Isbister cairn – the human remains

Thursday, March 20, 2025 (11:00 AM)

“Like the passage grave of Quanterness, Isbister, holds the remains of a vastly greater number of individuals than any other stalled cairn.”

Colin Richards. An Archaeological study of Neolithic Orkney: Architecture, Order and Social classification. (1993)

The Isbister stalled cairn. (📷 Jim Richardson) — Inside the Isbister stalled cairn. (📷 Jim Richardson)

By Sigurd Towrie

Isbister was one of the few Orcadian chambered cairns found to contain human remains – in this case, in such quantities that it was declared “the largest assemblage … from any single British Neolithic site.” [1]

16,000 bones and fragments were submitted for analysis, the 1983 results [2] suggesting at least 342 individuals were represented [3], “which, given the conditions, must be on the low side”. [4]

The bones were disarticulated and it was considered that there no complete skeletons present. But despite the apparently jumbled mass of remains, there appeared to be some structure:

“While there were bones everywhere on the floor they were predominantly along the sides of the walls and this particularly applied to the skulls…The bones were disarticulated but not in complete disorder; the impression gained was that each skull had a pile of bones associated with it…” [5]

Perceived weathering on the bones was seen as further evidence that bodies were defleshed outside chambered cairns before being deposited within.

This process, excarnation, had been cited as the reason for a lack of smaller bones at Quanterness in 1972-74, but the interpretation arguably reached its zenith after Isbister’s excavation:

“Foreign though the idea may be to us, it would seem that the dead were excarnated – rid of their flesh – and it can be conjectured that they were exposed on platforms in the large natural bowl of flagstone outside the tomb entrance.” [7]

At Isbister the excarnation story was embellished, the sea eagle remains bringing birds of prey into the equation. The eagles were suggested to be totemic and played an integral part in stripping flesh from the corpses of the dead. Radiocarbon dating has since confirmed this was not the case, the eagle bone entering the chamber up to 1,000 years later. [8]

The notion of excarnation was called into question during a re-evaluation of Quanterness bone assemblage. This pointed to complete, fully fleshed bodies being placed within the structure and left to decay – a process that may have been hastened by the deliberate dismemberment of some. [9]

It also concluded that the missing bones crucial to the excarnation theory had either not survived or were overlooked during excavation. The Quanterness re-analysis also saw the estimated number of bodies represented drastically reduced – 59 instead of the 157 proposed in the 1970s. [9]

Something similar occurred following Dr Dave Lawrence’s 2006 work on the Isbister human remains.

He concluded that the recovered bone assemblage represented 85 individuals [1] and not the 342 originally proposed:

“The overall MNI [minimum number of individuals] published for the site is therefore greatly inflated and, pending further analysis, previously published data should be used with great caution.” [10]

Contrary to conclusions of the 1983 osteological report, Dr Lawrence found little evidence of excarnation:

“The lack of colour-fading, low scores for weathering and absence of root erosion support an argument against there being any substantive evidence for excarnation outside the tomb before inhumation.” [10]

He also pointed out that:

“It is possible that cadavers were disposed of by excarnation, but this must have resulted in destruction and not the later collection of bones for interment that has generally been proposed.” [1]

Regarding the recorded absence of articulated skeletal material, Lawrence highlighted that :

“An existing photograph clearly shows a cranium, vertebral column and possibly ossa coxae of a single individual all in anatomically correct and articulated position. At least one individual, therefore, was probably interred as a complete body…” [10]

Although impossible to say with certainty, it is not unlikely that the Isbister bodies, like Quanterness, were deposited complete and left to decompose. Then, the bones were disturbed and trampled – presumably during subsequent interments or events.

As encountered at other sites, e.g. Midhowe and the Knowe of Yarso, activities within clearly involved reorganisation, with the Isbister skulls placed along the walls or piled in the side cells. And maybe skeletal material from other sites was brought in.

A recent study of the bone from Rousay’s Knowe of Rowiegar proposed that human remains were placed at different stages of decomposition, suggesting a more complex, muti-stage process for handling the dead. [11]

Although the Rowiegar analysis produced no evidence for excarnation, it indicated that some individuals were placed in the structure immediately after death with others were perhaps buried elsewhere, exhumed and their remains (or some of them) transferred. [11]

A hard life…

But enough about the dead, what did the Isbister bones tell us about Neolithic life? In that area of South Ronaldsay at least.

Dr Lawrence’s re-evaluation of the Isbister remains also painted a vivid picture of the lives of those placed within the structure. All ages were represented, but the rarity of infants prompted the suggestion that they were “disposed of in a manner other than being interred in the chambered tomb”. [1]

Although the chamber contained male and female remains, the number of males was twice that of females. In addition, isotopic analyses suggested dietary differences, with women showing signs of a greater marine component to their diet. [1]

The bones pointed to tough lives, with indicators of hard, physical work visible in both adults and children. But as well as signs of accidental bone fractures and multiple diseases – with arthritis and scurvy common afflictions – some of the Isbister remains revealed evidence of violent encounters:

“The large number of crania with fractures reflects (often deadly) interpersonal violence. Fracture form included circular blunt force trauma consistent with a direct mace blow or slingshot strike, linear and ovoid blunt force trauma consistent with clubs, weapon hafts or rocks, narrow penetrating trauma consistent with a pointed weapon such as a spear or arrow with a sharpened tip or an antler pick; and sharp force trauma consistent with a glancing axe.

