2000 saw Orkney's past in focus
Story Dated: December 28, 2000

Looking back over the past 12 months it is clear that 2000 has been yet another year of discovery - a time in which Orkney's ancient past was once again brought to the fore.

With television crews descending on the county and the start of the eagerly anticipated excavation all eyes were on Minehowe.

However, the mysterious Tankerness chamber was but one part of an eye-opening summer of excavation.

At the end of June, four weeks of intensive archaeological work at Minehowe drew to a close. During the dig a team of archaeologists, led by Jane Downes of Orkney College, sought out answers to some of the many questions surrounding the underground chamber.

The long-awaited Minehowe dig

As expected the excavation showed Minehowe to be an Iron Age construction, dating from the middle or later years of the period - around 200BC to 500AD. Of particular interest were the artefacts and evidence found around the outside of the chamber - evidence that is providing the experts with a clearer understanding of elements of Iron Age culture.

Day by day a more elaborate and fascinating view of the area surrounding Minehowe emerged. Gradually it became clear that the underground structure was merely a small part of a larger complex. Minehowe was, for some reason, part of what appeared to have been a prestigious and powerful Iron Age settlement.

Lying around 300 metres from Minehowe are the remains of a broch, the fortified drystone towers common throughout Orkney. What became clear was that the inhabitants of this ancient structure were using the natural mound now known as Longhowe as a ceremonial walkway through the water and marshlands that then surrounded their stronghold.

More information about the monument's enclosing ditch - first revealed by geophysicist John Gater in 1999 - was also gathered and proved particularly interesting. Encircling the base of the howe, the 18 feet wide ditch was found to have been dug out to a depth of around 14 feet.

The ditch surrounded the howe, leaving a single entrance causeway built up with stonework at the sides. Lying at the end of this entrance causeway, the archaeologists found evidence of an Iron Age round house lying beneath the remains of a later Pictish house. On first glance this round house appeared contemporary to the ditch but until further excavations can be made around the structure it will be impossible to say for certain.

Around this building, the excavators uncovered what has so far been the biggest example of Iron Age metalworking in Orkney. A discovery that Julie Gibson regarded as especially significant, particularly as it shed light on the craft of these Iron Age metalworkers.

"We've got this great workshop interest here," she said. "Basically we've found all the stuff that goes with metalworking - ore, furnace bases, crucibles, moulds, bits of metalwork and whetstones. So we've found this metalworking area on the outside that is particularly important because all that's been found before is the artefacts. Evidence of the creation of these artefacts, however, is a not as common, which makes this area extremely interesting to us. Most of our material that we've got at the moment has come out of the middens there.

"There's the sort of things you find in very special places in brochs set aside for metalworking but here of course we've got our broch separated from the metalworking area and from the ritual area (Minehowe) so I think we can maybe get some more answers about the thought that went into metalworking. Was it regarded as an almost "magical" process in a sense or a slightly dangerous process in this conversion of the stone and ore into metal and art?

"This area is going to be important as it gives us an impression of how Iron Age people were thinking about this metalworking process as well as what they were actually doing. All of which is virtually unknown."

Although the evidence shows these early metalworkers were extremely active in the area surrounding Minehowe, when it comes to the actual quantity of the goods being produced, at the moment the experts can only guess.

"Basically, with these buildings we've only just scratched the surface." said Julie. "We haven't got down into them at all. What we have done is established that they are there and established roughly what was going on but there's no tangible links to the structures at present."

Over the month-long excavation most of the work took place around the outside of Minehowe, with only a few excursions made inside the chamber. Although it was thought that there was originally some sort of structure over the entrance to the depth of Minehowe, the investigations proved inconclusive.

"There doesn't appear to have been major structures at the front as far as that trench leads us to believe, so we haven't got that circular building with a knob on the top, but we may have something over to one side. We're just not certain," said Julie.

However, immediately before the entrance a curious flat stone was found which, when carefully lifted, revealed a small bowl-shaped scoop of earth. This scoop was filled with ash that was thought to have been the remains of a cremation. An analysis of these bones has yet to be carried out but this will reveal whether the remains are human or animal.

Although the focus of the excavation was not directly on the underground chamber, the archaeologists now have a clear idea of the relationship between Minehowe and the other elements found in the ancient landscape.

