A History of Ancient Britain (23 page)

Card reckons he would need more than one lifetime fully to investigate the site, but has already seen enough to persuade him the Ness of Brodgar will prove to be Neolithic Orkney’s most
precious gemstone. At least 10 buildings have been identified so far, some with similarities to houses like those at Skara Brae and all constructed with consummate skill by people well schooled in
getting the best out of Orkney flagstone. One of them, however (prosaically labelled ‘Structure 10’ in the matter-of-fact language of on-site data recording), is already going by the
nickname of ‘the Temple of Orkney’.

First spotted in 2008, it is unlike anything seen before in Orkney, or anywhere else in Britain for that matter. Measuring 80-odd feet long by 60-odd feet wide and with
walls 15 feet thick, it is a massive building even by modern standards. Card believes a pitched roof of slabs of Orkney flagstone would have extended out over the walls to create a covered walkway
or quadrangle around the outside of the building – an idea supported by the discovery of a beautifully paved surface around at least three of the four sides.

While the craftsmanship of the outer walls is exquisite, Card describes the interior as ‘scrappy’ by comparison – so that the main impact was to be had from outside. Only a
privileged few would have stepped inside to a gloomy, cruciform interior, reminiscent of the chamber of Maes Howe, where they would have encountered a stone dresser and, perhaps, painted walls.
Neolithic paintwork is unknown in Britain and if Card is right, and the few smears of pigment identified so far do indeed prove to be iron ore imported from Hoy and processed into paint, then the
unique nature of the ‘Temple’ will be enhanced even more.

All of the buildings around Structure 10 are impressive, made second-rate only by its exceptional grandeur. Their interiors have already yielded a veritable treasure store of Late Neolithic
finery: beautifully decorated ‘Grooved-Ware’ pottery, carved and polished axes and mace-heads, flint tools. It is as though everything an archaeologist could dream of finding has been
deliberately piled within the enigmatic structures.

To make matters even more fascinating, the most recent seasons of excavation have begun to persuade the archaeologists that all the secondary buildings had been put beyond use and even
demolished before Structure 10 was erected. It is as though the last incumbents of the site decided to wipe the place clean in preparation for a final architectural flourish – a last hurrah.
Once built, on the apex of the ridge and with nothing else around it, the Temple of Orkney would have been visible for miles around. And, best of all, even the most scientifically minded of the
archaeologists on site are beginning to talk not just of a temple but of a ‘temple complex’.

Excavation of geophysical anomalies north and south of Structure 10 has revealed the remains of two huge walls that once cut across the full width of the promontory, separating the buildings
from the outer world either side. The larger of them, ‘the Great Wall of Brodgar’, was 12 feet wide in its first phase – wider than anything ever built in Britain by Hadrian
– before being widened to nearly 20 feet and having a parallel ditch cut alongside.
The second boundary, ‘the Lesser Wall of Brodgar’, was over six feet
thick and both are likely to have been too tall for a man to see over.

It is already becoming hard to avoid the conclusion that all the monument-building on Mainland Orkney 5,000 years ago – the passage grave of Maes Howe, the circles of standing stones, the
lone monoliths dotted through the landscape – was an overture leading to a final crescendo. ‘The size, symmetry and grandeur of the buildings already uncovered, coupled with their
dominant location on a raised, centrally located mound, imply a site of extraordinary importance in Neolithic Orkney,’ said Card. ‘When all the evidence is pieced together . . . the
complexity of the architecture, the monumental enclosure wall and the artefact assemblage – the term “ritual” or “temple” seems inescapable. . . . We may be on the
brink of a radical rethink of prehistoric religion in Orkney in the third millennium
BC
.’

The Grooved-Ware pottery recovered from the Ness of Brodgar is part of the key to understanding the spread of Neolithic religion and belief systems. It is found on Neolithic sites the length and
breadth of Britain – but the earliest of all of it was made on Orkney. Grooved-Ware – with its intricate patterns of lines etched into the wet clay before firing – is the first
domestic pottery in Britain made with a flat rather than a rounded base. Apart from anything else it was designed for display – probably on the shelves of those ubiquitous stone dressers
– and whatever inspired its production and use, it all started on Orkney. Anyone studying the Neolithic of Britain is reminded at all times that the inhabitants of the northern archipelago
were at the centre of something rather than on its fringe.

