A Celebration of Sunrise at the Tomb of the Eagles
by Ilse Babette Barthelmess
Orkney Museums and Heritage, December 2004, priced £18.

A visit to the chambered tomb at Isbister, South Ronaldsay, is always a special experience, even though we are surrounded by extraordinary archaeology in Orkney.

Historic Scotland does a fine job presenting the major monuments like Maeshowe and Skara Brae, with its award-winning Visitor Centre, but the tomb at Liddle Farm remains in the custody of its discoverer, Ronald Simison.

Together with his family, Mr Simison provides a uniquely informed and stimulating guide to the burnt mound and the tomb, generally known as the Tomb of the Eagles since 1981, after an exhibition at Tankerness House curated by Bryce Wilson.

The story of Ronald Simison's chance discovery of a cache of Neolithic ceremonial objects in 1958, and his careful excavation of the tomb in 1976, provide a personal link to the site, and bring the ancient materials closer to the visitor.

If you are lucky, you can hold 'Charlie', a Neolithic skull retained from the first trial digging in 1958, a direct line to the first Orcadians across two hundred generations.

It seems right that the tomb is in the guardianship of the Simison family, who care for the site with a commitment perhaps not so different from that of the people who first built and worshipped at the cairn.

Babette Barthelmess now provides us with another richly imaginative approach to the Isbister monument in her book A Celebration of Sunrise at the Tomb of the Eagles.

With heroic dedication or so it seems to this reader she decided to observe the progress of sunrise at the Tomb of the Eagles to discover if there is a possible orientation towards spring and summer dawn in the tomb's construction.

Having obtained Ronald Simison's permission to visit the site so early in the day, Babette got up between three and six o'clock in the morning for a prolonged period and in all weathers.

On what must have been a truly magical morning, she saw the sun rise in perfect alignment with the entrance passage to the tomb on May 2 2001. She writes: "As I turn around and look down the passage I see my shadow in the centre of a glowing red-golden square which the sunlight paints on the back wall of the central stall in the main chamber."

She also found that a second perfect alignment occurs in mid-August, and in the intervening months sunlight could reach to the foot of the tomb's rear wall.

But why is the chamber not centrally positioned within its amphitheatre?

According to Babette Barthelmess's observations, the tomb may have been carefully sited so that from its entrance the sun could be observed throughout the year, including at the summer solstice rising, the northern-most point in its traverse.

This aspect of the site does not seem to have been investigated in any detail before, and Babette Barthelmess can claim to have made a real contribution to knowledge of the tomb's orientation.

But her intention is even more ambitious than this: "The emphasis in this book is not to increase factual knowledge but to refine perception, create awareness."

This celebration of sunrise is also a spiritual exploration of what may have been sacred aspects of the Tomb of the Eagles and the kinds of perception that Neolithic people experienced there.

Babette Barthelmess evokes very well the striking location of the tomb and its natural amphitheatre embraced by the 'hornworks' to either side the tomb entrance.

This dramatic space surely invited ritual and meditation in earlier millennia. And many of her own dawn visits were clearly heightened experiences in the midst of the beauty and solitude of an ancient landscape.

Anthropologists call these kinds of event 'liminal' experiences, that's to say, events located at the edge of routine life, and which may cross established boundaries.

For many societies, this is where the spirit world may be found, or even entered: between land and water, night and day, one season and the next.

And this certainly seems to have been Babette Barthelmess's experience at the Tomb of the Eagles.

The format of A Celebration of Sunrise is as original as the content, taking the form of a ring-bound photo album, strikingly designed and produced with The Orcadian's facilities.

Nineteen atmospheric photographs, one painting and three prints on the left-hand page are set against the text that is printed on semi-transparent paper. The author's most daring speculation concerns the non-perpendicular alignment of the entrance passage and main chamber.

Why was the entrance constructed at this particular angle, since different orientations could have captured even more sunlight over longer periods?

The actual construction admits light to the chamber for three and a half months, leaving the chamber in darkness for the remaining eight and a half months.

She speculates: "Maybe the tomb's layout honoured a ritual which ensured that man's reproduction was co-ordinated with the rhythm of nature?"

Her conclusion is "that the sanctuary did not serve a singular aspect, e.g. worship of the ancestors, the 'eagle totem', or the sun, but will have incorporated all of these into a holistic experience for the community of the living."

Babette Barthelmess's text, photographs and artwork creatively celebrate this vision, which is there for all to experience at the Tomb of the Eagles.

Nigel Wheale