In Northern Scotland, the Neolithic Age Never Ended

Summary

“The natural assumption with a place like Brodgar is that it was made to last,” Edmonds went on. “If stones are missing from the circle, it must be because of later interference. In fact, chances are that a lot of stones actually came down in the Neolithic. Some have solid foundations, but others aren’t set very deep. If you were concerned about long-term stability, you wouldn’t have done it that way. Which tells us that a place like Brodgar is really a performative space. The making of it is what counts. New stones are added, others are taken away. There’s a fluidity to it all. That’s what we can never see but have to try to imagine.”I followed Edmonds down to the Ness, where the past was going back underground. An earthmover operator was filling in the excavation trenches and restoring Brodgar Farm to its former state. Structure 10, an imposing ceremonial building that I had earlier toured with Nick Card, was no longer visible.“The question of permanence comes up here, too,” Edmonds said. “After a couple of generations, Structure 10 was suffering from subsidence and had to be partly rebuilt. Over time, it fell out of use. Finally, around 2400 B.C., it was sealed up in a huge ceremony that involved that massive slaughter of cattle.” Such “decommissioning” festivals were common in the Neolithic: they involved the razing of roofs, the trampling of pottery, the breaking of gneiss mace heads. Now, in an epochal recurrence that would have pleased George Mackay Brown, Structure 10 had been sealed up again.The last redoubt was the masterly Structure 27. After greeting Card and Tam at Dig H.Q., Edmonds headed there to take some final soil samples. “Architecture with a capital ‘A,’ ” he said, as if still surprised by the sight. Less subsidence had occurred here. The megalithic slabs that anchor the building differ in level by only a few centimetres.“The orange-looking earth is ash from peat fires,” Edmonds said, scraping at the trench wall with a trowel. “There’s a layer of...