Monuments as Landscape: Creating the Centre of the World in Late Neolithic Orkney Author(s): Colin Richards Reviewed work(s): Source: World Archaeology, Vol. 28, No. 2, Sacred Geography (Oct., 1996), pp. 190-208 Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/125070 . Accessed: 27/12/2011 16:01 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Taylor & Francis, Ltd. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to World Archaeology. http://www.jstor.org
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Monuments as Landscape: Creating the Centre of the World in Late Neolithic OrkneyAuthor(s): Colin RichardsReviewed work(s):Source: World Archaeology, Vol. 28, No. 2, Sacred Geography (Oct., 1996), pp. 190-208Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/125070 .Accessed: 27/12/2011 16:01
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].
Taylor & Francis, Ltd. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to WorldArchaeology.
In Britain and Ireland there is a tendency for late Neolithic monuments to be clustered in groups and located at similar topographic positions. In this paper a group of spectacular monuments, including henges, passage graves and standing stones, in Orkney is examined. It is shown how the development of the monuments occurs and how they draw on the visual imagery of the natural world in their architectural representation. As each monument embodies a different role and purpose so its architecture and appearance vary. Through a sequence of construction a single area of Mainland, Orkney, becomes transformed as new 'landscapes' are created and manipulated. Ultimately, this particular place comes to embody the totality of the Neolithic Orcadian world and acts as an axis mundi for cosmological belief.
Few can fail to be impressed by the scale and splendour of the henge monuments, stone circles and passage graves of the late Neolithic period in Britain and Ireland. At certain places such impressions are enhanced through the juxtaposition of monuments, sometimes composed of similar types of sites such as the henges in the Milfield Basin, Northum- berland (Micket 1976; Harding 1981). Alternatively, different forms of monuments are positioned in close proximity, for instance, the Irish passage graves and henges in the Boyne valley. In the latter example it is possible to see a clear temporal development of 'place', and quite probably the same is true for the Milfield basin. In addressing the question of why a particular place is deemed appropriate for such embellishment, it is noticeable that in some areas, such as northern Britain, these complexes tend to be situated in highly visible positions, often on the floors of natural bowls or basins. The henges in the Milfield basin or the timber and stone circles on Machrie Moor, Arran
Creating the centre of the world in late Neolithic Orkney 191
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Figure 1 The Stenness-Brodgar area of western Mainland, Orkney.
(Haggarty 1991), are examples of this topographic location. In other areas, for instance Wessex, groups of monuments are placed at different aspects within rolling terrain on the chalk uplands. In terms of the social construction of landscape in the late Neolithic period, why should such widespread consistency be shown in the juxtaposition of monuments? What factors influence the architecture of these monuments, and why does a similar topographic location of monumental complexes occur within different regions of Britain and Ireland?
In order to provide some insight into these questions, I wish to examine a group of late Neolithic monuments which conform to a topographic position typical for northern Britain in being situated within a large natural bowl in west Mainland, Orkney. These include a range of different architectural forms such as the passage graves of Maeshowe, Bookan and probably the Ring of Bookan, the henge monuments with internal stone circles of Stenness and Brodgar, and a number of large standing stones such as the Watchstone and Stone of Odin. Perhaps the main difference between the Orcadian monumental complex and those in other areas is the presence of the substantial settlement of Barnhouse which lies in the heart of the distribution of monuments (Fig. 1). I wish to argue that the settlement of Barnhouse provides a key to understanding both the concepts of order embodied in the creation of this 'landscape', and the architectural diversity exhibited by a series of monuments situated in such a small area of Mainland, Orkney.
When walking around the stone circles of Stenness and Brodgar and gazing up at their towering height, one is struck by the sheer size and permanence of these constructions. Such feelings of awe and wonder are simply a product of their architecture. Yes, tremendous effort went into their erection, but for the people undertaking this work they were introducing to the world an architecture which would endure. Participation in such
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Creating the centre of the world in late Neolithic Orkney 193
projects should not simply be viewed in terms of amounts of labour invested in different scales of monumentality (Renfrew 1979: 214-18), because each stone erected and every portion of ditch carved out of the natural rock would have marked individual biographies and an altered understanding of the landscape (Barrett 1994). But there is more: these people were engaging in a project of religious significance, the result of which was intended to last for ever and was referenced to something beyond their immediate experience. By their toil a specific place in the world was given a permanency and sharper physical definition through monumental constructions (Bradley 1993: 47-50).
