Significant Neolithic Tomb Discoveries At Orkney and Damerham

Orkneyjar Archaeology News - Plough Uncovers Suspected Chambered Tomb

Neolithic Age: Prehistoric Complex Including Two 6,000-year-old Tombs Discovered In Britain
Science Daily


From Britain comes news of two sets of discoveries, one of a chambered cairn in Orkney, north of the Scottish mainland, the other in Hampshire, a county in southern England, where Neolithic tombs dating back 5,000-6,000 years have been found, making them them amongst the oldest such sites ever found.

The find on Orkney looks interesting because it might be an intact chambered cairn, or even a previously unknown type of complex, which moreover appears to have been dug into the crest of a hillside and constructed some distance from other sites nearby dating to the same era, whilst the long barrows at Damerham, about 15 miles from Stonehenge, were only discovered after aerial photography indicated the presence of archaeology in an area of England thought already to have been exhaustively excavated.

For details of the first report, we refer to the Orkneyjar website...

"What appears to be a Neolithic chambered tomb has been unearthed on the outskirts of Kirkwall. The underground structure was discovered by John Hourie, Heathfield, St Ola, while ploughing. He reported it to his neighbour, archaeologist Caroline Wickham Jones, who contacted the county archaeologist Julie Gibson.

Julie explained: “The structure is located in a field on the crest of the hill overlooking Kirkwall and Scapa. Soils are thin, are rarely ploughed - this year’s ploughing work was the first time in decades. Bedrock is apparent in places.

“The structure itself is neat drystone construction, the wall curves round tightly and is beehived in by corbelling at the top. “On the opposite side to the wall is a space topped by lintels, and indeed it was breaking one lintel that caused the site to be found.

“It’s early days yet, but it may be a Neolithic chambered cairn, some five or six thousand years old.”

Comparison is made to a discovery made in 1998 at Crantit, St Ola, where a similar find was made by a farmer, seemingly as a result of his decision to plough a field in a different direction, whereupon a chambered cairn came to light, which in common with the recent find at Kirkwall, is believed to have remained intact over the past 5,000 years.

Crantit has apparently been sealed, pending further investigation, while this latest find is being carefully assessed before further exploratory work can take place - as far as I can tell, no artefacts or human remains have been found yet, but should it prove to be intact, it's likely that any finds that are made will attract a great deal of interest.

This news coincides with the news of similar discoveries several hundred miles to the south, at Damerham in Hampshire, where two more undisturbed Neolithic tombs in the guise of long barrows, estimated to be 6,000 years old, are attracting the attentions of a team of archaeologists, led by Dr. Helen Wickstead of Kingston University, who is also project manager of the Damerham Archaeology Project.

The site first came to light back in 2003, following analysis of aerial photographs which showed crop marks on farming land, indicating the presence of an ancient site, which in turn prompted Dr. Wickstead to begin conducting geophysical surveys in the hope of confirming the site as genuine. The second site was found by another archaeologist, who by chance noticed other crop marks when looking at Windows Live Maps, and now preliminary archaeology has begun, yielding pottery sherds and stone tools, with further investigative research due to be carried out later in the summer.

Dr Wickstead said that further work would help to reveal more about the Neolithic era. “We hope that scientific methods will allow us to record these sites before they are completely eroded,” she said. “If we can excavate, we’ll be able to say a lot more about Neolithic people in that area and find out things like who was buried there, what kinds of lives they led, and what the environment was like six thousand years ago.”

She said the find was particularly rare because it was close to Cranborne Chase, one of the most thoroughly researched prehistoric areas in Europe. “I was really excited. It’s rare to find sites of this kind and the tombs are likely to be of national importance,” said Dr Wickstead. ”What’s really extraordinary is the location – it’s one of the most famous prehistoric landscapes, a mecca for prehistorians, and you would have thought the archaeological world would have gone over it with a fine tooth comb.”

Both Orkney and Cranbourne Chase were the focus of intense activity during the Neolithic, and these latest finds come as a surprise because both areas have been the subject of much scrutiny by historians and archaeologists for many years, and further major finds were not generally expected.

Orkney has a wealth of Neolithic era sites, including Skara Brae, Maes Howe, the Ring of Brodgar, and the Stones of Stenness, to name but a few of the most well known, and excavations in recent years have revealed other surprises, most notably at the Links of Noltland site on Westray.

For its part, Cranbourne Chase appears to have been no less important to Neolithic people, as summarised in a review of a book, 'Thrill of the Chase: A Landscape Revealed' by Martin Green, the archaeologist acknowledged to have been the first to spot the crop marks at Damerham. Here's a brief note from British Archaeology magazine...

Cranborne Chase, the gently undulating area of chalk upland just south of Salisbury, is among the best-studied archaeological landscapes in Britain. Amongst its wealth of monuments are the Dorset Cursus and the Knowlton henge complex, numerous barrow cemeteries, the hillforts at Hambledon and Chiselbury, the prehistoric settlements at Little Woodbury and Pimperne, and the late Roman defensive earthwork of Bokerley Dyke.

This was, of course, the favoured stamping ground of the eager barrow-diggers Colt Hoare and Cunnington, the masterful Pitt Rivers, and the Wessex flyers Crawford and Keiller. More recently, it has been the focus of fieldwork by Wessex Archaeology, the Royal Commission, and no fewer than five different university teams.

This book is a readable and lively account of both past and recent archaeological work on Cranborne Chase. It has been a full season for books on archaeological fieldwork with a personal 'memoir' feel about them. Here Martin Green, twice winner of the Pitt Rivers Award for the best 'independent' archaeological work, provides a compelling context for the results of his own considerable fieldwork over the past 25 years on his own land at Down Farm."

The 2009 archaeology digging season is still in its early stages, and more updates will appear as news of further discoveries and research begins to filter through, from Britain, Europe and the world at large.

image of Damerham crop marks from Damerham Archaeology Project
image of Orkney find from Orkneyjar