These remains are [like fragments of a
shipwreck] that after the Revolution of so many Years and Governments have
escaped the Teeth of Time and (which is more dangerous) the Hands of mistaken
Zeale. So that the retriving of these forgotten Things from Oblivion in
some sort resembles the Art of the Conjurer. A conjurer, who makes those
walke and appeare that have layen in their graves many hundreds of yeares:
and to represent as it were to the eie, the places, Customes and Fashions,
that were of old Times. - John Aubrey mid-Seventeenth Century (Ashmore 1996).
Introduction: Rock art in the Neolithic and early Bronze Age
Richard Bradley, in his book Rock Art and the Prehistory of Atlantic Europe: signing the land (1997), undertook a broad regional synthesis of a topic he described as "Atlantic rock art." This term was meant to describe similar rock art motifs found in Ireland, Britain, France, Portugal, and Spain made during the Neolithic and early Bronze Age. It was during this period that the cup and ring rock art at Achnabreck, Mid Argyll, Scotland was made.
Bradley described the chronology of the broader regional picture as follows: "Whether or not it had its roots in altered states of consciousness, Atlantic rock art first appeared by the late fourth millennium BC. It ran in parallel with the development of megalithic art in Ireland, with which it shares a range of circular motifs, and it was still in use in the early Bronze Age when a series of distinctive weapons were portrayed in the carvings. Nowhere does it seem to have survived into the first millennium BC"(Bradley 1997:65).
Bradley pointed specifically to Achnabreck as one of the sites indicating a lengthy chronology for British rock art.
The second piece of evidence [that British rock art has a lengthy chronology] comes from Achnabreck in Mid Argyll, where differences of weathering suggest that the motifs were created in two different phases (RCAHMS 1988, 87-99). According to that interpretation, the early motifs are concentric circles, which lack a central cup mark, and a series of double spirals best paralleled in the passage-grave art of Orkney. The later motifs at Achnabreck consist mainly of cups and rings, many of them breached by a radial line. These elements are much more common in open-air rock carvings and are found throughout its distribution. Taken together, these arguments suggest that the abstract motifs in British rock art might have been used over a considerably longer period than their equivalents in megalithic tombs. At the same time all these dates are earlier than those ascribed to the types of metalwork depicted in sites in Wessex and Mid Argyll. Open-air rock art was obviously very long-lived. In Britain and Ireland it could have originated as early as 3300 BC and may have remained important into the early years of the second millennium BC. (Bradley 1997:64-67)
A Minimum Age For the "Atlantic style" of rock art
Bradley notes that based upon evidence found at various sites in Britain there is some consensus that by the period of the Late Bronze Age and Iron Age, cup and ring rock carvings had gone out of use (Bradley 1997:65). This evidence includes the reuse of already carved rocks in later construction projects and carvings that were overlain by field walls and hill forts, etc. thus providing a minimum age for this style of rock art.
Daily life in the Neolithic is usually taken to refer to the story of stone age farming. The Neolithic period or "new stone age" is generally understood to refer to the period of transformation from a hunting, gathering, and fishing way of life to a more a permanently settled, agricultural way of life. In Scotland, the Neolithic period extended for a period of about 20 centuries, from about 4000 BC to about 2500 or 2000 BC (Ashmore 1996:124). Ross describes the period as running from c. 4500 BC to c. 2000 BC (Ross1991:24). Farming in the western Mediterranean was undertaken much earlier - since at least c. 6500 BC in Greece (Dyer 1990:29). Overviews of the Neolithic transition in Europe as a whole can be found in Alisdair Whistle and Andrew Sherratt's articles in Cunliffe (1994) and for southern Britain in Julian Thomas' Rethinking the Neolithic (1991) which contests the view of the early Neolithic as a primarily economic phenomenon synonymous with a mixed farming economy. "The population of Neolithic Britain did not live in major timber-framed buildings, quite probably did not reside in the same place year-round, did not go out to labour in great walled fields of waving corn, were not smitten by overpopulation or soil decline, and much of their day-to-day food may have been provided by wild crops" (Thomas 1991:28).
A chronology of prehistoric Scotland
The following table provides a chronology of Scotland's prehistory incorporating roughly estimated dates (after Ross 1991:181; Ashmore 1996).
| Dates BC (All dates are from Ross 1991:181 unless otherwise noted) | Description |
| c. 1,000,000 BC to c.15,000 BC | Paleolithic Period: the "old stone age" Homo erectus, Neanderthals, Archaic Homo sapiens, etc. |
| c.40,000 BC | Homo sapiens sapiens appeared in Europe. |
| c. 15,000 BC | The last Ice Age ended. During the Pleistocene or "ice age", glaciers covered Scotland. Around 13,500 BC temperatures warmed to like those of today. Between 11,000 BC and 10,000 BC there was another cold period (Ashmore 1996). |
c. 15,000 BC to 4500 BC (Ross 1991:181) or c. 10,000 BC to c. 4000 BC (Ashmore 1996:124) |
Mesolithic Period: the "middle stone age" or hunter/gatherer/fisher way of life. By 9000 BC birch forests were forming in southern Scotland. By 8,250 BC hazel forests were starting in the south. By 8000 BC the birch forests reached northern Scotland. By 7,500 BC elms appeared in southern Scotland. From 6,700 BC to 6,200 BC elms preceded oak moving through Argyll leading to a mixed oak forest in Argyll, Scotland (Ashmore 1996). |
| c. 7000 BC | Homo sapiens sapiens first appeared in Scotland. |
c. 5500 BC (Ross 1991:181) c. 6000 BC (Dyer 1990: 29; Hadingham 1975:29) |
Britain became an island. |
c. 4500 BC to c. 2000 BC (Ross 1991:181) c. 4000 BC to 2500 or 2000 BC (Ashmore 1996:124) |
Neolithic Period: The "new stone age" or agricultural revolution was the transition from hunting/gathering to agriculture. According to Ashmore (1996) nearly all 23 Scottish radiocarbon dates between 4500 BC to 4000 BC were from hunter/gatherer sites. By way of contrast, 27 Scottish dates from 4000 BC to 3750 BC were from sites built by farmers. |
| c. 3000 BC | Earliest chambered tombs were built (Ross 1991). A chambered tomb is, "a place for deposition of bodies or skeletons virtually always consisting of a chamber under a barrow or cairn" (Ashmore 1996:123). |
| c. 2500 BC | First stone circles were erected. |
| c. 2650 BC | Beginning of the Beaker period. A beaker is, "a pot with an S-shaped profile and simple rim, usually highly decorated with impressed or incised patterns dating between 2500 and 1500 BC" (Ashmore 1996:123). |
| c. 2600 BC | First copper objects. |
c. 2000 BC to c. 700 BC (Ross 1991:181) c.2500 or 2000 BC to c. 750 or 500 BC (Ashmore 1996:123) |
Bronze Age |
| c. 2000 BC | Bronze working; Chambered communal tombs went out of fashion; Cist burials were common. |
| c. 1100 BC | A marked deterioration in climate began. Burial sites were no longer constructed. |
| c. 1000 BC | Defensive settlements became common. |
| c. 700 BC to 400 AD | Iron Age/Roman period. |
| c. 600 BC | Celts appeared in Scotland. Iron working began. |
| c. 55 BC | Julius Caesar's first expedition to Britain. |
Material culture in Neolithic and early Bronze Age Scotland c. 4000 BC to 1000 BC
Various archaeologists have described material culture in Scotland during the period between 4000 BC and 1000 BC (Ashmore 1996; Dyer 1990; Hedges 1992; Richards 1991; Ross 1991; Smith 1974; ).