Julie Gibson explained: "It's quite interesting in terms of the entire monument being a ritual area. The monument doesn't just consist of the underground structure - the monument consists of this great ditch and the underground structure and other things, including the niche at the rear of the howe, the paving and the deposition of this ashy material. Whatever this ash was it was definitely disposed off in that way - whether it was a cremation or the product of burning some other substance that was special and then was deposited there.

"What we've begun to see is that Minehowe is somehow connected to the nearby broch, which is less that 300 metres away, in that the entrance to the monument leads down towards Longhowe and then at the other end of Longhowe you have the broch with its external defences leading up onto the mound-so in a sense Longhowe is a path between the broch and Minehowe. This is a physical link between the two which we didn't know about before."

The discovery of artefacts with a distinctly Roman origin - a fibula brooch, pottery fragments and glass - also helped the archaeologists build up a clearer picture of how the area was used in the Iron Age.

"What is particularly interesting about the Roman finds is that we put in two very small ditches and out of the one very small ditch section we've found the fibula brooch, the glass and two or three other bits of pottery that were Roman. Now that's quite a lot given the amount of area that we've opened up which has the potential to produce these finds. Had we opened more we may well have found more of these high-class trading goods.

"These Roman finds are only paralleled in broch sites in Orkney. So what we're beginning to get is a clear link between the broch and this site (Minehowe) - a link that is making the explanation of these funny wells in brochs clearer as ritual by dint of inference from this. All in all the site is extremely important in that it is going to give us an insight into the rituals of the Iron Age period - rituals which at the moment are not really understood at all."

An important result of the Minehowe excavation was the confirmation that the Iron Age community, who were reusing a landscape that had already been used by their Bronze Age ancestors, still appeared to have some reverence for those who had gone before. According to Julie Gibson it was clear that in creating their ceremonial walkway across the top of Longhowe to Minehowe, the Iron Age builders were leaving the Bronze Age cist burials undisturbed.

She said: "We can now see that the Iron Age builders built their causeway across the top of Longhowe through what was previously a Bronze Age ritual landscape to their own ritual one that they were making.

"Colin Richards has a theory that in creating this underground structure the Iron Age builders were actually reconstructing their past in a way. He refers to the Quanterness Chambered Tomb, where the Iron Age roundhouse was built into the front of the Neolithic tomb backing onto the entrance. Now the tomb's entrance was quite clear in the roundhouse but that entrance was full of Neolithic material so they certainly were not disturbing the entrance. They had evidently gone in through the top of the tomb because there was evidence of Iron Age activity inside the Quanterness. What is important here is that these builders hadn't disturbed the entrance."

When it came to the most important discovery of the excavation, Julie was in no doubt.

"I think it has to be the metalworking area - it's going to prove very exciting in the future. As objects I can't decide between the fibula brooch and the bronze stud but I think that it's the totality of it, the sheer enormity of the monument that is the "star find" and its connection to the broch, I think that's the key thing."

As filming continued, Minehowe had a number of celebrity visitors throughout the excavation, among these being Time Team's Professor Mick Astin and Stewart Ainsworth.

After a brief visit which included time working on the Minehowe dig as well as filming some of the county's best known archaeological sites, Mick Astin's enthusiasm was clear.

"What surprises me coming from the south of England, is that up here you take the top soil off and you're straight on to the archaeology with no sign of the original geology." he said.

"I think it was maybe Julie (Gibson) that said 'you scratch the surface of the soil here and you've got archaeology'. Looking around here today you've got exactly that!"

A low flight over the howe gave the visiting archaeologists an overview of the area, quite literally showing Minehowe and its companion mounds in an entirely different light.

Mick explained: "From the air, particularly with the low sunlight we got last night, there's a sort of low ring of hills that encloses this area in which this "pimple" is in the middle.

"I think it's really important - probably more important than we think." he said. "It looks to me as if it's some sort of massive ritual complex with a settlement and other stuff that's been used for a considerable period."

For local man Tom Muir, who grew up in the shadow of the monument, the attention the site has brought to the East Mainland was well deserved and long overdue.

"There has always been this sort of intellectual snobbery going on from way, way back," he said. "The West Mainland has all the really well known sites and even as far back as the 1800s the East Mainland was being dismissed as insignificant.

A prime example of this attitude can be found within the pages of the Third Statistical Account that relates an account made by the Reverend Charles Clouston of Sandwick in 1862.

