The golden finds of 2009

Amateur treasure hunter David Booth

THE past year may have brought its troubles, economic and otherwise, but it also saw an unprecedented wealth of archaeological revelations in Scotland, with discoveries of international importance providing new insights into the lives of our forebears of several millennia ago.

It was the Year of Homecoming in which Scotland's earliest known recorded human face re-emerged into the light of day after 5,000 years, to the astonishment of archaeologists on the island of Westray in Orkney; also in Orkney, the remains of a vast "Neolithic cathedral," a sacred site like no other in Britain, were revealed. Elsewhere, archaeologists excavated below a monumental capstone in a field at Forteviot, Perthshire, to reveal the grave of a "Bronze Age hero", replete with a bronze and gold dagger and other artefacts, while near Stirling an amateur enthusiast with a metal detector stumbled upon the most important hoard of Iron Age gold yet unearthed in Scotland.

An annus mirabilis for Scottish archaeology? "I've certainly been describing it as a bumper year," says Peter Yeoman, head of cultural resources with Historic Scotland, the government agency responsible for most of the sites concerned. "Obviously with archaeological work you expect the unexpected. There's a tremendous unpredictability in investigating the past."

Discoveries such as those on Orkney and at Stirling are significantly re-shaping our understanding of these periods in Scotland's history, Yeoman adds, particularly referring to the major finds at excavations at Links of Noltland on Westray, the most north-westerly of the Orkney islands, where excavations by the Edinburgh-based Ease Archaeology, contractor for Historic Scotland, unearthed Neolithic structures including one with ritually deposited cattle skulls built into its wall. The site made the headlines in August, when stunned archaeologists found themselves brushing some 4,000 years' accretion of soil away from a carved pebble which is the only known Neolithic carving of a human to have been found in Scotland.

"Looking at the face of 'the Westray Wife', as she has become known locally, and to be able to say that this is the oldest human representation ever to be found in Scotland, and one of just a handful found throughout Britain … that was a phenomenal thing in terms of how it helps us as archaeologists and cultural historians to understand more about these first generations of farmers and their lives," says Yeoman.

Also on Orkney, where the abundance of prehistoric sites has earned the mainland Unesco World Heritage Site status, the discovery of the remains of what has been termed a "Neolithic cathedral" at the Ness of Brodgar, which would have dominated the two famous formations of standing stones that flank it, Stenness and the Ring of Brodgar, opened another window into the culture of 2,500BC.

"So here's this unprecedented building," says Yeoman. "Those two excavations, which happened to be going on concurrently on Orkney, are informing very big leaps forward in our understanding of the Neolithic."

The astonishing cache of Iron Age gold necklaces unearthed in September in a field near Stirling was similarly of European significance, revealing the wealth and cosmopolitan connections of those living in the area between 300 and 100BC. Found by a would-be treasure-hunter trying out his first metal detector, the "Stirling Hoard", worth about 1 million in monetary terms, was priceless in its cultural and historical significance and the greatest find of its kind in Scotland since 1857. "It is giving us a new window on the Scottish iron age," says Dr David Caldwell, keeper of Scottish and European collections at National Museums Scotland, where the Scottish Treasure Trove Unit is based. Of the Stirling finds, he adds: "They show us the wealth and aspirations of people wearing fancy jewellery and also the wide links – one of the torcs either comes from the Mediterranean or was made by someone who trained down there. It is sometimes too easy to think of our ancestors as grunting savages, as it were, but these people had quite sophisticated lifestyles and links."

The archaeological action wasn't confined to Scotland, however. In June, the Tamworth Hoard, the greatest cache of Anglo-Saxon gold ever found in Britain, worth an estimated 3.285m, was discovered in a field in Staffordshire – again by an amateur with a metal detector.

"I've been an archaeologist for more than 30 years," observes Yeoman, "and I don't think I've ever seen a year in which we've seen so much and such good media reporting on archaeological discoveries. That includes on Historic Scotland's sites, and in England with the Tamworth Hoard and the focus that's on Stonehenge at moment."

Also during the past year, developments in investigative technology enabled previous finds to be reassessed, as in the case of the Stirling Castle Knight, a warrior whose bones were excavated a decade ago from under the floor of a "lost" medieval royal chapel within the castle. In June, it was reported that the knight's skeleton had been subjected to advanced laser scanning techniques, which revealed the extent of old injuries as well as the final, fatal blow.

