ABSTRACT
Ah u n d r e d miles off the north coast o f Scotland (Fig. 62) lies one o f the most remarkable archaeological sites ever excavated in north-west Europe. To the modern traveller flying from the Orkneys past Fair Isle, the famous bird sanctuary, the site is first seen nestling on the west shore o f Sumburgh Head, the sheer-sided promontory which forms the southernmost tip o f the Shetland Islands. As the plane descends to the nearby landing strip a vivid impression is gained o f a huge mound over 3 acres in extent, scarred and pock-marked at various levels by the walls, foundations and floors o f many ruinous buildings (Plate XXXVII). Piled one on top o f the other, they represent the remains o f successive village settlements inhabited from a time when the islanders were leading a Stone Age existence to the coming o f the Vikings in the early 9th Century A.D. As in the great tels o f Near Eastem countries, each settlement was inundated by drift sand, blown in this case not from the surrounding desert but from the nearby dunes or whipped by fierce equinoctial gales from the exposed beach along the bay. Here, moreover, the settlements were those o f primitive pastoralists, farmers and fishermen, who inhabited the very rim o f barbarian Europe, far removed from the early centres o f urban civilization. Yet
for all their poverty and isolation, these habitations throw considerable light on the prehistoric and protohistoric peoples who colonized our shores over a span o f three thousand years, and whose descendants are still to be found in these remote island groups.
