I have two tokens for the lockers at my local swimming pool. One from the sports centre itself, one from the Prehistoric Society. Only recently did I realise how closely these two, apparently disparate, organisations are related. Both draw upon 5000-year-old art for inspiration. That from the Prehistoric Society is a realistic representation of three interlocking spirals carved upon the great entrance stone at Newgrange passage tomb, by the River Boyne, Ireland. The other, from the Pickaquoy Centre looks surprisingly similar. Given that a nearby prehistoric mound yielded a piece of decorated stone in the 1850s you would be forgiven for thinking, as I initially did, that the design is taken from this. The reality, however, is a bit more complex.

The carving on the Pickaquoy Stone is also curvilinear, but, instead of incorporating complex spirals like the Newgrange slab, it comprises a single motif: a central pecked cup mark, around which some make out three complete concentric circles and an incomplete fourth, though a recent rendition suggests that it may be a single spiral. It would appear that the designer of the Pickaquoy Centre logo, while inspired by the local art, turned to Ireland for inspiration to create their own.

It is an interesting development of a tradition that has persisted for some 5000 years. There are indeed several carved stones in Orkney that date to this period and appear to provide evidence of thematic links in expression between Orkney and Neolithic Ireland. The Pierowall Stone, discovered in the 1980’s in Westray, makes use of a complex pattern of double spirals, while simpler conjoined spirals and concentric circles also appear on a stone from Neolithic passage tomb in Eday that was demolished in the 1820s. There are other examples, including an elaborately decorated pottery sherd from the Neolithic village of Skara Brae which bears interlocking lozenges and spirals. None mimic the three spirals from Newgrange specifically, though it is clear that the inhabitants of Neolithic Orkney were aware, at least at some levels, of the wider world of the Neolithic across the British Isles

It is not, however, a tradition that shows any sign of continuity through the ages. The recent occurrences of the symbols carry their own symbolism and meanings and we know nothing of the precise weight and connotations of these designs in the past. Beyond deducing the fact that they were significant, our interpretations of the Neolithic design and art can never rise above academic (or other) narrative (helpful as that may be).

Nevertheless, I find the longevity of the inspiration strangely moving, even if the original meaning has long gone. Not only was the twentieth-century designer of the Pickaquoy Centre logo finding local roots in prehistory. But, like their Neolithic predecessors, they turned further afield to seek stimulation for their creation. When they sought to follow the vision of those who helped to create the monuments of Neolithic Ireland, they were merely following in the footsteps of their predecessors some 5000 years ago. It is interesting that the design gurus of the Prehistoric Society did likewise in looking for inspiration for their own logo in the 1980s. Deliberate or not, both provide a masterful indication of the way in which the past remains alive in the present.

There is a further, smaller, twist to the story. By drawing upon the Newgrange symbols for their logo, the Pickaquoy Centre has unknowingly created a local myth. I’ve been told many times that they made use of a local carved stone for their design. As we have seen that is not quite the whole story, but it is a good evocation of the way in which truth and fiction become entwined when we are creating our past narratives.

We have a very short-term relationship with material culture these days. Nothing lasts for long and we are ever keen to seek a new version, the most up to date model. It is true with regard to both our largest and our smallest possessions. The oldest things I own date back to the early twentieth century, though they do have strong family associations. There is a carved and worn wooden bread board, and an elaborate brass-decorated barometer. Neither has much intrinsic value, but they are significant for me because of the image they evoke of my grandfather’s house in London, and the people therein. These items are not even that old, a mere hundred years or so. My house is a bit older than that, some 160 years, but it has only been my house for less than 20 years.

A book I have been reading has got me thinking about a time when houses were something very different. Mark Edmonds’ Orcadia, Land Sea and Stone in Neolithic Orkney, takes us back some 5500 years to a place where, he suggests, houses were more of a skin, an outer definition of family, an evocation of your lineage and ancestors.

