Liddle Burnt Mound is a Bronze Age site on the island of South Ronaldsay, Orkney. The site consists of the remains of a building and a mound that surrounds it on three sides. [1] The purpose of the site is controversial, but most investigators believe burnt mounds hosted a "domestic function", [2] perhaps related to cooking.
The Liddle Burnt Mound is located on Liddle Farm; the farmer, Ronald Simison, had been using the mound as a quarry for road metal until he came across stone structures in 1972. [3] He alerted Colin Renfrew who was excavating at Quanterness. John Hedges, a member of his team, investigated the site and recognized the remains of a stone building at the centre of the mound. The building is oval with thick external walls. From these, interior walls project into the main room creating compartments, one of which houses a hearth. [1] In the centre of the structure is a large recessed, stone tank, lined with flagstones and rendered waterproof by the surrounding clay. [3] The capacity of the tank is nearly one thousand litres and it was found half filled with stones that were shattered and "fired" by intense heat. [4] Hedges originally thought that the building represented a house, but he was troubled by the distribution of features; for example, there is no obvious place to sleep. [4]
The surrounding mound still rises to a height of 2 metres (6.6 ft) in places, and calculations suggest an original volume of at least 200 cubic metres (7,100 cu ft). [5] It consists primarily of shattered stone, charcoal, and ash. Artifacts recovered from the mound include hammerstones, pot lids and pottery. These items, combined with the tank and hearth found in the building, suggest that the site was used for cooking. [3] Burnt bones of goat and sheep support this interpretation, [6] which was put to the test with an experiment in Orkney where a leg of lamb was cooked in a stone tank heated by a peat fire. [7]
Dating of materials excavated from the mound indicate that the site was in use between 1200 and 500 BC. [8]
There are more than 200 known burnt mounds in Orkney and almost as many known in Shetland. [3] They are also found throughout the British Isles. O'Kelly suggested that burnt mounds represent temporary hunting camps used for cooking joints of meat. [9] However, bone is only occasionally reported from burnt mound sites, as at Liddle, which might seem unusual for a cooking site. This has been explained by the soils being too acidic for the bone to be preserved, but it would seem unlikely that all of the soils relating to burnt mounds were so acidic that no bone survived, particularly as the pH of the soil will vary considerably from site to site. There are examples of burnt mounds on neutral or basic soils, without bone being apparent. [10] It has also been suggested that burnt mounds were saunas or used in salt or leather preparation. [11]
Liddle Farm is also the site of Isbister Chambered Cairn, popularly known as the Tomb of the Eagles.
Maeshowe is a Neolithic chambered cairn and passage grave situated on Mainland Orkney, Scotland. It was probably built around 2800 BC. In the archaeology of Scotland, it gives its name to the Maeshowe type of chambered cairn, which is limited to Orkney.
Skara Brae is a stone-built Neolithic settlement, located on the Bay of Skaill on the west coast of Mainland, the largest island in the Orkney archipelago of Scotland. Consisting of ten clustered houses, made of flagstones, in earthen dams that provided support for the walls; the houses included stone hearths, beds, and cupboards. A primitive sewer system, with "toilets" and drains in each house, carried effluent to the ocean.
The Ring of Brodgar is a Neolithic henge and stone circle about 6 miles north-east of Stromness on Mainland, the largest island in Orkney, Scotland. It is part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site known as the Heart of Neolithic Orkney.
South Ronaldsay is one of the Orkney Islands off the north coast of Scotland. It is linked to the Orkney Mainland by the Churchill Barriers, running via Burray, Glimps Holm and Lamb Holm.
Jarlshof is the best known prehistoric archaeological site in Shetland, Scotland. It lies in Sumburgh, Mainland, Shetland and has been described as "one of the most remarkable archaeological sites ever excavated in the British Isles". It contains remains dating from 2500 BC up to the 17th century AD.
Unstan ware is the name used by archaeologists for a type of finely made and decorated Neolithic pottery from the 4th and 3rd millennia BC. Typical are elegant and distinctive shallow bowls with a band of grooved patterning below the rim, a type of decoration which was created using a technique known as "stab-and-drag". A second version consists of undecorated, round-bottomed bowls. Some of the bowls had bits of volcanic rock included in the clay to make them stronger. Bone tools were used to burnish the surfaces to make them shiny and impermeable.
The Standing Stones of Stenness is a Neolithic monument five miles northeast of Stromness on the mainland of Orkney, Scotland. This may be the oldest henge site in the British Isles. Various traditions associated with the stones survived into the modern era and they form part of the Heart of Neolithic Orkney World Heritage Site. They are looked after by Historic Environment Scotland as a scheduled monument.
Fulacht fiadh is the name given to one of many burned mounds, dating from the Bronze Age, found in Ireland. Most surviving examples consist of a low horseshoe-shaped mound of charcoal-enriched soil, and heat shattered stone, with a cooking pit located in a slight depression at its centre. In ploughed fields, they are apparent as black spreads of earth interspersed with small sharp stones.
