Skara Brae: Orkney's Remarkably Preserved Neolithic Village

Skara Brae is a Neolithic stone-built village on the Bay of Skaill in Orkney, off the north coast of Scotland, lived in from about 3180 to 2500 BC. Hidden under sand dunes for more than four thousand years, it was exposed by a violent storm in 1850. Its houses still contain their original stone beds, hearths and dressers, which makes Skara Brae the most complete Neolithic village in northern Europe and an unusually intimate window on daily life five thousand years ago.

Background: Neolithic Orkney

Farming reached Britain from continental Europe around 4000 BC, and by the mid-fourth millennium BC farming communities were established in Orkney. The oldest known houses in the islands, at the Knap of Howar on Papa Westray, date to roughly 3700–3500 BC. Over the following centuries Orkney became one of the most dynamic regions of Neolithic Britain.

The islands have very few trees but abundant flagstone, a sedimentary rock that splits naturally into flat, even slabs. Neolithic Orcadians used it for almost everything: walls, roof supports, furniture, tombs and standing stones. This choice of material is the main reason so much of their world survives.

Skara Brae belongs to the same era as Orkney’s great ceremonial monuments. About 10 km (6 miles) to the east lie the Stones of Stenness, the Ring of Brodgar, the chambered tomb of Maeshowe and the ceremonial complex at the Ness of Brodgar. Together they form a landscape that shows both how people lived and how they gathered for ritual.

The village and its houses

Skara Brae was occupied in at least two main phases, with older houses partly demolished and replaced by later ones. The well-preserved village visible today belongs mostly to the later phase. It consists of around eight structures, most of them dwellings, connected by low, narrow passages that were roofed with stone slabs.

The houses were sunk into mounds of midden, a dense mixture of household rubbish such as ash, shells, bones and decayed organic matter. Packing the buildings into midden gave them stability and insulation against the wind and rain of an exposed Atlantic coast. Each house was entered through a low doorway that could be closed with a stone slab, held in place by a bar sliding into holes in the door jambs.

A typical house is a single large room, roughly square with rounded corners, with an average floor area of about 40 square metres (430 sq ft). In the centre is a square stone hearth, where a fire of peat, heather, seaweed, driftwood or dried dung would have burned. The roofs have not survived; they were probably made of timber or whalebone covered with turf, skins or thatch.

Stone furniture

What makes Skara Brae extraordinary is its furniture. Facing the doorway in most houses is a stone “dresser” of two shelves supported on stone legs. Its prominent position suggests it was used to display valued objects, much as a dresser might be in a later farmhouse.

On either side of the hearth are box beds, rectangular enclosures built of upright slabs. They were probably filled with heather, bracken or straw and covered with skins. In many houses one bed is larger than the other, which some archaeologists have interpreted as a difference between men’s and women’s sides, though this cannot be proven.

Small stone-lined tanks are set into the floors and sealed with clay, so that they could hold water. One suggestion is that they were used to soak limpets as fishing bait. Cells and recesses built into the walls served as cupboards. Some cells were connected to a drain that ran beneath the village, and these have been interpreted as possible early indoor toilets.

One building, known as House 8, stands apart. It has no beds or dresser and contains debris from working stone, bone and possibly pottery, so it is often interpreted as a workshop. Its separate position suggests that some tasks were deliberately kept away from living spaces.

Daily life and economy

The people of Skara Brae were farmers who also made full use of the sea and shore. They kept cattle and sheep and some pigs, and grew cereals such as barley and wheat. Fish bones, shells of limpets and other shellfish, and the bones of seabirds and occasionally deer show a varied diet. Driftwood and stranded whales were valuable resources on an island with little timber.

The villagers made Grooved Ware, a flat-bottomed pottery style decorated with grooves and applied strips, which appears in Orkney early and later spread across Britain and Ireland, reaching southern England and sites such as Stonehenge. They also made tools and ornaments of bone, antler, stone and walrus or whale ivory: awls, needles, beads, pendants and pins.

Among the most puzzling finds are carved stone balls and other decorated stone objects with knobs or spikes, whose purpose is unknown. Some walls and slabs carry incised geometric patterns, such as lozenges and zigzags. Pigments, including red ochre, were found in small containers, and may have been used for body decoration or for painting surfaces.