But why here? What made this an appropriate place? And what beliefs and concepts of order determined the form and nature of these monuments?
As a starting point it should be noted that concepts of order are inevitably cosmologically based: cosmologies allow a particular cultural understanding and categor- ization of the lived and experienced world; they represent a way of 'thinking about' the multiplicity of images and experiences of individuals. In this sense they are not simply abstractions but structure daily practices and perceptions of space and time: they are as real as people's lives. Cosmology is therefore necessarily embedded in the natural topography and environment (Tilley 1994), and through the categorization of space and time particular natural places are recognized and images of landscape and order are created.
Through the spatial imagery of late Neolithic architecture we glimpse such order, and can also appreciate that it embraces people's lives and their perceptions of the world. Architecture structures social practices by imposing a particular order on the contexts of daily life. Hence architecture is reflexive because people create their constructed environment and are then influenced by that creation.
Monuments as cosmology
This account begins towards the end of the fourth millennium BC, when the village of Barnhouse was established adjacent to the loch of Harray, in western Mainland, Orkney (Fig. 1). Although originally numbering perhaps no more than twelve houses (Fig. 2), the village is notable for the presence of a new and uniform house architecture. Previously, early Neolithic houses, as seen at Knap of Howar, Papa Westray, and more recently, Stonehall, Mainland, displayed a linear ordering of space as a dominant feature of their architecture (Fig. 3a). This spatial order is replicated within the contemporary stalled cairns (Richards 1992a). The late Neolithic houses are different, being circular in shape with a rear 'dresser', right and left stone 'bed' boxes and a central hearth (Fig. 3b). At one level it could be suggested that this changed spatial representation adheres to an altered perception of social concepts of order, involving concentricity and centrality. However, the presence of a cruciform layout of internal furniture within the house betrays a more complex system of categorization associated with temporality and directionality (Richards 1991). Such ideas are unlikely to be neutral but introduce and express social contrasts and oppositions embodying both auspicious and inauspicious qualities and meanings.
At Barnhouse, House 2, a large building situated in the south-west, represents a
194 Colin Richards
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Figure 3 a) The early Neolithic houses at Knap of Howar (after Ritchie 1984); b) House 3 at Barnhouse.
primary element of settlement (Fig. 2). In terms of constructional method, it was unlike the other houses, being built in a more sophisticated and regular manner. The quality of masonry was far superior to the other houses with carefully laid slabs creating straight walls and angular recesses. Internal form was created through a series of recesses defined through the use of corner buttresses. Although of different appearance, we see this house to employ the same principles in its spatial organization: cruciform elements embraced within a concentric order. It is almost as if two houses were laid face to face, each having a central hearth and cruciform organization of internal space. Exactly the same principles of order can be seen in the architecture of contemporary passage graves, for instance at Quanterness, Mainland (Renfrew 1979), and Quoyness, Sanday (Childe 1952).
The influence of cosmology on house form has been widely examined in ethnographic studies (for example, Hugh-Jones 1979; Blier 1987), and has also been discussed in relation to late Neolithic Orcadian houses (Richards 1991; Parker Pearson and Richards 1994: 41-7). Once this relationship is acknowledged, it is tempting to view the architec- ture of the house as simply a spatial representation of abstract beliefs and resulting concepts of order. However, people 'dwell' within houses, it is where they 'live' and reside within the world. Under these circumstances, it is important to understand the house not only as a physical construct with which to think about the world, but as a place in which participation in actions and practices leads to the formation of individual and cultural knowledge (Bourdieu 1977).
