The Lost World Of Prehistoric Scotland: Inside Kilmartin Glen's Tombs

Scotland. Renowned for its castles, lochs, wildlife and stunning scenery. It's also a country that boasts a rich and proud history. From Mary Queen of Scots to the Battle of Culloden. But for me, as an ancient historian, what's even more fascinating is when you go further back in time, beyond Scotland's written history, when you delve into this land's prehistoric past and the many mysteries still surrounding it. In this episode, I'll be investigating mysterious Stone Age rock carvings, learning about the new people who migrated to Scotland in the mid-third millennium BC. That is a period when people got very rich very quick in Kilmartin Glen. And coming face to face with one of the most important prehistoric discoveries of recent times. Oh yes, look at that. So that's an antler right there. Join me as we explore the extraordinary enigmatic world of prehistoric Scotland. I'm leaving Stone Age Orkney behind me and I'm heading south to the beautiful region of Argyll and to one of the best preserved prehistoric landscapes in the whole of Britain, Kilmartin Glen. Surrounded by hills on two sides and running parallel with Scotland's west coast, this valley is home to a rich array of stunning Stone and Bronze Age remains, including more of this land's iconic monoliths. These are fascinating legacies of Scotland's prehistoric past. But for me, what's just as interesting, if not more interesting, are the smaller, more minuscule details. Details such as these. You'll notice these indents on this particular rock. Now they're not natural. These are man-made. And you'll also notice if you look closely enough that surrounding a couple of these, you'll notice a circle, a ring. So what exactly are they? What are they doing on exposed pieces of rock like this? And how do they fit into the story of this extraordinary area? I've come to Kilmartin Glen to learn more about the mysterious rock art that this valley is famous for and to see how prehistoric communities based around here used and reused it for more than a thousand years. Evidence for human activity at Kilmartin Glen possibly dates as far back as the 6th millennium BC and the Mesolithic period. But it's at the end of the subsequent Neolithic period, the beginning of the 3rd millennium BC, that we really start seeing significant human activity in this area, with the construction of some striking and familiar structures. At the heart of Kilmartin Glen today is a multitude of prehistoric monuments. And near the centre is Temple Wood Stone Circle, one of the most ancient sites still visible in the glen. Hiding in plain sight here are some astonishing relics from our ancient ancestors. To help me find them, I'm teaming up again with Dr Hugo Anderson-Wymark. So Hugo, first off, this stone circle looks very impressive, but it wouldn't have originally looked like this when it was first constructed. No, no. To understand this, you have to take away a lot of this stonework. In fact, you have to take away all of this cairn material, all of the kists in the middle, until you just have the upright stones left. And that would have been the original Neolithic monument at this location here. Dated to roughly 3000 BC, Temple Wood has similarities with the stone circles we've already seen in Orkney in its structure and its purpose. This was probably a place for communal activities, for performances and celebrations. But Temple Wood also has a remarkable hidden feature. So Hugo, you've taken me over here, but what's so special about this particular stone? Well, if you shine your light down this face here, you'll see what's special about this rock. Oh yes, I can see some lines here. What is this? Yes, and if you look very carefully, it's a spiral. There's three lines that spiral out here all the way around this rock. And then they go around the corner. This rock art isn't just interesting because of its age, but because of what it tells us about Kilmartin Glen and its connection to the wider Stone Age world. This spiral is a very distinctive spiral because it has these three grooves that go all the way around it. It looks very reminiscent of a spiral that is seen in Ireland. The spiral is something we also see up in Orkney, in passage graves in Orkney. So here we are sort of midway between the two. What does this therefore tell us about the connections of the people who are living here at this time? Well, it tells us a lot about people moving through the landscape. We're talking about people connecting across these very long distances in the Neolithic, bringing ideas backwards and forwards, and ideas and beliefs. But this faint bit of rock art at Temple Wood is a mere taste of what Kilmartin Glen has to offer, because this area of Scotland boasts the richest concentration of rock art in the whole country, and it can be found in some truly spectacular places. I've come to Achnabreck, just south of the Glen, to get a better look at this art. Here, on these huge slabs of exposed rock, are not just a couple of these ancient carvings, but dozens. These interesting circular designs can be found at various places all across Kilmartin Glen, on exposed rocks such as this one here at Achnabreck. But it does beg the question, what exactly are they? And what are they doing here? To find out more, I'm meeting archaeologist Dr Joanna Valdez-Tullett, an expert