ORKNEY, SCOTLAND—The Scotsman reports that recent storms have exposed human remains at Newark, an ancient Pictish cemetery site on Orkney’s southeastern coast. The cemetery is thought to have been used from A.D. 550 to 1450, and contains four or five layers of burials, according to Pete Higgins of the Orkney Research Centre for Archaeology (ORCA). The site could offer information about the arrival of the Vikings, he added. Archaeologists have placed sandbags on the ground, which consists of soft clay prone to landslides, as a form of short-term protection for the remains. Researchers plan to analyze DNA from the bones. Traces of a seventeenth-century manor house have also been lost to the North Sea. To read about a Viking hall unearthed on the Orkney island of Rousay, go to "Skoal!"
