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Skara
Brae
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Visit the best preserved Stone Age settlement in Western
Europe. Set amidst a landscape littered with the relics
of our neolithic ancestors, on the sandy beaches of
the Bay of Skaill on Orkney's west coast, Skara Brae
is a gift from the past - a true trip into the stone
age.
Skara Brae Factsheet
- Right
is Male - Left is Female?
Each of the eight dwellings of Skara Brae
have the same basic layout - a large room,
with a fireplace in the middle, a bed on either
side and a dresser facing the entrance.
The visitor to Skara Brae may notice that
the right hand bed is always larger that than
the left hand bed; this has led some archaeologists,
including one of the site's main excavators,
Gordon Childe, to speculate that the layout
of the village is gendered - right being male
and left being female. Beads and paintpots
were also found on some of the smaller beds
- lending weight to the gendered theory.
- This
theory is also supported by the fact that,
in most of the later houses, an object on
the left hand side of the entrance, usually
a stone box, forced a person to turn into
the right hand half of the house. This suggested
that the right hand side of the dwelling may
have been an area where guests were received
and the less domestic business of the day
was delt with, while the left hand side was
reserved for the more domestic chores which
were delt with by the women.
Was this part of a greater structure of belief
held by the neolithic inhabitants of Skara
Brae - that their universe was ordered by
gender?
- House
7 - An Apparently Darker History
House 7 in Skara Brae may appear very
much like the other houses in the community,
however, several distinctive features have
led archaeologists and historians to theorise
that it played a unique, and perhaps darker,
part in village life.
- The
house is isolated from the main part of the
village: access being gained down a side-passage.
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It is the only house in the village in which
the door was barred from the outside, not
the inside.
- The
bodies of two females, interred in stone-built
graves, were discovered beneath the right
hand bed and wall. It was apparent that the
females had been buried there before the house
was constructed and their presence could have
signified some sort of foundation ritual.
- Most
theories on the subject invlove confinement
or separation from the rest of the community
- they range from childbirth and menstruation
to initiation through ritual and imprisonment.
- Stone
Age Lavatories?
Off the main room, cells were set into
the wall for storage. One of these has a drain
and may be the first indoor toilet - long
before the Romans amazed Britannia with the
wonders of Latin latrines.
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