Skara Brae

[Siegmund]

http://www.orkneyjar.com/history/skarabrae/index.html


The Discovery of the Village

Buried into the southern shore of Sandwick's Bay o' Skaill is the Neolithic village of Skara Brae - one of Orkney's most visited sites and rightly regarded as one of the most remarkable monuments in Europe.

In the winter of 1850, a great storm battered Orkney. Nothing particularly unusual about that, but on this occasion the combination of Orkney's notorious winds and extremely high tides stripped the grass from a large mound known as Skerrabra.

The storm revealed the outline of a series of stone buildings that intrigued the local laird, William Watt of Skaill. So he embarked on an excavation of the site.

By 1868, after the remains of four ancient houses had been unearthed, Skerrabra was abandoned. The settlement then remained undisturbed until 1925 when another storm damaged some of the previously excavated structures.

A sea-wall was built to preserve these remains, but during the construction work more ancient structures were discovered.

Further excavations followed and between 1928 and 1930, the dwellings we can see today were unearthed from their protective cocoons.

At the time the village was thought to be an Iron Age settlement. But this was no Pictish village. Radio-carbon dating in the early 1970s showed the settlement was much older and, dating from the late Neolithic, was actually inhabited between 3200 BC and 2200 BC.

Today Skerrabra - or Skara Brae as it has become known - is made up of eight dwellings, linked together by a series of low alleyways.

Because of the protection offered by the sand that protected the settlement for 4,000 years, these buildings and their contents are incredibly well-preserved. Not only are the walls of the structure still standing and alleyways roofed with their original stone slabs, but the interior fittings of each dwelling give an unparalleled glimpse of life as it was in Neolithic Orkney.

Each house shares the same basic design - a large square room with a central fireplace, a bed on either side and a shelved dresser on the wall opposite the doorway.

In its lifetime Skara Brae became embedded in its own rubbish and this, together with the encroaching sand dunes, meant that the village was gradually abandoned. Thereafter the settlement was gradually covered by a drifting wall of sand, that hid it from sight for for over 40 centuries until the great storm of 1850.

But the elements that exposed Skara Brae to the world are also the settlement's greatest nemesis. Skara Brae is under constant threat by the erosion caused by the fierce Orkney weather and the onslaught of the sand and sea. Steps are being taken, however, to alleviate or minimise this damage.

Because of this infamous erosion Skara Brae now stands right by the shore of the Bay o' Skaill. During its lifetime, however, the village would have been some distance from the sea.
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[Siegmund]

http://www.orkneyjar.com/history/skarabrae/skarab1.htm


The Buildings

The Neolithic village of Skara Brae was inhabited continually for at least 600 years.

During this period there appears to have been two distinctive stages of construction.

The earliest houses in the village were circular with one main room containing the central hearth .

Beds were set into the walls at either side of the hearth and opposite the main entrance was the shelved stone dresser that typifies Skara Brae.

The remains of these older structures remain on the site as rough stone outlines.

The later houses followed the same basic design as their predecessors but on a larger scale. The shape of the houses changed slightly, becoming more rectangular with rounded internal corners, and the beds were no longer built into the wall but protruded into the main living area.

Although it was in use for seven generations, Skara Brae never grew any larger than eight structures. The maximum number of dwellings at any one period was probably six or eight housing a total of no more than 50 to 100 villagers at any one time.

The total floor area of the Skara Brae houses is approximately 36 square metres - a figure that when compared to modern dwellings shows that these prehistoric houses were actually quite spacious.

Today, the visitor to the village is left with the impression that the eight surviving structures are the remains of an underground village, linked by a series of short, roofed tunnels.

This is actually quite misleading and not the case. The houses were not sunk into the ground but were built into mounds of pre-existing rubbish known as "midden". Although this midden provided the houses with a small degree of stability its most important purpose was to act as a layer of insulation - an absolute necessity given Orkney's harsh winter climate.

Because the houses were built into the midden, from the outside the village would originally have appeared as a low, round mound, broken only by the surface of each house's roof.

Life within the huts would have been reasonably warm and comfortable (certainly by Neolithic standards) with beds having straw or heather mattresses and blankets of sheepskin or deerskin.

A remarkably sophisticated drainage system was even incorporated into the village's design - a system that may have included an early form of toilet facilities.
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[Siegmund]

http://www.orkneyjar.com/history/skarabrae/layout.htm


The Layout of Skara Brae

The layout of Skara Brae as it would have been around 2600BC. Click for an enlargement.

Although the layout of Skara Brae was undoubtedly functional, elements of the architecture may also have been symbolically significant.

The passages that wound their way throughout the village were constructed in such as fashion as to force visitor and inhabitant alike to travel through the village in a specific way.

The person moving through Skara Brae had to pass a number of dwellings branching from the main passage. The identical layout of each Skara Brae house meant that on passing each door the visitor was immediately aware of the central hearth, with the fire burning, and the stone dresser illuminated by firelight.