In his guide to the East Mainland he states: "The traveller may with ease ride round all the East Mainland in the course of a day: but we have nothing to hold out as an inducement for undertaking such a journey."

In other words, the Reverend Clouston was telling his readers not to bother!

Tom continued: "Whereas the archaeology of the East Mainland isn't maybe as conspicuous as the West Mainland, with your stone circles and suchlike, there is an awful lot out here. It usually just lying there and if it's ever been looked at, it was just delved into by antiquarians of the nineteenth century - much like Dingieshowe was - or more often than not its existence was just recorded and it was left.

"The one thing that this excavation really has done for me personally is having toured around Tankerness and Toab with Dr Colin Richards, you start looking for the lumps and bumps whereas before you just drove past and you never thought about it. The amount of mounds around that area is staggering. Even the natural glacial ones like Longhowe and the one at the back of Kirkyard all have activity on top of them - there are either settlements or in the case of Longhowe there's these Bronze Age cist burials.

"So this was a burial place for people in the Bronze Age, then you have this chamber with the ditch around it being constructed in the Iron Age as a sort of significant religious centre of some sort but considered special. And then you had a medieval chapel in the area and nowadays you've got the kirkyard. So local folks still see it as a special place because it's the final resting place of their ancestors and their families.

"It gives a nice feeling of continuity from the Bronze Age right through to the present day that this small area has always been set aside as somewhere a bit special."

Over the years the parish of St Andrews has revealed a wealth of Bronze and Iron Age artefacts. Among these a fringed cloak found in a peat bank just below Groatsetter, a wooden sword, a few bronze daggers and a razor.

These artefacts might well fit in with the idea that Minehowe was once surrounded by and possibly even filled with water; an element that was considered special to the Iron Age inhabitants of Scotland.

Tom Muir explained: "These items are all very high status goods. You just don't throw away bronze daggers. The fact that there were found underneath a pile of peat would suggest that they were originally thrown into a hole of water. Again, this brings to mind the whole concept of a body of water being a doorway to the underworld, which was maybe something in the psyche of the folk that built the Minehowe chamber as well - if it was indeed flooded. It shows you that there was an awful lot going on in this area and there was a lot of wealth in this area right through from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age."

A deep trench excavated in the vicinity of Minehowe has shown that there could have been a higher water table at the time Minehowe was in use. Not only would this have meant that the bottom chamber of the underground structure might have been flooded, but that the ditch itself may also have been filled with water.

Given that the broch was probably also surrounded by a watery marsh, the mounds of Longhowe and Minehowe, together with the numerous other howes in the area may even have had the appearance of small islands. Tom Muir expanded on this idea: "You have these areas of high ground with these two long glacial ridges forming a sort of valley pointing, almost funnelling you towards Minehowe at the end of it. The area around it would probably have been fairly boggy and watery - it might not have been entirely water covered, some of it might have been lochs, but it would certainly have been boggy. You wouldn't have been able to use it and you certainly wouldn't have been travelling through it. It makes sense then to stick to the high ground to get around. It's fascinating when you think that mounds were therefore sort of like islands in the boggy area and that is where you're finding these high status goods being tossed in."

"(The Minehowe area) might have been considered a fairly important "holy" place, for want of a better word, and the concept that you were passing through a ditch filled with water to get to the sacred area appeals to me greatly because you can imagine the effect it would have had on the minds of the folk who believed that this was the doorway to another world and that water was in some way special.

"That's not that hard to imagine because folk here up to not that long ago still went to the holy wells across the islands to draw water and that was within living memory. These holy wells were in virtually every area of Orkney and they were just a continuation of a concept."

From the very first day of the Minehowe excavation, not only the quantity but the sheer quality of the finds had the archaeologists spellbound. Pottery, bones, shells were all unearthed and at the very start a small bronze and enamel button hinted at the things to come. From the start of the excavations, the artefacts found hinted at what was later confirmed - that the Minehowe area was once the residence of someone of prestige and power; someone of high authority and power who could afford such luxury items. The discovery of artefacts with a distinctly Roman origin - a rare type of fibula brooch dating from the second or third century AD, pottery fragments and glass - caused great excitement during the excavation.

