Investigations in Sanday Orkney Excavations at Pool, Sanday: A Multi-period Settlement from Neolithic to Late Norse Times

Sanday is one of the most fertile of the Orkney islands, and these two volumes explore an unusually complete cultural landscape of prehistoric times. Together they demonstrate that the risk management strategies, subsistence base and related social arrangements of people living on islands on the North Atlantic fringe were different to those of populations in other areas of mainland Britain. Coastal erosion threatening the site at Pool on the west coast of the island led to its excavation during 1983-8, revealing a long structural sequence from the mid fourth millennium BC to the Norse period of the 9th to 11th centuries AD. The long settlement sequence at Pool means that it is possible to see long-term change in the subsistence base, as new crops and new animals are added to it, and yet there is a striking continuity in the basic way of life over almost five millennia that demonstrates a successful adaptation to island life, for if the harvest failed, there was always the sea and the cliffs to provide food. Substantial Neolithic stone-built structures represented a permanent settlement, housing perhaps more than one family group and, unusually, both Grooved Ware and Unstan Ware were included in the material culture of the inhabitants. The latest Neolithic building was absorbed into a subsequent Iron Age village as a core structural unit and survived through into the Viking period in modified form. Outstanding finds include a securely-dated Pictish symbol stone and an ogham inscription. By the time of the Norse arrival, probably in the eighth or ninth centuries at the very latest, the settlement had contracted substantially, but had not been abandoned completely. A native population of unknown size or status survived in association with the Norse incomers until sometime in the 10th or 11th century, when the distinction became less obvious. A notable innovation of Norse times was the cultivation of flax.