Today we have commoditised everything. Perhaps even our relationships, certainly our possessions. We easily discard what we have and change it at the drop of a hat. Goods hold little intrinsic value, instead they facilitate our lifestyle and our image. We do not wish to be out of date.  Such is our reliance on technology that change is often forced on us as operating systems are updated, or objects no longer serve their function.

Even our homes rarely last. Some of us move on every few years or so, few people stay at the same address for more than twenty years, and we speak with awe of those who have inhabited the same property for more than forty years. Imagine then a time when your home was a given, something built generations ago and inherently bound into your lineage. It might change, even adapt to accommodate new generations, new needs, but it was you.

It is a complicated idea to grasp (hopefully I have got it right). Perhaps we can begin to approach it through a consideration of the castles and stately homes that still exist within the countryside today. Many lie uninhabited, often ruinous, but in their heyday they comprised nodes within a mesh, a network of significant human relations that gave order to society. Though once a stable and familiar norm that transcended the generations, it was not without its problems, I know, but sadly that network has now collapsed.

Though the details of prehistoric society were very different, Edmonds postulates a similar association across generations and community between the well-built stone houses of late Neolithic Orkney and the inhabitants of the islands. It is hard to contemplate the idea that your house might be more than just a symbol of ‘how you live now’. Something that encapsulates not just your parents and grandparents (if only), but generations long gone. Generations who have disappeared into the mists of myth and story.

It is an idea I like to think about.

Few of us would seek to set up that sort of longevity today. And many details of the system Edmonds posits remain unclear. What happened as children multiplied? Did the formation of family partnerships introduce any sort of mobility?  How big was a family? How many generations? Would the system work in places (like most of the rest of Britain) where houses were built of timber rather than stone? Was Orkney special? Was it just the dwelling house, or the association between home, tomb and land? Was there even any perceived difference between home, tomb and land? We separate the living from the dead very strictly today, and few of us have any deep link to the land wherein we live. But things have not necessarily always been thus. Maybe, once upon a time, they were one and the same.

I like books that move me out of my comfort zone. Ideas that challenge me to develop new perceptions, to see beyond my cosy middle-class western horizons.

This book certainly does that. Of course, you don’t have to agree with everything. That is the fun of archaeology – there is always a new story. It is nice to be around when one comes along

The development of farming in Neolithic Orkney is a fascinating topic that has inspired research over the last century. From the days of Gordon Childe, through the work of Colin Renfrew to the publications of Anna and Graham Ritchie and the fieldwork of Colin Richards there have been many many archaeologists who wish to unpick the rich Neolithic record of Orkney. Many continue to do so and there is a wealth of literature on the subject.

It seems strange, then, that, in addition to this, the archaeology of Neolithic Orkney has also prompted an outpouring of catastrophe theories. In recent weeks I have had correspondence on meteor strikes, volcanic eruptions with associated ash fall and or sulphuric rains, and tsunamis. All of which may, apparently, have played a role in limiting farming, especially towards the end of the period. In these circumstances I am amazed that anyone (or any monuments) survived such difficult times.

One problem seems to me to be that, despite evidence for these events elsewhere, no one has yet published good geoscience evidence for them in Orkney. It seems a little strange when there is a plethora of Orkney-based archaeological research, much of which includes palaeoenvironmental assessments. The lack of detail, including dates and sample information makes it hard to assess the impact of events like these on the local community. Could it, one wonders, show up in changes to the architectural tradition, or farming record? Thankfully, other research suggests that, while there was some decline of agricultural activity in more marginal areas into the Early Bronze Age in some parts of Orkney, in other places agriculture may actually have expanded into and during the Bronze Age.

The (changing) evidence of the past aside, I am curious as to why these Neolithic catastrophe theories have become so popular. Do they represent a manifestation of twenty-first century concerns as we struggle with the changes that we now face? In contrast to many of our ancestors, the population of today has been able to take advantage of centuries of relative geographical stability, especially in this corner of northwest Europe. While this has undoubtedly been a good thing, it has also lulled us into a false sense of security. In the face of stability, the current threats of climate change and relative sea-level rise gain momentum. Added to which we are far less flexible than our ancestors and the density of modern populations create their own issues. We certainly face problems.