Creating the centre of the world in late Neolithic Orkney 195
The spatial organization of the Barnhouse village itself is that of a number of houses surrounding an open central area. In this central area a range of practices occur involving material transformation. Pottery is manufactured, animal bone is changed into bone artefacts and flint is knapped and retouched. It is an area of transformation and creation. Within the settlement, therefore, we see a homology in operation: the central hearth within the house containing the life-maintaining fire, itself an agent of transformation and creation. In the organization of settlement, the open central area is also an area involved with the transformation of materials.
With these ideas in mind I wish to leave Barnhouse and consider one of the best known 'monuments' of the Stenness-Brodgar complex, the nearby passage grave of Maeshowe (Plate 1). Maeshowe is fully visible from Barnhouse, being situated on slightly raised ground under a kilometre to the south-east of the village. However, its exact place in the landscape was not determined solely by a desire for close proximity and clear view from Barnhouse. Recent excavations have revealed that below the clay platform upon which the passage grave stands lie the remains of an earlier building, probably an early Neolithic house (Richards in prep.). A similar situation occurs at the nearby passage grave of Howe of Howe, Stromness (Smith 1995), which is situated approximately four kilometres to the west of Maeshowe. Although in the recent report the underlying building is identified as being a stalled cairn, the presence of a hearth makes this interpretation unlikely. At one level, the construction of late Neolithic passage graves overlying early Neolithic houses forges links with an ancestral and mythical past; at another, it turns attention towards late Neolithic conceptions of the 'sacred' within an ordered landscape imbued with ideas of auspicious and inauspicious places and directions, heavily influenced by a perceived relationship between the living and the dead, the past and the present.
While the chosen location of Maeshowe is clearly influenced by an earlier Neolithic building which once occupied that place, the history of that place may be even more
196 Colin Richards
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Fglare 4 Plan of Maeshowe (after RCAMS 1946).
complex. The internal architecture of Maeshowe is of special interest not simply because, in terms of masonry and building technique, it is one of the most sophisticated passage graves in north-west Europe, but because of the completely atypical use of standing stones in its construction (Fig. 4). Inside the main central chamber, four standing stones face four corner buttresses which create recesses in exactly the same manner as seen in House 2 at Barnhouse (Fig. 2). Together, the recesses, in combination with three side cells and the entrance passage, form a cruciform organization of space. What is absent from the centre of the interior of Maeshowe, a house of the dead, is the life giving hearth. In this particular form of internal spatial definition we recognize strong links between Maeshowe and Barnhouse, but also differences, notably the lack of a central origin: the hearth.
Creating the centre of the world in late Neolithic Orkney 197
Plate 2 The Stones of Stenness.
Added to this, Henshall (1963), has noted the extraordinary use of four large slabs to create the main length of the entrance passage into Maeshowe; again, a building technique unknown in any other passage grave. What was not commented on was that they were of similar size and shape to the standing stones forming the stone circle at the Stones of Stenness (Plate 2). At this point the discovery of a standing stone socket on the platform at the rear of the passage grave may become significant. Excavated in 1991 (Richards in prep.), the stone socket is face on to the mound, in a position consistent with it being part of a stone circle situated on the platform. Taken together how can this evidence be best interpreted?
The standing stones concealed within the main chamber of Maeshowe are superfluous to structural necessity. Moreover, through the necessary sequence of construction their erection represents a primary stage of construction. Consequently, for a period of time four monoliths stood proud in the centre of the platform for all to see. At a later date they were slowly encased within the rising passage grave which included at least four other monoliths in its construction. Given the inclusion of these massive stones within the fabric of the passage grave, the possibility exists that Maeshowe itself incorporates a dismantled stone circle in its architecture.
Defining the perimeter of the platform at Maeshowe is a broad ditch surrounded by a bank, which is now known to originally have been an external wall (Richards 1992b: 448). The existence of an entrance through this wall is difficult to ascertain. However, the ditch runs around in a continuous circuit having no causeway linking the platform with the outside world. Whether the ditch and wall were contemporary with or post-date the construction of the passage grave is still unresolved (cf. Sharples 1985). None the less, Maeshowe was, or became, through these physical boundaries, divorced from the surrounding landscape which it dominates. However, unlike the stone circles of Stenness
198 Colin Richards
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Figure 5 Plan of the Stones of Stenness (after Ritchie 1976).
and Brodgar which are clearly visible from all lines of approach, Maeshowe is visible only from the south and west, most clearly seen from the Barnhouse village.
