Knap of Howar
The Knap of Howar on Papa Westray , an Orkney island , are two Neolithic buildings on the island's west coast. The place dates between 3,700 and 3,100 BC. Chr.
Digs
The monument, long buried under a dune, was discovered by William Traill and William Kirkness in 1929 and excavated from 1930. The excavation was documented in a silent film that is in the archives of the BBC . At that time, the facility was believed to be from the Iron Age . In 1937 a wall was built to protect the site from further sea erosion. From 1973 to 1975 the site was dug up again by Anna Ritchie in advance of restorations.
buildings
The two buildings were erected on a 0.4 meter thick pile of rubbish ( mussel heap ), which consisted of dark gray clay with embedded shells of crustaceans (mostly mussels). The walls are double-walled dry stone walls made of thin standing stone slabs (local red sandstone, the "Rousay Flags group"), the spaces in between are filled with waste. The inner area of the shell pile was removed for the construction of the buildings. The inner dry stone wall of House 1 sits on the natural ground (glacial clay), while the outer rests on waste material, resulting in a difference in level 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 (internal dimensions). The walls are 1.5–1.7 m thick and have been preserved up to a height of 1.6 m. The 0.75 m long entrance passage is paved with stone slabs. The stone slab door lintel was 1.3 m high. Building 1 is connected to Building 2 by a 1.03 m high and 0.7 m wide passage. This corridor was roughly paved.
The three-room building 2 was interpreted as a workshop or house. Its trapezoidal interior measures 7.5 × 3.6–2.6 m. A 2–4 cm thick layer of earth with embedded ash particles was found on the floor of compartment 2c. In the middle room (2b) the settlement layer was up to 20 cm thick and consisted of two layers corresponding to two different hearths .
The low entrances to both buildings face the sea. There were no windows; presumably the houses were lit by a hole in the roof that allowed the smoke from the stove to escape. Recesses for beams in the walls indicate a wooden roof structure. The internal fittings correspond to those of Skara Brae . Stoves, room dividers, stone boxes and wall shelves are almost intact.
Economy
The waste shows that the Neolithic settlers kept cattle , sheep and pigs . While the cattle are remarkably large, the sheep belong to a primitive breed that probably did not yet have wool fleece. Naked barley was grown , shellfish , especially limpets ( Patella vulgata ), and hazelnuts were collected . Birds (geese, swans, cormorants, seagulls, puffins, starlings, skua) and seals were hunted. Whether deer were hunted in Orkney or on the Scottish mainland is controversial. Fish such as herring , conger ( Conger ) and turbot need of boats have been caught out. Pollack , burbot , cod , spotted wrasse (Labrus bergylta) and eel , on the other hand, are found near the coast and could have been caught with hooks or nets.
Cultural classification
The Howar Knap houses are unusual in their design on Orkney and Shetland. Rectangular stone or wooden houses, however, are documented for this period in the rest of Scotland and beyond. Two such parallel houses, enclosed by a palisade, were found in Loch Olabhat on North Uist , on a small artificial island (Eilean Dòmhnuill, the oldest Crannóg at all). This palisade element is missing in the Howar Knap. However, various peculiarities indicate that such systems are not secular buildings. In Balbridie, just south of the River Dee in northeastern Scotland, the post holes of a large wooden house ("The Neolithic Timber Hall") have been excavated, which at 26 by 13 m is almost three times the size of Knap from Howar 1 and is the largest early Neolithic house was in the UK. It is even larger than the great longhouses of the early farmers in continental Europe. The pottery from Balbridie and the Knap of Howar is made from Unstan ware . Knap of Howar has been used for two periods. From phase 1 only the lower waste layer and a stone paving south of house 1 have been preserved. Unstan goods were found in both layers.
Similar but later sites (where Grooved Ware was found) are Skara Brae and Barnhouse .
literature
- Anna Ritchie: Prehistoric Orkney (= Historic Scotland. ). Batsford, London et al. 1995, ISBN 0-7134-7593-5 .
- Anna Ritchie: Excavations of a neolithic farmstead at Knap of Howar, Papa Westray, Orkney. In: Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. Vol. 113, 1983, ISSN 0081-1564 , pp. 40-121 .
- William Traill, William Kirkness: Hower, a prehistoric structure on Papa Westray, Orkney. In: Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. Vol. 71, 1936/1937, pp. 309-321 .
Web links
Coordinates: 59 ° 21 '22 " N , 2 ° 53' 36" W.