on these mysterious motifs. So these are cup and ring motifs. They are part of a prehistoric carving tradition that we call Atlantic rock art, and essentially they are little hollows, and they are surrounded by rings. As well as the circular designs, this great rock is also marked with straight lines that join some of the circles. The rock surface would be really important when it came to create the rock art, and what we see here is an example of the use of the natural features of the rock that are incorporated into the composition of the rock art. So what they're doing here, they're using this natural fissure that you can see comes from that end of the panel and it goes straight onto that side, and they are using it to recreate a radial. So radials are lines that are often created or carved with the cup and ring motifs, but they are just lines that come from these features, and usually they are carved, but in this instance what they're doing is they're just using the natural fissure to recreate that linear line, that radial. And it says it's carved and then almost connecting to the natural fissure in how it's been designed. Exactly. We will see in this panel specifically, we will see some examples of that, but exactly as you're saying, this line is coming from the central cup mark and it's joining to the natural fissure here. This interplay of the motifs with natural features is a common characteristic of Atlantic rock art, and as the name suggests, it's not just in Scotland that we find examples of it. We do have this type of rock art with connections to what we have here in Scotland elsewhere. So we find Atlantic rock art also in England, but also in Ireland, and also in Iberia. So we have them in Galicia, in the Spanish province of Galicia, and also in northern Portugal. Atlantic rock art is very much an idea that was grasped between all of these communities, because we see it recreated. It's not just about the similarity of the shapes, but it's in the way that it was created. So this interplay with the motifs and the natural features is something that we see in all of these regions that I mentioned across the Atlantic seaboard. The way that they are placed in the landscape is very similar as well. So there is this ideology that they are all sharing, and that was very much transmitted throughout these exchanges. They had their own cultures, their own beliefs, but there was something very special about this type of rock art. They were recreating it across their own landscapes. The discovery of similar rock art in places as far away as Portugal is further proof of how Stone Age people and their ideas travelled along Europe's Atlantic seaboard some 5,000 years ago. Joanna, it begs the all-important question, what does all of this mean? Why do we think they made this rock art? So that's a really, really big question, and the straight answer is we don't know. But we have a few theories around. So Ronald Morris was an archaeologist who worked here in Scotland for several decades, and in one of his books he suggests 104 theories, ranging from a function related to predicting solar events, lunar events. There was also the idea that these could have been ancient writings, and so these were the first theories that emerged about rock art. Later on we see another perspective which moves the focus of rock art research from the motifs to the wider landscape. There's a reason why they chose this place to carve and not that one over there. There is this idea that the rock art could be marking routeways or pathways, could be related to areas of the landscape that were really important for people. There is also suggestions that this could be a mean of communication between groups of people who lived in the same area but didn't really come across each other very often. It's astonishing to think that even 5,000 years ago people, goods and crucially ideas were being transported all across the British Isles and beyond. And this area seems to have been an important place along the route of this stone age motorway, evidenced by its enigmatic rock art. But how exactly did they make these motifs? Hugo is going to give me a hands-on demonstration. It's a relatively simple process and you make it by hammering it with stone and grinding it with stone to the sort of finish you want. So what sorts of tools do we think they would have used to make rock art like this? Well in this area there's lots of glacial cobbles or cobbles in the glacial deposits and so you can find all sorts of different sort of granites, metamorphic rocks. Quartz is quite useful as well. You want a really hard rock, something harder than the stone you're working. But a variety of shapes are good for pounding out cut marks. A nice rounded surface is good but for doing finer work you want a sharp edge or a sharp point to work with. To draw out the patterns on the rock, Hugo uses charcoal. He outlines two designs, a cup and ring mark and a spiral. So Hugo, the lines have been drawn, the jackets are taken off, it's time to work. How do you suggest that I should begin? Maybe pick this hammer stone, that's quite a nice edge to work with. And then what you want to do, grip your hammer stone, not too hard, take aim on the black line and then just a nice peck, doesn't have to come up too high. And work from the centre out do you think? Yeah, just keep going. If you're not seeing any stone coming