Transcript: VFT 2: Orkney - Interview with James Moore,
Orkney college, UHI
Q2: Can you discuss some of the geophysics results from Bookan?
Ok, so here in this plot we’re looking at the area of geophysical survey that was undertaken at Bookan just
to the north of the Ring of Bookan itself. The thing that immediately dominates when you look at this is the
pattern of rig and furrow cultivation; the sort of zebra-like pattern that you can see across most of the
fields in this data set. If you look at this quite carefully and in a little bit of detail, you can see that this
seems to represent a fairly coherent pattern of cultivation: there are rigs that possibly underlie each other.
There are a couple of instances where it’s just about possible to detect some reworking or just possibly,
changes in directions of the ploughing and things like that.
Generally it appears to be one single pattern of cultivation that presumably was all that was being used at
the same point in time.
It’s also possible, just to the right hand side, to see what appears to be the remnants of a farmstead. We
don’t have a name or anything like that, attached to it but there’s clear evidence of a farmstead set within
this area of rig and furrow which gives a really nice impression of the pre-enclosure landscape and it’s all
been completely replaced by the modern field boundaries and the modern field structure that we see
today. A very different landscape not only in the alignment of the fields and the arrangement of these
things but also the difference between the modern fields, which are primarily laid to grass, and this rig and
furrow cultivation which would have given an almost corrugated kind of appearance to the landscape and
would have been primarily used for arable crops and root crops.
What’s particularly interesting about the rig and furrow in this area is that it shows up in slightly different
ways depending on where it is in the landscape. This might be a result, in places of the different cultivation
patterns, if particular farmers were applying particularly large amounts of manure or refuse to the fields,
that would increase the enhancement of the soils and therefore we would see them as more enhanced
anomalies and therefore darker anomalies within the rig and furrow. Given the extent of the area of rig and
furrow and also the variations between [them], some are very clearly black and white, and others much
more subtle (very faint traces of the rig and furrow), this seems much more likely to be a result of the
underlying archaeology in places where the rig and furrow is not really cutting through or reworking earlier
deposits, it’s showing up very faintly if at all in other areas where it’s going through the soils that are being
worked are already full of pre-existing archaeology – they’re showing up in much clearer, stronger,
anomalies. This is an almost classic example of a palimpsest landscape, where we’ve got successive phases
cutting through and reworking earlier deposits.
So within this area of highly enhanced rig and furrow soils it’s possible to make out a couple of circular
features off to the south-east. These, we honestly don’t quite know what they are. They appear to be
Neolithic, from the odd finds that have been turned up over the years, potentially ceremonial but at the
same time something more than passing practices as you can see that they’re still quite visible within the
data and that the rig and furrow surrounding them is highly enhanced, which implies more domestic
activity or at least something more than a simple occasional ceremony or practice. So, the short answer is
that we don’t really know what they are. They are clearly something of quite significant size and possibly
File Ref:
Web:
Content:
Document1PR029
http://www.uhi.ac.uk/learning-and-teaching  [email protected]
Page 1 of 2
Transcript: VFT 2: Orkney - Interview with James Moore,
Orkney college, UHI
05/06/13
represent a series of banks and ditches, possibly henges, these sorts of things, and they may well be
connected to the Ring of Bookan just to the south, just to the other side of the road there.
There’s also quite a large area that seems to be more easily identifiable as settlement activity or domestic
activity of some sort or another. Interestingly, [this area is] associated really quite close to these two
circular features. Whether or not it’s contemporary we just don’t know. This is one of the perennial
problems, perennial weaknesses I suppose, of gradiometer data – that you are simply getting a twodimensional plan of the responses. There’s no way of telling what came before what else, other than on
typological grounds.
And then, just to complete the prehistoric picture, right at the top of the data it’s just possible to make out
a large ditch and bank that appears to be associated with the broch at Burian, another Iron Age site. In
contrast to the other Iron Age sites that we’ve looked at with the survey this is one of the so-called Islet
sites, where the building is positioned on a little islet sticking out into the loch and is cut off from the rest of
the area, the rest of the mainland, with a large bank and ditch although.
There does seem to be hints of activity: settlements, something like that that extend out beyond the ditch
and again the rig and furrow in this area is incredibly highly enhanced which implies that there is probably
further activity that is underlying the soils or is being reworked in the soils, which would be perfectly in
keeping with other Iron Age settlements that we know of where significant efforts are made to enhance
soils to create enhanced anthropogenic type soils that were then used for intense cultivation of cereal
crops and things like that.
File Ref:
Web:
Content::
Document1
http://www.uhi.ac.uk/learning-and-teaching  [email protected]
Page 2 of 2