I wonder whether those who promote the cataclysms of the past have tapped into a general need for excitement? Or is it more a need for reassurance? Do we feel the need to remind ourselves that the human race can survive, even thrive, when things go wrong? Is there a generic requirement for a ‘millennium bug’ style threat to keep us on our toes? I think I may have to settle down with a calming mug of hot chocolate while I wait to hear of the next disaster that lay in wait for those who lived in these islands some five thousand years ago.

It is all part of the entertainment of life as an archaeologist.

Many years ago (more than I care to remember) I used to meet with a group of archaeological colleagues for a relaxing drink on a Friday night in Edinburgh. Most of us were involved, at one time or another, in working on the Neolithic archaeology of Orkney. Even then Orkney was regarded as something special. Being archaeologists we rarely left our work totally behind but rather used the time to discuss some of the most pressing dilemmas in our archaeological interpretations. I remember animated debates as to the meaning of the two very different pottery styles to be found in Neolithic Orkney. Did they, as some people thought, overlap, or had one supplanted the other. Radiocarbon dating had not long been employed and it was still something of a blunt tool – in many ways it did not lend much to our discussion. Another favourite topic was the meaning of the different styles of tombs and houses to be found in Orkney. It all seemed very bipartite. Were we simply observing the transformations in society that lead to changes in material culture? But was it a simple linear, evolutionary change? Or were there more nefarious elements at play. In short, did the advent of new styles of tomb and house (and other material culture) mean the advent of new people with new ways, did it signal some sort of social unrest or change, or was it just a matter of time?

You will notice that the uncertainties of dating at the time were such that we were able to assume that everything had changed at much the same time.

Now, I read with interest a new paper, by Alex Bayliss and colleagues, recently published in Antiquity. Alex is one of the wizards of radiocarbon dating. Using a statistical technique, known as Bayesian analysis, she is able to produce much tighter estimates of age from calibrated radiocarbon dates in conjunction with existing understanding of the archaeological record. Together with her colleagues they have been looking at the dates available for the sites of Neolithic Orkney, and taking many new dates as well, in order to provide a detailed chronology for Neolithic Orkney and consider what it may mean.

It is an interesting, thought provoking paper that pulls together a huge amount of information. It has received much attention since it was published. There is a lot of useful information relating to issues like the length of use of specific sites, and the ways in which they may relate to one another. But I am left questioning some of their conclusions, and somehow I ended up feeling a little disappointed. One of the problems with publishing in Antiquity is that you have to keep your papers short, and, in this case, it meant that the evidence needed to back up their statements was often lacking.

There is useful information relating to the antiquity of timber houses in Orkney together with the stone buildings that became more common. There is information relating to the dating of different types of tomb, and to the pottery types. The general conclusion seems to be that some social differentiation and the concurrence of new ideas took place fairly early on in Neolithic Orkney (the overlapping of the different styles in tombs and pottery for example), but that around 2800 BC something happened that led to a geographical shift in settlements and the development of larger houses and more elaborate pottery. The authors note that events in the Neolithic heartland of Stenness-Brodgar were, however, very different.

One of my problems relates to this comparison of the sites in the Stenness-Brodgar area with those elsewhere in Orkney. Stenness-Brodgar is a very different place with a very different type of site. Ness of Brodgar is discussed as a ‘place of human dwelling’. Now there is not much yet published about Ness, but all the material that one can find leads one to believe that it is not a common or garden settlement. Surely, it is not, therefore, surprising to find that events there were different to those elsewhere. The authors are not, as I understand it, comparing like with like.

There is also a general assumption that the archaeology of Orkney is such that the known sites provide a representative sample of what went on in the past. I find this very doubtful. Not only does general research suggest that this is not so, the known sites represent only the places where we have looked for (or found), sites. But also, the very existence of sites like Ness of Brodgar, totally unknown until some ten years ago, tells us that we don’t know everything about Neolithic Orkney.