off, you're going to have to hit it harder. Okay, I'm seeing something there. Yeah, I'm seeing, yeah, a bit of red. So you're starting to see the indents much quicker than you would on a, let's say a harder stone that is more common in this part of Scotland. Yeah, so I'll just start moving over the rest of that black surface now. Something you really notice as you start making the rock art is the sound. That repetitive pounding we're hearing, it drums in your ears doesn't it? It's a real part of the performance of making rock art and certainly in the Neolithic there would have been a lot of people watching you make rock art, they'd have been hearing that sound, they'd have been seeing all this dust blowing around, so it would have been a real event. You can imagine those sounds, you know, those repetitive beating sounds echoing across a landscape like this, can't you, thousands of years ago? Yeah, for hours on end, people in the glen below you would be knowing that you were making rock art up here. Fascinating. As we continue bashing away at the rock with the hammer stones, soon enough the faint outline of the motifs start becoming visible. That is looking fantastic. Look at that. Yeah. You can feel the grooves now, can't you? Yeah, you can feel them and you can feel the individual pits on the surface. Oh yes, so from the individual hit marks. Yeah, each one of them a little bit of your hard effort. How interesting. So what we need to do now is make that just a little bit smoother, so we'll grind it with the edge of a stone. Yeah. Nice rounded stone. We just grind it down a bit and that will finish it off. After grinding our designs down for a little while, a quick brushing of the dust off the rock and a sprinkling of water reveals our final products. Oh, there we go. Look at that. The colour's come out that stone. That's fantastic. You can really see the patterns there, can't you? The indent of the stone. It really shows how it might have taken quite a bit of time on that harder rock, but the rewards were very much worth it. It's incredibly close to the designs you can see on Achnabreck. It's absolutely remarkable. By the end of the Neolithic period, Kilmartin Glen was interconnected with a much wider Neolithic world that stretched all across Britain and Ireland, evidenced by the stone circles and rock art motifs like this, which you can still see today. But this was only the beginning of Kilmartin Glen's prehistoric activity. Great change was just around the corner. In the mid-third millennium BC, a new age dawned in Britain. The Neolithic reached its end and the Chalcolithic, or Copper Age, began. A time of great significance for Kilmartin Glen and its prehistoric landscape, with the arrival of new people, originally from distant shores. It was a seismic moment in the story of Kilmartin Glen, and indeed for all of Britain. These new people, known as the Beaker people because of the elaborate pottery they were buried with, would transform not just the landscape, but the population too. To find out more, I'm meeting Dr Matthew Knight at the National Museum of Scotland's Collection Centre. This is the skeletal remains of a young adult female, buried 4,500 years ago. We've been able to radiocarbon date her to around 2450 BC to around 2150 BC, and this places her right at transitional period from the late Neolithic into the Chalcolithic, when the Beaker people were first starting to arrive in Britain. We can go a step further. Analysis of her teeth, in the form of isotopic analysis, indicated that she probably wasn't born in Scotland. She was probably non-local. The isotopes that were analysed for this individual suggested that she perhaps grew up in eastern Britain, maybe eastern Ireland, or perhaps even on the continent in northern Europe. And genetic analysis of this person has indicated that her ancestry derives from the continental steppe around central Europe, perhaps around the region of the Netherlands. So, putting all of this together, what we can say about this person is that although they were on an island off the west coast of Scotland, she didn't grow up there. And we can say that she might have been one of the first of the so-called Beaker people to travel from northern Europe, across Scotland, to where she was eventually buried. And it's so significant, isn't it, in the story of Kilmartin Glen and this area of Scotland. It really emphasises how, at this period, there's this great step change, this new population coming in. Yeah, we know that lots of people were moving around at this time. What's happening is small groups of people are coming in and they're integrating with society through localised marriages and communal connections that, over time, transforms the genetic data that we see in people in the Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age. The Chalcolithic is seen very much as this transitional period between the Stone and Bronze Ages, roughly lasting between 2500 and 2200 BC. Why these new people decided to come to Kilmartin Glen at this time is unclear, but it may be to do with their quest for copper. We know that copper deposits existed around the Glen, and we know that the Beaker people were searching for sources of this revolutionary metal. Their arrival at Kilmartin Glen and the surrounding area, with their own ideas, beliefs and practices, would greatly affect what happened next. The latter half of