You see before you the ruin of a ring of tall stones, built between 3000 and 2500 BC. At other monuments we know that prehistoric people wreaked destruction, and it may be due to them or medieval Orcadians that the ring had lost all but 4 of its upright stones by 1760.
The ditch around it filled up with soil as centuries of ploughing levelled down the original bank. The flattening of the ditch and bank was almost complete by 1973. You can only see the bank because we have reinstated it to look as it did in 1851 -- flaws and all, for it was already partly ploughed when the first good record was made. In the area where the bank was shown absent in 1851 you can see the original line of the bank as a low swell.
The Builders
Before 4000 BC people began to grow wheat and barley in Britain. Before that time only hunters had roamed the land. The farmers reached Orkney earlier than 3500 BC and over the next 1000 years built many settlements, tombs, and the Stones of Stenness. These buildings show great diversity, but two broad groups of people can be recognized. One group used a kind of pottery called grooved ware (Fig. 1 & 6). We know more about how these people lived in Orkney than about any other ancient British community.
The Stones and the Henge
At some time between 3000 and 2000 BC people set up 12 great stones, the tallest over 5.7m high, in an ellipse pointing a little west of north. Round them they dug, partly through solid rock, a ditch 6m wide and about 2.3m deep (Fig. 2). Outside it a bank of similar width and unknown height was built. They left an 8m wide causeway across the ditch on the northern side of the ring, and a similar gap in the bank. Such great circuits of bank and ditch together are called henges by archaeologists.
The Central Settings
The drawing shows features discovered in excavation and mostly no longer visible. In the centre of the ring a wooden post was set up. Subsequently a roughly 2m square setting of stone slabs was made where the post had been. Perhaps later, two large stones were set up to its north -- they disappeared before historical records were made, but the holes were found in excavations. A small wooden structure was built to the north of the two stones, not quite in line with them (Fig. 3).
The large 3-slab structure visible to the north again of the centre has been rebuilt twice in modern times. It is comparable to structures in other great stone rings and here belongs to the period of original use. All these features lie on a line running due north from the centre of the ring.
Planning Stenness
We think the ring of stones was put up before the henge, because it would have been hard to manoeuvre the stones once the ditch was dug. The standing stones must have been quarried elsewhere. Careful measurement shows the surviving stones and stone holes lie on a 30m by 32m ellipse pointing about 20 degrees W of N. We are not sure how precise the builders meant to be. The causeway and central features are on different lines from the centre.
Building Stenness
In 1906 AD, when a fallen stone was re-erected, only 8 men were needed; they inched up the stone on a progressively enlarged timber framework ramp until it tipped into its stonehole. Perhaps the original builders used a driftwood ramp (Fig. 4) or perhaps they used stone and levers to wedge the standing stone towards the vertical.
From evidence like this, and from experiments, we calculate it took more than 5000 man-days to build Stenness. The time was mainly spent digging the ditch and building the bank. We can imagine that 50 men did all the work in a single summer, or that 10-20 did it over several seasons.
The Monument in Use
Archaeologists found pottery, cremated bone and evidence of fire in the small central slab setting (Fig. 5). The bones may have come from animals or people. They may represent offerings or burial ceremonies. There are signs of much later activity; pits were dug and in their fill was pottery like the jars found in nearby Iron Age settlements of 3000 years later.
Hidden Meanings
Grooved ware pottery like that from Stenness has been found in some of the great ceremonial monuments of England and Scotland. The people who built Stenness were part of a rich and well organized society. The meaning of the great stones they raised 5000 years ago is hidden from us and all we can be sure of is that they reflect a concentration of wealth and power in the heart of Orkney.