Kent State University
|Understanding the Passage |Stone Age Village |Importance in History |
| | | |
| |Excerpted from: Skara Brae | |
| |The Story of a Prehistoric Village | |
| |by Olivier Dunrea | |
| | | |
| |By the year 6000 B.C.- eight thousand years ago- a great | |
| |migration had begun. Slowly people from the Near East were | |
| |moving westward into Europe. | |
| |It was still the Stone Age. Later, in the Neolithic (“New | |
| |Stone”) Age, people had settled in Europe and were practicing | |
| |farming and herding. But as Neolithic Man needed more space | |
| |and more food, he began to move again. | |
| |By 3500 B.C. farmers and herders had reached a group of islands| |
| |to the north of Scotland- the Orkneys. | |
| |In time the Orkneys became more populated. New masses of | |
| |migrating people reached their shores. One band of settlers, | |
| |seeking better grazing for their animals, moved farther out on | |
| |the main island. | |
| |As they marched northward along the cliffs and inlets they | |
| |came to a beautiful wide bay- the Bay of Skaill. It was here | |
| |the band decided to make their new home. | |
| |There were twenty people in the group: four small families. | |
| |Together they owned a flock of sheep, a small herd of cattle, | |
| |and a few pigs. | |
| |During this period, settlers lived off their animals. To their| |
| |diet of meat and milk they added wild foods foraged from the | |
| |land and sea- birds and eggs, fish, shellfish, and wild grains | |
| |and animals. | |
| |As winter approached, the settlers built permanent stone | |
| |houses. There were plenty of stones on the beach around the | |
| |bay, and collecting them went quickly. The stones could be | |
| |easily split to make a straight, uniform surface for building. | |
| |The stones were laid one on top of another without the use of | |
| |mortar. The settlers might have used curved whalebones washed | |
| |up on the beach to help support the roofs. | |
| |The houses were small when completed, measuring only twelve | |
| |feet long by six to nine feet wide in the interior. | |
| |Each hut was big enough to allow room for a central hearth, and| |
| |a stone dresser built into the rear wall. The mother and small| |
| |children slept in the bed to the left of the hearth; the father| |
| |slept in the bed to the right. | |
| |The stone beds were filled with heather and skins, making them | |
| |comfortable and warm for sleeping. There were one or two | |
| |recessed nooks for keeping personal possessions in the wall | |
| |above each bed. | |
| |Within a few weeks the little huts were completed. And so | |
| |began the occupation of the village we now call Skara Brae. It| |
| |was around 3100 B.C. | |
| |As the generations came and went, so did the huts. The older | |
| |huts were sometimes taken down stone by stone to build new | |
| |huts. | |
| |At some point in their history the inhabitants of Skara Brae | |
| |most likely began to cultivate small plots of grain. They | |
| |remained an isolated group, living a quiet life off the land | |
| |and sea and their stock of animals. | |
| |When the settlers were first building their permanent homes, | |
| |there was little time for anything else. Several generations | |
| |later though, the village was well established and had settled | |
| |into an ordered pattern of life. The villagers now attended to| |
| |other matters. They were able to focus on the social and | |
| |ceremonial life that keeps a community together. | |
| |There was time for the villagers to practice their various | |
| |crafts. The women made pottery. Sometimes they made engraved | |
| |or raided designs on their pots. But the people of Skara Brae,| |
| |unlike many Neolithic peoples, were not especially skills at | |
| |this craft. | |
| |The men spent hours carving strange, intricate patterns on | |
| |stone balls. | |
| |The teeth and bones from sheep, cattle, and whales were used to| |
| |make beautiful beads and necklaces. | |
| |For a long time the life of Skara Brae continued uninterrupted.| |
| |Then around 2400 B.C., when the village had settled into its | |
| |way of life, a terrible catastrophe occurred that caused it to | |
| |be abandoned forever. | |
| |As the villagers went about their daily tasks of collecting | |
| |food and tending their herds or practicing their crafts, a | |
| |sudden and violent storm arose. The storm came so unexpectedly| |
| |and with such severity that the inhabitants fled without being | |
| |able to collect all their belongings. | |
| |The storm raged with a fury the villagers had never experienced| |
| |before. They fled the village in blind terror. | |
| |The villagers abandoned their village in the hilly dunes. | |
| |Several times a small number of them returned and camped under | |
| |the remaining exposed walls of the huts. And then they never | |
| |returned again. Over the centuries the sand continued to drift | |
| |in, until nothing was visible. | |
| |It was not until over 4,000 years later, in the winter of 1850,| |
| |that another severe storm befell the Bay of Skaill and changed | |
| |its appearance once more. The storm stripped the grass and | |
| |sand from the dune and exposed to view the stone walls of Skara| |
| |Brae's huts. Observers were astonished. | |
| |Through careful uncovering and painstaking documentation of the| |
| |placement of all the furnishings and relics, the archaeologists| |
| |were able to piece together the story of this remote village on| |
| |the Bay of Skaill in the Orkney Islands. | |
| | | |
|Important Vocabulary | |Where Does Skara Brae Fit into History: |
| | | |
|Click on this link for definitions of some| |This link will take you to an annotated |
|of the terms and concepts used in this | |(I made some notes) timeline of the |
|passage. | |Stone Age. |
| | | |
| | | |
| | |What does Skara Brae look like? |
|Summary | | |
| | |This link will take you to photos of what|
|This link will summarize the passage's | |Skara Brae looks like today. |
|main ideas. | | |
| | | |
|Where is Skara Brae | |Time to think like an archaeologist. |
| | | |
|Click on this link to find Skara Brae on| |This link will ask you questions about |
|the map. | |Skara Brae. The answers can be found in |
| | |the passage, the summary, and/or the |
| | |definitions. Some of these questions |
| | |will help you link what we have learned |
| | |already about the Adena of Ohio with the |
| | |People of Skara Brae. |
| | | |
Works Cited
Dunrea, O. (1985). Skara Brae, the Story of a Prehistoric Village. (p. 1-23) New York: Holiday House.
Charles Tait Photographic Limited. (2002). Skara Brae Photographs [Graphic]. Retrieved September 30, 2010 from
SOL Practice Test Two. (2010) Stone Age Timeline [Graphic]. Retrieved September 26, 2010 from
The Official Site of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. (2008) World Map [Graphic]. Retrieved September 25, 2010 from
Travellerspoint. (2010) British Map [Graphic]. Retrieved September 25, 2010 from
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