The Border of Farming and the Cultural Markers - Nordlige Verdener

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Fig. 6:
Hand-held
tools from
Scord of
Brouster and
Sandsting
(ARC 8056).
Could these
have been
used to break
up clods
sions into stone structures at Neolithic
and Bronze Age settlement sites. They
appear together at the Scord of Brouster
as early as 3500 BC (2006: 111,130).
This practice may allude to the important
social value of these agricultural
tools to the people who relied on them.
The profile of other stone tools in the
Scord of Brouster assemblage lend
themselves to be hand-held and may
have been practical for breaking up
clods on very small plots (see fig. 6). This
would have been arduous work, but
work was most likely done in groups.
Wooden and bone tools
From the Neolithic period, as noted
above, tilling of the soil was done by
ard, but recent evidence also suggests
that, by the Bronze Age, some turning of
the soil was done by other tools. Spades
are almost absent from the archaeological
record but inferential evidence for
their use is observed in ancient field systems.
Grooves in the Bronze Age subsoil
during excavations at Cornwall, in southern
Britain, suggest the soil appears to
have been broken by a spade or hoe
rather than the ard (Rees 1979: 329;
Lerche & Steenberg 1980: 63). Similar
ridges and furrows dating to 1500 BC
have been uncovered in areas of blanketbog
in Western Ireland (Mitchell 1978:
27). Likewise, similar evidence was noted
in Iron Age field systems in Denmark
(Lerche & Steenberg 1980: 63). In Scotland,
patches of cord rig, that resemble
miniature rig-and-furrow, have been revealed
in Iron Age field systems; these
appear to have been hand dug (Armit &
Ralston 2005: 190).
Photographs by the author.
Further north in Shetland, excavations
of a Bronze Age house at Mavis Grind
revealed features similar to spade-dug
lazy beds, dug through several centimetres
of accumulating peat (Cracknell &
Smith 1985: 91). Also, recent excavations
at Old Scatness revealed marks in the
sub-soil which were shorter and less
sharp in profile than ard furrows – these