The Knowe of Rowiegar – Neolithic burials with Iron Age modifications

Thursday, October 9, 2025 (3:28 PM)

“The great broch and the splendid chambered cairn at Midhowe on the south-west coast, the cairns at Rowiegar and Taiversoe Tuick, the Stone Age village on the Braes of Rinyo under Faraclett Head—these and other relics of antiquity are of superlative interest.”

Eric Linklater. Orkney and Shetland. 1965

Rowiegar photograph from 1980. — The Knowe of Rowiegar in 1980. (📷 Raymond Lamb/Orkney SMR)

By Sigurd Towrie

We have mentioned, many times, how Bronze and Iron Age Orcadians are known to have returned to already ancient sites and appropriated them for their own use.

This varied from ephemeral activity in or around a structure, additions or complete remodelling. Perhaps the best-known example is the construction of an Iron Age roundhouse outside the Neolithic chambered cairn at Quanterness.

In the island of Rousay there is another example, although not as clear cut. At the Knowe of Rowiegar – a huge stalled cairn on Rousay’s south-western shore – it seems Iron Age people converted the interior into an earth-house/souterrain.

Unfortunately, the excavation was not published, although some photographs were taken after completion and a short film made of the excavated site, showing the structure in some detail.

Work at the cairn was part of an excavation campaign by Walter Grant, the owner of Rousay’s Trumland estate, who financed and directed a series of digs across the island. In 1937, as well as Midhowe, the Taversoe Tuick, the Knowe of Lairo and Bigland Round, this included work on the Knowe of Rowiegar.

At that time the knowe was little more than a ruinous mound running north-west to south-east a short distance from the shoreline. Unfortunately, the site was not maintained after excavation and now consists of a few stones projecting above the rough grass.

Rowiegar plan — The Knowe of Rowiegar, Rousay. (Davidson & Henshall. *The Chambered Cairns of Orkney*. 1989)

It measured 27.4m long by 5.6 to 6.6m wide. The entrance is suggested to have been in the south-eastern end of the cairn, but the passage and outer part of the chamber had been destroyed – thought to have been during Iron Age modifications to the site. The central area had been heavily disturbed when it was converted into an earth-house/souterrain.

1937 excavation photo of the Knowe of Rowiegar showing the inner chamber. (📷 David Wilson/Orkney SMR)

Eight pairs of divisional orthostats survived, and the location of a missing pair established, confirming the structure was a (very) long stalled cairn. The orthostats had been placed to form “stalls” along the inner walls ranging from 1.5 to 1.8 metres long. If this spacing continued towards the suspected entrance there would have been two more pairs followed by two stones flanking the entrance, allowing for a passage about 2.6m long.

This meant the chamber was approximately 22.2 metres in length – one of the longest examples known – 1.8 metres wide and had twelve compartments.

Within the undisturbed compartments was evidence suggesting Rowiegar’s stalls contained the same low, stone shelves, or benches, found between the orthostat dividers in other stalled cairns, such as Midhowe.

Among the large quantity of animal remains inside were some fragments of human bone. These do not appear to have been studied in detail at the time but were re-examined in 2002. [1]

The new analysis proposed the remains represented a minimum of 28 people, representing all ages.

There were “seven cases of trauma or possible trauma evident in the skull and two possible cases of trauma in the postcranial skeleton” possibly linked to interpersonal violence.

Malnutrition was also evident in the skeletal assemblage, as well as signs of general bodily stress:

“As most signs of trauma, disease and malnourishment occur in the non-preservable soft tissues of the body, this level of evidence of such population stresses in the skeletal assemblage indicates a high level of violence and ill-health. The times during which these people lived were both brutal and challenging.” [1]

Radiocarbon dating of the remains suggests the structure was in use between c3300-2900BC, but not necessarily continuously.

Isotopic analysis of the human remains also indicated that “these individuals consumed a predominantly terrestrial diet, albeit with some evidence of the possible minor inclusion of marine protein and intra-group dietary variability.”[2]

Mortuary practice

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 [3] and this arguably reached its zenith following the excavation of the Isbister cairn, South Ronaldsay. [4]

Doubt was cast on 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. [5]

A recent re-evaluation of the Knowe of Rowiegar remains suggests that human remains were placed at different stages of decomposition and points towards a more complex, muti-stage process for handling the dead. [6]

The authors of a 2024 paper analysed bone from 13 of the individuals recovered during the Rowiegar excavation. Examining the microstructure, they proposed 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 concluded:

“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.

A reanalysis of the radiocarbon dates from the human remains suggests the chamber was in use between 3420–3360BC. [7]

Iron age re-use and modifications

“Rowiegar, situated close to the beach about six miles south of Midhowe, was found in very ruinous condition, but here, too, as at Midhowe, two unexplained walls were found running out, one from each end of one side of the cairn. More interesting, however, was a kind of earth-house which had been constructed underneath the floor of the chamber.”

Hugh Marwick. Ancient Monuments in Orkney. 1952

1937: The exterior of the Neolithic structure also showing later, Iron Age, alterations to the site. (📷 David Wilson/Orkney SMR)

Some 3,000 years after the stalled chamber’s construction, it was revisited and appears to have been modified in the Iron Age. The site was reoccupied with evidence of building beside and over the top of the cairn.

The Iron Age date proposed for the alterations is based on artefacts recovered during the 1947 excavation were pottery sherds, steatite vessel fragments, part of a bronze vessel, a spindlewhorl and a glass bead.

The presence of the bead suggests a date between 200BC and AD200.

Stonework at the south-eastern end of the Neolithic cairn was too ruinous to be interpreted and two thick walls, curving outwards from the north-western and south-eastern ends of the cairn, are likewise unclear. The latter, however, are perhaps also connected to the Iron Age re-use.

This re-use seems to relate to the construction of an earth-house, or souterrain, within the centre of the Neolithic stalled chamber – an underground structure accessed from above. Unfortunately, Grant’s excavation was not published but it seems the earth-house was entered from the south-east, its builders lowering the floor and building masonry pillars to support a lintelled roof.

Notes

[1] Hutchison, M., Curtis, N. and Kidd, R. (2015) The Knowe of Rowiegar, Rousay, Orkney: description and dating of the human remains and context relative to neighbouring cairns. In Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland Volume 145.
[2] Gigleux, C., Richards, M.P., Curtis, N., Hutchison, M. and Britton, K. (2017). Reconstructing diet at the Neolithic stalled cairn of the Knowe of Rowiegar, Rousay, Orkney, using stable isotope analysis. In Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, 13, pp.272-280.
[3] Renfrew, C. (1979) Investigations in Orkney (Reports of the Research Committee of the Society of Antiquaries of London)
[4] Hedges, J.W. (1984) Tomb of the Eagles: A Window on Stone Age Tribal Britain.
[5] 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)
[6] Tudor, T., Crozier, R. & Madgwick, R. (2025) All Mixed Up: Investigating Mortuary Practice and Processes of Disarticulation Through Integrated Histotaphonomic Analysis at the Knowe of Rowiegar, Neolithic Chambered Cairn, Orkney, UK. J Archaeol Method Theory 32, 9.
[7] Bayliss, A., Marshall, P., Richards, C. and Whittle, A. (2017) Islands of history: the Late Neolithic timescape of Orkney. Antiquity, 91(359), 1171-1188.