1) The crops grown were barley and wheat. "Evidence for the cultivation of cereals comes from impressions of wheat and barley on pottery fragments, ploughmarks preserved below subsequent earthworks, flint sickles for harvesting the grain and flat stone querns for grinding it" (Wainwright 1989:26). In Scotland no botanical samples have been radiocarbon dated to before 3000 BC but fragments of fields have been found underneath burial mounds and shell-sand (Ashmore 1996). "The impressions of cereal grains left in the wet clay of pottery before firing show that wheat and barley were the main crops grown, although cultivation must have been a very wasteful process. A small patch of scrub or woodland would be cleared by felling the trees with stone axes and burning off what was left over. The seeds were planted with the use of some simple kind of mattock or hoe. When the ground was exhausted the farmers moved on and cleared the next patch of woodland" (Hadingham 1975:30). Hedges asserts that "the largest percentage of the caloric intake, would have been from crops.. . . From preference sandy soils would have been chosen - such as those around Skara brae, the Knap of Howar, and the Links of Noltland - since these were easiest to work with primitive implements, and the heavier gleys of the valley bottoms would have been avoided.. . . Implements which may have been used to break the land are the ox shoulder blades, as found at Skara Brae and the Links of Noltland, and the mattock heads as found at Isbister itself. . . . There is evidence from the Links of Noltland both that animal manure was used and that settlement midden was weathered and then spread on areas which were under cultivation" (Hedges 1984:202).
2) Marine resources included sea and river fish and shellfish (Ashmore 1996). Oysters, winkles, cockles, crabs, and razor shells would have been delicacies and limpets probably were used as bait and famine food (Hedges 1984: 208).
3) Hunting activity was directed towards deer and wild cattle or aurox (Ashmore 1996)..
4) Wild plant resources that were gathered included fruits, roots, storable hazelnuts and acorns (Ashmore 1996). Rope made of twisted heather was found at Skara Brae (Hedges 1984:215).
5) Distinctive Unstan Ware pottery was found in both tombs and houses. Tomb pottery was thicker, bigger and solid. Home pottery was small and finely made (Ashmore 1996). Grooved Ware such as from Skara Brae, Stenness and Quanterness was a separate distinct style and Beakers were in use during later periods. "The Unstan Ware people had the subcultural trait of making round-based vessels, of which some were deep and others bowl-shaped with a distinctive collar around the rim . . .; the Grooved Ware people, on the other hand, held to their tradition of pots which were bucket shaped and which had flat bases (Hedges 1984:210). Radiocarbon dates suggest that Grooved Ware and Unstan Ware may have been contemporaneous (Renfrew 1990:7).
6) Sheep, cattle, pigs, goats, dogs, wheat and barley may have been brought across from the continent between 4200 BC and 3500 BC (Dyer 1990:30; Hedges 1984:204). "Movement for the first farmers was difficult due to thick forest cover and marshes. Wheeled transport was unknown in western Europe though heavy loads could have been moved using land-sledges or slide cars. Water provided the best means of transport and in all probability small skin boats like the Eskimo whaling umiak or the Irish curragh were used" (Dyer 1990:30). "The evidence from all the settlement sites points to sheep/goats and cattle having been kept in approximately equal proportions. Pigs by comparison were rare, being kept and fattened only in small numbers" (Hedges 1984:204).
7) Around 4000 BC, stone tools included polished stone axeheads were being made in Ireland. Whether or not these were also being made in Scotland is still an unresolved question. Raw material for stone tools included flint and chert beach pebbles and rum bloodstone (Ashmore 1996).
8) Housing consisted of rectilinear timber structures. The building materials consisted of stone, timber, or turf. Archaeological excavation of a building found in southern Scotland after 4000 BC found a rectilinear timber and stone mortuary house with massive D shaped posts lined by granite boulders and a timber facade with two interior posts, oak plank flooring, and cremated bone. After it burned it was replaced with a stone burial chamber(Ashmore 1996). .
9) Houses in Argyll have been found (Graham Ritchie 1997: 44). The Ardnadam, Cowal houses date from c. 3699 BC to 3342 BC. A flood destroyed the first 2 phases (they were on a stream's alluvial fan). Excavation revealed post-holes, cobbled areas, and hearths. The size of the houses were about 6 by 6 meters. A later house was found to be oval and 12 meters in length (Ashmore 1996).
10) Neolithic weapons included leaf shaped arrowheads. In southern Scotland, a long bow over 6 feet long, made of imported yew, was dated to between 4000 BC and 3600 BC (Ashmore 1996).
11) Burial practices included large burial mounds (long barrows made of earth and timber) or stone built burial chambers covered by cairns (Ashmore 1996). .
12) Between 4500 and 4000 BC the landscape in the Argyll area of Scotland probably had a mixed oak forest. Scotland as a whole at that time was not blanketed by forest. There were good clearings and good grazing: 1) on the edges of uplands, and 2) around lakes, rivers and marshes (Ashmore 1996)..
13) Hunters fired woodland in 4100 BC at 1200-1300ft and around the margins of some lakes and fens "to improve pasture for red deer and encourage them to concentrate at known spots." (Ashmore 1996:22).