An earth oven, ground oven or cooking pit is one of the simplest and most ancient cooking structures. At its most basic, an earth oven is a pit in the ground used to trap heat and bake, smoke, or steam food. Earth ovens have been used in many places and cultures in the past, and the presence of such cooking pits is a key sign of human settlement often sought by archaeologists. Earth ovens remain a common tool for cooking large quantities of food where no equipment is available. They have been used in various civilizations around the world and are still commonly found in the Pacific region to date.
A burnt mound is an archaeological feature consisting of a mound of shattered stones and charcoal, normally with an adjacent hearth and trough. The trough could be rock-cut, wood-lined or clay-lined to ensure it was watertight. Radiocarbon dates vary quite widely, the earliest being late Neolithic, with clusters of dates between 1900 and 1500 BC and 1200–800 BC, with some outliers in the Iron Age. There are also some dates that go into the Early Middle Ages. The technology used at burnt mounds has much greater antiquity and is found from the Palaeolithic onwards.
The Tomb of the Eagles, or Isbister Chambered Cairn, is a Neolithic chambered tomb located on a cliff edge at Isbister on South Ronaldsay in Orkney, Scotland. The site was discovered by Ronald Simison, a farmer, when digging flagstones in 1958; he conducted a limited excavation and removed some bones and skulls at that time but filled in the site with dirt. A more extensive excavation was started in 1976, and "an enormous amount of material was removed", according to a report published in 2002.
The Dwarfie Stane is a megalithic chambered tomb carved out of a titanic block of Devonian Old Red Sandstone located in a steep-sided glaciated valley between the settlements of Quoys and Rackwick on Hoy, an island in Orkney, Scotland. The stone is a glacial erratic located in desolate peatland. The site is managed by Historic Environment Scotland.
Bimbister is a village on the Orkney Islands, Scotland. The A986 is the main road through the village. The Bronze Age cemetery, the Knowes of Trotty, which includes twelve surviving burial mounds, lies to the east of the village. Bimbister is within the parish of Birsay and Harray.
Prehistoric Orkney refers only to the prehistory of the Orkney archipelago of Scotland that begins with human occupation. Although some records referring to Orkney survive that were written during the Roman invasions of Scotland, “prehistory” in northern Scotland is defined as lasting until the start of Scotland's Early Historic Period.
Irish cuisine is the style of cooking that originated from the island of Ireland or was developed by Irish people. It has evolved from centuries of social and political change and the mixing of the different cultures in Ireland, predominantly from nearby Britain and other European regions. The cuisine is founded upon the crops and animals farmed in its temperate climate and the abundance of fresh fish and seafood from the surrounding waters of the Atlantic Ocean. Chowder, for example, is popular around the coasts.
Midhowe Chambered Cairn is a large Neolithic chambered cairn located on the south shore of the island of Rousay, Orkney, Scotland. The name "Midhowe" comes from the Iron Age broch known as Midhowe Broch, that lies just west of the tomb. The broch got its name from the fact that it's the middle of three such structures that lie grouped within 500 metres (1,600 ft) of each other and Howe from the Old Norse word haugr meaning mound or barrow. Together, the broch and chambered cairn form part of a large complex of ancient structures on the shore of Eynhallow Sound separating Rousay from Mainland, Orkney.
Unstan is a Neolithic chambered cairn located about 2 mi (3 km) north-east of Stromness on Mainland, Orkney, Scotland. The tomb was built on a promontory that extends into the Loch of Stenness near the settlement of Howe. Unstan is notable as an atypical hybrid of the two main types of chambered cairn found in Orkney, and as the location of the first discovery of a type of pottery that now bears the name of the tomb. The site is in the care of Historic Environment Scotland as a scheduled monument.
Prehistoric art in Scotland is visual art created or found within the modern borders of Scotland, before the departure of the Romans from southern and central Britain in the early fifth century CE, which is usually seen as the beginning of the early historic or Medieval era. There is no clear definition of prehistoric art among scholars and objects that may involve creativity often lack a context that would allow them to be understood.
The Knowes of Trotty is a Bronze Age cemetery located in Mainland, Orkney in Scotland. The ancient site consists of a group of twelve surviving burial mounds, dating to 2030–1770 BC. Along with cremated human remains, four gold discs and a number of amber beads and pendants were discovered in the largest mound in 1858. Knowes of Trotty is one of the earliest group of burial mounds in Orkney and one of the largest Bronze Age cemeteries in the United Kingdom.
Quanterness chambered cairn is a Neolithic burial monument located on Mainland, Orkney in Scotland. An Iron Age roundhouse built into the cairn was discovered during excavation in the early 1970s. The dwelling was constructed around 700 BC. Also found during excavation, were the remains of 157 people, pottery remnants and other artefacts. Historic Environment Scotland established the site as a scheduled monument in 1929.