The villagers of Skara Brae certainly possessed domestic ani mals including short-horned cattle, sheep and swine. There is no evidence that they practised agriculture, but fish played a promi nent part in their diet and limpet shells have been found in enor mous quantities. For weaving or metallurgy there is no evidence. Picks, shovels, awls (used probably for piercing leather garments), pins and polishing tools were made of bone. Flint, very finely worked, provided scrapers, and knives were manufactured in great numbers from the rolled stones of the beach. When dashed hard upon the ground these yield a sharp-edged flake quite suitable for use as a knife. Such flakes are extremely common in the midden and the huts. Axe-heads were made of polished stone and were not usually perforated. The only possible weapons, found on the site, are stone balls carved all over with nobby pro jections. These may have been mace-heads or bolas, but may equally well have served as poises for a weighing beam or bismar. The pottery is exceedingly coarse and very badly fired; indeed earthenware was used almost exclusively for cooking vessels, some of which are very large. The pots are nevertheless often decorated with relief patterns, formed by applied strips, below the rim. Other vessels include small cups made from vertebrae, large dishes of whale-bone and stone basins.
As ornaments, beads (disc, cylindrical, barrel-shaped and seg mented) and amulets (generally in the form of a tusk or claw) carved out of bone, walrus-ivory, boars'-tusk and the incisor teeth of ruminants were popular.
The cemetery of Skara is yet to be found. One skeleton was unearthed lying above the hearth of hut No. z many years ago. In 1928 a double-interment was discovered under the wall of hut No. 7. This grave was an integral part of the hut and must have been covered over before the wall was built. It contained the
skeletons of two very aged women which were buried in the con tracted posture with a very poor type of furniture. They were probably the victims of a foundation sacrifice. The skeleton from hut No. I belonged to a tall woman, 5 ft. 6 in. high with a long head (index 70.6). The skull of the victim from hut No. 7 was likewise dolichocephalic. Hence the lowness of the doorways and passages was not due to the dwarfish stature of the huts' owners. Probably the low door and long covered streets were really de signed to exclude drafts of cold air like the entrance-passage of an Esquimaux snow-hut or igloo.
The builders of Skara were most probably Picts. In any case the architecture of their houses, their industry and especially their ceramic art carry on a tradition that had been rooted in northern Scotland since neolithic times. The actual age of the settlement is open to dispute. The finely worked flints and polished stone axe-heads would point to a high antiquity. Yet in previous excavations the mould for an early Christian cross and a stone carved with Runic letters were unearthed somewhere on the site. In 1928 an inscription was noticed on a slab in front of the grave. The script is still undecipherable. These facts would all support a date between A.D. 600 and Boo, a date by no means incompatible with the stone balls. None the less it must be noted that a broch on the opposite side of Skail Bay has yielded normal Iron Age relics all far in advance of the industry of Skara Brae, while the pottery distinctly resembles that of the late bronze age ("en crusted" type).
See Petrie in Proc. Soc. Antiquaries Scotland, 1867, p. 205 Balfour Stewart, ibid., 1913-14, P. 344 ; Childe, ibid., 1928-29; Garson, J.
Anthrop. Institute, xiii., p. 56. (V. G. C.)