14) The population density of earlier Mesolithic hunter gatherers had probably been relatively low. Modern ethnographic analogies to people living in deciduous areas suggests: 10-20 people for every 400 sq. miles. "Since human groups which are successful over the long term seem to require breeding populations of a few hundred, people must have travelled long distances to find suitable marriage partners" (Ashmore 1996:22).
15) Ashmore has discussed who might have moved out when people married in the earlier Mesolithic period. In some hunter-gatherer societies the women marry out of the family, and in some the men do. If gathering is most important, and if women did most of the gathering then women may have had an incentive to stay where they were since they already knew where the food resources were located from growing up in the area. There were presumably many kinship ties over long distances (Ashmore 1996).
16) One issue that remains is if there was there an extended, transitional, non-intensive farming period. Swidden type mobile/fallow farming only uses 5% of the area for crops. In this situation hoes and digging sticks are used rather than spades or plows and there is no weeding or caring for cows, sheep or goats. Hunting, fishing, wild roots, seeds, and fruits supplied much of the food and there would perhaps have been much leisure time and less work than would be required for intensive agriculture (Ashmore 1996).
17) Elsewhere in Europe, in Denmark, the fishing hunter-gatherers along the coast "developed pottery and bred domesticated pigs around 5000-4750" BC (Ashmore 1996:24-5). That way of life survived for 1000 years before they turned to agriculture.
18) By 4000 BC intensive farmers may have been an alternative food source for the hunter gatherers who could still trade wild meat and raw stone (Ashmore 1996).
19) By 4000 BC, during the start up of intensive agriculture in Scotland, clearing the land by using fire would not have killed off the grasses since the the roots survive. Plows (ards) pulled by people or draft animals were needed. This required more work and required care of animals and crops. About one hectare and half was needed for growing animal fodder unless pasture was available (Ashmore 1996).
20) Ashmore thinks that between 4000 BC and 3500 BC individual ownership of farm land by a family had not yet arisen (Ashmore 1996:26).
21) We can assume that there were probably oral traditions and ceremonial structures regarding death.They probably believed in an afterlife given the regional variation in disposal of the dead. West and North Scotland had chambered tombs (Ashmore 1996).
22) Chambered tombs consisted of mounds of earth, turf or stone with burial chambers, usually of stone. They were square, round, shoe-heel shaped or "0" shaped. Some opened straight outward and others had passages. Some had compartments and many were corbelled or "sloped in" (Ashmore 1996). "The earliest radiocarbon dates come from earthen long barrows, stone chambered tombs and domestic settlements; the dates cluster between about 3250 bc and 2800 bc, thus indicating that the Neolithic settlement of Scotland as far north as the Northern Isles was well established early in the fourth millenium BC" (Ritchie 1991).
23) Ashmore hypothesized regarding religious beliefs by referring to ethnographic analogies. Ashmore noted that in many cultures it is believed that the body soul - leaves upon the last breath "and returns to some universal stock of life-force" (Ashmore 1996:29). .The dream soul - remains "in the dead body until it has been completely changed by decomposition, or cremation or another process" (Id.). The ego soul, "retains a sense of personal identity" (Id.). "We rarely see dead bodies, skeletons or even human bones. Yet they were common sights to people of the Neolithic and Bronze Age. Some of the causewayed enclosures were open-air cemeteries where bodies were left on the ground to decompose. Bodies were also placed in tombs, either complete or after they had rotted, when bundles of bones might be collected together and put in the tomb" (Pearson 1993:49).
24) Daily life and material culture in northern Scotland is known in some detail. According to Anna Ritchie (1995) the Knap of Howar houses on Papa Westray in Orkney c. 3600 - 3100 BC were built of flagstones, had lintel slabs over doorways, used upright slabs, and consisted of 2 linked houses built into a midden. The larger house was 9.6 m (32 ft) long internally (Ashmore 1996: Plate 2). Unstan Ware pottery was found there (over 78 pots). These were characteristically round-bottomed with a decorated collar above an angled shoulder. Many bones of animals were recovered including domesticated cattle, sheep and pigs and wild deer, whales, and seals. This northern site at the Knap of Howar revealed that other food resources were also available e.g. birds (gannets, fulmars, guillemots, great auk's i.e.oil & meat), eggs, and fish taken from shore with a hook and line such as young saithe, ballan wrasse, rockling, or from boats up to 5 miles out with a hook and line and a baited dropnet. These were used for large saithe, ling, cod, halibut and turbot. Marine shellfish was also available such as oysters, winkles, cockles, razorfish; and limpets (for bait). Land snails were found suggesting grassland was nearby (Ashmore 1996).
25) The Knap of Howar site was located near freshwater pools which probably supplied it with water and was also near cleared land. The fuel for fires was indicated by charcoal from driftwood (spruce or larch), and charcoal from the midden (alder and birch). Food sources included oysters, barley, and wheat. Tools used included a whalebone spatula and mallet head and a small polished hand axe. Manure spreading on fields and plows has been found elsewhere in the Orkneys. Tool manufacture was done at a workshop with bone dress-pins and skin-working tools such as bone awls; blunt end embossing tools perhaps to decorate clothing, carpentry and possibly flint-working tools. Chert working debris was recovered. Also found were stone knives, scrapers from flint and chert, sandstone beach-pebble hammerstones, quern-stones, pointed tools, and a fine grinding-stone (Ashmore 1996).
26) The archaeological site at Skara Brae, Orkney, c. 3100 - 2500 BC, provides other specific information from an extensive Neolithic site. The inhabitants had stone built furniture and used timber and whale ribs for the turf roof supports. Furnishings included dressers, a bed, heather and straw mattresses, animal skin coverings, and storage spaces sealed to hold water. Men and women may have followed a pattern for sleeping arrangements. The right hand bed (male?) is always larger than the left (female?). Beads and paint pots were found on the smaller beds. A person always had to turn right to enter. This raises the possibility of a gendered spatial orientation and perhaps a gendered view of the universe where left is female and right is male (Ashmore 1996; Richards 1991:27).
27) Secrecy, security, and plumbing were also apparent at the site. A secret space was found under the stone dresser and a hole for a bar was located on both sides of doors. In the interior space inhabitants could stand, but entrances required crawling A lavatory drain was also found. House 7 was isolated and House 7's door was barred from the outside.
28) Artistic decorations were applied to carved patterns on the walls, grooved ware, bone necklaces, bone pins, carved balls and axes (Ashmore 1996).
