The Archaeology of Britain: An introduction from ... - waughfamily.ca

• 202 • Julian D.Richards
by an aisled version without internal
partitions, and the bower was
enlarged with a latrine attached at one
end. After the Norman Conquest, it
developed into a motte-and-bailey
castle (Beresford 1987).
In Orkney, Shetland and the
Hebrides, it is easier to identify Norse
settlements. Rectangular long-houses
replace native houses based on oval
or circular forms. Around the Bay of
Birsay, Orkney, a likely seat of the
Norse earls (Hunter 1986), are a
number of Norse farmsteads. At the
Point of Buckquoy at Birsay, a Norse
farm had been built on top of the
ruins of an earlier Pictish farm, and
at first sight would appear to support
a picture of conquest and
replacement of the local population.
However, the artefacts from the
Norse occupation levels are not
Scandinavian types but Pictish bone
pins and decorated combs. These
imply that the Viking newcomers
were at least able to obtain equipment
from a native population that had not
been exterminated, and most
probably inter-married with it. By
contrast, the evidence from the Udal,
Figure 11.5 Norse buildings at Jarlshof, Shetland.
North Uist, has been used to
Source: Historic Scotland
demolish the idea of social
integration. Here the eighth-century
native settlement was apparently replaced by an entirely Scandinavian culture. A short-lived defended
enclosure was the first Viking Age structure; characteristic longhouses were then built amongst the
ruins of five Pictish houses (Ritchie 1993).
At Jarlshof on Shetland, romantically named by Sir Walter Scott, a small Pictish community
was replaced by a sequence of Norse longhouses in the ninth century. Houses over 20 m long by
5 m wide are known. The walls are built of stone rubble with a turf and earth core. Typically
there are pairs of opposed doors placed in the long walls, stone-lined hearths and wall benches.
At Jarlshof, the group of two or three houses and their outbuildings, perhaps representing an
extended family unit, is unusual (Figure 11.5). In Scotland, the overall settlement pattern is
dispersed, comprising individual farms. At Westness, Rousay, Orkney, excavations have revealed
a fragment of a Viking Age landscape. A coastal cemetery contained more than 30 graves, some
pre-Norse, but with two small boat burials. Nearby was a farm consisting of a substantial longhouse
and two byres, one interpreted as a cattle byre with space for about 18 animals, and the other for
sheep. Beyond the cemetery was a boat-house, or naust, comprising a three-sided building, open to
the sea (Ritchie 1993).