Settlement at Barnhouse continues for no longer than approximately four hundred years, ending early in the third millennium BC. During this time, on a higher ridge, within two hundred metres to the south-east of Barnhouse, the Stones of Stenness henge monument was built. Its towering circle of monoliths are themselves encircled by a large rock-cut ditch with a single causeway entrance, and an outer bank or possibly a wall (Fig. 5). In the centre lies a large square stone hearth which is modified and enlarged during its period of use (cf. Richards 1993: 170-1). Running from the central hearth, in direct
Creating the centre of the world in late Neolithic Orkney 199
alignment with the entrance, is a pathway of stone slabs leading to two adjacent sockets for standing stones which were removed during the life of the monument.
As with the ditch and wall around Maeshowe, the chronological relationship of the different elements which form the Stones of Stenness is difficult to establish. However, in all aspects of the architecture of this monument we see the same principles of order employed to generate a familiar spatial representation: a central hearth, encircled by a boundary with a single entrance, offering an image of spatial organization similar to that presented within the house (cf. Hodder 1982: 222). Yet the Stones of Stenness is not a house, it is something quite different, a monument built by people for something beyond themselves; perhaps a place associated with particular deities or ancestors. Within its confines human transactions could be sanctioned amidst an architecture of overawing proportions designed both to impress and to intimidate.
I would suggest that the architecture of the Stones of Stenness embodies the imagery of the perceived world at a single place and time. Activities occurring within such a context necessarily drew on this architecture and the privilege of knowledge which it would have held (Thomas 1991: 39). Here the principles of order seen in the concentric arrangement of space within the monument relate to a perceived order of the world mirrored in the architecture of house, tomb and henge.
The Watchstone, a single monolith over 5 metres high, is situated adjacent to the loch of Stenness, approximately 120 metres north-west of the Stones of Stenness (Plate 3). Earlier this century, building work on the road which passes the standing stone uncovered the stump of a second monolith eleven metres away from the Watchstone (RCAMS 1946: 320). Similarly, when a geophysical survey in 1990 located the stone-hole of the Stone of Odin, a famous monolith with a hole in its centre, a second stone-hole was discovered approximately six metres away (Richards in prep.). Local myth describes an avenue of standing stones running between the henges of Stenness and Brodgar, although no evidence for this exists. Instead, on the Stenness promontory two sets of paired monoliths, evocative of giant door jambs, are situated between the loch edge and the entrance to the Stones of Stenness. If these are symbolic doorways through which processions passed, it is interesting that they link henge with loch, or rather henge to water (see Richards in press). Whatever the reasons behind such a conjunction, the situation of these megalithic doorways transformed the image of the world and provided an altered conception of landscape.
When habitation at Barnhouse effectively ceases, a single monumental building, Structure 8, is constructed to the south-west partially overlying earlier houses. This massive structure comprises a single large house with a central hearth surrounded by a clay platform bounded by an outer wall (Fig. 6). Again, concentricity orders the spatial configuration, but in the architecture of the internal house we see a change from the small circular house form to one of square shape with rounded corners. This shift in house design is also discernible in the houses of the latest phase at Skara Brae (Childe 1931). Hence, after the abandonment of the Barnhouse settlement, the place is marked in monumental fashion through the erection of Structure 8. Through the provision of the high surrounding wall and extremely small side entrance, visual access, and therefore knowledge of what is occurring within its confines, is curtailed. In this form its architecture is one of restriction and exclusion (Richards 1993: 163-72).
200 Colin Richards
Plate 3 The Watchstone.
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The Stenness-Brodgar area of Orkney, therefore, undergoes a sequence of change with the construction of a series of massive monuments. Beginning around 3300 BC, the settlement of Barnhouse appears to act as a focal point for the passage graves, henge monuments and standing stones, all of which are built within a four-hundredyear period. When the settlement falls out of use, at approximately 2800 Bc, a large structure is built on the site and large-scale habitation of this area ceases.