29) Organic materials preserved included rope made of twisted heather with a finely carved wooden handle, and puff balls filled with a fibrous material like cotton-wool used in recent times to staunch bleeding (Ashmore 1996).
30) The inhabitants of the houses at Rinyo in Rousay, Orkney owned: a clay oven, both applied and "Grooved Ware" pottery, small flint tools, polished stone axes, a broken macehead, and plain stone balls. Also found at Rinyo were lumps of haematite polished by use, "Skaill knives," stone pot-lids, small stone vessels, saddle querns, and pumice with grooves worn by bone points(Ashmore 1996). According to Anna Ritchie, (1990:38) "knowledge of the flexible and water resistant qualities of hazel bark is demonstrated by its use at Rinyo to line drains (Childe and Grant 1939,18)."
31) At Barnhouse, Orkney, houses may have been intentionally cleaned and demolished at the end of lives or periods (Ashmore 1996).
32) "Where traces of houses have survived these are small and roughly rectangular, timber-framed with walls made of turf or wattle-and-daub, no doubt surmounted by a thatched or turf roof" (Longworth 1986:11).
33) "Totemism" or clan symbolism may have been reflected in the animal remains found in various communal burial tombs. At the Tomb of the Eagles, Orkney sea eagle bones were found in a human communal burial tomb (Hedges 1984). During this period with average human life expectancies in the twenties, white tailed sea eagles with their impressive 6.5 ft wing span may have actually lived longer than the humans (Hedges 1984). One other possibility is that the birds lived and died in the tomb which looks out from a cliff over the North Sea. At the Point of Cott burial tomb 36 talons were found and at Burray tomb 7 dogs were found. At the Cuween burial tomb 24 Scotty dog skulls were found in the tomb along with human remains.
34) Tomb food offerings may have been made to the dead or to mourners. At the Holm of Papa Westray excavation discovered 20 lbs. of fish bones and 30 sheep. At the Knowe of Yarso 36 red deer remains were identified and at the Knowe of Ramsay 14 red deer were identified.
35) At the Auchategan, Cowal site c. 3254 to 2500 BC 60 Neolithic vessel sherds were found on a valley terrace over the River Ruel. Also found were post-holes, hearths, and flint. Carved stone balls and traded axes have been found in three places in Argyll.
36) At Machrie Moor, Aran, (of an undetermined date) there were ard marks (marks from a simple plow). Also found were ritual timber circles, later stone circles, and stake holes for land division.
37) During the early bronze age, jewelry found in hoards, such as the bronze hoard from Migdale, in northern Scotland, dating to around 2000 BC, included bronze bracelets, earrings, metal and stone beads (Ashmore 1996). "Drawing on evidence from Britain and north-western Europe, we can say with some certainty how people appeared during the era of beakers and bronze.. . . For both men and women there were a variety of tunics and skirts, fastened at the waist, with cloaks and rough shirt-like garments for the upper part of the body. Hair seems to have been worn long. Hats of some description were common. On the eveidence of long pins found beneath their skulls, women may have wound their tresses on top of their heads" (Ross 1998:49).
38) The Kilmartin Valley with its wide range of ritual and burial monuments from before 3000 BC to c. 1200 BC including extensive rock art, such as at Achnabreck, has been called a "ritual landscape" with obvious "intervisibility" between the sites in the landscape (Anna Ritchie 1990:49; Bradley 1997:122).
A detailed chronology of Neolithic and Early Bronze Age Scotland
| Dates BC (Ashmore 1996). Calibrated radiocarbon dates | Description |
| 4000 BC to 3500 BC | Trends: Richard Bradley has argued that an "archaeology of mobility" which focuses on "paths, places and viewpoints" is more appropriate to the Neolithic and Early Bronze Age period since with a few exceptions Atlantic European rock art disappeared with the arrival of a "fully agricultural economy and a network of permanent settlements" (Bradley 1997:6-7). Early farmers in 4000 BC used ards - a simple plow - to grow wheat and barley. Chambered tombs were built in the west and north of Scotland during this millenium. Archaeological sites: Shurton Hill pre-wall soil (Shetland), Knap of Howar midden (Orkney), Tullochs of Assery tombs, Camster pre-tomb activity, Tulloch Wood soil, Fochabers pit, Pitglassie cremation enclosure, Balbridie House, Wardend of Durris activity, Dalladies mortuary house, Douglasmuir enclosure, Pitnacree enclosure, Inchtuthil enclosure, Balfarg Riding School pits, Biggar Common bonfire, Rotten Bottom, bow, Lochhill mortuary house, Ardnadam houses (Argyll), Monamore tomb forecourt, Machrie Moor pits, Port Charlotte, activity before tomb, Newton settlement, Glenbatrick Waterhole settlement, Caisteal nan Gillean shell mound, Templewood timber setting (Argyll), Carding Mill Bat shell midden (Argyll), Alit Chrysal house. |
| 3500 BC to 3000 BC | Trends: Regional diversity increased. The climate was somewhat warmer and wetter than today with a slightly longer growing season than today except for slight deterioration in 3250 BC. "Archaeologists have conjectured that around and after 3000 power was increasingly concentrated in a few hands and that new types of structure and prestigious objects were signs of the rise of chieftans" (Ashmore 1996:43). Archaeological sites: Scourd of Brouster (Shetland), Holm of Papa Westray north (Orkney), Knap of Howar houses, Point of Cott tomb, Tofts Ness settlement, Skara Brae settlement, Barnhouse settlement, Quanterness, Isbister Tomb of the Eagles, Tulloch of Assery B and Tulach an t'Sionnaich, The Ord North, tomb, Achany Glen, Lairg activity, Raigmore pits, Pitglassie enclosure, Den of Boddam (soil below mine waste), Dalladies mortuary house and long barrow, Craig na Caillich (peat below quarry waste), North Mains cremation, Kinloch Farm enclosure, Balfarg Riding School pits, Shell mounds at Mumrills, Inveravon, and Nether Kinnel, Meldon Bridge pits, Beckton Farm settlement, Clochmaben activity, Stoneyburn pit, Dunloskin Wood house, Machrie Moor timber ring, Achnasavil activity, Port Charlotte chambered cairn, Lussa River settlement, Kinloch, Allt Chrysal settlement, Bharpa Carinish settlement, Northton settlement, Bernera Bridge platform, Shulishader axe. |
| 3000 BC to 2500 BC | Trends: People stopped burying their dead in chambered tombs and instead began building large circular ceremonial earthworks. They also began building tall timber and stone rings during this millenium. Previously lower stone rings had been built. Archaeological sites: Scourd of Brouster (Shetland), Sumburgh cist, Holm of Papa Westray North tomb (Orkney), St. Boniface activity, Knap of Howar houses, Links of Noltland settlement, Pierowall tomb after destruction, Point of Cott tomb, Tofts Ness settlement, Quoyness tomb, Knowe of Yarso, Know of Ramsay and Knowe of Rowieger tombs, Sandfiold tomb, Skara Brae settlement, Stones of Stenness, Barnhouse, Maes Howe ditch, Quanterness tomb, Isbister Tomb of the Eagles, Tulach an t'Sionnaich and Tulloch of Assery B, Achany Glen, Lairg activity, Raigmore pits, Fochabers cobbling, Wardend of Durris settlement, Pitnacree cremation, Craig na Caillich, peat below quarry waste, North Mains ceremonial enclosure, Balfarg Riding School mortuary structures and Balfarg ceremonial enclosure, Nether Kinneil shell mound, Green Knowe cairn, Meldon Bridge pits, Beckton Farm settlement, Blackshouse Burn enclosure, Monamore tomb, fire on blocking, Machrie Moor timber ring, Glenbatrick Waterhole, Lussa River settlement, Kinloch Rum activity, Bharpa Carinish settlement. |
