fixed at c. 9000 BCE (see above) but it is believed that the elevated location may have functioned as a spiritual center c. 11,000 BCE or even earlier."
Deletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe
I find that just amazing it is rewriting prehistory, as is the find of a Paleolithic calendar reported a few months ago in Scotland that predates what were thought to be the first calendars devised by mankid by around five milennia.
"The BBC reported that a team led by University of Birmingham said the ancient site was created some 10,000 years ago by hunter-gatherers.
The arrangement of 12 pits was first discovered in 2004.
“The evidence suggests that hunter-gatherer societies in Scotland had both the need and sophistication to track time across the years, to correct for seasonal drift of the lunar year and that this occurred nearly 5,000 years before the first formal calendars known in the Near East,” Vince Gaffney, professor of landscape archaeology at the university, told the BBC.
He added that the finding “illustrates one important step towards the formal construction of time and therefore history itself.”
http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/179232-oldest-calendar-discovered-in-aberdeenshire-scotland/
I think this golden mean of humanity and as a matter of fact all of evolution this essential co-operativeness is the key to survival, but the realisation of this simple fact has been lost I think... bonobos are as much part of our evolutionary heritage as are chimpazees. Co-operation was absolutlely essential I believe when you want to fell and butcher a bison or starve and all you have at your disposal is sticks, stones and your intellect. This leads me on to make the assumption that the Paleolithic was on the whole a society of friends with their music, arts, science and transparent interdependency was its hallmark after a hard day at the quarry carving phallic symbols while the wife skins and antelope and kids go picking blackberies.
All good stuff Doug, thanks for your encouraging comments, the world of no nations is a nice place to be I think.
Fascinating material about the discovery of that calender, AA. This is putting paid to what Professor C.S. Lewis once called, in another context, the "chronological snobbery" of the 20th Century advertising magus who sees ancient thinkers and their civilizations as inherently backward. The Paleolithic calender of Aberdeenshire s another nail in the coffin of how wrong that still-prevailing snobbery is!
DeleteOne human is not cut out to be ferocious predator in the sense of finding and killing food sources--not without neighbors. Nor can we sustain hunting by modern rifles and such as anything but a regulated, annual hobby for those who are interested in killing animals, for which I make no judgments other than to say something prinal is at work there and it's often a social event. (Think of "the hunting party" concept of the aristocrats and middle-class North American deer hunters.)
As for "gathering": even with modern farm tools one man cannot irrigate a desert--it takes a village of laborers to bring in a crop, and at least a tractor that must be made and shipped to the farm. However you look at it, there is an interdependent spirit at work.
It's clear to me one of the greatest uses of the Internet has to be keeping better track of how fast we are learning that the achievements of the past need to be rolled back further and further in the time-frame beyond "history".
Individuality has its place when it is to protect us from overbearing officialdom, both public and private.
But its interesting to me that we see the core communal spirit of humans I believe whenever there is a natural disaster. People come together more readily. Now we see this extending to economic disasters as well on the eve of the fifth anniversary of the Wall Street Meltdown and the Great Recession.
We may be stuck with nations a while longer, AA, but there is hope nationalism and centralization is on the downhill slope.
A new spirit is blossoming in cities like Detroit and San Francisco--smaller localized business and political units are coming together as Washington is gridlocked vy partisanship and multinational interests sunk in around Capitol Hill. I will post below an article from the San Francisco Chronicle (below this reply) that will better explain what I mean.
Thanks again for your sharing this voyage, AA.
http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/openforum/article/With-D-C-inertia-urban-leaders-must-innovate-4812864.php
DeleteThanks for the link Doug, its interesting to see that there is a metropolitan revolution taking place in San Francisco and all across the US.
DeleteIt may not be exactly what Murray Bookchin advocated but it has resonances of his libertarian municipalism about it I think. This form of devolutionary 'subsidiarity' is a symptom of the decline of the nation state as a primary form of social organisation and governance all over the world it seems. A characteristic of globalisation and yet its antithesis that is ushering a new post-statist, postmodern social order into being, a new synthesis in the dialectics of social existence.
Not only that.... hopefully a better deal for the citizenry and a less remote decision making aparatus and a greater degree of social inclusion. Regionalism and localism is the way to go I think and for the first time ever it seems to an idea whose day has come. Thanks for the heads up on the situation in northern California Doug, sticky money is the name of the game, preventing the flight of capital. Too late for some places like Detroit perhaps the wealth has flown, but still the opportunity to rebuild from the ground up here, I hope so anyway Doug. A metropolitan revolution indeed!
