Link: New research suggests differing mortuary practices in Rousay cairn
Since the first recorded antiquarian incursions into Orkney’s chambered cairns, the nature of their contents has been the subject of much discussion.
Where human remains were found, not only the number of number of bodies varied but also their nature – from entire articulated skeletons, jumbled piles of disarticulated bone or neatly organised deposits. And sometimes all three!
This suggested that Neolithic chambered cairns were re-entered regularly — not just for the deposition of corpses but to interact with earlier skeletal material.
The disarticulated bone encountered over the years led to one of the most tenacious images of the Orcadian Neolithic — that of corpses being defleshed outside the cairn before some remains were transferred inside. Following the excavation of Quanterness, in 1972-74, excarnation was cited as the reason for a lack of smaller bones (Renfrew et al. 1979) and this arguably reached its zenith following the excavation of the Isbister cairn, South Ronaldsay (Hedges 1984).
Doubt was cast on the idea of excarnation following a re-evaluation of the Quanterness bone assemblage, which now points to whole, fully fleshed, bodies being placed within the chambered cairn and left to decay — a process that may have been hastened by deliberate dismemberment (Crozier et al. 2016).
However, a new paper looking at the bone assemblage from the Rousay’s Knowe of Rowiegar suggests that human remains were placed at different stages of decomposition and points towards a more complex, muti-stage process for handling the dead.
All Mixed Up: Investigating Mortuary Practice and Processes of Disarticulation Through Integrated Histotaphonomic Analysis at the Knowe of Rowiegar, Neolithic Chambered Cairn, Orkney, UK, by Tierney Tudor, Rebecca Crozier and Richard Madgwick, was published in the Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory in December 2024.
The authors analysed bone from 13 of the individuals recovered during Rowiegar’s excavation in 1937.
Examining the microstructure, they suggest there were different mortuary practices present, with some individuals placed in the structure immediately after death while others were perhaps buried elsewhere, exhumed and their remains (or some of them) transferred to the Rowiegar cairn.
The analysis yielded no evidence for excarnation.
The authors write: “Currently, it is not possible to ascertain how long after soft tissue decay the remains were accessed. Nor is it possible to establish whether all remains were retrieved and deposited in the chambered cairn, or whether selective retrieval of certain elements was undertaken for targeted deposition at the Knowe of Rowiegar.
“It is also possible that the remains represent the end point of a more protracted funerary practice involving selective retrieval and circulation prior to final deposition. The unbalanced element representation at the site suggests that selective retrieval is likely.”
The quantity of skull fragments from Rowiegar compared to other bones also adds weight to the idea of specific remains being removed from cairns, relocated, curated and possibly exchanged.
References
- Crozier, R. (2016) Fragments of death — a taphonomic study of human remains from Neolithic Orkney
- 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)
- Hedges, J.W. (1984) Tomb of the Eagles: A Window on Stone Age Tribal Britain.
- Renfrew, C. (1979) Investigations in Orkney (Reports of the Research Committee of the Society of Antiquaries of London)