Between the hearth and the dresser there is sometimes a large block that was almost certainly a seat - perhaps a seat of honour for the most venerated member of the household.

This is probably also significant in that this person would be the first householder encountered upon entering the house, also lit by the flickering orange flames of the central fire.

With this in mind it may be that the fire symbolised the well-being of the household, perhaps even the continuity of each community.

The specific positioning of the stone dresser, immediately opposite the door, also meant that it was illuminated by whatever light came through the entrance as well as the light from the fire.

This ensured that the dresser and its contents were the first object encountered upon entering the house. If, as has been suggested, the dresser's contents represented the status of the owner, its position could have communicated the fact to any visitor before they even crossed the threshold.

An intriguing idea is that the interior design of each house was also deliberately laid out to guide the movement of any visitor entering the dwelling.

In most of the later houses, there is an obstacle, usually a box made from slabs of flagstone, placed to the immediate left of the entrance. This forced any person entering the house to move into the area to the right of the entrance.

This may be significant. The area to the right of the houses may have been a "male area" - an area associated with status and as such distinct from the left hand side where the menial and domestic chores of the day were carried out.

This theory may explain why the beds to the right of the entrance are larger than those to the left. The discovery of beads and paint within the smaller beds prompted archaeologist Gordon Childe to speculate that the smaller beds were used by the women while the men took the larger ones in the male section of the house.
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[Siegmund]

http://www.orkneyjar.com/history/skarabrae/furniture.htm


The Stone Furniture

With the shortage of woodland in Orkney, the dwellers in Skara Brae were forced to make do with the only building material available to them - stone.

It is because of this that the village is so well preserved today.

Each hut in the village was equipped with an extensive assortment of stone furniture ranging from cupboards, dressers, beds, shelves and limpet tanks - all crafted from the local flagstone that provided the Neolithic builders with a readily available material that could be worked easily and turned into items for use within the household.

Of all the furniture within Skara Brae's houses, it would appear that the stone dressers were regarded as the most important. In each house this dresser faces the entrance and is therefore the first item seen when entering.

Although it is perfectly possible that the dresser might have been nothing more than a storage unit, it seems more likely that it had a more symbolic purpose.

Were the objects displayed on the dresser somehow indicative of the status of each house's occupants? The significance of the position of the dresser is further dealt with on the page detailing the layout of the village.

At the centre of every house, perhaps the most important area, was a central hearth.
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[Siegmund]

http://www.orkneyjar.com/history/skarabrae/hearth.htm


The Central Hearth

In the centre of every house in the Skara Brae complex is a large square hearth made up of stone kerbs.

For the significance of the hearth to the Neolithic inhabitants of Orkney, we need look no further than our own houses.

To this day the fireplace serves more than one purpose - it is a source of heat, light and the centre of life within a room. In earlier times this was even more the case. The fire not only gave warmth and light but cooked food and even disposed of combustible rubbish.

But then as now, perhaps more than anything, the hearth, and the fire within, was the centre of domestic and social life.

Winter in Orkney has always been the time when folk gathered around the fire to talk, tell stories and make music. It is not unlikely that the same thing happened over 4,000 years ago within the houses of Skara Brae.

The importance of the fire for the maintenance of life could have led to the placement of the hearth, and the furniture around it, acquiring some symbolic significance, something that may account for the hearth structure found within the Standing Stones o' Stenness henge.

In a society where there was little or no boundary between religion and everyday life, the fire at the centre of every hearth was quite literally the life of the settlement.

They simply could not survive without it.

However, despite whatever significance the fire had to Neolithic Orcadians, the position of the hearth can also be viewed from a purely functional angle.

Placed in the centre of the house the smoke was allowed to escape from the central smoke-hole - if any existed - and also maximised the number of people able to get around the fire.
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[Siegmund]

http://www.orkneyjar.com/history/skarabrae/passages.htm


The Network of Access Passages

A winding network of passages low, narrow stone passage linked the houses of Skara Brae.

This meant it was possible to travel from one house to another without having to step outside - not a bad thing in the midst of an Orkney winter!

Just over one metre high, the low passages were roofed with stone slabs before being covered over with insulating midden.

The height of the passages not only helped minimise drafts but could have served a symbolic, or even defensive, purpose, forcing the person entering the village to kneel or stoop.

Once inside and after a brief period of disorientation, the visitor would have encountered a series of dark winding, passages that led to distinct havens of warmth and light.

One main passageway lead into the village. At either side of the entrance to this was a bar-hole that indicates the main passageway could have been sealed, perhaps against intruders.

Similar bar-holes are found along the length of the passages and also at the entrance of each house.

The door to each of the houses consisted of a large slab of stone, big enough to fill the low gap. When this "door" was closed it was held in place by a bar slotted into the bar-holes.

Only two of the passages remain and are visible today.
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[Siegmund]

http://www.orkneyjar.com/history/skarabrae/skarab2.htm


Daily Life in Skara Brae

A reconstruction of the entrance into the Skara Brae complex

There is no doubt that life within Skara Brae was that of a close, tightly-knit community.

