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THE BRIEFING History HeadlinesORKNEY SCOTLAND
Skol’s out
Archaeologists have uncovered what
they believe to be a Viking drinking hall on
Orkney. Pottery, a spindle whorl and a bone
comb fragment were found among the stone
ruins on Skaill Farmstead in Westness, Rousay,
which are over 13 metres long. The site, thought to
date back to the 10th centur y, may have been used in
the 12th century by the influential chieftain Earl Sigurd
of Westness. Experts hope that the discovery will shed
light on diet and agriculture in the Norse period.231History
Headlines
WORDS ELLIE CAWTHORNEGETTY^ IMAGES/PA^ IMAGESQUEBEC CANADA
Journey’s end
The bones of 21 migrants killed in
a shipwreck while fleeing the Irish
Famine have been buried in Canada.
The passengers sailed from Sligo in
spring 1847 aboard the Carricks of
Whitehaven, which sank in a storm off
the Gaspé Peninsula, Quebec; of some
180 passengers, most perished. After
recent analysis of bones found on Cap-
des-Rosiers beach in 2011 and 2016
confirmed their origins, they were bur-
ied near the Irish Memorial on the beach.LAGUNA EK’NAAB GUATEMALA
The war before
Charcoal samples from a lake bed could help rewrite
the story of Classic Mayan civilisation. Historians long
theorised that cities emptied following resource wars
sparked by droughts in the eighth and ninth centuries.
Analysis of sediment samples from Laguna Ek’Naab,
northern Guatemala, revealed charcoal deposits
consistent with a major fire around AD 690–700 –
corroborating a Mayan inscription describing the
burning of a city in 697. This may indicate that ‘total’
warfare was widespread long before the drought
period, and that the Maya’s story “really needs
reconsideration”, says paleoclimatologist David Wahl.23The remains of Irish
migrants shipwrecked off
the Canadian coast in 1847
are buried in QuebecNAPLES ITALY
Hot topic
A dispute has erupted between volcanologists
and archaeologists at the ancient site of Pom-
peii, where major excavations are underway.
In an open letter to the scientific journal
Nature, published in July, a team of volcano-
logy experts expressed alarm “that volcanic
deposits are being sacrificed” during the dig.
Volcanologist Professor Roberto Scandone
argued that experts working on the Great
Pompeii Project “seem not to realise that the
enthusiasm for archaeology is committing
an act of vandalism to volcanology”.4Mayan warfare may
have been more
destructive and less
ritualised earlier than
previously thoughtThe plaster cast of the remains of a horse
excavated near Pompeii in 2018Viking-era artefacts excavated
at Skaill Farmstead, Orkney,
include this carved bone comb