the third millennium BC is seen as something of a golden age in the story of Kilmartin Glen. Within a few centuries of these first Beaker graves, you see the people here, well, significantly changing the whole landscape. Rock art outcrops were prized up, standing stones were moved, but the most striking example of this great landscape change at that time is where I'm standing right now. Here, and stretching all the way beyond the trees over there, up there, you have the creation of this great linear cemetery, initially composed of six monumental cairns, the oldest of which is right here. This tomb is called Netherlagi South Cairn. Originally, this was a Neolithic tomb constructed roughly 5,000 years ago. But it wasn't long before these new people converted it for their own purposes, remodelling it into how it looks today. They enlarged the tomb and transformed its original Stone Age rectangular mound into a round one. Netherlagi South became a tomb for their own elites. All along the valley, these people created more of these vast mounds. The whole Neolithic landscape was radically changing. Kilmartin Glen was transforming into this place for burials, and not just any burials, but elaborate monumental ones for only the richest in these prehistoric societies. The big question, therefore, is why? Well, it's all to do with one of the greatest technological revolutions in human history, when the Age of Copper came to an end and the Bronze Age began. Dr Alison Sheridan is able to tell me more. That is a period when people got very rich very quick in Kilmartin Glen, and they showed off their wealth. And we think that they got rich because they were able to control the flow of metal that was coming from Ireland and was then going up the Great Glen into northeast Scotland. We can't say for sure whether it was copper or bronze that was coming through, because essentially the copper will have come from southwest Ireland, the tin will have come from Cornwall or Devon, would you believe? We know that it was being made into bronze in Ireland, so either copper or bronze was coming up. Kilmartin Glen became a Bronze Age staging post for the flow of valuable metals. And the people overseeing this metal trade through the valley were the tycoons of their day, high-status individuals who were intent on impressing the locals. To be allowed to have a high-status grave in a pre-existing important area means that they were treated with respect. They must have made an amazing impression on the local people. I'm keen to have a look at one particular object that really epitomises the power and wealth of these Bronze Age elites. So I'm heading back to see Matthew at the collection centre. This is the Poltalloch Necklace, a stunning piece of jewellery discovered in one of Kilmartin Glen's many Bronze Age burials. This extraordinary object is made from over 100 beautifully crafted beads of exquisite Whitby jet. It's more evidence of the movements of people and goods all across the British Isles and yet more proof of the power and status of the people who chose to be buried in Kilmartin Glen. These are referred to as spacer plates to space out the necklace and they're decorated with small holes that would have been incised in into them to create these really lovely geometric shapes. But the Bronze Age people went a step further and in some of these incisions what you can see are small white inclusions and analysis of those white inclusions has shown that this is a form of white paste made from calcined bone, bone that was burnt and then ground up and then inserted to create this really strong contrast of white decoration and the black jet. It is striking, really striking, but what also seems really striking is keeping on those details and those patterns. If we look at these ones here on either side this almost looks like you see Neolithic designs similar to the butterfly kind of stones. You see them in Yorkshire, you see them in Orkney and now you see this depiction here too. Yeah I think there's a long-standing tradition in terms of geometric patterns showing up and so you see geometric patterns showing up on some of the beaker pottery, you also see it on some metal work at this time, particularly gold ornaments. So there's a whole variety of motifs that remain really important to the people of Kilmartin Glen and Britain more widely during the early Bronze Age. But not everything is quite as it seems. The majority of the necklace is produced from Whitby jet but this bracelet of a series of beads was produced from a jet-like material called canal coal or perhaps shale and that suggests that someone is trying to imitate the beads you see in the necklace and kind of complete the set as it were. It's incredibly hard to the naked eye to distinguish between the two materials and this is where the scientific analysis shows us some of these kind of personal decisions that were made where someone is making a like-for-like object. And so what does the burial of an object such as this, such as the bracelet, such this pottery, what does it tell us about the importance of Kilmartin Glen, of this area of Scotland in the early Bronze Age? The whole culmination of elaborately decorated pottery, finely made ornaments, as well as the aggrandized burial cairns, all really speaks to something quite significant happening in Kilmartin Glen during the Chalcolithic and into the early Bronze