Knap of Howar

The Knap of Howar on Papa Westray, an island of Orkney, is a Neolithic settlement on the west coast of the island. The place is dated 3700-3100 BC

Excavations

The long -buried under a dune monument was discovered in 1929 by William Traill and William Kirkness and excavated from 1930. The excavation was documented in a silent film, which is in the archives of the BBC. The plant was thought at that time for Iron Age. In 1937 a wall was built to protect the site from further erosion by the sea. From 1973-1975 the site was excavated again in advance of restoration work by Anna Ritchie for the Department of Environment.

Buildings

The two buildings were built on a 0.4 -meter-thick middens ( middens ), the (mostly mussels ) consisted of dark gray clay with embedded shells of crustaceans. The walls are double wall dry-stone walls of thin slabs of stone Stand ( local red sandstone, Rousay Flags group), the gaps are filled with waste. For the construction of the buildings we removed the inner region of the shell mounds. The interior drywall of House 1 is located on the natural soil ( glacial clay), while the outer resting on waste material, resulting in a level difference of 35 cm. The houses are surrounded by waste material.

Building 1 is rectangular and has two rooms of 5 × 5.3 and 4.5 × 4.6 m ( inside dimensions ). The walls are 1.5-1.7 m thick and receive up to a height of 1.6 m. The 0.75 m long entrance passage is paved with stone slabs. The lintel of stone slabs was 1.3 m high. Building 1 is connected to a 1.03 m high and 0.7 m wide passage with construction 2. This transition was roughly paved.

The three-roomed building 2 was interpreted as a workshop or home. Its trapezoidal interior measures 7.5 × 3.6 to 2.6 m. On the floor of the Department 2c there was a 2-4 cm thick layer of soil with embedded ash particles. In the middle room (2b ) the settlement layer was up to 20 cm thick and consisted of two layers, which correspond to two different hearths.

The low inputs of both buildings have the sea. There were no windows; presumably the houses were through a hole in the roof, which made pulling the smoke of the hearth, is evident. Holes for beam conditions in the walls indicate a roof structure. The internals are similar to those of Skara Brae. Herd, the room divider, stone boxes and wall shelves are almost intact.

Economy

The show wastes that the Neolithic settlers kept cattle, sheep and pigs. While the cattle are strikingly large, belong to a primitive sheep breed that probably had no wool fleece. Was cultivated naked barley were collected shellfish, especially limpets ( Patella vulgata ) and hazelnuts, were hunted birds ( geese, swans, cormorants, gulls, puffins, starlings, Skua ) and seals. Whether deer were hunted on Orkney or on the Scottish mainland, is controversial. Fish such as herring, conger eel ( Conger ) and turbot must have been caught from boats. Pollock, rockling, cod, spotted wrasse ( Labrus bergylta ) and eel comes before the other hand, near the coast and could have been caught using hooks or nets.

Cultural classification

The Knap of Howar houses are unusual in their design to Orkney and Shetland. Rectangular houses of stone or wood, however, are documented for this period in Scotland and beyond. Two such parallel houses, surrounded by a palisade, were in the hole Olabhat on North Uist, on a small artificial island ( Eilean Dòmhnuill, the oldest Crannog at all) found. At Knap of Howar this element is missing. Various features suggest, however, that it is not to secular buildings in such systems. In Balbridie immediately south of the River Dee in north-eastern Scotland, the post-holes of a large wooden house ( engl. "The Neolithic Timber Hall " ) have been unearthed, which reached 26 times 13 meters, almost three times the size of Knap of Howar 1 and the largest früheneolithische House was in the UK. It is even larger than the previously discovered large longhouses of early farmers in continental Europe. The pottery of the Knap of Howar Balbridie and consists of Unstan goods. Knap of Howar is zweiperiodig. For phase 1, only the lower layer of waste and stone paving south of Building 1 is obtained. In both layers Unstan - goods were found.

Similar, but later systems ( where then Grooved Ware was found) are Skara Brae and Barnhouse.