Beside the Ocean: Coastal Landscapes at the Bay of Skaill, Marwick, and Birsay Bay, Orkney. Archaeological Research 2003–2018. By DavidGriffiths, JaneHarrison and MichaelAthanson. Oxford and Philadelphia: Oxbow Books. 2019. xxviii + 346 pp. £45. ISBN 978 1 78925 096 1 (hardback); ISBN 978 1 78925 097 8 (epub).

Abstract

Many readers will find this book challenging, but its challenging nature is one of its inherent strengths. Much of the writing, though unfailingly concise and lucid, is highly technical and on two different levels. One is geophysical surveying with a view to identifying archaeological potential. The results are shown in a number of diagrams. Where excavation trenches are superimposed on the gradiometry of a much wider area, however, the relationship and interpretative possibilities seem often to be disappointingly indeterminate. In their conclusion the authors state that future excavation of neighbouring sites may alter the picture quite radically. On the other hand, an impressive feature of this research programme, the Birsay-Skaill Landscape Archaeology Project extending over fifteen years, is its geographical and topographical scope, focussed on three adjoining bays in the north-west of the Orcadian Mainland. The survey work was concentrated on a portion of the inner bay in each case, together with the immediate hinterland of the Iron Age settlement on the Brough of Birsay. Here the conclusion was that the built-up area of the settlement did not extend much beyond the fenced boundary of the guardianship complex. Any estimate of archaeological potential has to take account of all manner of anomalies caused by rabbit burrowing, sand extraction, refuse dumping, windblown sand, quarrying, kelping pits, modern fencing, previous archaeological excavations and even a derelict twentieth-century rifle range. There are numerous gaps between individual survey areas and part of one survey was prevented by reports of a nesting corncrake! The second level of technical wizardry relates to something quite traditional in major archaeological reports – dazzling displays of scientific expertise in geoarchaeology, geochemical intra-site mapping, archaeobotanical and archaeozoological evidence, plus the standard categories of finds. All of the data are located and discussed in meticulous detail, with constant references to comparable material from other locations in the Viking world. Some of the samples are very small: for example, only three beads of glass or amber. Nevertheless, maximum use is made of everything, often with extraordinary ingenuity. The basic Viking Age economy was that of a mixed cereal kind featuring barley and oats, with increased emphasis on the latter for human and animal consumption in the Late Norse period. The infield for tillage would have been fertilized by a combination of animal manure, seaweed, fish bone, ground animal bone and even blood. Linen production was also important in the East Mound longhouse, retted flax being hung up to dry in its western annex. Barley residues contained little sign of use for brewing: perhaps other means of inducing joyfulness in this windblown landscape were available. Fish remains were notable for the large size of some species such as cod (over a metre in length), most fish being prepared fresh for immediate consumption rather than being processed into stockfish. Iron working was small-scale in nature and apparently episodic, as tools and other household equipment were required or needed to be repaired. Locally grown small trees, especially willow, were managed so as to provide a steady, possibly seasonal, supply of charcoal for personal metalworking. Steatite vessels hinted at links with Shetland rather than with Norway, whereas combs were probably made in the Irish Sea region. At both Snusgar and East Mound (merely a geographical naming) in the Bay of Skaill, a longhouse complex was excavated, that at the latter being much better preserved and therefore more academically rewarding. At 26.3 m long and with a tripartite layout, it is comparable with what has been interpreted as a chieftain’s farmstead at Hrísbrú, Mosfell, east of Reykjavík in Iceland. With its stone walls and stone-built furniture, several small hearths and an iron candle holder for wall-mounted interior lighting, there was a degree of comfort for a relatively high-status household. The stone-lined side benches, filled with sand and probably covered with furs, cloth or plants, could have accommodated about twenty people in a seated position. The eastern byre had a well-constructed drainage system, along with small animal stalls and some workbenches. This longhouse was constructed from an earlier bow-sided hall-building and had an estimated lifespan of 25–50 years as a dwelling in the eleventh century before it entered a lengthy period of decay and final abandonment under windblown sand in the fourteenth century. An important finding is that such buildings were subject to periodic reconfiguration: house maintenance was a permanent feature of life. This district beside the ocean is already famous for at least three major archaeological sites: Neolithic Skara Brae, the Iron Age Brough of Birsay and the Viking Age silver hoard of objects and coins found by chance at Skaill in 1858. In this present volume the latter is revisited with matchless skill and attention to detail by James Graham-Campbell, who proposes a slightly later deposition date of c.960–80 and a location on the eastern flank of the Snusgar mound. The poorly preserved longhouse there may have been constructed around that time, but no precise association can be established. Beside the Ocean is replete with references to previous excavations and provides an extended context for these well-known individual sites, in an effort ‘to re-contextualise past discoveries’. Indeed ‘an extensive data capture is a more productive means of characterising archaeological potential in sand landscapes than an intensive one’. The director of research, David Griffiths, and all of the contributors to this impressive volume are to be congratulated on their capacity for carefully nuanced interpretations of minute details and on their meticulous presentation of the data. Exquisitely drawn site plans and profiles are colour-coded in a consistent schema (depicted in Fig. 4.43) and there is a helpful summary of the basic archaeological findings in the penultimate chapter. This book points as much towards the future of a multifaceted academic discipline as it does towards the past of the dramatic if somewhat forbidding Orcadian Mainland.