HOME

TheInfoList



Click Here for Items Related To - Knap of Howar
OR:
Knap of Howar on:   [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Amazon]

The Knap of Howar () on the island of
Papa Westray Papa Westray () ( sco, Papa Westree), also known as Papay, is one of the Orkney Islands in Scotland, United Kingdom. The fertile soilKeay, J. & Keay, J. (1994) ''Collins Encyclopaedia of Scotland''. London. HarperCollins. has long been a draw ...
in
Orkney Orkney (; sco, Orkney; on, Orkneyjar; nrn, Orknøjar), also known as the Orkney Islands, is an archipelago in the Northern Isles of Scotland, situated off the north coast of the island of Great Britain. Orkney is 10 miles (16 km) north ...
, Scotland is a Neolithic farmstead which may be the oldest preserved stone house in northern Europe. Radiocarbon dating shows that it was occupied from 3700 BC to 2800 BC, earlier than the similar houses in the settlement at Skara Brae on the Orkney Mainland.


The site

The farmstead consists of two adjacent rounded rectangular thick-walled stone buildings with very low doorways facing the sea. The larger and older structure is linked by a low passageway to the other building, which has been interpreted as a workshop or a second house. They were constructed on an earlier
midden A midden (also kitchen midden or shell heap) is an old dump for domestic waste which may consist of animal bone, human excrement, botanical material, mollusc shells, potsherds, lithics (especially debitage), and other artifacts and ecofact ...
, and were surrounded by midden material which has protected them. There are no windows; the structures were presumably lit by fire, with a hole in the roof to let out smoke. Though they now stand close to the shore, they would have originally lain inland. The shore shows how the local stone splits into thin slabs, giving a ready source of construction material. The stone walls of the buildings are preserved, as well as a hearth and cupboards made of stone. The roof is missing, it was likely made of wood and thatched or turfed. A hearth and a stone-built cupboard survive inside, and there may have been an external porch. The walls still stand to an
eaves The eaves are the edges of the roof which overhang the face of a wall and, normally, project beyond the side of a building. The eaves form an overhang to throw water clear of the walls and may be highly decorated as part of an architectural styl ...
height of , and the stone furniture is intact giving a vivid impression of life in the house. Fireplaces, partition screens, beds and storage shelves are almost intact, and post holes were found indicating the roof structure. Evidence from the middens shows that the inhabitants were keeping cattle, sheep and pigs, cultivating barley and wheat and gathering
shellfish Shellfish is a colloquial and fisheries term for exoskeleton-bearing aquatic invertebrates used as food, including various species of molluscs, crustaceans, and echinoderms. Although most kinds of shellfish are harvested from saltwater envir ...
as well as fishing for species which must have been line caught using boats. Finds of finely-made and decorated Unstan ware pottery link the inhabitants to
chambered cairn A chambered cairn is a burial monument, usually constructed during the Neolithic, consisting of a sizeable (usually stone) chamber around and over which a cairn of stones was constructed. Some chambered cairns are also passage-graves. They are fo ...
tombs nearby and to sites far afield including Balbridie and Eilean Domhnuill. The name Howar is believed to be derived from Old Norse word ''haugr'' meaning mounds or barrows. The site is in the care of Historic Scotland. Broch of Burrian Archaeology (The Papar Project)
/ref>


See also

* * Oldest buildings in Scotland * List of the oldest buildings in the world


Notes


References

* Wickham-Jones, Caroline (2007) ''Orkney: A Historical Guide''. Edinburgh. Birlinn.


Other sources

* ''Scotland Before History'' - Stuart Piggott, (Edinburgh University Press. 1982) * ''Scotland's Hidden History'' - Ian Armit, Tempus (in association with Historic Scotland. 1998) * ''The Other Orkney Book'' - Gordon Thomson, (Northabout Publishing. 1980) * "The Knap of Howar and the Origins of Geometry" - by Nicholas Cope & Keith Critchlow (Kairos publications 2016).
www.ncope.co.uk


External links

*

{{DEFAULTSORT:Knap Of Howar 4th-millennium BC architecture in Scotland Archaeological sites in Orkney Prehistoric Orkney Scheduled monuments in Scotland Stone Age sites in Scotland Neolithic settlements Former populated places in Scotland Neolithic Scotland Historic Scotland properties in Orkney Houses in Orkney Papa Westray