Similar but different – the two-storey Huntersquoy chambered cairn, Eday

By Sigurd Towrie

Once upon a time in the Neolithic, a group of people – presumably residents – decided they were going to build a structure on Eday’s Vinquoy Hill. We can only imagine what lay behind this decision, but it was clearly not taken lightly.

Their goal was to raise a partially subterranean, two-storey building that would be cut into the rock on the hill’s lower slopes.

What we do not know is whether their construction was inspired by Rousay’s Taversoe Tuick – the only other “double-decker tomb” in Orkney – or vice versa. Nor can we say with any certainty where it fits in the timeline of the three known chambered cairns on Vinquoy Hill.

Huntersquoy sits in the middle of the three – about 440 metres to the south-east of the Vinquoy cairn, which is prominent on the skyline above, and 170 metres to the north-west of the Braeside stalled cairn.

With chambered cairns, we tend to focus on the similarities – something that has long fed into the notion that they served the same purpose.

But every so often we come across a site where, despite the shared features, distinct differences stand out. And Huntersquoy is one such site.

Like the Taversoe Tuick, little remained of Huntersquoy’s upper chamber, although the lower was well-preserved.

But despite the clear similarities between these two subterranean chambers, elements of Huntersquoy’s architecture are intriguingly unique. Unfortunately, however, the chamber is usually flooded making access nigh on impossible. As a result, it remains understudied.

The structure was excavated by Charles Calder in 1936/37 , who found that “no appreciable mound marked the position, which was overgrown with grass, peat and heather.” [1]

It may have been unmarked but people knew something lay beneath. A ground-level lintel over an apparent entrance, together with an opening into an “debris-filled underground chamber”, had seen the structure classed as an Iron Age souterrain – an earth-house as they are known in Orkney. The stumps of two upright stones above had been interpreted as standing stones.

Calder’s investigation, however, revealed otherwise, unearthing “a Neolithic burial cairn of very remarkable construction”. [1]

That “remarkable construction” was made up of two distinct chambers with a rectangular stalled cairn overlying a structure partially cut into the hillside. Like the Taversoe Tuick, the upper and lower storeys had their own entrances, “placed diametrically opposite one another on the circumference of the cairn, in a line running east and west.” [1]

Calder commented:

The upper chamber

By 1936, Huntersquoy’s top storey was all but gone with only one or two wall courses remaining. Enough survived, however, to confirm it had been a stalled cairn, typical of the Orkney-Cromarty examples found throughout the islands, and almost identical in layout to the nearby Sandhill Smithy.

A three-metre-long entrance passage ran through the 11-metre-diameter external cairn at its western end. This was typically narrow – a mere 43 centimetres wide on the outside, splaying to 66 centimetres at the inner end. We do not know its height but, based on other examples, it was unlikely to have been more than 70 centimetres.

Inside, the rectangular chamber – measuring c.3.5 metres long by two metres wide – had been divided into three compartments by two pairs of orthostats, one metre apart, projecting from the walls. A third pair framed the entrance.

Beside the surviving orthostats Calder found evidence for low stone benches or shelves, again features typical of stalled cairns.

He proposed that:

That need not necessarily be the case. Midhowe, for example, only had “benches” running along its north-eastern side.

Although nothing survived at the eastern end of Huntersquoy’s upper level, it was undoubtedly made up of an end compartment, probably containing another bench – or shelf-like – feature and the massive stone backslab typical of the stalled cairns.

Calder found that it had been built on the lintels forming the underlying structure’s roof. A “thick layer of prepared clay”, he wrote, had been laid on top to seal the gaps and create a floor surface. [1]

This tells us that the lower chamber was complete before construction began on the upper. Although we cannot say for sure, the evidence suggests there was no prolonged delay and that the two-storeyed design was planned from the outset.

Comparing the two chambers, Calder wrote:

Lower chamber

The well-built, subterranean chamber had been built into a rock-cut pit in the hillside.

