Coarse stone tools are frequent finds at prehistoric sites in Orkney and Shetland. A whole range of tools was made and used for diverse jobs such as butchering, flint knapping, craft work, agriculture, storage and food processing.
These stone assemblages are often large, dominated by particular tool types and are found at many different types of site including both funerary and domestic settings.
Recent research into the contexts of these various tools from sites across the Northern Isles has demonstrated aspects of continuity and change within and between assemblages. This variability within the artefactual record can be interpreted at broader level in order to assess the social implications which these patterns may represent.
You can read more at:
Clarke, A 2006 Stone tools and the Prehistory of the Northern Isles British Archaeological Report, 406.
The small, finger-like tools (left) have been shaped by grinding. The larger multi-hollowed cobbles (right) are an unusual tool form.
These tools exhibit grinding on one face – they were most likely used to process or shape other materials.
Found at Bronze Age sites, these flaked cobbles may have been used as heavy duty choppers.
These unusual stone objects are found at Bronze Age structures in Shetland. They may have been used in the tethering of animals in byres.
These unusual tools have a distinctive carefully-shaped handle . They were in use in the Early Bronze Age of Orkney and Shetland.
These have been shaped from the local shale to form a hatchet or cleaver-like head with a handle.
These were most likely some form of agricultural tool – hafted to be used as mattocks or hoes. They are common to Bronze Age sites in Shetland and Orkney where they can occur in their hundreds.
These stone points were hafted to an ard and used to till the soil.
These stone flakes are found at Neolithic and Early Bronze Age sites in Orkney and Shetland.
These balls are shaped to almost perfect spheres and may have been used as gaming counters or as some sort of tally system. They are found at hillforts and other Iron Age sites around the SE of Scotland.
Hammerstones, flaked stone bars and a saddle quern from St Kilda.
Bloodstone was used throughout prehistory to make tools. Just one source – at Bloodstone Hill on the island of Rum, Inverness-shire was exploited and tools and debitage are found at various sites on Rum and further afield. For more information see CR Wickham-Jones 1990 Excavations on Rhum: Mesolithic and Later Sites at Kinloch
A flaked stone bar (left) is manufactured by knapping a larger block of sandstone (right). Large quantities of distinctive flake debris can be produced (centre).
These flaked stone bars were made from sandstone cobbles rather than quarried blocks.
Flaked lithics are knapped using these hammerstones.