Age. This seems like this is this key center of connectivity but also the people buried here or the objects like this is a statement of power and of wealth. Yeah absolutely. This necklace is an extraordinary insight into Kilmartin Glen's newfound prominence in the early Bronze Age. The people who decided to be buried here were the billionaires of their day and some would even reuse the valley's more ancient rock art in their burials. Hugo is going to take me to see a striking example at one of these cairns. So here we are inside another one of these Netherlagic cairns. There's the kist, the burial itself. What exactly is this? Well this slab originally went on the top of this kist. It was the very large capstone covering this kist. So you can see that this stone is really smooth at this end. That surface would have been lying on the top of a hillside being smoothed by the glaciers in the last Ice Age and you can see traces of Neolithic carvings on it. Oh yeah so these here we go. You can see a whole series of cup and ring marks more than 40 of them dotted across the surface of this stone. So this was a big slab of rock art on top of a hilltop that has been transported down here to be used for the cover of a Bronze Age kist. It's fascinating how this ancient slab, decorated with Neolithic art, was later reused as a Bronze Age coffin lid for this wealthy individual. And the Bronze Age appropriation of this Stone Age art didn't stop there. As you look closer you notice that they also added their own personal carvings to it. There are lots of wonderful carvings. Very shallow but once you get your eye in you can see the shapes of axes emerging from this stone. So yeah there's more than a dozen covering this surface and cutting across the surface of these earlier cut marks. So redressing this stone in the Bronze Age to go as a very rich offering with this burial. And is this a new different type of rock art we see here then? Because so far we've really been looking at like ring marks and so on. But axe heads, this is something which seems completely different. Yeah it's very rare to get axe heads carved on stone. There's only a few places in Britain where they're carved at all. Most of those are in this immediate area around Kilmartin and then of course there's Stonehenge which has hundreds of these carvings across its surface. But what's quite nice with these is that you can see the forms of the axes represented. So we can see here this sort of gently curved edge. That is a classic early Bronze Age flat axe. So while we don't have the actual metalwork buried here we can see what style of axe and so therefore date when these carvings were made about 2000 or so BC. For this elite figure buried in Kilmartin Glen the axe head seems to have been a symbol of his power and wealth. Very likely he was one of these Bronze Age tycoons controlling the flow of metals through the important connection hub that was Kilmartin Glen roughly 4,000 years ago. But axe heads weren't the only items that it appears these tycoons were transporting. Suggested by one massive unique piece of rock art also found in Kilmartin Glen. The original doesn't survive but Matthew has brought out a copy to show me. It's a really peculiar piece that would have stood upright with this being the top and this being the bottom and it's referred to as a halberd pillar. The Bronze Age halberd was an extraordinary bladed object. Streamlined in its design this piece of metal resembled a pick and was a truly terrifying weapon. There have actually been tests with this sort of weapon and they're incredibly deadly and what we seem to have here is a depiction of one of these halberds up at the top and then it would have been hafted at its side and the haft runs down here. But then you've got this decoration referred to as almost a rake decoration that we don't fully understand and it seems to predate the carving of the halberd but would have originally had this long line all the way across and then these lines coming off it. If we take the argument that this was carved for the purposes of inclusion in an early Bronze Age kist then it suggests that these earlier pieces of rock art must be earlier are probably Neolithic in origin. It's really interesting how you have this rock art made in the Neolithic times being reused by these new people who've since come in to Kilmarnock and made a wealthy living and then have it in their graves. Rock art seems to be the thing to kind of take and place in a Bronze Age kist. This is the only depiction of a hafted halberd on rock art from Britain which makes it really really unusual. For a long time axe heads and that potential halberd were the only examples of prehistoric figurative rock art that archaeologists knew of from Kilmartin Glen, indeed from the whole of Scotland. They had no examples for instance of animals being depicted on this ancient art. That was however until very recently. This is Dunclegare Cairn, another of these extraordinary Bronze Age cairns created for the elites living in this area of Britain. Situated just a bit further south of most of the other tombs and stone circles it's another striking example of burial architecture from Kilmartin. But it's on the inside where you can see something absolutely extraordinary. To show me I've teamed up with Joanna. So Joanna we're inside the cairn now but where where should we be looking? So if