Having reached Britain the farmers found themselves at the end of the line. Short of crossing the Atlantic Ocean there was nowhere left to go. Long before Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon,
those pioneers who made it over the sea to Britain with their seeds and animals took a similarly fateful step, one that would change everything – including themselves in the end. Until their
arrival in Britain the farmers always had options, the freedom to keep chasing the horizon towards pastures new, but no more. These islands were different – Ultima Thule, the ends of the
Earth – and they fundamentally altered all that touched them. Whatever came to Britain was eventually changed by it so that the Neolithic here became like no other.

Perhaps it was an effect of arriving at the last and final destination. When the Roman writer and historian Tacitus put words into the mouth of Calgacus, the first named Scot, on the eve of the
climactic battle with the
Caledonians at Mons Graupius in the autumn of
AD
84, he had him refer to that very thing: ‘We the last men on earth,
the last of the free, have been shielded before today by the very remoteness and seclusion for which we are famed . . . there are no tribes beyond us, nothing indeed but waves and rocks’.

The remoteness for which Britons are famed . . . and after 1,000 and more years in Britain, trapped against the waves and rocks, the farmers learned a new way of understanding the world and
their own place in it. For generation after generation they had built great earthen enclosures, vast cursus monuments and tombs of timber and stone, claims upon the land. But by 3000
BC
a profound change had taken place. From now on there were connections between Earth and sky as well – and that was new. It was not that the land stopped being as important as
it always had been; rather it was a realisation that the Earth itself was connected to something much, much bigger . . . an infinity roamed by the sun, Moon and stars . . . the heavens.

This need to understand and make sense of their function and purpose within the cosmos is uniquely human and it still moves and motivates people today. Proof of this, if proof were needed, is to
be had by joining the multitude that gathers every mid-summer, just before dawn, in the shadow of the most famous Stone Age monument of them all.

Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain has been attracting people for millennia. I was there on 21 June 2010, dazed by the effect of getting up at 2.30 in the morning, and the whole experience that
followed was vaguely surreal. Thousands of people walked towards the stones through the darkness before dawn, all seemingly as chilled and befuddled as me. Thousands more were already there, having
spent the night near the stones, and the assembled throng seemed to include people from every country on Earth. Many danced (together or alone), juggled flaming torches, beat drums, or chanted, or
filmed themselves and others with mobile phones.

All the usual suspects were there too: the obligatory satsuma-orange Hari Krishna devotees; the druids in their elaborate robes and headgear, easily mistaken for extras from a pantomime, Widow
Twankies every one; dreadlocked hippies, waifs and strays and all the rest were represented among hordes of ordinary people who just looked as if they had got on the wrong bus that morning. Most
simply stood around, seemingly unsure of what to do, or lay huddled inside sleeping bags waiting for light and warmth from above.

More than anything else I was appalled by the mess they had made of the place. It was as though half a dozen bin-lorries had backed up to Stonehenge from all points on
the compass and tipped their loads into the waiting breeze. There was rubbish everywhere – papers, bottles, fast food packaging, throwaway barbecues – all being trampled underfoot. For
people on a supposed pilgrimage to a sacred site in search of understanding, it seemed many of them found even the proper disposal of refuse too challenging a concept. There was an edge to the
whole thing as well – characters roaming through the crowd apparently more in hope of trouble than enlightenment, disappointed by the almost negligible police presence. (Go to Stonehenge, it
is a wonderful place; but if you take my advice you will give it a body swerve at the summer solstice.)

But there we were – human detritus of every possible sort – a river eddying around the foot of rocks set in place by farmers the best part of 5,000 years ago. The sky on the horizon
turned from black to blue and finally to pink. What had been an unfocused hubbub of chatter and laughter changed steadily into something more defined and orchestrated. A broken whooping cheer began
in fragments scattered through the crowd and then coalesced into a single roar of welcome for the main event. Ironically enough it was hard to see the sunrise because there were too many people and
big stones in the way, but all at once she made her entrance – appearing like a diamond in the grass. Presumably the dawn of a new day meant something different to every human being on the
plain, and judging by the expressions on their faces most seemed sure it had been worth the trip and the wait.