"The scientific analysis techniques now available to us have been very important," says Yeoman, who adds that similar techniques were applied this year to the bones of the "Whithorn bishops", excavated in the 1950s at the important Christian site of Isle of Whithorn in Wigtownshire, historic Scotland's most southerly charge. "We've been able to apply bone isotope analysis to these remains.

Fifty years ago nobody could have dreamed that taking tiny, non-destructive samples of tooth enamel and bone collagen would allow us to look very specifically at issues of diet and regional origins of these bishops, who lived between 1200 and around 1400."

And just last month, a report on the Lewis Chessmen (30 of which will be retrieved from museums in Edinburgh and London for a tour of Scotland, starting in May), based on fresh thinking and analysis techniques including photogrammetric study, shed new light on the famous Viking pieces, suggesting that they belonged to someone who lived in the vicinity, rather than the previously favoured theory that they were lost or concealed by someone more transient.

A YEAR OF REVELATIONS

THE STIRLING KNIGHT

RECENTLY developed analysis techniques enabled the re-assessment of human remains unearthed under a chapel floor at Stirling Castle in 1997. Scanning established that, although the knight was only in his mid-twenties, he bore more than his fair share of battle scars: bone re-growth around a dent in the front of his skull suggested recovery from a severe blow, possibly from an axe, and he had been carrying a large arrowhead in his chest. The blow that finally killed him, however, was probably from a sword, through his nose and jaw.

The fact that he was laid to rest under the floor of a "lost" royal chapel within the castle suggests that he may have died during a siege and that he was someone of prestige.

THE FORTEVIOT TOMB

THE 4,000-year-old grave of someone investigators termed "a Bronze Age hero" was uncovered in a field at Forteviot, Perthshire, on a site regarded as a Pictish royal centre.

When a crane raised a four-tonne capstone from the grave, archaeologists from Glasgow and Aberdeen universities working on the Serf (Strathearn Environs and Royal Forteviot) project found a skeleton laid out on a bed of quartz pebbles, accompanied by a bronze dagger banded with gold, as well as the remains of wooden, bark and leather artefacts and what seem to have been floral tributes.

The dig's co-director, Dr Kenneth Brophy, described the find as "beyond anybody's expectation," and added: "The high quality of preservation is virtually unique in Britain and is of exceptional importance for understanding the important centuries when metals were first introduced into Scotland."

THE NEOLITHIC CATHEDRAL

ON MAINLAND Orkney, between the renowned Neolithic landmarks of the Ring of Brodgar and the Stones of Stenness, investigators from Orkney College and Glasgow, Aberdeen and Cardiff universities unearthed the remains of what has been termed a "Neolithic cathedral," from roughly the same period as the Orkney Venus and unlike anything else ever found in the UK. Some 65ft long, the building would have dominated the stone circles on either side, and seems to have been part of a ceremonial landscape, with a paved outer passage and massive walls channelling people's movement.

THE STIRLING HOARD

IN SEPTEMBER, amateur treasure hunter David Booth, trying out his metal detector for the first time near Stirling, uncovered the most important find of Iron Age gold found in Scotland to date.

Known as torcs and dating from between the first and third centuries BC, the elaborately wrought necklaces were regarded as being of European significance, suggesting the wealth and international connections of those who wore them.

One of the torcs was of southern French origin while another, a uniquely braided gold wire torc, showed the influences of Mediterranean craftsmanship.

THE ORKNEY VENUS

SCOTLAND'S earliest known carving of a person and the only known Neolithic carving of a human to be found in Scotland, the 3.5cm by 3cm figurine emerged from Historic Scotland's excavations at the Links of Noltland on Westray, Orkney, in August. As one of the archaeologists on the site remarked: "It was one of those eureka moments. None of the archaeology team have seen anything like it before."

Only two comparable figurines have been found on the British mainland, but it does have similarities to Neolithic carvings from elsewhere in Europe which bear similarly rounded heads, breasts and exaggerated hips.

Also at the Links of Noltland site, archaeologists uncovered the wall of a Neolithic structure with what appeared to be ritually deposited skulls built into it, some of them interlocking.