Unstan goods

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Unstan ware bowl

The Unstan Ware describes a Neolithic pottery that was produced from the end of the 4th millennium BC. Was made in Scotland .

definition

The ceramic tradition was defined by Stuart Piggott (1910–1996) on the basis of finds from the Stalled Cairns on the Orkney and named after 35 bowls that were found in the Unstan Cairn on Orkney Mainland .

St. Piggot understands unstan goods as undecorated, round-bottomed bowls with a straight or drawn-in edge and bowls with a fold and a grooved or engraved ribbon-like decoration between fold and edge. Audrey Henshall narrowed the definition to ornate bowls with a break Piggots first type is now mostly referred to as “plain bowls”.

features

Unstan ceramics are characterized by a single shape: a wide, round-bottomed bowl , which is usually divided into two parts. Their vertical or slightly conical shoulder is sometimes lifted from the body of the vessel by a slight bulge. Only the upper half of the vessel is decorated. The patterns, lines, more rarely triangles or filled angle bands are engraved, scratched and engraved. There are also undecorated vessels.

distribution

Unstan goods were only found in northern and northwestern Scotland, on the Orkney in the Knap of Howar , in Stonehall and in the Midhowe Cairn , on the Calf of Eday , in the Wideford Hill Cairn , on the Hebrides in the Crannóg of Eilean Domhnuill in Loch Olabhat / Loch Olivat and Eilean at Tighe on North Uist , and Northton on Harris.

On the Scottish mainland there have been finds in Skitton , Caithness and Urquhart , in Moray , Kenny's Cairn in Caithness and in Ord North in Sutherland . The decoration of Neolithic Balbridie vessels shows certain similarities to Unstan ceramics, but the shape is clearly different.

Burials

Unstan pottery was discovered in heap in the elongated passage graves of the "Stalled cairns" of the Orkney-Cromarty type.

Dating

According to Alison Sheridan, the heyday of Unstan ceramics can be set between 3600/3500 BC (Knap of Howar) and 3200.

The Unstan pottery tradition is being replaced on the Orkneys by Grooved ceramics , which can be found in Skara Brae and Maes Howe , but also on the British mainland.

See also

literature

  • Ian Armit: Scotland's hidden history. Tempus, Stroud 1998, ISBN 0-7524-1400-3 .
  • Trevor Garnham: Lines on the landscape, circles from the Sky. Monuments of Neolithic Orkney. Stroud, Tempus 2004, ISBN 0-7524-3114-5 .
  • John W. Hedges: Tomb of the eagles. A window on Stone Age tribal Britain. London, Murray 1984, ISBN 0-7195-4343-6 .
  • Audrey Shore Henshall: The chambered Tombs of Scotland. Volume 2. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh 1972, ISBN 0-85224-190-9 .
  • Stuart Piggott : Scotland before history. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh 1982, ISBN 0-85224-348-0 .
  • Gordon Thomson: The other Orkney book. Northabout Publishing, Edinburgh 1980, ISBN 0-907200-00-1 .
  • Alison Sheridan: French connections I: spreading the 'marmites' thinly. In: Ian Armit, Eileen M. Murphy, Eimear Nelis, Derek Simpson (Eds.): Neolithic settlement in Ireland and Western Britain. Oxbow, Oxford 2003, ISBN 1-8421-7091-0 , pp. 2-17.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Stuart Piggott: The Neolithic Cultures of the British Isles. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1954, p. 248.
  2. ^ Niall M. Sharpies: The excavation of a chambered cairn, the Ord North, at Lairg, Sutherland by JXWP Corcoran. In: Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. Vol. 111, 1981, pp. 21-62, here p. 38, ( digital version (PDF; 4.36 MB) ).
  3. ^ W. Lindsay Scott: Eilean an Tighe: A pottery workshop of the second Millennium BC In: Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. Vol. 85, 1950/1951, pp. 1–37, ( digital version (PDF; 19 MB) ).
  4. ^ Derek DA Simpson: The Later Neolithic and Beaker settlement at Northton, Isle of Harris. In: Colin Burgess, Roger Miket (Ed.): Settlement and Economy in the Third and Second Millennia BC Papers delivered at a Conference organized by the Department of Adult Education, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, January 1976 (= British Archaeological Reports. 33 ). British Archaeological Reports, Oxford 1976, ISBN 0-904531-52-X , pp. 221-231.
  5. ^ Niall M. Sharpies: The excavation of a chambered cairn, the Ord North, at Lairg, Sutherland by JXWP Corcoran. In: Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. Vol. 111, 1981, pp. 21-62, here pp. 34, 38, ( digitized version (PDF; 4.36 MB) ).
  6. ^ Alan D. Fairweather, Ian BM Ralston: The Neolithic timber hall at Balbridie, Grampian Region, Scotland: the building, the date, the plant macrofossils. In: Antiquity. Vol. 67, No. 255, 1993, pp. 313-323, here p. 315, doi : 10.1017 / S0003598X00045373 .
  7. ^ Ian BM Ralston: A timber hall at Balbridie Farm: The Neolithic Settlement of North East Scotland. In: Aberdeen University Review. 168, 1982, pp. 238-249.
  8. ^ Alison Sheridan: French connections I: spreading the 'marmites' thinly. In: Ian Armit et al. (Ed.): Neolitic settlement in Ireland and Western Britain. Oxbow, Oxford 2003, pp. 2-17.

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