Tomb of the Eagles

The Tomb of the Eagles, properly Isbister Chambered Cairn, is a Neolithic chambered tomb standing on a cliff edge at Isbister on South Ronaldsay in Orkney. Its position on the cliff is as much a part of the monument as its contents. Ronald Simison, a farmer, found the site in 1958 while digging flagstones. He carried out a limited excavation, removed some bones and skulls, and then filled the site in again — which is how a great many Orkney sites were both discovered and disturbed. Digging flagstones is how a good many Orkney monuments have come to light.

A more extensive excavation began in 1976, and an enormous amount of material was removed according to a report published in 2002. Simison alerted the archaeologist John Hedges, who mounted a full study, prepared a technical report and wrote a popular book that fixed the tomb's name in the public mind. The Archaeological Journal's review of that book was cool, calling it reasonably well done and observing how very much better it might have been. The name it established has nonetheless outlasted the criticism.

The tomb held 16,000 human bones from at least 324 individuals, and not one intact skeleton. That combination — an enormous quantity of bone and no complete burials — is what makes the site archaeologically important. Mixed with the human remains were talons and bones from eight to twenty birds, predominantly the white-tailed sea eagle. The obvious reading was that the eagle was a totem animal for the people buried here.

Subsequent research undermined that. The bird material was added at a later date than the human bone, so the eagles and the people were not deposited together — and the name by which the tomb is universally known rests on a connection that the evidence no longer supports.