Your point about the " core communal spirit of humans whenever there is a natural disaster." brings the theory of spontaneous order to mind. The Wikipedia entry on this starts with the observations that:-
Delete"Spontaneous order, also known as "self-organization", is the spontaneous emergence of order out of seeming chaos. It is a process found in physical, biological, and social networks, as well as economics, though the term "self-organization" is more often used for physical and biological processes, while "spontaneous order" is typically used to describe the emergence of various kinds of social orders from a combination of self-interested individuals who are not intentionally trying to create order through planning. The evolution of life on Earth, language, crystal structure, the Internet and a free market economy have all been proposed as examples of systems which evolved through spontaneous order. "
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spontaneous_order#Anarchism
Interestingly Wikipedia goes on to juxtapose spontaneous orders with organisations as opposites, which I take to be a version of the populations versus corporations schism sometimes discussed here online.
Although the concept of spontaneous order is as at home in rightwing political thinking as it is on the left, ideology as ever makes a good servant but a bad master in my opinion Doug.
Thanks for further opening up the discussion Doug.
I do think the bottom does seem to be out of the tub in Detroit, sadly, AA. The political situation in the United States, with its strong emphasis on divided powers at the federal level, make it more and more likely that what is occurring in San Francisco will accelerate. The Congress remains in the hands of hard-core ideological anti-government nimrods, and the Democrats are locked into defending systems, not rediscovering innovations. In short, the pragmatism of American governance that served us reasonably well (as far as domestic politics at least) is a long gone daddy at this point.
DeleteIt is interesting to see the common sharing of spontaneous order as a theory that Anarchists, J.M. Keynes devotees and classical liberals have all embraced, although certainly for different ends.
The difficulty for me is keeping entities small enough to create the "sticky money" you speak about. A multi-national banking system seems to cry for curbing their political advantages through the power of lobbyists. It could be the answer to some of that regulation might be better done on some places by local safeguards rather than fighting the Wall Street/Washington leviathans the way it was done in the New Deal of the 1930's. If it could work anywhere in the USA , it could work in San Francisco! Thanks for adding so much good content to this key board dialogue, AA
fascinating, that sounds like the trip of a lifetime. I so envy you going to places like that. I think so called 'pre-history' fascinates me more than recorded history. The more we learn about the ancestors the more respect and admiration I have for them. Makes me wonder exactly who the civilized society is, them or us. And I love the video, it brings the whole thing to life. Maybe it is all 'romantic fantasy but what ever brutality existed then can't be any worse than what we have now. Except of course that our brutality utilizes stealth, deception, manipulation, lies and every scrap of technology available to us. We have written language, records, education, philosophy, technology, science and a million other things they didn't have, but when you come right down to it, none of that has actually made us a better people. They even managed to live in what seems like a more cooperative and unified community than we do.
ReplyDeleteThanks Aaron, I really enjoyed reading this, think I've said this before, but if I had a religion, the most important part of that religion would be the ancestors.
Thanks those comments Loretta, I concur with all off the points you have made. To me the veneration of ancestors is a rational belief system that understands the cycles of nature much better than we mostly do now in our hermetically sealed, centrally heated isolation.
ReplyDeleteThe find of the mesolithic calendar in Aberdeenshire is of such ground breaking importance and yet it has only been fleetingly reported in the media. It resets the clock for prehistory and this excites me because I have always been of the opinion that human sophistication is pretty well a constant in homo sapiens throughout their known of existence.
This is the backstop against which we can better understand history and particularly pre-history I think. Respect for the ancestors as you rightly put it.
Since I came back from Orkney I have recently visited another archeological site near where I live, which in the two weeks it was open for excavation has thrown up artifacts over a period of 3,000+ years from neoloithic stone axeheads to medieval pottery, to 18th century metal coffin parts, broken Victorian headstones, a 1780s penny and a whole load of evidence of canal building and industrial canal usage from the early 19th century...2 weeks that's all the time archaeologists had the funding for...... and the cost of the project - £50,000.
Actually the purpose of the was dig to search for the long lost Saxon minster which as it happens was not successful.
I have my own theories about its location and the county archaeologist I spoke to said agreed it was possible that the minster might have been in the location I suggested but she didn't want to hear it she said because geophysics had given them some hope of success at this site....alas a hope dashed I'm afraid, but a great thing to do anyway and a fascinating haul to catalogue and write up, we're richer for it however much it cost.
But we don't have to spend any money at all to visit the vast majority of prehistoric architecture in Britan and Ireland, nor most of the rest of the world for that matter ....other than getting there of course. Speaking of which you could get a ferry from Aberdeen to Kirkwall a bus to Dingwall and ferry to Rousay - job done!
Its not terribly expensive from destinations in Scotland to Orkney, for example from Inverness to Stromness via the Scrabster ferry by return ticket on Scotrail was only £56.20 which sounded pretty reasonable to me anyway.
http://www.scotrail.co.uk/content/far-north-through-tickets-stromness-kirkwall-and-lerwick.html
I have drifted a bit here sorry Loretta, I find the subject fascinating and one point leads on to another and so it goes. Thanks again for your comments.