The Knowe of Yarsoe

The Knowe of Yarsoe is a stalled cairn on the island of Rousay in Orkney. Like the majority of the cairns in Orkney, it was built in the early Neolithic period and continued in use for over a thousand years. It stands on the edge of a steep slope which falls away sharply towards the sea, the focus for many Orkney tombs.

Unlike the chambered cairns such as Cuween on Mainland Orkney, the stalled cairns comprise a long, narrow chamber subdivided by stone slabs into sections, resembling cattle stalls, where the bones of the deceased were laid. It is believed the two cairn types represent two distinct but interconnected cultures living in Orkney during the Neolithic period.

This tomb contains four consecutive stalls, and perhaps represents a continuing ritual descent into the spirit world from the earthly world. The innermost stall is partly blocked by stone slabs.

The Knowe of Yarsoe contained the disarticulated remains of around 29 people, dating from 2900-1900BC. All were adults and many more skulls were found than other remains. Orkney tombs typically contained several hundred bodies, adults and children, and many were ritually sealed and/or emptied at the end of the Neolithic period, around 2500BC. The bodies in this tomb may be those associated with the closure rite after the rest of the community’s ancestors were removed elsewhere. 
The dates indicate that these weren’t the last people to die. They may have been especially powerful or revered people whose remains (or perhaps their skulls) had been curated in a tomb or in a house for several hundred years before being placed here, perhaps as guardians of the land or the tomb. Many tombs have legends of ghostly guardians who bring calamity on anyone who disturbs them. Some may have been added long after Orkney’s Neolithic culture had collapsed.

The entrance of the Knowe of Yarsoe faces southeast, along the line of the hillside, on the long axis of the tomb. This is typical of stalled cairns and a major difference to chambered tombs which generally face out to sea. The communities linked to these tombs may have had little affinity to the sea compared with the people who built the chambered cairns.

Red deer. Massimo Catarinella, Wikicommons

Many tombs are linked to specific animals or birds which were interred with the human bodies. These include sea eagles, dogs and otters. The Knowe of Yarsoe contained the remains of at least 34 red deer. Red deer remains are commonly found in stalled cairns but not in chambered cairns, another indication of a cultural divide. The deer was a revered animal, both for its gifts of meat, hide and antler and for its embodiment of the spirit of the wilds. The shedding and regrowth of antlers reflects the dying-and-rising spirit of the green and the deer remained a totem or spirit guide for shamans and ritual specialists throughout the Celtic and Anglo-Saxon periods. The horned God Cernunnos and the sage Merlin were both associated with deer.

Cernunnos on the Gundestrup Cauldron, 1^st Century BC. 

Rousay is rugged with steep hillsides and heather moorland, ideal habitat for red deer, which were probably introduced to the islands by people at a very early point in Orkney’s history. Rousay is poor quality land and unsuitable for cultivation, and this offers the idea that the stalled cairns were linked to the earliest hunter-gatherer communities of Orkney, who especially revered the deer, whereas the Neolithic farmers who settled in later times and have proven Middle Eastern ancestry lived on the better quality land more suited to agriculture, built the chambered cairns and the various ritual monuments including the Stones of Stenness and the Ring of Brodgar, and brought Orkney into the forefront of British culture.

The Tomb of the Otters

The Tomb of the Otters is one of the most recently discovered Neolithic cairns in Orkney. It was built on the south coast of the island of South Ronaldsay, a short distance from the Tomb of the Eagles.

Like many of Orkney’s tombs, the Tomb of the Otters is a relatively inconspicuous grassy mound which could easily be a natural feature, as it was supposed to be until chance digging revealed the truth. The tombs were typically blended into the landscape but at the same time offered wide views across the land. They were built for eyes within the tomb, not for the living outside it.

Excavation found it to be a chambered cairn, containing six small chambers leading off from the main chamber. Those at the western end were added after the main construction and another small chamber was inserted under the main entrance passage. The tomb contained over two thousand disarticulated human bones, which had been placed in the tomb over a period of several hundred years.

Some of the bones date to 3300BC, the date of first construction of many Orkney tombs, and genetic analysis shows the dead were settler-farmers whose recent ancestry lay in the Middle East, the birthplace of agriculture. The presence of so many bones is unusual: in many cases, the tombs were emptied at the end of the Neolithic period, around 2500BC, in an elaborate, Orkney-wide destruction and closure of ritual sites.

The coast near the tomb.

 The tombs are believed to each link to one community or village, and many are associated with specific animals or birds which may have been community totems. This tomb is uniquely associated with otters.

The tomb was, uniquely, carved out of the bedrock and is set partly into the ground. This makes it unusually wet inside and the bones were periodically covered with silt, perhaps caused when water levels rose. This was perhaps a deliberate attempt to emulate the otters’ natural habitat.

The skeletons and spraint of otters were found in large amounts inside the tomb, suggesting otters routinely entered it. The skeleton of a four-year-old child was found with a small stone which had been worked to resemble an otter’s head. Perhaps this was a favourite toy, or perhaps a spiritual emblem to help guide this child to the next world.

Many of the ‘totems’ have well-known links to the spiritual world and many are carrion-eaters. The otter almost exclusively eats fish, but has been known to eat carrion. It is possible the otters encouraged in this tomb devoured the flesh of the dead and were considered spirit guides for these people. Their habitat of both land and sea gives them a greater liminal status.

The chambers are roofed with slabs of stone from the beach which are heavily water-worn, creating another deliberate link to the sea.

The majority of Orkney tombs face out to sea, but the entrance passage of this tomb faces north, inland. It is possible this entrance is a later feature after the tomb was extended, perhaps to keep it damp and suitable for otters. The original entrance may have been to the west, where it would face a large lake, plausibly the freshwater home of the otters in question.

  

English Otter. Alexander Leisser, Wikicommons.