* Astronomy

Four thousand years ago work began to erect the great earthen burial mounds that comprise the Bronze Age barrow cemetery at the Knowes of Trotty, in Harray, Orkney. There are at least 16 barrows - or graves - in two rows, nestling between the edge of the farmlands and the foot of the moorland. Many were raised upon natural mounds to enhance their prominence.

It is a spectacular site, even today, and there are indications that in the Bronze Age the Knowes of Trotty was a cemetery of special significance. The barrows were built to honour the dead of the local farmers and represent a change in burial ritual away from the communal interments of Neolithic farming sites like Maeshowe and more towards individual burials that often incorporated the use of fire to cremate the body. Burial in the Bronze Age celebrated the individual and often included grave goods, perhaps as an indication of status and for use in the after world.
Sadly, sites like this have long attracted attention. Earlier diggings into the mounds removed much of the evidence that might have been of use to archaeologists of today, but finds of gold and amber objects with one of the burials in the 19th century add support to the theory that this was a notable place. Goods like these would have been of great value and were generally rare in Bronze Age society. Although the gold was Scottish in origin, archaeologists suggested that there may be links in the craftwork with artefacts found around the Wessex area of Stonehenge where similar objects were made.


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Latitude: 59.039408N Longitude: 3.150092W

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