Monuments as landscape
In tracing the historical development of the Stenness monuments I have merely attempted to unravel their sequence of construction and hint at their different natures. By drawing out the principles which influenced their respective spatial organization, each monument
Creating the centre of the world in late Neolithic Orkney 201
Figure 6 Plan of Structure 8 at Barnhouse.
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becomes comprehensible in conforming to late Neolithic perceptions of order. But in promoting such principles, I am aware that a danger exists of reducing all monuments to a common denominator, a single template of order or cosmological construct. While consistent spatial order may be recognizable in each monument, they remain different, both visually and in terms of individual experience and expectation. I now intend to draw out these differences and reconsider the passage grave and henge monument as different 'constructs' within a categorized landscape. I will suggest that the role of each place is physically constituted in terms of a transformation of the natural world, thereby providing an insight into the way different aspects of life are metaphorically linked into an appreciation and understanding of 'landscape'.
The construction of Maeshowe almost certainly overlaps chronologically with the establishment of a settlement at Barnhouse. While the position of Maeshowe seems to be determined to some degree by the presence of an earlier building, there is no evidence to suggest that earlier activity influenced the site of the Barnhouse village. It is suggested that despite its unusual architecture, Maeshowe was completely concerned with the ancestral beliefs of the inhabitants of the nearby settlement. While always a visible aspect of the lived and worked landscape, Maeshowe also has a time as well as a place. Its passage is
202 Colin Richards
oriented towards the south-west, aligned towards the setting sun on the few days immediately before and after the winter solstice as it drops below the hills of Hoy (P. Ashmore pers. comm.). Throughout the year the interior is in perpetual darkness, there is no life-providing hearth within the central chamber; it is a residence of the dead. Then, at the heart of winter, with all its connotations of darkness and cold, the dying midwinter sun illuminates the interior of the passage grave. At the very point of the midwinter solstice the interior is returned to darkness. After this period the sun begins its return journey back across the horizon and again the interior of the passage grave is illuminated. Hence, the 'death' of the old year and 'rebirth' of the new is accompanied by two periods of illumination within Maeshowe, allowing a rite of passage involving union with the ancestors.
Through architecture, Maeshowe not only commemorates the passage from one yearly cycle to another, but this time also marks Maeshowe. It is a time of celebration, of the dead, an anniversary that all will remember. I think this aspect of architecture provides a good example of how particular places become part of, and compose, 'landscape', itself understood in terms of social categories and practices within the rhythms of daily life. Maeshowe marks a specific place and time and this is how it forms part of a Neolithic landscape which was continually read and re-read by the people who inhabited it.
The outward appearance of Maeshowe is that of a mound. Unlike other late Neolithic passage graves which are constructed as stone cairns with outer revetment walls (Sharples 1985: 65), the mound which forms Maeshowe is composed of clay. Today it is covered by grass and presumably the change from a bare mound of clay to one covered by some form of vegetational cover did not take a great deal of time. There are two features of this construction which I wish to highlight. The first is that, not long after its erection, Maeshowe would outwardly have resembled the surrounding topography where further to the north a number of natural knolls have a similar appearance. Hence, this monument embodies the remarkable characteristics of being both conceptually below and physically above ground. The place of the dead is therefore in an ambiguous position located between two worlds. The second point leads on from the first in that the physical constitution of Maeshowe mirrors that of the earth itself. The chamber is constructed of stone and is covered by natural boulder clay; this mimics the geological formation of the world where the bed-rock is covered by a continuous layer of natural till (Fig. 4). Taken together, these observations indicate a conscious attempt on the part of the builders to create a structure to house the dead which is visible as a monument and yet positions the dead as being below the surface of the humanly inhabited world.
Gradually, through time, the landscape is transformed as different monuments such as the Stones of Stenness and Ring of Brodgar are constructed. So too are social practices. Because each monument embodies a different purpose and intention, so each assumes a different architectural form and is positioned at a different locale. Some may refer to older monuments, to remembered places, creating a memory of landscape; others are built at new places which serve both to draw on and to alter such an understanding of landscape.
