Paper short abstract:

Iron Age burials in Orkney are few in number yet the cemetery at Berst Ness, Westray uncovered more than forty inhumations including a high number of infants, particularly perinates and neonates. This paper introduces the site and will attempt to outline the significance of such high numbers of infants.

Paper long abstract:

Excavations at Berst Ness on Westray in the Orkney Islands have uncovered a complex site with structures ranging in date from at least the Bronze Age through to nineteenth century kelp-pits. Part of the Iron Age use of the site has proven to be a large cemetery with upwards of 40 adult, adolescent and child inhumations, a much greater number of infants, and some animals interred in the rubble of earlier buildings. The human remains are now being examined as part of a PhD project in the University of Edinburgh.

A limited programme of radio-carbon dating has produced dates between 200BC and 400AD for these burials. Such a large number of burials is unique for this time in Orkney - a period characterised by its monumental domestic structures. The high number of infants, perinates and neonates in particular, is of even greater interest given the lack of infant burials in formal cemeteries of almost all periods.

This paper will outline the cemetery phase of the site with particular attention to the child and infant burials, give a brief account of the early stages of the skeletal analysis which is already yielding interesting results, and attempt an early approach at the significance of these infant burials in the study of Orkney's funerary archaeology.