Of course, that is not the case. We rarely have personal names or recognisable families, and there are still many gaps in the evidence for which we need to use ‘plausible imagination’ when conjuring up our narratives about past communities. My experience over the past week or so has highlighted one of these gaps, in particular, for me.

We were not a big group, but I was surprised just how tired we all got – a condition that seemed to be made worse by our lack of recent familiarity with the level of social interaction in which we were indulging.  It made me think about the invisibility of conversation and banter and their role as vital parts of our social lives. I draw my own sense of being, and, indeed, much of my self-confidence, from the interaction I have with others. Yet they are almost impossible to track archaeologically. We can infer information from elements such as room size, but we never know precisely how space is used. Nor do we tend to have the sort of detail that indicates social conventions such as hierarchies of communication. I learnt my Spanish in a family setting in Chile where children still spoke to adults with deference using formal verb constructions. It has left me feeling very uncomfortable when introduced to the parents of friends in Spain for whom my use of a formal construct would leave them with the impression that I wished to consider them more as a bank manager. The sort of grease by which a society operates smoothly often leaves little archaeological trace. Yet it is as important a part of the well-being of the community as the presence of a functional hearth.

In Orkney we are privileged because we do have one glimpse into the social conventions of the past. The Orkneyinga Saga was compiled towards the end of the twelfth century from pre-existing oral histories with the aim of presenting a popular narrative history of the Norse Earls of Orkney and Shetland. It is undoubtedly idealistic, stereotypical, and often fictional. But it provides a lively and colourful account of individuals, the ways in which they interacted, and the things that they considered important. There are family relations that bring to mind the writings of Austen or the Brontës. There is fashion, conspiracy, travel, poetry, drinking and, above all, life (well – quite a lot of death actually). Now, Orkney has a fantastic repertoire of archaeological remains relating to the period. Without the Saga few would complain that our interpretation lacked detail. But with it we can move onto a different plane. The cathedral of St Magnus built by Earl Rognvald is magnificent, but when you enter it and think of the Earl who worshipped there, who most certainly saw the building as a reflection of his own importance, and yet was not above heading out with peasant fishermen to assist with the catch – well then you experience the site in a totally different way.

As someone who specialises in the archaeology of some of the earliest communities in Scotland this sort of detail is, realistically, beyond my professional grasp. But occasionally, it does not hurt to be reminded of it.

On 18^th April we celebrated World Heritage Day. I have been lucky enough to visit a great variety of World Heritage Sites around the world, both cultural and natural, and, of course, I live and work in close proximity to the Heart of Neolithic Orkney World Heritage Site.

The World Heritage Convention is, as its name suggests, a global premise, originating in 1972, and currently ratified by 194 States. The overall aim is to safeguard the wellbeing of exceptional places for the future. One of the reasons I like it is because it treats both natural and cultural heritage as significant. I also like the way in which it acknowledges the significance of the past for the future. ‘Heritage is our legacy from the past, what we live with today, and what we pass on to future generations. Our cultural and natural heritage are both irreplaceable sources of life and inspiration’. The World Heritage convention is administered by UNESCO.

It is a bureaucratic process that can take many years to become a World Heritage Site. Individual states compile documents to outline the merits of specific candidates, and these are then checked by local committees under the auspices of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, in the case of natural sites, and the International Council on Monuments and Sites in the case of cultural sites. There are several selection criteria. A state not only has to convince the committee that the site is truly outstanding in global terms, it is necessary to demonstrate the integrity of the site as it currently exists, and, also, that there are reasonable plans to ensure the wellbeing of the location into the future. A lot of work is involved just to make it to the provisional list before the process of evaluation even begins.  On the other hand, the paperwork associated with any site is an invaluable source of information about the place.

World Heritage Sites are monitored. It is possible for a site to go on to an endangered list, and even be struck off in exceptional circumstances. In general, the List of World Heritage in Danger is intended to stimulate remedial action. In addition to immediate humanly stimulated threats, such as inappropriate development, recent years have seen the recognition of climate change as a clear and ever-present threat and many states are working hard to mitigate potential problems.

World Heritage Sites are highly physical, and it is possible to visit many of them. It is recognised, however, that other significant aspects of life around the world are less tangible and so a list of Intangible Heritage has also built up. A diverse range of practices and traditions are earmarked here from specific foods, to music and craft work.

While most people are enthusiastic about the nomination of a local World Heritage Site, in practice, the long-term reality has both advantages and disadvantages. It is, of course, always good to see an element of your own locality recognised as of exceptional significance. World Heritage is a powerful draw, however, and can lead to considerable visitor pressure on areas that are often already fragile, remote, and lacking in infrastructure. The accolade of a designation undoubtedly facilitates the acquisition of funds for research and investigation, but, depending on the state, there is usually no money per se when a site is placed on the list. The funnelling of funds into one particular site can also lead to problems for nearby projects when they seek assistance. The recognition of World Heritage status should act as a safeguard for the wellbeing of the site and its immediate location, nevertheless, many people find that this requires an increased level of paperwork that can be onerous and some might suggest that it entails a level of restriction that acts to stifle necessary development.

