Discover the Astounding Secrets of Scotland's Stone Age Settlements

In the Orkney Islands, archaeologists close the chapter on a legendary excavation, capping two decades of remarkable Neolithic discoveries

By Peter Ross

Photographs by Kieran Dodds

One ordinary day in the spring of 2003, Carole Hoey was washing dishes at the kitchen sink when a sound, or rather a sudden absence of sound, caused her to glance out the window. She had lived here, on the land between the lochs, for six years, and she had become used to the view, Orkney’s everyday miracle: the hills of Hoy, the waters of Stenness and Harray, and, just up the road, the Ring of Brodgar—Scotland’s biggest stone circle.

What snagged her attention was the realization that she could no longer hear the tractor. It had been passing up and down, plowing a field belonging to her neighbors, preparing for the sowing of wildflowers in ground that, for years, had been given over to barley. Hoey didn’t yet know it, but the planned meadow would not now happen. A very different crop was about to emerge.



A decorated stone discovered Ness of Brodgar, one of 1,000-odd examples of “rock art” found at the site—more than the rest of Britain combined. Kieran Dodds


As the plow worked the southern part of the field, it had caught on something heavy and dragged it from where it lay. That was why the tractor had stopped. Hoey watched as the plow rose from the earth. There was a slab lodged between its blades. “It wasn’t any old stone,” she recalls now. “It looked like it had been deliberately made.”

The rectangular object was a little over five feet long. Four semicircular notches along one side appeared very like handholds. The Orkney Islands are rich in prehistoric sites, and it was thought, at first, that the slab could be the capstone of a type of Bronze Age burial known as a cist. The possibility of human remains prompted investigation, and when, a week or so later, two archaeologists arrived from the Scottish mainland, Hoey was given a trowel and invited to help. What was revealed, as she scraped the earth, was the top of a wall. “It was so exciting and enthralling. I was the first person to see that in thousands of years.”

More:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/discover-astounding-secrets-scotlands-stone-age-settlements-180985627/