In reconsidering the Stones of Stenness and Ring of Brodgar, I want to draw attention to the physical appearance of the henge monuments. Certainly in respect of the former, concentric order around a central point is clearly a structuring principle of the spatial organization of the monument, but the selection of particular architectural features
Creating the centre of the world in late Neolithic Orkney 203
requires further consideration. Both the Stones of Stenness and the Ring of Brodgar conform to the architectural form of a more general class of henge monuments distributed across the British Isles. Typically, they consist of an inner circular ditch and outer bank with one or two entrances, and in this respect the two Orcadian examples have been classified as 'classic' henge monuments (Harding with Lee 1987: 45). Little discussion has been directed towards this fundamental architectural arrangement apart from the observation that an inner ditch and outer bank define a central open area (e.g. Clare 1987: 466). Instead, attention has been directed towards size, number of entrances and internal features for classification purposes (Burl 1969; Clare 1986).
The Stones of Stenness and Ring of Brodgar could be described as consisting of two basic components: the bounding inner ditch and outer bank, defining a central area, and the internal arrangement of stone 'furniture' within the interior. In examining the first of these components, the ditch and bank, it is worth noting Clare's observation that the tradition of digging ditches is 'alien' to Orkney (1987: 470). As a possible way of thinking about the appearance in Orkney of henge monuments, I wish to draw attention to the constitution of the henge monument in relation to the local topography. The Stones of Stenness and Ring of Brodgar are, respectively, situated on two opposed narrow promontories which separate the lochs of Harray and Stenness. In turn the lochs are surrounded by the hills forming the large natural bowl of western Mainland, Orkney (Fig. 7). Thus, by virtue of their position, both monuments have the appearance of being surrounded by water which is enclosed by the encircling hills (Plate 4).
If the idea of the internal ditch and external bank forming the henge enclosure actually embodies the local topography, a microcosm of landscape, it may be significant that on excavation the ditches of both henges were found to be waterlogged, resulting in organic preservation (Ritchie 1976: 10-12; Renfrew 1979: 39-41). Indeed, judging from contem- porary photographs of the archaeological investigations at both of these monuments, a pump was required in every case for the excavation of the ditches. Under these circumstances it seems likely that, for long periods of time during the year, the ditches bounding both henge monuments contained water. We now have to imagine the interior of the Stones of Stenness and Ring of Brodgar to be areas bounded not simply by clean rock-cut ditches, as archaeologists have tended to envisage, but encircled by ditches containing standing water. In thinking again of the appearance of the henge monuments as composed of a central area bounded by a ditch, partially full of water, which is surrounded by high bank, the parallels between the architecture of the henge and the local topography become strikingly apparent. In this situation these monuments are not referring only to the local topography but perhaps also the island world which Neolithic Orcadians inhabited. This may also betray a specific attitude to water as representing both a natural architecture and a potent symbolic agent of transition and division (Richards in press). With this point in mind it is worth mentioning that the other definite late Neolithic monument with an enclosing ditch, Maeshowe, may also have been encircled by water. Certainly during excavations of the ditch by Childe (1956) and Renfrew (1979) pumps were consistently employed to prevent the trenches across the ditch from flooding. Furthermore, peat growth within the Maeshowe ditch commenced shortly after it was originally dug (Renfrew 1979: 31-8). Returning to the henge monuments, in moving across the causeway entrances into their central areas, late Neolithic people can now be seen to have taken a passage
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across water, which in turn may have embodied through that physical movement an aspect of purification and separation,
In considering the second component of the henge monuments, the stone 'furniture'
Creatinr the centre of the world in late Neolithic Orknev 205
Plate 4 Aerial view of the Stenness promontory.
which lies within the boundaries, a similar relationship between henge architecture and local topography becomes evident. The height of the standing stones, dwarfing the central features, imitates the encompassing topography where the surrounding hills overlook the dwellings and lives of Neolithic people. The monoliths are cut from the bed-rock, the stuff of the earth; they are dragged and placed vertically in their sockets. The massive central hearth slabs are laid flat in the centre of the henge monument. In taking these different positions the elements of the monument involving quarried sandstone bed-rock are mimicking the vertical rock formations of the encircling hills and the horizontal sandstone beds of the central bowl. Here the stratigraphy forming the natural world is re-created within a single monument.
