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Britain's Ancient Capital: Secrets Of Orkney

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Howburn Digger H
Howburn Digger Jan 19, 2017 12:21:10
Replying to spencer

spencer wrote:
Have any artifacts from such places of contemporary date been found elsewhere on Orkney, or Shetland for that matter...or, indeed, in Denmark?
It goes considerably earlier than that. I am a bit perturbed at this whole Orkney-centric broohaha being generated by the Ness dig and anxious archeos trying to elbow in on the fuss.

The earliest known continental crossings into Scotland/ North Britain were done about 9 or 10 thousand years before. The Hamburg-ish People crossed from Germany and Denmark dryshod (might have been a little marshy in places). This wouldn't have been a one off, it would have been a seasonal, semi-permanent state of affairs. As the available routes across what is now the North Sea changed so the patterns of seasonal migration and settlent would have changed.

Late Upper Paleolithic Hamburg People tanged tools found here in Biggar at Howburn Farm. 14, 000 years old.

http://www.biggararchaeology.org.uk/news03_109_howburn.shtml

This Secrets Of Orkney programme seems to suggest a sudden wave of boats full of voles and stone builders setting off from Rotterdam on the high tide around 3,500 BCE.
The Ness is a very interesting site (I love what appears to be domestic RA), but the whole Orkney-centric "turn-everything-on-its-head" seems a little over-egged perhaps.

W wideford
wideford Jan 19, 2017 17:34:51
Replying to Howburn Digger

I wonder if the Ness is truly unique "At the end of January 1901 "A tremendous sea came over the banks which was the means of exposing a great lot of the old buildings below the brae and beautifully shows the under midden". The words of Mr William G.T. Watt in a letter to J.W. Cursiter who "visited the place and found the midden was about 100 feet long, 3 feet deep in the centre, tapering to each end and almost entirely composed of the bones of Bos (primogenius?), chiefly jaws and horn cores. In March 1903 high seas washed away the midden but revealed building below it built on the rock..." This at Skerrabrae