Although these discoveries do not necessarily mean the ancient Orcadians had any direct contact with Romans, they inevitably knew people that did. What the Roman finds did show, however, was the link between Minehowe and the nearby broch - other Roman finds in Orkney have generally been in brochs, Gurness, for example, and points to some trading network that was in place at the time. The large quantity of these high quality trading goods unearthed at Minehowe adds weight to the idea that the settlement was a prosperous and powerful one.

From the finds discovered around Minehowe, it is clear that at one time the settlement had a very active metalworking area. The ore, furnace bases, crucibles, moulds, bits of metalwork and whetstones all point to a significant production of metal artefacts.

Quantities of deer antler, a substance used for items such as combs, was also known to have been used for the handles of knives and daggers - a fact that tied in nicely with the sheer quantity of metalworking finds uncovered in the area surrounding Minehowe.

Perhaps one of the most important finds from this area came about entirely by accident following a series of visits to the site by local schoolchildren. In charge of showing these young visitors around the site and letting them experience a mock dig was Tom Muir from the Orkney Museum who was also part of the excavation team working on the site.

Tom explained: "We had been taking around school parties from St Andrews primary school mornings and afternoons. We were showing them the around site, taking them down the chamber, showing them some of the things we'd been discovering and letting them do a bit of digging. Then they got a pencil and a rubber and away they went, fairly happy.

"Then on the Friday, the last afternoon the bairns were visiting, they were accompanied by Jackie Clouston, the school janitor. They were all digging away as usual and I was going back and fore and saying 'this is something' or 'this isn't something' when Jackie says 'What's this?' and holds up a piece of fired clay. It was a very light coloured, buff sort of clay and it had a scoop out of it which was blackened. It was very obvious smooth scoop and I initially thought that it was a piece of a crucible for melting metal in."

Tom carried the find over to the dig supervisor who agreed that Jackie's discovery was indeed a piece of crucible. Satisfied, Tom headed back over to where the school party were digging.

"But by the time I went back to Jackie he had already turned up more of this - and there was actually a big chunk of it there! So at that point I took over and started excavating very carefully." he said.

Working meticulously around the object, Tom cleared away all the surrounding soil and debris and eventually lifted it to reveal a complete section of a mould for casting decorated bronze spear butts.

"It was rounded at the top and square at the bottom so it was a very obviously man-made thing." he explained. "We carefully cleaned around it until we had uncovered all the sides of it and so the whole thing was just sitting on a peedie lump of ash. When we lifted it the whole thing came up just beautifully in one piece with some of the ash still sticking to it.

"There was this shaft with a couple of rings around it and then this knob at the top. From that we could tell that it was what is known as a door-knob spear butt. There was great excitement but unfortunately the bairns had had to leave before that was discovered.

"The nice thing about this was the fact that the bairns had come down to have a shot seeing as it was an excavation in their own parish. They'd come down wanting to have a go at digging and the area they were working in was just a piece of midden deposit beside the buildings. Work was being concentrated on the buildings at the time so this area was really finished and wasn't going to be looked at again. If it wasn't for the fact that the bairns were there that would never have been touched and it wouldn't have been found."

After the main excavations at Minehowe were completed, funding was acquired to continue excavating the area around the ditch. For three weeks the archaeologists worked extending the original ditch trench, uncovering a wealth of artefacts as they worked.

The massive ditch that once encircled the monument continued to perplex with the discovery of a second "wall" in it, a short distance from the original entrance causeway.

This stone wall, found at the bottom of the 13 foot deep ditch, was a later addition to the ditch and was actually built into the side of an altered entrance causeway. This section of revetting (stone facing) seemed to have been built during the second phase of three distinct periods of work that appear to have been carried out on the entrance section of the ditch.

The reason behind the repeated ditch work was unclear but it was suggested that the original sides of the ditch may have collapsed or that the entrance was deliberately altered by someone in power wishing to "leave his mark" on the ancient site.

Site supervisor Paul Sharman added that although there was definite evidence that the ditch had been deliberately filled in and recut during the later stages of its use, during the earlier stages there did not appear to be much infilling going on.

Among the last finds were two pottery vessels that appeared to have been complete when they were placed at the bottom of the ditch. Although it was not clear whether their positioning was deliberate, it is possible given the religious significance of the site that they were votive (made with a vow) offerings or perhaps dedicatory. As for the future, it is hoped that work can continue at Minehowe, not just concentrating on the underground chamber but looking at the area as a whole.