| 2500 BC to 2000 BC | Trends: Sometime from 3000 to 2000 BC large stone circles like the Ring of Brodgar in Orkney were built. The Ring of Brodgar had 60 standing stones up to 4.5 m (15 ft) tall, in a circle about 100 m (exactly 340.7 ft) across. Between 200 and 2000 BC climate did not appear to change significantly. Grooved Ware went out of use before 2250 BC and the settlements and ceremonial enclosures associated with them (suggesting centralization of power) were no longer being built. Beakers with simple rims, graceful S-shaped profiles and decorations appeared. Some of these new Beaker styles probably had continental origins (Ashmore 1996:75). Archaeological sites: Ness of Gruting settlement (Shetland), Links of Noltland settlement and midden (Orkney), Point of Cott tomb's animal bones, Point of Buckquoy deer bones, Skara Brae settlement, Stones of Stenness timber structure, Quanterness tomb, Rinyo settlement, Isbister tomb, Tulloch of Assery animal bones, Acha vanich cist, Achaney Glen, Lairg activity, Embo tomb, Fodderty cist, Raigmore pits, Tulloch Wood soils, Fochabers pit, Den of Boddam peat after mining, Tavelty cist, Beech Hill House, Keabog cist, Cookston Farm cist, Brachtullo cist, Middle Brighty Farm cist, North Mains barrow, Collessie dagger, Dalgety Bay pit, Nether Kinneil and Inveravon shell mounds, Dryburn Bridge burials, Ruchlaw Mains cist, Green Knowe cairn, Meldon Bridge pits and enclosure, Beckton Farm settlement, Locharbriggs dugout canoe, Crawford burnt mound, Fall Kneesend pit, Lintshie Gutter settlement, Stair Lodge burnt mound, Kilpatrick precairn activity, Machrie Moor timber ring and fields, Machrie North burnt mound, Distillery cave antler spatulae, Borochill Mhor burnt mound, Ardnave settlement, Sorisdale grave, Kinloch Rum activity. |
| 2000 BC to 1500 BC | Trends: During this millennium the climate began oscillating . After 2000 BC, pastures, rough grazing, and fields replaced forest in many areas. Small settlements appeared with the first well dated roundhouses. Both cremations and inhumations were buried with beakers or food vessels. The earliest metalwork hoard consisting of beads is dated c. 2000 BC and long distance trade or gift exchange occurred with metal weapons and tools and ornaments of jet, lignite, and shale. Archaeological sites: Scord of Brouster settlement (Shetland), Ness of Gruting settlement, Tougs settlement, Sumburg settlement, Point of Cott tomb animal bones (Orkney), Tofts Ness settlement, Birsay small sites, Sandfold burial, Beaquoy house, Mousland cairn, Isbister burial, Cheleamy cist, Cnoc Stanger activity, The Ord North cremation, Kilearnan Hill cairn, Achany Glen, Lairg cist, settlement, burnt mound and cremation, Migdale Bronze hoard, Dridgad Cottage cist, Raigmore pits, Mains of Balnagowan cist, Tulloch Wood soils, Fetterangus cist, Berrybrae cairn pits, Sketewan cairn, Cookston Farm cist, Dalladies burial, Balneaves burial enclosure, Boysack Mill cist, Knockenny Farm cist, Loanleven burial enclosure, Almondbank cists, North Mains barrow, cist and burial enclosure, Gairneybank Farm cists, Aberdour Road cist, Dryburn Bridge burials, Green Knowe cairn, Denny longbow, Rough Castle field systems, Weird Law burial enclosure, Crawford burnt mound, Stoneyburn cairn, Bodsberry Hill settlement, Lintshie Gutter settlement, Park of Tongland cairn, Dervaird 2 burnt mound, Cruise 1 burnt mound, Machrie North burntmound, Tormore house, Balloch Hill burial, Kentraw burials, Traigh Bhan burials, Ardnave settlement, Kilealian settlement, North Cairn activity, Kilmartin Quarry burials, Loch Nell ox yoke, Black Crofts fields, Acharn cairn, Rosinish, Baleshare midden, Loch Paible midden, The Udal, midden, Northton settlement, Kneep burials. |
1500 BC to 1000 BC |
Trends: This 500 year period is characterized by "undefended settlements and intensifying agriculture" (Ashmore 1996:102). Intensification in eastern Scotland had probably become necessary because of some failures of soil management and continuing population growth. By 750 BC the climate was wetter and cooler and peat growth started or accelerated. Stone plowshares and cereal pollen in Shetland, and an ox yoke found in the Orkneys, indicates farming in the far north. Two houses with pot boilers and burnt stones indicate one of the techniques of cooking. Both crouched burial inhumation and cremation were practiced and low mounds and cairns with pockets of cremated bone have been found from this period. Roundhouses have been found in settlements from this period. Archaeological sites: Kebister settlement (Shetland), Tougs settlement, Pool of Virkie midden, St. Boniface settlement (Orkney), Rapness cairn, White Moss ox-yoke, Quoyscottie mound, Tofts Ness settlement, Holland burials, Skaill burials, Tulloch of Assery A burial, Cnoc Stanger activity, Upper Suisgill settlement, Craggie Water burnt mound, Kilearnan Hill settlement, Achany Glen, Lairg burnt mound and settlement, Raigmore pits, Culbin sands fields, Tulloch Wood fields, Rattray fields, Sands of Forvie soil, Scotstown cist, Skewtewan cairn, Beech Hill House cairn, Carn Dubh settlement, Reswallie Mains cist, Norht Mains cremation, Balfarg Riding School pit, Ashgrove cist, Bannockburn, Longniddry cist, Eildon Hill settlement, Green Knowe cairn and settlement, Meldon Bridge cremations, Lintshie Gutter settlement, Muirhead burnt mound, Carronbridge cremation, Park of Tongland cairn, Dervaird burnt mound, Gabsnout burnt mound, Tormore prehouse, Kilpatrick house, Cul a' Bhaile house, Traigh Bhan burials, An Sithean soil, Templewood cairns (Argyll) , Kilmartin cremations (Argyll), Claggan cairn, Sheader midden, Baleshare, midden, The Udal midden. |
Reconstructing Daily Life in Neolithic and Early Bronze Age Scotland
Janet Spector (1993) has suggested that preparing a synthesis in the form of a fictional account that reconstructs the daily life of a person living in the past is a useful writing exercise for archaeologists who otherwise tend to produce dry lists of artifacts and write site descriptions that few would want to read. Stepping back from a focus on sites and artifacts and composing such an imaginative narrative about the daily life of an individual avoids the "facelessness" of most archaeological writing. It is akin to drawing an artistic impression or artistic reconstruction of a site. A verbal sketch in fictionalized narrative form sometimes highlights the many details and "small things forgotten" that we do not yet know from artifact lists and compilations of site data (Deetz 1977). Probably most archaeologists do some kind of synthesizing in their heads about what daily life was like from the artifacts they excavate without necessarily making the process explicit.
