Fiasco in the Orkneys

I watched Neil Oliver’s History of Ancient Britain Special: Orkney’s Stone Age Temple on catch-up last night.  If you missed it and don’t know what I’m talking about, check out http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01971gm

Briefly archaeologists have discovered an incredible site on the Orkneys at Brodgar – the size of 5 football pitches they say.  They also say that it is a temple – in other words it has a religious function – but present no evidence for this at all except a small baluster-shaped piece of worked bone they are calling the Brodgar Boy.  A little figure of a man would not really imply a religious function, even if it were one, but to be fair it is nor really a convincing human figure at all.  Nevertheless, by the end of the programme the complex – so far unearthed is a scatter of randomly oriented buildings enclosed by a wall – had become a gateway between the worlds of the living and the dead.

While I’m in the mood, I’m a bit puzzled about the dating evidence.  The enclosing wall – apparently of cut stone and ten feet high – is dateable to 3000BC on the basis of carbon dating of burnt wood found beneath it.  Now as far as I can see, all anyone can say about the date of the wall is that it is later than the burnt wood – this is how stratigraphy works.  It could be neolithic, or Bronze Age, Roman, medieval or built yesterday. Couldn’t it?

This is not a rhetorical question.  I really want help here, so if you are an archaeologist and can explain these things to me, please leave a comment.