Archaeologists excavating a tomb in one of Scotland’s oldest known monuments have discovered two 5,500-year-old polished stone balls.
The team discovered Tresness, a chambered, hill-shaped tomb on the Orkney island of Sanday, dating to 3,500 BC. Hugo Anderson-Whymark, the senior curator of prehistory at the National Museum of Scotland, said after the discovery of the first cannon, “A marvellous find from inside the tomb! “Only about 20 Neolithic polished stone balls were found in Orkney, and very few of them were intact.”
Anderson-Whymark later said the second ball was “about the size of a cricket ball, perfectly spherical and beautifully finished.” “It’s fragmented in striped sandstone, but it will be wonderful when restored.”
Researchers previously reported finding plain stone balls at other sites in Orkney, including the Neolithic village of Skara Brae and the building complex known as Ness of Brodgar. Archaeologists have also unearthed more than 500 carved stone balls, some in Orkney but many elsewhere.
Aberdeenshire on the Scottish mainland, 160km south of Orkney, is particularly rich in these artefacts. One known as the Towie ball was carved into four knuckles, three of which were decorated with intricate spiral patterns. Other specimens found in the area have distinctive spikes and ridge patterns.
Researchers say the stones were likely used as both weapons and symbols of power. Human remains of different ages and genders found at Orkney show signs of impact injuries to the head with a hard object, possibly caused by such tools. But the discovery of polished balls in a tomb is unusual.
The tomb at Tresness was divided into several chambers. Vicki Cummings, an archaeologist at Central Lancaster University, says the tomb was probably connected to a Neolithic settlement at Cata Sand, two and a half kilometers away. “We have a human settlement and a tomb that is more or less contemporary, so it seems very likely that the people who built this monument were people from the settlement at Cata Sands.” he says.
Cummings adds that the landscape of the area was very different during the Neolithic period. The sea level was lower, meaning the shore was further away from the tomb and settlement, and the area was covered with trees.
Archaeological sites in the Scottish archipelago make up the UNESCO World Heritage site known as the Heart of Neolithic Orkney. Monuments, settlements and artefacts found in the area bear witness to the farming practices of people living in northwestern Europe before 4000 BC.
The team states that in addition to the cannons, the excavations in the tomb revealed sherds, knives and a roe deer horn. This season’s excavation revealed how Bronze Age people altered the monument, removing the stones and adding a new outer wall made of large stones brought from elsewhere.
Archaeologists first discovered the tomb in the 1980s. In 2017, new excavations began with “an additional sense of urgency.” The area is subject to erosion and the collapse of the cliff on which it is located, so researchers are trying to document the site and collect as many artefacts as possible before it’s too late. They create 3D models of the tomb, emphasizing the sections built during the Neolithic and Bronze Age.
Cummings ended his speech with: “At the end of the day, this is a settlement that is, unfortunately, disappearing into this sea, so we extract this information before it is lost forever.”
Source: https://arkeofili.com/iskocyadaki-neolitik-mezarda-5-500-yillik-tas-toplar-bulundu/
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