Unless an artist drawing a picture wants to leave large parts of the page blank, missing information must be filled in with something. A "day-in-the-life" synthesis fills in the blanks by supplying a view of the past which is at some level dependent upon ethnographic analogy, the researcher's own cultural background and personal experiences, and judgments about "uniformitarian" behaviors that exist today which might also have been at work in the past. The exercise of filling in the blanks highlights the process of making assumptions and forces some conclusions about what is most likely among competing possibilities.
An obvious problem with describing daily life in Scotland is that it was an environmentally and culturally diverse country. With no surviving written language and a history of later invasions it would be difficult to know how people actually spoke in Neolithic Scotland (Ritchie and Breeze 1990:19). To construct a narrative with what little archaeological evidence physically survived 3000 to 6000 years (and also survived the process of publication so that it is available in print) requires drawing upon descriptions of excavations from different locations. Sites representing different families and centuries are of conjoined.
Much of the underlying raw archaeological data can be found above in sources such as Ashmore (1996) and from descriptions and photographs of various artifacts such as: the bronze hoard from Migdale in northern Scotland, dating to around 2000 BC; the grave-pit in the center of the cairn at Harehope in southern Scotland; the Dunloskin Wood house in Argyll from around 3250 BC; the Ardnadam, Cowal houses in Argyll dating from about 3699 BC to 3342 BC; the Skara Brae settlement; the skeletal evidence from the Tomb of the Eagles, Isbister, Orkney, etc.
Imagining a day in the life of an early Bronze Age rock artist: a fictionalized narrative based upon recovered artifacts
The family of the old woman lived near a river in a small circular house constructed from sturdy oak timbers sunk into the ground, with a thatched roof and walls made of wattle. The floor was cobbled by her late husband and then covered with oak planking from trees he felled and shaped with a polished stone ax made in Ireland. The ax was brought across the water by traders paddling and sailing a leather boat using a hide sail.
He had also obtained from them two valuable narrow-butted, bronze flat axes, one of which he always carried in his leather belt. The tin to make the Irish bronze had come all the way from Galacia. The shiny metal ax with its short oak handle was part of his everyday dress as an adult man and over time he became quite attached to it. Wearing it clearly indicated to everyone that he was able to defend both himself and his family. The bronze ax became the farmer's symbol for a life of struggle against the external world, with obstacles both natural and human. The distinctive shape of a bronze ax was occasionally carved into the stone that covered a farmer's burial cist.
A metal ax was a practical tool for many everyday tasks, such as occasionally finishing off the wounded deer, wild cattle, geese, ducks, and swans which he hunted at 60 meters with a yew longbow and leaf shaped arrowheads knapped from local chert beach pebbles. Too many arrows were lost in the floor of the mixed oak forest to use anything but locally available stone for arrowheads. Her husband had wanted to trade two of his wife's pendants made of ivory and pig's tusk for an Irish ax of polished porcellanite but the offer was declined. The Irish traders explained that they had their own pigs at home.
On most mornings, the ache of arthritis in the old woman's hands, wrists, elbows, and knees and a poorly healed fracture of her ankle made the thought of getting out of her warm bed, into the chilly air before dawn, an unpleasant prospect. She thought about how as a young mother she sometimes had to lie in bed the whole day to keep her sick infants warm. Losing too much of one's body heat was a common cause of death in old people and infants. Eventually, the old woman pulled back the heavy pile of lamb fleeces and supple deer and calve hides and with some difficulty arose from her soft bed of heather and straw positioned to the left of the front door. Approaching the central hearth she pulled bird eggs from the ash and placed birch kindling, dried dung, and spruce driftwood onto the embers to revive the fire and heat up stones for boiling. Outside the house she kept a stack of beautifully split hazel logs which she used for guests and special occasions. She placed a thin walled pot with pickled meat and a dish of oysters, winkles, and cockles by the fire and adjusted hanging strips of mutton and cod to dry in the smoke.