you shine your light here can you see where the antlers are? Yes look at that. So that's an antler right there. Exactly exactly and there's this fissure here which is slightly misleading because it looks like the antler is coming out of it but actually if you look further here you can see the head. Can you see the head? Yes and I see the other antler too. Yes exactly. And if you've if you've put your finger on it and you follow it you can follow it down. Is this the neck I'm guessing? Exactly that's the neck all the way down. And then the body and then what we got down here we got other bits of the body too. Yeah yeah so you have the bag you've got the tail can you see the tail? Oh yes yes right at the end too so even little details like that are included. Yeah and the pointy legs as well. Oh yes you've got that so one two three four four legs. Joanna it this is absolutely astonishing this is this piece of rock art there's so much detail to this particular stag. It is a very naturalistic representation of an adult male deer. I mean I've seen pictures of this on the internet and when it was announced to the world last year it was looked amazing then but just to see it now in person underneath this well this huge slab of stone it's absolutely breathtaking it really does blow your mind It's incredible to see this amazing discovery up close and this was just one of several stag depictions Joanna and her colleagues uncovered under this slab of stone. Only recently found it is one of the most important prehistoric rock art discoveries of the past century. It is the first time that we know of animal depictions of this period and created in such a naturalistic way. And you mentioned this period so when do we think that these stag rock art depictions date to? So big question chronology with rock art is always very complicated it will very much depend whether the animals were carved before or after this stone was placed here to seal this this kist. So this monument that you see here it's an early bronze age cairn and it has two more kists back there that are very nicely dated to the early bronze age. This kist however is slightly more complicated because all of all about it all the characteristics about it are slightly odd. So the suggestion is that this kist would be the primary burial of this of this monument so this would be the first tomb that existed here probably dating to the neolithic and then the others were added at a later stage. So it is possible that the animals date to the neolithic if they were put here at the same time that they built this kist but it's also possible that they were created out in the landscape and were there for centuries even and then quarried and placed on top of the kist in those circumstances they could be much older. Being such a unique discovery also throws up some exciting complications for archaeologists like Joanna. It does it does because we thought that we had a really good idea of what prehistoric rock art is in in Britain and Ireland even mainly composed of cup and ring motifs and other circular variations and now we have these animals which are completely unique but at the same time they do bring us closer to other areas in in Europe where we also have rock art being carved in the landscape but where animals were also also being being depicted so now we have the geometric and the the figurative in in the form of of animal depictions which we also have in other places. And I guess it promises therefore with this discovery that there could be future figurative rock art discoveries found in Scotland. There's definitely going to be some more we just need to know where to find them. Although its importance would ultimately fade as the Bronze Age progressed, for centuries Kilmartin Glen was the centre of an extraordinary ceremonial landscape filled with remarkable monuments. Rich in stone and Bronze Age archaeology this valley's prehistoric remains continue to amaze visitors and archaeologists alike. And so Alison why do you think Kilmartin Glen is so significant in the story of prehistoric Scotland? I think it's really important because it shows us how control over a relatively rare resource can then manifest itself in expressions of power and status. So it's you know it's a classic example of people who got rich and then they showed off their wealth and power by making very ostentatious graves for for the dead. And before that it was important because it's part of this amazing story of long-distance connections in the late Neolithic around 3000 BC. So they were in contact with people in Orkney, they went up to Orkney, they came back with wonderful ideas, they built their stone circles in Kilmartin Glen then. So really it's well-connected elites. It's an interesting story of what people with power did with their power. I've been absolutely blown away by my time here at Kilmartin Glen. It's such an extraordinary area rich in remarkable prehistory. We've gone from the Neolithic to the end of the Bronze Age from exploring elaborate burial cairns to laying eyes upon one of the greatest rock art discoveries in recent history. Kilmartin Glen, truly it's one of the great gems of prehistoric Scotland. But it's time to move on because the Iron Age awaits and with it some of the most extraordinary structures in Scotland's prehistory. The age of this country's iconic dry stone round houses is just around the corner.