Banks Chambered Tomb

Discovered by accident in 2010, Banks Chambered Tomb proved to be the first undisturbed Neolithic burial found in Scotland in thirty years. Radiocarbon dating places its use between 3344 and 3021 BC.

On 16 September 2010, Hamish Mowatt began levelling a mound of earth near his farmhouse and holiday cottages at Banks on South Ronaldsay. What he uncovered was the edge of a stone chamber. Looking inside the flooded space with an underwater camera, he saw what appeared to be human skulls. He contacted the authorities, and in November 2010, the Orkney Research Centre for Archaeology conducted evaluation excavations that confirmed the site as a Neolithic chambered tomb. The discovery was remarkable for what had not happened: the tomb had not been disturbed since its Neolithic builders sealed it. The central passage, approximately four metres long by seventy-five centimetres wide, was aligned east to west, with five burial cells opening from it and one featuring an upper shelf. The chamber had been quarried from solid bedrock, a construction method with no parallel among the dozens of other chambered cairns in Orkney. Excavation of one chamber and the central passage revealed human bones in multiple layers separated by silt and thin stone slabs. Radiocarbon dating placed the burials between 3344 and 3021 BC, indicating approximately three centuries of use. All age groups were represented, from very young infants to adults. In every layer, otter bones and otter spraint appeared alongside the human remains. The otters had entered the tomb during the intervals when the entrance stood open between burial episodes. A deer antler and pottery fragments with four distinct incised patterns were also recovered. Among the most evocative finds was a natural stone resembling an otter's head, discovered beneath the bones of a young girl. Scratched symbols on interior stones, sealed since the tomb's closure, represent datable examples of Neolithic mark-making whose meaning remains undeciphered.