Speaking at the time Julie Gibson of Orkney Archaeological Trust said: "We are very much looking to continue the excavation - this site has produced, for instance, bronze work of the Roman period which is rare throughout Scotland let alone Orkney and out of a couple of very small trenches in the ditch. The implications are enormous in terms of looking at the Iron Age society."

She added: "One of the things we would really like to do is to look at perhaps a longer term project looking at the Iron Age landscape of the whole area - for example, to compare what was going on at the broch at the end of Langhowe and around Minehowe and find out what were the differences between the two sites. This would be something we would be looking at as a longer term project, perhaps five years, if we can get funding and could incorporate the archaeology students from Orkney College."

The continued interest in the site from the world's press is also something Julie feels has been a benefit, well and truly placing Orkney "at the heart of the archaeological universe." This interest, she added, can only be good for the county's archaeology and heritage for years to come.

Stonehall excavation draws to a close

But Minehowe wasn't the only excavation site this year with a number of Orkney Archaeological Trust projects under way throughout the summer. Out in Firth, in almost a repeat of last year's discoveries, the archaeologists working on the site of Orkney's oldest Neolithic settlement at Stonehall in Firth uncovered yet another mysterious structure.

There, Dr Colin Richards, along with a group of archaeology students from Glasgow University, uncovered a strange Neolithic structure of a previously unknown design that had the experts perplexed.

Almost 6,000 years old, the building dated to the early Neolithic period of prehistory. Lying beneath a thick layer of ash the excavators revealed a beautifully paved floor that Dr Richards felt was on a par with the later Neolithic settlement at Barnhouse in Stenness.

Describing the discovery Dr Richards said: "What we've got is an oval shaped structure with a gorgeously paved floor. We've had two polished stone axes and everything seems to be right for an early Neolithic date. It's just that it's a style of structure we haven't seen before."

Conscious that this was a statement often used in relation to the early Neolithic, Dr Richards explained that at present they only had one other structure of the same period so new discoveries would obviously be unfamiliar.

"All we've got from this period is one building - the Knap of Howar - but what we have here is quite different. I've really not seen anything like it before. This thing had two entrances, for example. We've got an entrance that was open, then beside it was this second entrance which had been deliberately blocked up which is unusual.

"It's not conforming to anything which we would expect for the period. What this shows is that the early Neolithic is far more complicated than we once thought."

He added: "The big realisation here is that when we started looking into this we were expecting that we'd find a certain type of house. We now know this is not quite the case."

The lack of conformance was not something Dr Richards was unduly worried about. On the contrary, he felt that these hitherto undiscovered elements are what continue to make the period interesting. From the dig, the layout and design of the egg-shaped building were clear but one element was particularly perplexing - the structure seemed to have no hearth. Although there was still an area of floor that had to be uncovered, the lack of a central hearth, an extremely important element of Neolithic architecture, hinted that the structure was something more than a mere dwelling house.

"One thing is for sure, if there's not a hearth then it was not built for living in. Even in the Neolithic when it was a bit warmer you would still need a fire in the house." said Dr Richards.

So if the building was not a house, what was it? Dr Richards was of the opinion that the structure had a ritual, perhaps funerary purpose - an idea strengthened by the close proximity of the nearby Cuween Hill cairn.

Could it have been, he wondered, part of the mortuary rituals practised by the builders of the tomb? Further up the hillside, in the second trench, the archaeologists uncovered the remains of three of the oldest structures found so far in Orkney.

Dating from around 3,800 BC, on visiting the site the most obvious of the three buildings was the well-preserved lower course of the most recent. This house, although older than Skara Brae, lay alongside the remains of two even earlier structures.

Overlooking the valley, the trench had originally revealed a second area of paving that Dr Richards explained had seemed to fall short of the visible remains of the second house. Further investigation revealed that this paved area was part of a second phase of development, the flagstones placed over the remains of the earliest structure and up to the walls of a second house. Little remained of the second structure, save the hearth and some stone uprights. The remains of the oldest structure are faint but one thing that is certain is that it too had no hearth.

Again, the lack of a hearth, among other factors, prompted Dr Richards to question the structure's original role. Was is a dwelling or, as he suggested, related to funerary ritual and the handling of the dead - perhaps an early prototype tomb? Its strange and less than practical positioning on the sloping side of a knoll further convinced him that the building and area were in some way considered special.

