The people inside Camster Cairns

Before entering the Grey Cairns of Camster, I try to put the people back inside them. These were not monuments created for archaeologists or curious visitors, but chambers built by Neolithic families for their dead, using stones gathered, dragged and lifted by hand. Some bodies may have been allowed to decompose elsewhere before selected bones were carried inside, where remains were revisited, rearranged and mingled until individual identity became part of a much older community of ancestors.

Camster cannot tell us very much about the appearance of those people because, although human remains were recovered during early excavations, much of the evidence was disturbed or lost. Across the Pentland Firth, however, the Tomb of the Eagles contained approximately 16,000 human bones representing at least 324 individuals. They belonged to adults and children whose bodies carried the evidence of strenuous lives, including worn joints, damaged spines and injuries caused by violence. Some survived serious blows to the head and continued living long enough for the bone to heal.

These tombs remained in use for generations, yet they did not necessarily receive everyone who died. Some process of selection appears to have taken place, although we cannot know whether admission depended upon ancestry, family, position or participation in particular ceremonies. When I stand outside Camster, I sometimes suggest another possibility. In a world shaped by natural and supernatural forces, might a person born physically different have appeared marked by powers beyond ordinary understanding? Could others have entered because they were healers, seers or people believed capable of communicating with the ancestors?

There is no archaeological evidence proving that Camster housed shamans or that physical difference brought sacred status, so this remains my interpretation rather than a conclusion. Yet it encourages us to stop imagining anonymous bones and begin imagining human beings. Some were strong, some injured and some physically different, while others may have possessed knowledge or abilities that left no mark upon the skeleton. They worked, suffered, survived and belonged to communities that remembered them. Before we crawl through Camster’s narrow passage, that is the thought worth holding onto: the chamber ahead was built by people, for people.

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