If we see cosmologies themselves as being reflexive in that they are both drawn from and explain the natural and cultural world, it is easier to understand how categories of meaning and representation are continually shifting in different social situations. Homology operates in a similar manner, allowing different realms and states of experience to be interwoven through a series of metaphorical links; in this process lies the potency of ritual. These metaphorical 'shifts' are both observable and comprehensible in the constitution of the Stones of Stenness and Ring of Brodgar.
Because the henge monuments can now be seen as a representation of the local topography, where rings of standing stones together with enclosing circles of water with external banks reference the lochs and encircling hills, the situation of a number of
206 Colin Richards
standing stones on the facing slopes of these hills becomes easier to understand (Fig. 7). Without doubt many standing stones have been removed, with no record remaining of their location. In some cases, as with the Deepdale stone which overlooks the southern shore of the loch of Stenness, the stones were paired in a similar manner to the stones around the monuments (Burton 1978). Interestingly, the Deepdale stones were paired in such a way as to be oriented as 'doorways' to face the Brodgar-Stenness monuments. Whether these stones actually provided formal access to the monumental complex is dif- ficult to know, but their situation on the downward slopes, effectively 'within' the con- fines of the surrounding hills, recreates the image presented by the stone circles within the henge. Here monument and landscape fuse in a series of transformations involving concentric order and representation of the natural world.
After the abandonment of Barnhouse there is no evidence of further Neolithic settle- ment in the immediate area. The landscape was now completely dominated by a collec- tion of extremely impressive monuments. Upon the encircling hillsides a series of single standing stones overlook the complex. Whereas the giant stone rings were symbolic ex- pressions of the surrounding topography, now they become fused and join in union to become a central point, an axis mundi, of the physical and cultural world. From the cen- tral hearth within the Stones of Stenness to the monumental complex in the large central bowl of western Mainland, we see a series of transformations operating at different scales, both in the composition of monuments and in people's experience of that cultural landscape.
Perhaps the most important point to recognize is that 'landscape' was continually created and transformed over several hundred years through different activities occur- ring at different places at different times of the year, and as such it will have assumed different qualities according to key points in the various cycles of human existence. The dominance of the monuments will always have overshadowed daily tasks and practices, just as they do today, but at particular times each place in this created landscape will assume especial significance. This is why the so-called 'ritual landscapes' of the late Neo- lithic are nothing more than a formalization of the social landscapes of daily life. When we view these enormous standing stones and monuments it should be born in mind that they are the bare elements of what were almost certainly the contexts of elaborate cere.- monies. When in use, decoration, colour and adornment would have completely trans- formed the imagery of the monuments, while at other times sheep may have grazed contentedly around the bases of the standing stones.
I have attempted to demonstrate the way in which an area of Orkney is gradually transformed during the late Neolithic period through a sequence of monumentality. Cos- mology acts as a way of both understanding and viewing the world; as such it necessarily imposes a categorical order on that world. This, of course, is realized only through social practices, through the idea of 'being'. Hence, landscapes are continually being trans- formed and re-categorized, and, as Richard Bradley (1993) has noted, once constructed, monuments alter the physical world and continue to influence its reading by future generations. For Neolithic Orcadians there can be little doubt that through monumenta- lity they created a spectacular landscape, which acted as the centre of their world, from concepts and images that were readily available in the formation of the natural world and the architecture of their homes.
Creating the centre of the world in late Neolithic Orkney 207
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Richard Bradley, Mark Edmonds, Jane Downes and Julian Thomas for commenting on this paper. Patrick Ashmore kindly pointed out the complexity of the Maeshowe orientation.
Department of Archaeology Glasgow University
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