Orkney was a major cultural center during the Neolithic, 3800 to 2500 BC. Farming flourished, permanent stone settlements and chambered tombs were constructed, and long-range contacts were sustained. From ∼3200 BC, the number, density, and extravagance of settlements increased, and new ceremonial monuments and ceramic styles, possibly originating in Orkney, spread across Britain and Ireland. By ∼2800 BC, this phenomenon was waning, although Neolithic traditions persisted to at least 2500 BC. Unlike elsewhere in Britain, there is little material evidence to suggest a Beaker presence, suggesting that Orkney may have developed along an insular trajectory during the second millennium BC. We tested this by comparing new genomic evidence from 22 Bronze Age and 3 Iron Age burials in northwest Orkney with Neolithic burials from across the archipelago. We identified signals of inward migration on a scale unsuspected from the archaeological record: As elsewhere in Bronze Age Britain, much of the population displayed significant genome-wide ancestry deriving ultimately from the Pontic-Caspian Steppe. However, uniquely in northern and central Europe, most of the male lineages were inherited from the local Neolithic. This suggests that some male descendants of Neolithic Orkney may have remained distinct well into the Bronze Age, although there are signs that this had dwindled by the Iron Age. Furthermore, although the majority of mitochondrial DNA lineages evidently arrived afresh with the Bronze Age, we also find evidence for continuity in the female line of descent from Mesolithic Britain into the Bronze Age and even to the present day.

THE area under consideration lies in the adjoining margins of the Geological Survey maps, sheets 21 and 22, Scotland, on •which a large number of volcanic necks are shown to occur.Sir Archibald Geikie (1897, pp. 394 seq.; 1903, pp. 65-6), who has given several short accounts of them, considers that they are the sites of some of the volcanoes which gave rise to the Calciferous Sandstone lavas. During the recent revision of this area by the Geological Survey several new volcanic necks have been recognised, and fresh evidence has been gathered about some of the others. In the map of the district (Fig. 1) the various necks are each given a separate number, and for facility of reference the same numbers will be used in the following account. DESCRIPTION OF THE NECKS. Vents Containing Acid Materials.-TheIrish Law vent (No. 1) forms the south extremity of the great volcanic centre of Misty Law, and most probably represents a late phase of activity. Its margins are only seen on the west in the sections on the sides of Rye Water Head, where a coarse-grained pink and green volcanic breccia is in contact with a pink felsitic rock. Further north the margin can be seen cutting across the Gogo Water. To the south it has been traced in a south easterly direction to the west slopes of Knockside Hills (Figs. 2 and 3). The eastern margin is covered by peat, but is taken as running in a north-easterly direction. Several masses of trachytic and basaltic rocks occur in the vent, interesting occurrences being on Irish Law. The breccia in the vent con tains numerous trachytic fragments and therefore it looks as if the junction between the two rocks was of an explosive nature, with shattering of the already consolidated trachyte.

Generalized stratigraphic column of Cenozoic and Mesozoic units in the oil and gas producing areas of Regional isopach map of the Smackover Formation in Regional isopach map of the Haynesville Formation in

Two cists representing common forms of Bronze Age burial monument were excavated in 1992 in Orkney. A short flat cist at Midskaill, on the island of Egilsay, was previously unrecorded and it contained coarse pottery sherds and 'cramp' (vitrified cremation slag). No human bone was found. The second cist, located within a mound at Linga Fiold, Sandwick, on Mainland Orkney, contained human bone and cramp. The Linga Fiold mound is one of a recorded and partially excavated group (RCAHMS 1946, no 713). The work was carried out with funding from Historic Scotland.

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