Understanding the
Passage
Important Vocabulary
Click on this link for
definitions of some of the
terms and concepts used in
this passage.
Stone Age Village
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
Summary
began to move again.
By 3500 B.C. farmers and herders had
This link will summarize reached a group of islands to the north of
the passage's main ideas.
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
Where is Skara Brae
island.
As they marched northward along the
Click on this link to find
cliffs and inlets they came to a beautiful
Skara Brae on the map.
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
Importance in
History
Where Does Skara Brae Fit
into History:
This link will take you to
an annotated (I made some
notes) timeline of the Stone
Age.
What does Skara Brae look
like?
This link will take you to
photos of what Skara Brae
looks like today.
Time to think like an
archaeologist.
This link will ask you
questions about 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.
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.
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 http://www.maeshowe.co.uk/
SOL Practice Test Two. (2010) Stone Age Timeline [Graphic]. Retrieved September
26, 2010 from
http://staff.harrisonburg.k12.va.us/~cwalton/SOLPracticeTwo.htm
The Official Site of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. (2008) World Map [Graphic].
Retrieved September 25, 2010 from http://en.beijing2008.cn/
Travellerspoint. (2010) British Map [Graphic]. Retrieved September 25, 2010 from
http://www.travellerspoint.com/guide/Scotland/