In 1936, the chamber and passage were “more than half-filled with stones, earth, and mud”. [1]

Clearing out this infill, the excavators revealed a roughly oval chamber aligned approximately north-south. Measuring c.3.9 metres long and 1.8 metres high, as we have seen its roof was formed by the five huge lintels that also served as the upper level’s floor.

Two pairs of orthostats projecting from the western and eastern walls, divided the interior into a roughly rectangular central area and two semi-circular side cells – a layout very similar in plan to the lower chamber at the Taversoe Tuick. The central area was further sub-divided into three, with recesses to the east and west, including masonry features suggestive of bench- or shelf-like features.

Access was by a four-metre-long passage, on the downslope side, that entered the chamber at the centre of its eastern wall.

At 60 centimetres wide and 75 centimetres high at the outer end, the passage height is not uniform, increasing as it moves inwards. This is due to a combination of the roof rising c.12 centimetres, just before the halfway mark, along with a descending ten-centimetre step.

After this, the passage floor slopes downwards, its inner threshold being c.36 centimetres lower than the entrance. The resultant increase in passage height is countered slightly by the final roof lintel being placed some ten centimetres lower than its neighbour.

Outside, a partially stone-faced “trench”, c. 2.58 metres long, cut through the external cairn material and led to the passage. Going on the assumption that the chamber’s role was solely funerary, Calder believed this“trench” had been “filled in and camouflaged after each burial in order to conceal the entrance and keep out unauthorised persons.” [1]

These days the chamber is usually flooded, making access impossible. Water was equally problematic in the 1930s, requiring remedial action to allow excavation work to continue:

Calder suggested the uneven, rocky floors of the chamber and passageway had been levelled using a thick layer of clay.

‘Several uncommon features’

There has long been a tendency to homogenise chambered cairns to fit them neatly into defined types. But although there is no doubt that Huntersquoy has elements akin to the Taversoe Tuick, and other chambered cairns, there are also distinct differences, described by Calder as “several uncommon features”. [1]

One of these elements immediately brings to mind the enigmatic Knowe of Lairo, in Rousay.

At Huntersquoy, the deliberate inclusion of a raised recess in the wall directly above the lower chamber’s entrance is, I believe, a feature is unique to the structure. About a metre wide by 60 centimetres high, the base of this recess is over 70 centimetres above the level of the irregular, rocky floor.

Although reminiscent of the so-called “shelves” and “cupboards” encountered in Neolithic dwellings, the recess also has the air of the elevated alcoves built Knowe of Lairo‘s inner walls. At the latter, the recesses contained some human remains but nothing was found within Huntersquoy.

The base of the western compartment, directly opposite the entrance, was also raised over a metre from the floor, the space beneath “filled in solid with built masonry”.  [1]

The bottom of the southern cell was c.71 centimetres above floor level, while the north, which had no surviving masonry, appeared to be “a tier of two cells, one above and one below a stone shelf.”

The lower cell – if it was ever meant to be used – had an uneven, rocky floor that “in places [rises] higher than the general floor-level”.

This saw Calder ponder “if this part were ever intended to be used for burial purposes, the main repository for the remains of the dead probably being that of the upper.” [1]

The base of that upper cell was c.66 centimetres from floor level.

Comparing those measurements to those found at the Taversoe Tuick, where the side-cell bases were between 30-40 centimetres above the level floor, why are Huntersquoy’s almost twice as high?

Water-filled?

That bodies of water were significant in the Neolithic is borne out by the deposition of objects in rivers, lakes, pools and marshes — a practice that continued right through to the Iron Age and well into the historical period. These watery places, it has been suggested, may also have played a part in the disposal of human remains – something that could go some way to explaining the lack of bodies within most of Orkney’s chambered cairns.

Were Huntersquoy’s recesses raised because of water ingress in the lower chamber? And that raises the question of whether water/flooding was a deliberate feature or something that required remedial action during construction.

