SKARA BRAE, the name of sand-dunes, Parish of Sand wick, Orkney. About 1851 a great storm laid bare here an im mense kitchen-midden and remains of ancient walls. Subsequent researches during the sixties by William Watt of Skail House, revealed a conglomeration of stone chambers or huts, opening onto a winding passage or street. Further excavations were con ducted by Balfour Stewart in 1913, and in 1926 the Office of Works, which had assumed guardianship of the site, was obliged to initiate restoration works to preserve the monument against further encroachments by the sea. In the course of these oper ations J. Firth, the contractor, opened up a new hut in 1927 and in 1928 yet another hut and a large section of street were freed from superincumbent debris under the direction of Gordon Childe, Professor of Prehistoric Archaeology in Edinburgh University.
The prehistoric village is conveniently situated on the southern shore of the Bay of Skail, that offers a sheltered haven to fisher men and convenient landing-place for ancient mariners. It consists, as noted, of an agglomeration of huts built of dry-masonry. Up to date seven such huts have been identified, but one has been washed away by the waves and a second had been already ruined and abandoned before the desertion of the site in prehistoric times. The huts are roughly square but the corners are in every case rounded. The largest measures about 21 feet square on the floor while others are scarcely twelve feet across. The walls are built of slabs of local stone without mortar and converge towards the top, each course projecting inwards a little beyond the one be low ; in some cases, particularly in No. 7, they are still intact to a height of 1 o feet. It does not seem possible, however, that they were completed to meet eventually in a corbelled dome, and it is still uncertain how the huts were roofed. In the walls at various heights niches have been left.
Moreover, most huts are provided with one or two small bee hive cells, built in the thickness of the wall and entered by a low doorway. The floors of the huts were of stamped earth, but part
at least was generally paved with slates. Huts 4 and 5, and probably also the others, were provided with drains, laid under neath the slate slabs and serving to carry off moisture and sewage. On the floors various domestic fixtures, being built of stone, still survive. In the centre in each case stands the hearth, framed with stone slabs set on edge. Built along the side walls are en closures resembling pens formed by three large stone slabs set on edge and held in place by pins and uprights also of stone. Against the rear walls of huts 1 and 7 two-storeyed structures of stone resembling dressers have been reared. In all huts stand cubical slate-lined receptacles, sunk in the floor. The joints be tween the lining-slabs have always been carefully caulked with clay.
The hut-doors are low and narrow. The jambs are about two feet apart while the height from threshold to lintel seldom ex ceeds three feet. Immediately within the threshold comes a short passage or porch of only slightly ampler dimensions in the walls of which are holes for the bar that blocked the door to slide in. The entrance passage is always slate flagged.
The door opened on to a narrow street or passage, generally paved with slate and covered over about four feet above the floor with a roof of stone slabs. This street and its branches, of which only one is as yet known, provided the sole means of com munication between the huts. The street-roof3 are to-day covered over with a deposit of kitchen refuse. In this are found, together with ashes and broken animal bones, stone-knives, pot-sherds, bone implements and ornaments of precisely the same type as those collected on the floors of intact huts. Hence it is clear that the people who lived in the huts used to dump their rubbish on the roofs of the streets connecting their dwellings and even to camp upon those roofs themselves.