A map of Orkney 10,000 years ago is beginning to paint a picture of how the islands appeared to the first settlers who arrived there at the end of the last Ice Age.
The culmination of a year’s work by The Rising Tide Project – The Submerged Landscape of Orkney, the map was produced by taking sediment samples from sites around Scapa Flow and combining the information with bathymetric data.
With sea levels estimated to be 30 metres lower than today, the first settlers approaching Orkney from the south would have experienced an almost unrecognisable landscape compared to what we see today.
Orkney-based archaeologist Caroline Wickham-Jones, a lecturer at the University of Aberdeen, is leading this part of the project — a collaboration between the universities of St Andrews, Wales, Dundee, Bangor and Aberdeen.
She said: “We’ve managed to create a totally different world. What I want to show people is just how much Orkney has changed.” The map shows a more constricted entrance into Scapa Flow as Flotta, Fara and Cava amalgamate with Hoy and Longhope to form a solid landmass. Towards the west, Hoy Sound becomes dry land, making Scapa Flow a landlocked bay.
Scapa Flow in 8,000BC — a landlocked bay accessible only by a narrow passage between what would become Stanger Head, on Flotta, and Hoxa Head. Three thousand years later, around 5,000BC, rising sea levels have submerged the islands and headlands in the middle of the Flow.
Ms Wickham-Jones said: “Access into Scapa Flow by the first settlers 10,000 years ago would have been through a narrow entrance between Hoxa and Stanger Head — there would have been no entrance through Hoy Sound. If you consider that you’d be in a low skin boat — I think it would have been quite spectacular, with massive cliffs towering over you on either side.”
Fresh water, a sheltered shore with access to the sea, and somewhere to fish and hunt, would have all been priorities for these people — and it seems Orkney provided these in abundance.
If you consider that you’d be in a low skin boat — I think it would have been quite spectacular, with massive cliffs towering over you on either side
“The map does answer the question why there is so little evidence of the first people that came to Orkney, and that is because what survives is likely to be under water,” Ms Wickham-Jones continued.
She added that the research methods and technology employed by the project could be applied to Doggerland — a former landmass in the North Sea that connected Great Britain to mainland Europe during and after the last Ice Age.
The full article is available here on Orkneyjar, Orkney Archaeology News : Painting a picture of Scapa Flow, 10,000 years ago
More information:
Rising Tide Project The Submerged Landscape of Orkney
University of Birmingham: North Sea Paleolandscapes website
Orkneyjar Orkney Archaeology News