ABSTRACT
It might also be claimed that the archaeological evidence has for too long been examined with specific monuments rather than the everyday workings of the communities responsible for them. It has been said of nineteenth-century antiquarians that 'from a background of Victorian colonialism at the height of the British Empire it was easy to conceive of the Stone Age inhabitants of Orkney as being on the same level as the indigenous races which are subject to imperialist rule the world round'.7 This may have induced a dual standard involving 'reverence for the physical remains and disdain for the uncivilized people who built them'.8 Perhaps the anomaly was particularly sharp in the Northern Isles given the impressive number of Megalithic tombs. The picture has changed a great deal since with the excavations at Jarlshof and Clickhimin and Renfrew's model of social evolution.9