“The multiple lesions of [two examples] particularly indicate close contact rather than missile attack, with [another] probably being ‘finished off’ with a cluster of blows after being stunned: the shape of the anterior lesion implicating a blunt weapon with circular cross-section, whilst the lateral lesions suggest use of considerable force producing fractures of similar size and therefore all consistent with a single weapon.” [1]

A particularly poignant example was the stone fragment embedded in a fragment of juvenile skull, which seemed likely “to be part of a broken weapon, perhaps carved intentionally, but possibly a weapon of convenience.” [1]

Possible evidence of violence has also been noted from Quoyness and Quanterness, while head trauma was noted on some of the Cuween cairn skulls [12] – a far cry from the idyllic, egalitarian situation once proposed for the Orcadian Neolithic.

“Is Isbister typical of the population living in the area at the time, or were some singled out for inclusion in the tomb because of their condition?”

Mark Edmonds. Orcadia: Land, Sea and Stone in Neolithic Orkney. (2019)

When first excavated Isbister, like most of Orkney’s chambered “tombs”, was considered to be the burial place of a community over a prolonged period of time. However, the quantity and dates of the remains implies otherwise.

Radiocarbon dates from some of the human remains within returned Neolithic dates (between c.3400 and 2800BC) with later, Bronze Age, dates (c.2500-2300BC) from a pair of burials outside.

This fits with an initial Neolithic use of the chamber and, like other examples across Orkney, a return to, and reuse, in the Bronze Age. The absence of Grooved Ware pottery within the cairn, however, implies the burials were before the widespread adoption of the ceramic style around 3200BC. Unless, like Toftsness, in Sanday, it was not used.

…and a bad death?

The span of the Neolithic activity suggests sporadic use, and, again, strongly suggests that not all who died ended up within a chambered cairn. Were that the case we should surely be looking at more than 85 burials in Isbister.

That said, the chamber had been dug into before its excavation and the removal of the infill included any deposits on the end compartment shelves and probably any within the north-eastern side cell [11b]. Had these survived, the number of calculated interments would obviously have been higher.

Although we could also be looking at a scenario where earlier burials were partially cleared out in between periods of use, from the dates this looks unlikely.

Instead, an interesting possibility revolves around the medical conditions/trauma noted on the remains. As Professor Mark Edmonds explained:

“[T]he frequency of conditions such as Craniosynostosis, which affects the pattern of growth in the skull, is far higher that we might predict … Is Isbister typical of the population living in the area at the time, or were some singled out for inclusion in the tomb because of their condition? Does that mean that some tombs held people who had suffered ‘bad deaths’.

“Were they feared or were they identified as different in another way, possessed of special powers? These are difficult questions to answer and it would be unwise to assume that the same protocols for inclusion applied everywhere.

“Entry to many tombs was a prerogative of kinship, where all that mattered was that a common bond was made secure. At others, the character and content of a tomb spoke more directly to the standing of particular groups. But there may well have been cases, like Isbister, where the dead were powerful in another way.” [13]

As has been proposed for other Orcadian chambered cairns, at the end of its life, Isbister appears to have been deliberately infilled, sealing off its contents and preventing further access. [4]

The Tomb of the Eagles is currently closed to the public, but
efforts are under way to raise money to allow it to reopen in 2025.

Notes

[1] Lawrence, D. (2012) Orkney’s First Farmers – Reconstructing biographies from osteological analysis to gain insights into life and society in a Neolithic community on the edge of Atlantic Europe. Vols 1 and 2.
[2] The Isbister human bone assemblage was initially analysed by surgeon Judson T. Chesterman, who was also responsible for examining the human remains from Quanterness a decade or so earlier.
[3] Chesterman, J. T. (1983) The human skeletal remains. In Hedges, J.W., Isbister: a chambered tomb in Orkney. BAR Publishing.
[4] Hedges, J.W. (1984) Tomb of the Eagles: A Window on Stone Age Tribal Britain.
[5] Hedges, J. (1983) Isbister: a chambered tomb in Orkney. BAR Publishing.
[6] Renfrew, C. (1979) Investigations in Orkney (Reports of the Research Committee of the Society of Antiquaries of London).
[7] Hedges, J. W. (1985) A Guide to the Isbister Chambered Cairn and Liddle Burnt Mound.
[8] Flight of the eagles. In British Archaeology 86, January/February 2006.
[9] Crozier, R. (2016) Reorientating the dead of Crossiecrown: Quanterness and Ramberry Head. In Richards, C. and Jones, R. (2016) The Development of Neolithic House Societies in Orkney: Investigations in the Bay of Firth, Mainland, Orkney (1994–2014). Oxford: Windgather Press, 196-223).
[10] Lawrence, D. (2006) Neolithic mortuary practice in Orkney. In Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland (Vol. 136, pp. 47-59).
[11] Tudor, T., Crozier, R. and Madgwick, R. (2024) All mixed up: Investigating mortuary practice and processes of disarticulation through integrated histotaphonomic analysis at the Knowe of Rowiegar, Neolithic chambered cairn, Orkney, UK. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, 32(1), pp.1-18.
[11b] Davidson, J. L. & Henshall, A. S. (1989). The Chambered Cairns of Orkney. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
[12] Crozier, R. (2018) A taphonomic approach to the re-analysis of the human remains from the Neolithic chamber tomb of Quanterness, Orkney. BAR Publishing.
[13] Edmonds, M. (2019) Orcadia: Land, Sea and Stone in Neolithic Orkney. Bloomsbury Publishing.