The authors conclude by suggesting that the variety of style and material culture in the earlier centuries of Neolithic Orkney may represent a competitive society in which communities sought to outdo each other in the monuments and houses that they built and the goods that they used. In this, the advent of elaborate flat-bottomed Grooved Ware pottery and different types of tomb might be seen as a way for one community to differentiate itself from others. Continual elaboration of house form and material culture is used to back this up and the paper talks of political tension and social concerns. Finally, the arrival of the Orkney vole is brought into play as a proxy for the introduction of new ideas and possibly even people directly from Europe in the later fourth millennium cal BC.

As I say it is an interesting paper. But I am left wondering whether, in nearly 40 years, we have really advanced at all in our archaeological deliberations. The arguments of the paper sound so much like those I used to hear in the pub. The dates are more tightly constrained, we have more sites, more variation in our sites, and, perhaps, more sophistication in our ideas. But I don’t really feel that I have learnt anything new. The dates presented confirm the old conundrums, they don’t explain them. For that we are left with unsupported speculation, just as we always have been. As you know, I don’t believe in an ‘archaeological truth’, and I guess we all love speculation, but we need to be careful not to suggest that it is founded in scientific fact.

Recently, a team of specialists drawn from the Universities of Leicester and Southampton announced the find of a new structure within the south circle at Avebury. It is an exciting find that reminds us that these ancient and well-loved places still preserve their secrets. I found it particularly interesting because of the way in which the new formation, said to be composed of megaliths that were removed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, comprises a square that is set within the heart of the surviving stone circle.

The team are, apparently, surprised to find a square megalithic setting, I can’t comment on that as my knowledge of megaliths around the UK is not, sadly, comprehensive, though I would point them to a paper published by Tim Darvill in the spring of 2016 which celebrates just this design at Stonehenge. I would also suggest that, were they to look north, they might find that the use of a square design, and indeed the overall design of a rectangle set within a circle is far from unusual. In fact, in Orkney, monuments comprising a square setting within a circle were all the rage among the special places of the late Neolithic. Perhaps the best known is Structure Eight at Barnhouse, where one is able to enter the reconstruction and experience for oneself how this type of architecture may have functioned. Another, well known example, is Structure Ten at Ness of Brodgar, only partly excavated but of similar design – contrast the angularity of the interior with the rounded nature of the exterior.

This internal angularity with external rounding is also seen in the house structure at Skara Brae, perhaps it is just how one did things in the Neolithic? But there is another site that suggests it may have a deeper meaning. Maeshowe is known for the circular platform on which it sits – yet the tomb interior is beautifully angular. Curiously, several archaeologists have suggested that there may have been a free standing rectangular stone setting on the platform at Maeshowe prior to the building of the tomb. And, of course, many of the stone-built chambered tombs of the north comprise rectangular chambers set within a rounded mound.

My guess is that were we to have a similarly detailed record of late Neolithic architecture right across the UK, we would find other uses of the square within the circle. Hopefully, the application of refined geophysics to sites away from the research heartlands of Wiltshire and Orkney will start to find them. What it actually meant is anyone’s guess, though I have noted before that it is still a powerful symbol (with many meanings) today. The new find at Avebury is indeed significant, but I’d caution against celebrating it as unique – to my mind it is more interesting if it starts to flesh out the nascent patterning of monumental settings that we are beginning to recognise across Neolithic Britain.

I seem to be travelling a lot just now and it makes me think about the ease of mobility today and the way in which it transcends not just distance but also culture. We are all accustomed to the presence of items in our homes, often everyday items, which reflect a way of life very different to our own.

One of my journeys led me north to the island chain of Shetland. It is a great place with amazing archaeology and I was lucky enough to be given the opportunity to spend three days there, discussing the archaeology with colleagues, and visiting some of the lesser known (but as it turned out no less spectacular), sites. Much of our discussion focussed on the introduction of farming to Shetland and development of the Neolithic there. The interesting element about this for me is that, although farming was certainly introduced by boat, there is little evidence that people, once settled there, kept up frequent contacts with communities further south. Repeated evidence for contact between Shetland and places such as Orkney does not appear until later in the Neolithic.