She had hurt her back carrying her second child, who died in infancy, and so felt stiff walking over the oak plank floor to the dresser against the wall. She splashed cold water on her face from a wooden bowl decorated with horizontal lines and v's. Even though they were still cold, she put three narrow bronze bracelets and one flat, ridged bracelet onto each of her thin wrists and put on her basket shaped gold earrings. Bypassing the necklace made of beads fashioned from tubes of decorated sheet metal, and bypassing her necklace of brown and yellow shells, she picked out a necklace made of polished soapstone, placed it around her neck, and combed her graying hair with a carved whale bone comb sanded smooth with pumice which had drifted ashore from Iceland. She wore her long hair up on top of her head and held it in place with long pins. Her leather tunics and skirts were fastened at the waist and although her shirts were good at repelling water in the increasingly wet and windy climate they did not hold in body heat very well. She found herself wearing her oiled cloak and her furs for more months out of the year. In the cubicles of her dresser she kept a wide assortment of bone and stone tools in straw baskets for repairing the family's clothing. Making and repairing clothes required sharp tools for cutting, boring, piercing, scraping, and pounding leather and for attaching conical shale and jet buttons. Some of her hide scrapers were made from quartz because of its durability but nothing was quite as sharp as her flint blades.
To spare her damaged lungs, Lilygra usually worked in the morning on the porch just outside the front door to get away from the hearth. A lifetime of inhaling smoke had given her a raspy cough and dulled both her sense of taste and smell. She liked food with a strong taste and was used to the smell from the pigs and sheep kept in the outdoor enclosure. She did not look forward to the task of bending over to grind the family's wheat and barley into flour with her rubbing stone and saddle quern. The heavy stones were worn smooth from daily use. Her back, knees, neck, arms and hands ached after what seemed like ever shorter periods of time on her knees grinding grain. Even though she tried to be careful, with her eyesight worsening, occasionally small bits of stone got into the flour and caused tooth damage and pitting of the tooth enamel. Dental problems could be painful and occasionally even fatal. Impacted wisdom teeth, tumors, and tooth infections were painful realities for some people living in their valley.
A consolation to her for her hard daily work was the view down the inlet to the whitecaps on the sea. A large sea eagle flew overhead searching for food. The sea eagle was older than many of the people she knew and had a wingspan longer than the height of the tallest person in her family. The bird glided back and forth on the air currents looking for cod as the rising sun gradually changed the color of the sea from black to grey and then deep blue. The cold and damp and the long dark northern winters made Lilygra hungry for longer periods of sunlight. The shortness of the winter daylight was a real problem for both her mood and her hands.
When Lilygra had rickets as a child, her mother was told by a midwife to pass her through a hole in a standing stone and then lay her out in the sun for several hours. After a few days this relieved her symptoms and eventually cured the problem.
Every morning Lilygra fetched water carrying a heavy water vessel home on her back using a leather band that went across her forehead attached to rope made of twisted heather. She needed to sharpen her hardest stone awl to punch the holes through the wet rawhide for the heather rope to pass through. Even though she tried to cushion the rawhide strap with fleece the daily trips were beginning to show up as an ever so slight change in the shape of her forehead. She collected drinking water from a nearby spring using a finely made round-bottomed clay pot. If she was tired she brought a lighter animal skin. For cooking large animals, or to take a hot bath, she used the stone pot boiler next to the house and dropped heated stones into it with a wooden pitchfork. The clay for her everyday pots came from the banks of the river and they were tempered with crushed shell, old vessels, and crushed rock taken from volcanic extrusions. She fired them using a huge driftwood fire of spruce and larch. The round bottomed vessels had an angled shoulder and were decorated with a linear pattern impressed into the clay. Her fingerprints and some charred barley had been accidentally fired into the interior of the pot when she made it. Stored in some of her pots was fermenting barley used to make a thick, mushy kind of beer.
After checking for theft during the night of any of the penned cattle and sheep in their wooden enclosures, Lilygra passed the farthest and strongest smelling fenced enclosure with their two valuable pigs. These smart but unruly creatures were much trouble to keep penned. The pigs would be roasted during a famine or a funeral feast.
Lilygra was 45 years old and was the oldest living member of her family and a grandmother. She was nearing the end of her life. Most women did not live past their early twenties and many died during childbirth. Most men did not live much longer.
In the summer she held her arthritic hands against the south-facing standing stones in the valley. The upright stones became hot on summer days and the penetrating heat helped reduce arthritic pain. After the air temperature dropped at dusk the air around the stones shimmered and attracted small animals and chirping insects. The stones absorbed and reflected heat from the central fire. Everyone in the area knew not to build the fires too close to the stones to avoid cracking them. These "living stones" and boulders were useful during midwinter gatherings and during healing ceremonies. People periodically fell ill and began shaking from rampant malaria.
Spirals were carved near the base of the standing stones in the valley to commemorate successful returns from the otherworld. Reversed spirals also represented the sun's movement during the year. Anyone who could help mothers deliver a baby or heal the sick was in great demand. The latter were considered the community's religious leaders. They faced physical and mental dangers on behalf of others and were thought to be able to enter and emerge from rock and intercede with the underground spirits that caused sickness. They also had knowledge about the minerals, plants, and ceremonies useful in curing the sick.
During annual celebrations local musicians used special boulders that made a metallic musical tone when tapped, to beat out a rhythm. They also played bird bone flutes, drums, rattles and bronze horns. These musical instruments, including the boulders, were used during weddings and other social gatherings at bonfires.
Away from the fields, on the trail up the hill and facing the sea, was a flat expanse of open bedrock with carved cup and rings. From this rock other important features in the landscape could be seen, such as the sea and other bedrock sites with carvings. In this area the ancestral burial tomb was located down in the river valley. Inside the tomb were also some large reused stones with old cup and rings. The cup and rings were an important spiritual symbol representing many things including the movement of the sun and moon around the earth; the number of child births a mother had; the death of a particular individual and hope for rebirth; the repeating cycles of time, the passage of the seasons, rain falling in cycles from the sky into a pool of water; the origins of life long ago, and many other things, some of which were kept secret and some of which were known to everyone. Lilygra carved a cupmark when her husband died and made a circle for each of their children who had reached adulthood and had children of their own. She carved a line from the cup mark to a long deep crack in the bedrock and enhanced the crack by widening it so that her cup and rings were tied to all the other cup and rings in the large open expanse of rock. The crack was believed to be an entrance to the underworld and a place from which souls emerged from the earth. After carving the rock she pushed a bit of animal fat along with a piece of moss and set it on fire. It burned down in about an hour and a half and began to audibly sputter. She added more animal fat every hour and kept it going throughout the night during her period of mourning.
Lilygra usually rested in the afternoon after returning from fetching water by carving beads for her necklaces and stitching and embossing soft calve and lambskins from which various skirts, shirts, and hoods were made. By sitting next to the front door on a stool she could watch the sea and still smell the unleavened bread baking in a small clay oven made from flat slabs of stone. Later she would make a beef stew with roasted meat and wild turnips.