The Neolithic builders would surely have noticed water pooling when digging the pit to house the chamber into which their chambered cairn would be built. That, and the height of the recess bases, does raise the possibility that the chamber was meant to flood – if not all the time, perhaps periodically.

If that were the case, did the times water was present dictate when the monument was the focus of activity?

The presence of water could explain the lack of human remains in the lower chamber – assuming, of course, that it ever held any.

In both storeys, the only finds were a few pottery sherds and flint flakes in the upper and pottery and an axe fragment and “axe-shaped implement” in the lower (pictured).

Iron Age activity

The presence of an Iron Age pottery sherd in the lower chamber is indicative of later reuse of the chamber and this raises another interesting possibility – that the chamber (water-filled or not) was adopted in the Iron Age and reused as a souterrain or earth-house.

The reuse of already ancient sites in the Iron Age is known throughout Orkney. The re-excavation of the Vinquoy cairn, upslope, not only revealed evidence of Bronze Age activity within the chamber but Iron Age outside.

Underground “wells” are also known from Iron Age sites across Orkney – the term “well” the result of the early archaeological interpretation that they served as water sources. But that notion is is questionable for numerous reasons, most obviously the difficulty of access and the variability of the water within.

With Huntersquoy, did the presence of an underground, perhaps water-filled, chamber draw Iron Age islanders back to the site?

Writing in 1983, however, David Fraser believed it unreasonable to suppose that the chamber was constantly flooded in prehistory. [2]

Instead, he suggested the water table had been altered “in the modern past” by the construction of a dam some 850 metres to the north-north-west of Huntersquoy:

More environmental research around the cairn is required before we can say for sure.

A lack of organic material means we have no dates for Huntersquoy. Although one small pottery sherd was suggested to have come from an Unstan Ware bowl [1], this does not necessarily mean an early date for the cairn’s construction and use.

Unstan Ware was long thought to have been supplanted, around 3200BC, by Grooved Ware pottery. However, a 2017 re-analysis of Orkney radiocarbon and luminescence dates now suggests that “round-based pottery […] and Grooved Ware […] were almost certainly in contemporaneous use during the thirty-first century cal BC, at the very least.” [3]

Bearing that in mind we could be looking at construction/use anywhere between 3400BC and 3000BC.

Across Orkney it has been suggested that when chambered cairns went out of use they were deliberately infilled and sealed off. Although the material the excavators encountered in Huntersquoy’s lower chamber is suggestive of something similar, there is a problem with that interpretation – namely the Iron Age pottery on the floor!

Water-filled or not, that confirms the chamber must have been open, and accessible, for millennia. Or cleared out in later prehistory.

Unfortunately, the excavation report does not go into the detail of the infill, but were we looking at deposition resulting from centuries of water ingress it seems highly unlikely it would have reached a uniform level, particularly if, the water was moving out the passageway.

Some distance to the east of the cairn, beyond its edge and roughly aligned to the entrance, was a hearth associated with peat ash and burnt stone. How this feature related to the Neolithic structure remains unclear:

At the risk of going against most of what I’ve written about patterns above, I’ll just add that something similar was found outside the Bookan cairn in Sandwick. There, two small, shallow scoops had been scraped out two metres from the entrance and filled with a dark material containing small amounts of charcoal.

Notes

• [1] Calder, C S T. (1938) Excavations of Three Neolithic Chambered Cairns-One with an Upper and a Lower Chamber-in the Islands of Eday and the Calf of Eday in Orkney. Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. Volume 72 (1937-38)
• [2] Fraser, D. (1983) Land and society in Neolithic Orkney. British Archaeology Reports, British Series, no. 117 ). Oxford.
• [3] Bayliss, A., Marshall, P., Richards, C. and Whittle, A. (2017) Islands of history: the Late Neolithic timescape of Orkney. Antiquity, 91(359), 1171–1188.