The Border of Farming and the Cultural Markers - Nordlige Verdener

30
ably relate to a process of acculturation,
whereby elements of the new lifestyle
(principally pottery use) had been adopted
by one such group. Thereafter, for
over half a millennium, a process of insular
development took place, as attested
most clearly in the emergence of a
Shetland style of Neolithic pottery and
in the use of felsite to create distinctive
knives and axeheads – the largest of
which can only have been non-utilitarian,
given the paucity of trees on the archipelago.
The next evidence suggesting
contact with the outside world
– assuming that the north-east Irish porcellanite
axeheads mentioned above
had arrived as part of the initial Neolithisation
process, and in the absence of
dating evidence for the few felsite exports
from Shetland – is not until the
first half of the third millennium BC, being
reflected in the use of symbols of
power that have a wide distribution in
Britain. Their adoption may well reflect
contact with Orkney, a link that recurs at
various times thereafter; but clearly
Shetland did not partake in the competitive
conspicuous consumption that
marks out Late Neolithic society in Orkney
(as seen, for example, in the complex
of sites and monuments around the
Loch of Stenness). Other contact with
the external world, but probably not via
Orkney, is attested by the presence of
All-Over-Cord Beaker, albeit occurring in
a Shetland-style context; and the adoption
of the practice of individual cist interment
represents the emulation of a
Beaker-associated practice elsewhere
in Scotland. However, the development
of Shetland Beaker pottery is unmistakably
localised.
The review of the domestic evidence as
presented in this contribution indicates
that there are very few settlements that
pre-date 2500 BC, in contrast to the period
2500–1500 BC; if this reflects a
genuine pattern, then we may be witnessing
a process of population growth
from a small Neolithic base. Understanding
the subsistence basis and social
dynamics that could have underpinned
such a development will require
more excavation and palaeoenvironmental
work of the type undertaken by
Dockrill and Bond, Edwards et al. and
Melton et al.; pointers as to areas of
high potential already exist in the results
of field and aerial survey, as mentioned
above.
In terms of funerary practices, although
a sequence as sketched in Fig. 10 can be
proposed, it remains to be tested through
excavation and dating. Once more, a dynamic
between a process of localisation
and the adoption of exogenous practices
can be traced.
As for the question of felsite exploitation
(and indeed the use of other lithics),