There was more to Lilygra's life than doing chores looking after animals and handling the problems of the farm. Her sons and daughters did most of the crop work in the spring and summer. Her sons cleared small patches of new land as the old became exhausted and handled the ox which pulled the ard to plow the fields. Manuring seemed to hold off the decreasing fertility of the land but eventually they would have to move.
If it was not too cold, she would go to bonfires in the valley carrying a pine pitch torch or an animal fat lamp. Entertaining stories and myths were eloquently told and retold during these winter months. Dancers imitated familiar physical movements of deer prancing, birds, and fish. The sound of the bronze, bone, and stone musical instruments, the singing and the beer and mead broke up the long winter nights.
Lilygra knew all the old beliefs surrounding the circular patterns visible on her palms and on the ends of her hard working and often dirty hands. Any spirals or natural markings on the body were noted and thought important as signs. One of the first things midwives commented upon with newborn babies were their hands and fingers. One of the proofs to her father that she was indeed related to him was because, as he reminded everyone, she had the slight family crook in the last phalange on both of her center fingers.
As a child Lilygra worked for months to carry flat stones up the hill from the sea to repair the ancestral family burial tomb and to build the underground pit that stored the harvest of grain. Frequently during the trip she had to put down the heavy flagstones and rest. The skin at the base of her fingers and upper palms turned white from compression and eventually went numb and blistered from carrying the heavy flat stones. As a child she frequently looked at her hands to check for blisters and cuts and noted the lines, circles, spirals, and swirls on her hands. She frequently rubbed her hands together to get the circulation back and wondered at the red blood flowing back under the white skin. Carrying stones too far without a break was painful and with so many flagstones to be carried up the hill she examined her dusty hands many times and was aware of all their markings. She was aware of the white flecks in her fingernails which always appeared when she hadn't had enough food to eat and took six months to grow out and disappear.
Having many children was of value on the farm. As a teenager Lilygra hoped every stone she had carried might transfer the soul of a new life to her. More children increased the physical power of the family for defense. Children playing along the seashore were given wooden buckets to pick up oysters and razorfish, winkles, cockles, and limpets and to call someone if any dead seals or whales washed ashore. It was the responsibility of the adult children to care for the old.
Lilygra's family venerated a grove of old oak trees on top of the hill. Due to their size the trees were surmised to be some kind of ancestral spirit beings, and therefore might have been some past family members. The acorns the trees produced were useful and were collected every year in baskets. Ground hazelnuts were sometimes cooked with wheat on a flat stone in animal fat or bird oil to make a fried pancake.
The entrance to Lilygra's family ancestral earth tomb had been carefully designed to allow sunlight in to the rear of the structure at sunrise on the shortest days of the year. The tomb was built of earth and stone and turf to resemble a pregnant mother's womb. From it one could see a stone circle in the distance at just about the furthest distance one could see with good eyesight. Recently her family had started to cremate their bodies or to place them in individual graves. Burying family members in stone cists with their legs pulled up was often difficult because rigor mortis set in so quickly after death.
Time and the monthly calendar were kept by being aware of the nightly phase of the moon. The moon reflected light, but not heat, was visible during both the night and day, and was constantly changing shape. The sun was always circular and gave off heat and light. Everyone knew that the sun and moon were powerful spirits in the sky. The sun was a male spirit and each year warmed the female Earth. This brought new life in the spring in the form of plants emerging out of the soil. The sun light filled the back of the tomb on the shortest day of the year through a slit over the door. At other times of the year this space was filled in with a solid block of white quartz. This yearly impregnation would help the part of the soul of ancestors that resided in bone to transmigrate into mothers wishing to have a baby. The changing moon was continually being reborn and dying and was represented by a flat death stone atop the tomb with cup marks. These represented their rebirth from the part of the ancestors soul that dwelled underground.
Lilygra spent most of the long daylight hours in the summer weeding and doing spade cultivation in the cereal fields and was usually too tired to fish at night with her husband. Usually the sea was calmer at night, and was less windy. He fished at sea with a torch in the small dugout canoe. One night, her husband disappeared after a sudden squall. The canoe was found later on the beach along with a large saithe, a ballon wrasse and a rockling. He regularly fished up to five miles out to sea with a hook and line using shellfish as bait and closer to shore with a baited dropnet. Cod, ling, turbot, flounder, conger eels, and halibut were his favorite offshore fish.
Lilygra memories of setting her babies bodies out in the middle of the local henge, a kind of reeking open cemetery, for the sea eagles and vultures to deflesh. She believed that that this would help to carry their souls skyward for part of their journey after death. It was necessary for some part of their soul to visit the moon if they were to be reborn into another body. Seven days after setting them out she returned to the henge to retrieve what was left of their small bones and to remove any remaining flesh for disposal at sea. After leaving the bones to dry and bleach in the sun for another month she wrapped up the remains for reburial in the family's ancestral tomb.
The symbol of her family were the little dogs they bred which helped with controlling the sheep, goats, and cattle. When these dogs died their remains were treated in the same manner as any other member of the family and their bones were also placed inside the ancestral tomb.
Her family believed that sometimes a deceased person came back as one of these dogs and so the dogs were treated very well. They were not eaten excerpt in a severe famine. Usually other food was available such as fish, oysters, shellfish, wheat and barley cereals, hazelnuts, acorns, birds eggs, otter, cows, sheep, pigs, seabirds, dried whale and seal meat, and wild deer. The seasonal cod migration which had brought their ancestors to this area in the first place still provided a major source of food.
The cupmarks that marked deaths were also the place where the first fruits of the season were placed. This was the best spot for communication with the underworld. The carvings were also always situated with a view of the sea and looked like drops of water with expanding rings. The cup marks were carved by noisily pounding the same spot for five to ten minutes with a hammer stone. At night this pounding could be heard far out to sea. In an emergency, when fishermen did not return at night, animal and fish oil were poured into them along with a dried moss or juniper wick and then lit. These burned for between an hour and an hour-and-a-half, and would sputter before going out. By adding a dab of cow or sheep fat or fish oil, the cups could be kept burning all night by one person. Once lit, these cupmarks were very hard to blow out even in a high wind and were not dependent upon driftwood that could be soaked in a downpour. Fat and fish oil were a good food offering to the spirits that assisted fishermen. An expanse of cupmarked bedrock lit up in this fashion was very impressive and in some locations could shine out to sea along the disorienting shoreline - indicating the way home.
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