The whole overpowering spectacle was enough to make a person wonder what form gatherings at Stonehenge had taken when the stones were younger than today. Did they come in their thousands then?
Did they await the dawn with fear, elation, relief or grim resignation? And when it was all over did they clear up afterwards or leave the mess to the stewards to take care of?

Some of the answers are to be found by considering a few of the stones themselves. Everyone today recognises the horseshoe of giant trilithons – the ‘hanging’ stones that give
the place its name. But those are comparatively recent arrivals in the story of Stonehenge and anyone in search of the original look and feel of the monument must consider the much smaller,
uncarved blocks of stone that mingle discreetly in the shadow of the show-stoppers. While the trilithons and the rest of the largest uprights are of
local sarsen stone
collected from the Marlborough Downs, less than 20 miles up the road, the most unassuming elements of the whole – veritable bit-part players – are from many, many miles away to the
north-west.

High in the Preseli Hills of south-west Wales the dramatically rolling landscape is broken here and there by just a few huge outcrops of very distinctive stone. It is a rock known to geologists
as a particular type of spotted dolerite, and in the whole of Britain it occurs only in the Preseli Hills. Close inspection of a few fragments reveals it to be quite special stuff. When freshly
broken – and wet – the surface has a distinctly blue-green colour and it is peppered throughout with glistening silvery white flecks of feldspar. Rather than spotted dolerite this
particular Welsh variant is more commonly referred to as ‘bluestone’ and it seems its qualities persuaded at least some monument-builders that it was a must-have material.

Among the many mysteries surrounding the most famous Stone Age monument in Britain, we at least know for certain that the first stone circle at Stonehenge was built of Preseli bluestones –
more than 200 tons of the stuff hacked out of the Welsh hills and transported 150 miles. But the story of Stonehenge is a complex one. People today ask, ‘What does it mean?’ – and
the beginning of any truthful answer to that question must allow for many different meanings; must allow for a special place that changed and evolved during hundreds of years of use.

Five thousand years ago the Stonehenge we see today simply did not exist. The first human addition to the place was a circular ditch, with a bank heaped up around the outside edge, enclosing an
internal space about 360 feet across. There were at least two entrance gaps – certainly one to the north-east and one to the south – and around the inner edge of the ditch was erected a
circle of 56 large timber posts. So for the first years of its existence – its marking out as somewhere special – Stonehenge was an earthen enclosure, and then a wooden circle. After a
while, more circles of timber posts were placed in settings towards the centre and archaeologists think it likely these would have been topped with lintels. This must not be seen as a conscious
evolution by generations of designers working towards a preconceived conclusion. Instead, different users of the place had their own, distinct ideas about what should be built there. Stonehenge has
meant many different things to many different people.

Later still, some guardians of the site felt the need to replace timber with stone. It was then, sometime around 3000
BC
, that the Herculean effort was made to bring in
the bluestones – each around six feet in length and
weighing a ton and a half – from Preseli. These newcomers were erected in a double circle towards the centre
of the enclosure and stood in place for an unknown length of time, until yet another community decided on something even bigger.

The bluestones were eventually moved to make way for the circle of huge sarsen uprights – weighing as much as 40 ton apiece – topped with lintels. Inside that circle a horseshoe of
yet bigger sarsen trilithons, like great stone doorframes, was erected as a final flourish. Fascinatingly, the builders used mortice and tenon joints – a self-conscious and deliberate
rendering in stone of techniques best suited to wood. Was there a memory or knowledge of the timber uprights and lintels that had featured in that earlier monument centuries ago? And did it matter
for some reason to echo the past in the later constructions on the site? Some archaeologists are even persuaded that the surfaces of at least a few of the upright sarsens were worked and carved to
give facets that suggest the bark of trees – suggesting a desire to combine the appearance of a wooded clearing, a natural circle of trees, with the permanence of stone.