The total population is usually estimated at between about 50 and 100 people. The close-knit plan, with houses linked by passages, suggests a community organised around shared space and cooperation, but there is no clear evidence of a chief’s house or of strong social ranking within the village.

Discovery and excavation

For about 4,300 years the village lay buried under sand dunes beside the Bay of Skaill. In the winter of 1850 a great storm stripped the grass and sand from a large mound known locally as Skerrabra, exposing the outlines of stone buildings. The local landowner, William Watt of Skaill House, began digging and by 1868 had cleared parts of four houses before work stopped.

In 1925 another storm damaged part of the site, and a sea wall was built to protect it. Between 1927 and 1930 the Australian-born archaeologist V. Gordon Childe excavated the village more fully and published a detailed report in 1931. Without radiocarbon dating, which did not yet exist, Childe initially believed the village was much younger and associated it with the Iron Age Picts.

Radiocarbon dating changed this picture. Excavations in 1972–1973 led by David Clarke of the National Museum of Antiquities of Scotland recovered samples that placed the village firmly in the Neolithic, between roughly 3180 and 2500 BC. These dates made Skara Brae older than the stone phase of Stonehenge and the Great Pyramid of Giza.

Myths and facts

Myth: Skara Brae was abandoned overnight in a sandstorm. This idea became popular through accounts of a string of beads apparently found scattered in a passage, as if dropped by someone fleeing in haste. Later excavation found no clear evidence of a single catastrophe. Most archaeologists now think the village was abandoned gradually around 2500 BC, possibly because of a cooling, stormier climate, encroaching sand or changes in social organisation. Sand only finally covered the ruins afterwards.

Myth: Skara Brae was a unique, isolated community. In fact it was one of several Neolithic settlements in Orkney. Similar houses have been found at Barnhouse near Stenness, at Rinyo on Rousay and at the Links of Noltland on Westray. Skara Brae is simply the best preserved.

Fact: the furniture really is original. The stone dressers, beds and hearths visible today are the Neolithic fittings, not modern reconstructions, although walls have been consolidated for conservation.

Legacy and conservation

In 1999 Skara Brae was inscribed by UNESCO as part of the Heart of Neolithic Orkney World Heritage Site, together with Maeshowe, the Stones of Stenness and the Ring of Brodgar. The site is cared for by Historic Environment Scotland and draws large numbers of visitors each year. A visitor centre displays finds and a full-size replica of one of the houses, built so that visitors can walk inside without damaging the original.

Skara Brae faces a serious threat from the sea. It stands only a few metres from the shore of the Bay of Skaill, and rising sea levels and more frequent storms linked to climate change are expected to increase erosion. Its sea wall needs regular maintenance, and the site is often cited as one of the most vulnerable heritage sites in Britain.

The village has also shaped how people imagine prehistory. Its stone beds and dressers show that Neolithic people lived in planned, organised and comfortable homes, overturning older images of prehistoric life as crude. In that respect it complements sites such as Ireland’s Newgrange, which show the monumental ambitions of the same era.

Timeline

• c. 3700–3500 BC: Farmers build the Knap of Howar on Papa Westray, the oldest known houses in Orkney.
• c. 3180 BC: The first houses are built at Skara Brae.
• c. 3100–2900 BC: The Stones of Stenness are raised nearby; Skara Brae is in its earlier phase.
• c. 2500 BC: Skara Brae is abandoned, probably gradually; sand later covers the ruins.
• 1850, winter: A storm strips the dune at the Bay of Skaill and exposes the stone houses.
• 1868: William Watt’s digging stops after parts of four houses have been cleared.
• 1925: Another storm damages the site; a protective sea wall is built.
• 1927–1930: V. Gordon Childe excavates the village and publishes it in 1931.
• 1972–1973: Excavations by David Clarke provide radiocarbon dates showing the village is Neolithic.
• 1999: UNESCO inscribes the Heart of Neolithic Orkney, including Skara Brae, as a World Heritage Site.

By the numbers

Why it matters

Skara Brae preserves something archaeology rarely finds: the inside of ordinary homes from five thousand years ago, complete with their furniture. It shows how a Neolithic community organised its living space, food, crafts and shelter on the edge of the Atlantic. Alongside Orkney’s stone circles and tombs, it reveals that the people who built great monuments also built carefully designed villages, and it remains one of the most evocative prehistoric sites in Europe.