It is an interesting debate. While the principals behind the World Heritage Convention are hard to fault, as ever the reality has proved to be complex. I love visiting the sites. Designation means that I know the experience will always be rewarding, but as a visitor am I adding to the pressures on places that are already troubled? I am certainly more careful about the locations I visit than I used to be. The next time you see that World Heritage logo of the square (culture) inside the circle (nature), take a moment to reflect on those for whom this place has been and will be significant: past, present, and future.

An ongoing research project reminds us of the ways in which archaeology encompasses even the most recent and widest uses of material culture. Orkney Energy Landscapes is a collaborative project between The Archaeology Institute, UHI, here in Orkney, and the University of St Andrews. It has been designed to look at the way our need for energy has helped to shape the landscape through the millennia. From peat cuttings to wind and marine turbines, the machinery created to service our energy requirements is visible within any local environment, and Orkney has a particularly rich record that extends from the earliest times to the present day.

It is an exciting project.

The need for energy has always been a part of human life and it has left a footprint on the landscape. In Orkney for many millennia it was integral to the local culture of self-sufficiency, satisfied by peat-cutting, the collection of driftwood, and other small-scale sources of power.  In recent decades, though Orkney is now well-connected into mainstream electricity, oil and other grids, local developments have once again seen some exciting responses to fulfilling that need into the future. As the parameters of energy production have changed, so we have come to an increasing realisation that traditional energy sources based on fossil fuels were not going to be sustainable into the future nor were they compatible with maintaining a stable climate. The result has been some interesting new footprints on the landscape. It is nice to think that these are seen as worthy of record while they are still fresh in people’s memories. How many times have we wished that we could have been present while the great stones at monuments like the Stones of Stenness were raised, or seated round the fire at Skara Brae for an evening of storytelling?

At the same time, it is interesting to consider how the traces of contemporary energy production show continuity with the past. Our need for power may have changed in scale, but it has never left us. Those of us who make use of rechargeable batteries for home or car maintain a direct link to our ancestors as they lifted a peat or log from the stack to place on the fire. We share a liking for hot food whether we use an induction hob, or carefully balanced pot. I rather like the way in which, in Orkney at least, our needs can once more be fulfilled by local generation. It also fun to trace the changing echoes of those needs as they have become fossilized into the landscape around us.

Finally, the project is, to me, significant because of the way in which it demonstrates that archaeology is not just concerned with dusty and ruinous relics. The links between archaeology and electric cars or the generation of hydrogen may seem tenuous, but they are there. They will be obvious to those who come after us. For now they provide a brilliant evocation of the relevance of our profession to the present and even to the future.

For the past few centuries humans have shared a remarkable ability to transform the world around us. What we put into the landscape today impacts on the look of that landscape in the future. This is a vital truism, but one that we have been slow to accept. Maybe we have just been shortsighted in our vision. Maybe we have been selfish. Whatever; we have now developed a more socially responsible ethos to the way we work. We are, at last, only too aware of the consequences, foreseen and unforseen, of our actions and our structures. Many of those consequences are long lasting, and sometimes these impacts are unforeseen. Today, we weigh the impact of what we develop and what we do. As the study of the way in which material culture impacts on the physical world over long spans of time, archaeology is uniquely placed to contribute to this.

To date, archaeology has been preoccupied with teaching us to read the record of the past. That is the role it fulfills in the popular imagination. But it is a role that is changing. I would argue that archaeology is also a significant tool to help us shape the future of the world in which we live. Hopefully we are starting to see a shift in emphasis to the future…

Just occasionally other people make use of my work. This week there are two such publications.Landscapes Revealed, now published by Oxbow Books, details the results of geophysical survey around the Heart of Neolithic Orkney World Heritage Site. It has been a mammoth effort, incorporating nearly 20 yeasrs of work from first inception to publication, but the result is well worthwhile. Not only do you have a listing of all the sites recorded (and this is a full landscape), but you also have a detailed discussion of the changing patterns of human activity across the area set into the wider Orkney context. It makes for a fascinating read.

Sadly the decision was taken not to annotate individual contributions other than in the acknowledgements, but you will find two sections that detail the results of the research undertaken by myself and my colleagues around Skara Brae (pp 61-65) and on the submerged landscape of the Loch of Stenness (pp 216-220).

The second ‘publication’ takes me further back. In 1988 I was lucky enough to journey through Pakistan and China. In common with other academics I took many photographs – all on slide film. In recent years I have been worrying about the deterioration of the slides all neatly boxed up in drawers in my study. Luckily an organisation known as the Historic Environment Image Resource, in Oxford, were able to come to the rescue. They seek to digitise old slides, particularly of sites and landscapes, with a view to preserving images of these locations for posterity. It is a fantastic service and an important one.

Some of my images were labled, many were not. They have recently completed their work on my material and used it to illustrate a blog about the work they do. I’d urge you to have a look at their website – there is a wealth of amazing material there. Where better to escape our current anxieties than losing yourself in the glories of the past?

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