Whatever its purpose, over time the original building was dismantled, the stone from its walls used to construct the second dwelling and its foundations paved over. The second structure followed suit and in turn was used to create the third and best preserved of the three.

This building had a more familiar design, similar to those already found in Neolithic settlement in the county. With the collapsed stone furniture, hearth and walls still visible, this was perhaps the most visually impressive part of this year's excavation.

As the three-year project drew to a close, the excavation certainly increased our understanding of Orkney's early human history and Dr Richards' work questioned a few firmly held assumptions about the period. The idea, for example, settlement in the early Neolithic consisted of single, isolated houses is contrary to the evidence from Stonehall where the pattern is one of loosely clustered houses, much like the Orcadian tunships of later history.

As was written at the time, a quest for understanding often raises more questions that answers. In many respects the Stonehall settlement typified this.

Mystery at the Knowe of Skea

Perhaps the most exciting discovery of the year was made towards the end of the "digging season" when a Stone Age tomb on Westray took the visiting archaeologists by complete surprise.

The site at the Knowe of Skea, Westside, was originally thought to be a prehistoric settlement, and was under investigation by a team of archaeologists from Edinburgh because it is threatened by coastal erosion. But when the excavations began it soon became clear that the structure within the knowe was a 5,000 year-old burial chamber, complete with human remains.

The archaeologists, led by Graeme Wilson and Hazel Moore from Edinburgh-based EASE Archaeology, came across more finds pointing to the site being a major prehistoric funerary complex in use for more than 1,000 years.

Human finger and toe bones were scattered around the 23 by 15 foot chamber the first direct evidence of excarnation according to Orkney county archaeologist Julie Gibson.

The burial rite involved leaving the body to decay outside the tomb and the archaeologists believed the bigger human bones were then deposited inside the tomb with the smaller unwanted bones were left behind outside.

Graeme Wilson said the shape of the tomb resembled the plan of the Neolithic house at the Knap of Howar on Papa Westray. He was particularly impressed with the standard of the stonework within the chamber as well as its size, which raised questions as to how it was roofed.

"The chamber appears to have been deliberately filled in with deposits containing large amounts of fish bone, shell and animal bone. A few sherds of pottery and some worked bone objects have also been found," he said.

At least two later Bronze Age burials had been inserted into the outside of the cairn, added Graeme, possibly more than a thousand years after its construction.

"In one case, the crouched skeleton of a young adult was found in a shallow pit cut into the surface of the cairn. Towards the periphery of the cairn, a stone-lined grave, known a cist, was found set into the cairn."

Julie Gibson added: "The archaeological record had it down as probably a settlement so as it was being eroded, the job was to check what sort of settlement it was. We were very surprised to see a chambered cairn come out like that, especially one of that size and beauty."

Also on Westray excavations at Peterkirk, near Rapness, uncovered the remains of an Iron Age village clustered around the remains of a broch. A polished stone axe of probably dating from the Neolithic period was found in the rubble which may indicate the presence of much earlier remains in the surrounding area.

Staying in the North Isles, September saw another archaeological race against time on Sanday as an excavation sought to investigate the remains of a Bronze Age cist before it was destroyed by the weather and the tides. The cist was found on the beach at Lopness, originally spotted by a team of geographers from Glasgow University who were on the island studying wind-blown sand.

Local archaeologist Mary Harris along with Judith Robertson and Orkney College's Jane Downes were despatched to the site, which soon revealed the remains of its ancient occupant - a crouched skeleton lying on its side. Along with the human remains were considerable quantities of pottery and flint.

The bones have been despatched to Glasgow University for further analysis.

Plans for 2001?

So as 2000 draws to a close, what's in store for 2001?

Speaking in early December, Jane Downes explained that they were hoping to return for another series of excavations at Minehowe.

"We're hoping to look at the area of metalworking further as well as investigate the make-up of the (Minehowe) mound and its relationship to the actual chamber." she said.

"What we're also doing a lot of next year is post-examination - that is, looking at the vast quantities of material from this year's Minehowe excavation."

So with the possibility of further work on Minehowe on the cards as well as further investigations on the incredible Neolithic tomb on Westray, the future is not just bright - it looks like being very interesting too.