The fact that their houses were all built to one standard plan and the furniture laid out a uniform manner could indicate their sense of identity depended on this symbolic design, linking the past generations with the present.

The standard house design would indicate that individual status was not measured in terms of worldly possessions and perhaps, as in a commune, all the inhabitants of Skara Brae were equal.

Unlike the nearby Barnhouse settlement, Skara Brae was certainly not a settlement in which one family or individual held power over the others. Although there were probably leaders of sorts, these people would have "earned" their position, perhaps through experience, and their title, if any existed, would not necessarily pass on to any offspring.

Life in Skara Brae was probably quite comfortable by Neolithic standards. The villagers were settled farmers who, cultivating the land and raising livestock, were entirely self-sufficient.

Bones found within the midden surrounding the houses shows that cattle and sheep formed the main part of the Skara Brae diet, with barley and wheat grown in the surrounding fields.

To compliment their farming produce, fish and shellfish were harvested in great quantities - and perhaps kept fresh within custom-built tanks within the houses.

The island's red deer and boar were also hunted for their meat and skins. Seal meat was consumed and, on the odd occasions when they found a beached whale, its meat would have provided a welcome feast.

They probably also the collected the eggs of sea-birds and possibly even the birds themselves - a task that took place in the islands until fairly recently.http://forums.skadi.net/attachment.php?attachmentid=30232&stc=1

[Siegmund]

http://www.orkneyjar.com/history/skarabrae/religion.htm


Ritual and Religion in Skara Brae

For obvious reasons we can only guess at the religious beliefs of the inhabitants of Skara Brae.

They left no written records of their beliefs and religious practices so we are forced to make assumptions based on various objects and clues found at the sites they visited and used on a regular basis.

Whenever dealing with something like ritual and religion we must remember that the people of Neolithic Orkney had a completely alien set of beliefs and values than we do today.

Speaking during the excavation of the village at Stonehall in Firth, archaeologist Dr Colin Richards said: "With a period like the Neolithic you get almost fooled into thinking we have some basic idea of what's going on, and then we look at something else and we're all at sea again. I think the reason for that is because to really understand something we have to make it familiar and if it's not familiar we simply do not understand it. All the time we're trying to make them (the Neolithic Orcadians) like us but in reality these people were totally different."

Despite this difference in society, from the material clues we can glean a small amount of information relating to their rituals and theorise as to the form their religious beliefs took.

Skara Brae's similarity to the architecture of the nearby tombs shows that ritual formed a considerable part of everyday life and in death. Given the effort put into the construction of these tombs we can also say with a degree of certainty that the dead were very important to the Neolithic Orcadians.

It seems likely, therefore, that some form of ancestor worship took place but whether this took precedence over the veneration over a pantheon of deities is obviously not known.

However, based on the islands’ later prehistoric inhabitants we can suggest that the inhabitants of Skara Brae did worship a number of gods - perhaps a multitude of deities or spirits who controlled different aspects of their daily lives. A spirit of the sea who stilled the winter storms or a god that may have controlled the seasons and ensured the fertility of the land and a plentiful harvest. The fresh water from the springs and burns was perhaps seen to have been a divine gift without which the settlement would perish.

The sun and the moon also seems to have been important to these people, given the care they took aligning their major monuments to sunrises and sunsets.

If we are to believe the theories that the stone circles at Brodgar and Stenness were used for astronomical purposes it has been suggested that the stars might also have had a place within this religious structure.http://forums.skadi.net/attachment.php?attachmentid=30233&stc=1

[Siegmund]

http://www.orkneyjar.com/history/skarabrae/abandon.htm


Why was Skara Brae abandoned?

A common misconception is that Skara Brae was abandoned in the face of an apocalyptic disaster that caused the inhabitants to flee.

This dramatic idea was proposed by Professor Gordon Childe, the archaeologist who excavated the village in 1928, and like a Northern Pompeii, it immediately caught the public's imagination.

However, in the light of modern techniques and thinking, Childe's theory has more or less been discounted.

Instead, it is now thought the fall of Skara Brae was simply because Neolithic society in Orkney was changing. This change brought about different ideas and a completely different set of values and way of life.

From the construction of the henge monuments at Brodgar and Stenness and the construction of Maeshowe, we can see the emergence of an elite ruling body who had the power to control the labour of a number of people.

With this development, the need for all-enclosed village communities disappeared - where once families depended on their tight-knit, little village communities they now were part of a larger, more widespread community, controlled by powerful tribal or spiritual leaders.

Over time families dispersed across the landscape, settling once again in single individual dwellings. As more and more of these younger people drifted from the villages they were not replaced.

So Skara Brae's demise was certainly not overnight.

It seems more likely that those who remained within the ancient village of Skara Brae gradually grew older and died. With their passing their home and the home of the ancestors for over six centuries finally fell silent - silent save for the almost inaudible sounds of the encroaching sand.
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