Alison Sheridan’s recent research suggests that, on the grounds of tomb types, the early farming communities may have come from the west coast of Scotland. We do not know for certain whether or not there were pre-existing Mesolithic communities here, but tantalizing hints of the use of coastal resources at an early date come from the site of West Voe in the south of the islands, where a team from Bradford has excavated a site dating to 3700 – 3600 BC. The finds from West Voe included both cattle and sheep bones and seem to indicate a community with both Mesolithic and Neolithic traits. This is, of itself, particularly exciting because, as I have argued before, it is particularly difficult for archaeologists to recognise the ‘blurred’ episodes that lay between our carefully defined periods. West Voe, it seems, is exactly this. Was this one of the first farming communities to settle in Shetland, or do the remains relate to a Mesolithic (or Neolithic) community that chose to adopt the ‘useful bits’ from their new neighbours? At the moment, we just don’t know.

Farming soon spread across Shetland and it is likely that agricultural land may have been more plentiful than today. Shetland, like Orkney, has been subject to rising relative sea-levels since the end of the last Ice Age meaning that coastal lands have been lost. We don’t yet have precise measurements for this but it is possible that relative sea-level was as much as 10m lower around 4000 BC which would mean that the topography of the islands was very different to that of today. As yet, there are few sites that date to this earliest farming period: perhaps a reflection of the loss of coastal settlements to inundation; or of our inability to recognise the earliest sites, particularly if they reflected the hybridity of West Voe; or maybe just confirmation that population levels at this time were, indeed, low.

The interesting thing is that the resources that we find on the Neolithic sites were all very local. And, despite the production in Shetland of stunning and apparently high status objects such as beautiful polished axes and knives of local felsite, we don’t get much evidence of Shetland-style products leaving the islands. Even in Orkney, where the islanders were, apparently, seriously into the production and acquisition of elaborate showy goods like Grooved Ware pottery, only two, possible, artifacts of Shetland felsite have been found. There is no evidence either that pottery such as Grooved Ware, or even architecture such as that of the Stone Circles, or the buildings at Ness of Brodgar and Barnhouse came north to Shetland. And, while research on the Orkney Vole and its possible Neolithic origins on the Continent may still be be controversial, there is no evidence for the spread of Orkney Voles into Shetland.

So, the available evidence suggests that the Neolithic islanders of Shetland did not look south for cultural connections. And the Neolithic islanders of Orkney seem to have been too preoccupied with their own southern networking to explore the possibility that there was benefit to be obtained from looking north. Only later, as economic and cultural horizons in the south of Britain shifted to the Continent and Ireland with the introduction of metal, did Orcadian communities apparently become aware of the availability of raw materials to the north.

I find this seeming isolation of Neolithic Shetland fascinating. Just how many groups of incomers made the lengthy journey north? How many people were needed to settle the islands? You’d not need that many breeding cattle and sheep, though the voyage cannot have been an easy one. Are the difficulties of the voyage reflected in the fact that there is so little evidence for return trips? Does the development of connections between the island groups of Orkney and Shetland in the later third millennium BC (when, for example, we see the export of steatite vessels from Shetland to Orkney) reflect improvements in sea-going craft as well as the possible decline of Orcadian connections further south?

Nevertheless, isolation did not equate with lack of success. The population of Neolithic Shetland may not have been large for the first few centuries, but communities survived. Work by Janet Montgomery of Durham University and her colleagues, suggests that there were, indeed, times of famine, but houses and elaborate tombs were built, and communities developed. With time, Shetland would become more a part of mainstream Britain. For now, it seems to me that the earliest farmers in Shetland may have adapted to their northern homeland by broadening their resource base and leaving an archaeological record that is both less clearly ‘Neolithic’ and, most likely, largely underwater.