Taversoe Tuick – the lower chamber

By Sigurd Towrie

As we have seen, the Taversoe Tuick’s lower chamber had survived more or less intact.

Roughly rectangular in plan, the 1937 excavator Water Grant described it as “like the upper one, constructed round a skeleton of five uprights, but is entered from the south.” [4]

The rear, northern end was divided into four compartments – an oval one at each side, flanking a pair directly opposite the six-metre-long, south-east-facing entrance passage:

The compartments were clearly defined by stone uprights and “shelved” with slabs to form “benches” about 40cm above the floor.

The Burroughs’ 19th century investigation had found a crouched burial in the west-central compartment and fragments of at least three individuals in its east-central neighbour.

Removing one of the “benches” in 1937, Grant recovered part of a human jawbone and the fragments of at least three pottery vessels “of the familiar Unstan type”. Unfortunately, the excavation report does not say which compartment. [4]

Adding these pottery fragments to those found by the Burroughs, Grant proposed the chamber had contained at least 16 clay vessels. [4]

Measuring only 3.7m by 1.4m, even without the modern access ladder, the bottom chamber is cramped. The roof, formed by the stone lintels that also make up the upper chamber’s floor, is a mere 1.5m above the floor.

Because the lower chamber supports the upper, it was obviously constructed first, built into a pit cut through clay and bedrock – a technique echoing the “chamber” containing the Sandfiold cist in the Mainland parish of Sandwick.

This tells us a few things.

For one, the site selected for the Taversoe Tuick was clearly significant and carefully selected for a reason. Important enough to require quarrying out a rock face before construction could begin.

But why? Was it chosen for its prominence? A line of sight? Or was it, like Maeshowe, perhaps selected due to an association with another structure? Or a place that played role in the builders’ ceremonies, traditions or mythology?

Maybe. But there’s probably a more practical reason.

There were undoubtedly easier locations to raise a chambered cairn. Locations that did not need require the excavation of a pit out of bedrock first.

But it is doubtful that “easier” locations would have been suitable for a two-storeyed structure. Cutting into the hillside meant that the rock walls of the pit not only supported the weight of the lintelled roof/floor, but also part of the uppermost chamber.

As Grant, explained:

The location, if there was any doubt, confirms that the double-decker design of the Taversoe Tuick had been decided upon long before construction began. And the first stage was creating a cavity to house the lower chamber and support the upper.

As well as the skeletal material the Burroughs found within the compartments, Turner recorded that:

The presence of human remains is intriguing when we consider the dimensions of the tiny entrance. Although the passage increases in height and width (to 0.6m wide and 1.2m high) as it enters the mound, the outer end was a mere 0.4m wide and 0.6m high.

Accessing other chambered cairns – both stalled and Maeshowe-type – generally requires crouching down, or crawling, to negotiate their low entrance passages.

The Taversoe Tuick’s diminutive entrance, however, takes it to a different level!

Clearly getting in and out was quite a squeeze! Particularly for those attempting to manoeuvre a corpse to the interior. And that’s not considering the aforementioned “blocking stone”, which projected c20cm from the passage floor and was bonded to the walls about four metres from the chamber!

Over the years much ink has been spilled on how the tiny entrance affected and controlled access. Suggestions included that the chamber was never meant to be entered (by mortals) or that, by necessity, it was a task for children.

That said, we know it is possible (though not particularly easy) for an adult male to negotiate the passage’s outer section, although it requires lying flat, on front or back, and slowly edging inwards.

This implies that if bodies were being deposited (and removed) at regular intervals, they must have been dragged in by someone who had entered the chamber first.

The passage appears to have a solar orientation around midwinter, but not specifically to the sunrise itself. Sunlight shining through the opening was noted by Orkney’s county archaeologist, Julie Gibson, as occurring around mid-morning on December 18.

Dating the structure

Unfortunately, unlike the Bronze Age cists from the upper chamber, we have no radiocarbon dates for the Neolithic construction/use because the skeletal remains from the lower chamber have not survived.

Within the lower chamber were sherds of round-bottomed, decorated pottery, similar to that encountered at the Unstan stalled cairn in Stenness. [2]

This suggests the Taversoe Tuick was raised around 3500-3300BC.

We need to be careful with pottery, however. Unstan Ware was long thought to have been supplanted, around 3200BC, by Grooved Ware. However, a 2017 re-analysis of Orkney radiocarbon and luminescence dates proposed that “round-based pottery […] and Grooved Ware […] were almost certainly in contemporaneous use during the thirty-first century cal BC, at the very least.” [5]

During their 19^th century investigations, the Burroughs found a macehead fragment and a triangular flint flake in the passage, on the outer side of the “blocking stone”. Another fragment of the macehead was recovered in 1937, found in spoil dumped from the 1898 operation.

The form of the complete polished stone artefact suggests a Late Neolithic date (c.3200-2500BC), although, again, its final deposition may have been much later.

At the outer end of the passageway, Lady Burrough had also recorded “[c]remation burials, under inverted Urns”. [3]

Her sketch plan of the lower chamber records two urns [3] but Turner’s 1903 account refers to “numerous broken portions of urns … on the floor of the passage, mixed with earth, black mud, and fragments of bone.” [1]

Again, the remains within these pottery vessels are long lost, but it is highly likely the cremations represented Bronze Age re-use of the structure – perhaps about the same time the cist burials were inserted into the upper chamber (c2100-1700BC).

Notes

• [1] Turner, W. (1903). An account of a chambered cairn and cremation cists at Taversoe Tuick, near Trumland House, in the island of Rousay, Orkney, excavated by Lieut. General Traill Burroughs, CB, of Rousay, in 1898. In Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland (Vol. 37, pp. 73-82).
• [2] Davidson, J. L. & Henshall, A. S. (1989). The Chambered Cairns of Orkney. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
• [3] Reynolds, D. M. (1985) ‘How we found a tumulus’ a story of the Orkney Islands — The Journal of Lady Burroughs. In Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland (Vol. 115, pp. 115-124).
• [4] Grant, W. (1939) Excavations on behalf of HM Office of works at Taiverso Tuick, Trumland, Rousay. In Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland Volume 73, 1938-39, pp. 155-166).
• [5] Bayliss, A., Marshall, P., Richards, C. and Whittle, A. (2017) Islands of History: The Late Neolithic timescape of Orkney. Antiquity, 91(359), pp. 1171–1188.)