Skara Brae and neolithic Britain

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Every last one of us was born too late to visit neolithic Britain. Sorry. Most of us wouldn’t handle it well anyway. But we can get a surprising glimpse of late stone age life from the island of Orkney, off the northeast coast of Scotland. 

These days, Orkney’s located almost exactly in the middle of nowhere, at least if by nowhere you mean a lot of water, but back then it seems to have been the center of a civilization, if for no other reason than that it was a midway point between northern Europe and Britain. For that, being in the middle of a lot of water is useful.

Not much is known about stone-age boats, but we can pretty well guess that traveling in one made a stop on a long voyage welcome. The break would’ve let people indulge in a neolithic cultural exchange, which I’m going to guess involved food, fresh water, alcohol, gossip, songs, gifts, and possibly an era-appropriate ritual or three.

I tossed in the rituals because Orkney’s rich in sites that hint at them, and every one of them involved an immense amount of labor. You don’t do all that if they don’t matter to you and if you don’t have time and energy to spare. 

Irrelevant photo: hemp agrimony

Skara Brae

Around 5,000 years ago, a group of people built a village on Orkney that’s now called Skara Brae. What they called it is anyone’s guess. A lot can get lost in 5,000 years, including a name. The people who lived there farmed, hunted, and fished.

The village is older than Stonehenge, older than the pyramids, and older than me. It was inhabited for something along the lines of 650 years and abandoned for reasons we can only guess at, but for us what’s significant about it is that at some point it was covered over by sand, which preserved it until a storm swept the sand off in 1850, uncovering an archaeologist’s dream.

The village is a circle of stone-built, single-room houses linked by roofed passages, with one larger building that according to one article might’ve been a workshop, although I can’t help wondering if it wouldn’t have been a place for everyone to gather. The walls were made of two layers of stone with insulation in between and the roofs were slate. Each house had a hearth, two beds outlined by stone slabs, which would have kept the bedding in place, and what are called dressers because–well, they have to be called something. To me, they look more like stone bookshelves, although this was a bookless, writingless world, so let’s stick with dressers. It’s chilly up there. People would’ve worn clothes, although that might not have been what they stored on them. They could’ve stored useful stuff, beautiful stuff, things they didn’t want to step on in the dark–say the neolilthic equivalent of Lego pieces.

For some fabulous photos, follow the link.

The houses also had tanks set into the floor. One house had an indoor toilet, although since plumbing was still a long way in the future that might not have been a great idea. I wasn’t there, so I can’t know.

Around the settlement, archaeologists have found dice, jewelry, tools, carved stone objects (objects here meaning things that are mysterious to us), and pottery in a style that spread to mainland Britain, supporting the argument that Orkney was an important site in the culture–a place that led the way. What hasn’t been found is weaponry, and the village wasn’t in an easily defended spot, arguing that this was a time and place of peace.

Not far from Skara Brae are two stone circles, The Ring of Brodgar and the Stones of Stenness; a chambered tomb, Maes Howe; and an assortment of unexcavated sites that hint at being ceremonial, burial, and settlement sites. The places that have been excavated show evidence of feasting–lots of feasting.

I won’t try to take you through the details of the excavations. I wouldn’t trust myself to get it right anyway. Follow the links if you want to know more. You’ll find lots of measurements and layouts. Or else settle for knowing that a lot went on in this seemingly isolated spot. 

So, did this important cultural center contribute the Stonehenge altar stone that’s recently been spotted as having come from somewhere in northeast Scotland or the Orkneys? It would make sense. They built similar monuments, but no. Orkney’s been ruled out and the search for the source of the altar stone goes on.

32 thoughts on “Skara Brae and neolithic Britain”

  1. Fascinating stuff Ellen. I’d love to know if there were any animals there when the first people moved in, though I doubt it. I’d guess they took some sheep or goats with them to breed for food and soon learned how to fish. Hugs

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  2. The big question as to what happened to these people. It is a huge mystery. DNA analysis of the bones of these people reveal that they have no connection to any modern people. No modern people share any DNA to them! What happened to them?

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  6. I love all the archaeological topics you bring up. I had read a bit about Scar Brae and The Ring of Brodgar. Maybe the people got flooded out at the end of the Ice Age. There used to be an area called Dogland between GB and Europe. They have done underwater archaeology there.

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    • Flooding’s unlikely. What was flooded when the ice age ended is still flooded, including Doggerland, which is now seabed.We’ll need to look for some other change–like maybe they lost their lease and had to move.

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  7. I’m feeling quite smug, cuz I’ve been to Skara Brae, the Ring of Brodgar and the Stones of Stenness. We didn’t visit Maes Howe, but three out of four ain’t bad. It’s interesting how the Skara Brae houses aren’t all that different from relatively modern ones in the same area. Wood might have replaced stone for the furniture, but there was often the same layout, insulated walls, and sometimes with the dwelling semi-subterranean or a turf roof. It’s bally cold up there! There’s the dresser at Skara Brae – in stone, but for all the world like we still have “Welsh dressers” – where a family displays its best possessions and keeps its crockery. Or did – now I guess it’s the 59″ TV.

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    • Yeah, they’d have had trouble fitting that TV in there. But you know, they were tough back then.

      Good point about the parallels with later houses. For a long time, houses would’ve been a bit like stone walls: you have one goal, you have more or less the same building materials, so even thought the tools changed the results are going to have a lot in common.

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  8. I had a great trip to Orkney years ago – including Ring of Brodgar, Maes Howe, Skara Brae, Stenness, but well before the most recent revelations and speculations. Always more mysteries.

    There is something different about the light and air there that makes it feel almost magical. (But that was in summer – I should think the winters are pretty bleak and windswept).

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    • I’ve also been there once, and it struck me as a pretty bleak place to live in the winter, but the archaeological sites! Holy shit! It does seem like the more we learn about them, the more we realize we don’t know.

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    • Thanks for the link. I’ll stop by. My partner and I were in Skara Brae some years back and I’m still awestruck by it. It has such a human dimension that I found it easy to imagine people living there–they didn’t seem that far removed from us.

      Glad you like the irrelevant photo idea. It saves a lot of headaches.

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