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Publication Account

Date 1997

Event ID 1017093

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Publication Account

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1017093

This is perhaps the most complete and comprehensible neolithic settlement complex in Shetland (colour photograph on p.28). The outlines of the houses, the enclosures and the many clearance cairns are readily discernible, even from the road, and recent excavations have laid bare many details of the settlement. The most obvious enclosure is close to the road, an irregular oval almost 60m long enclosed by a stone wall, and a large oval house is attached to its north end. The entrance is at the downslope end of the house, and the interior, 7m by 5m, contains a central hearth and stone-built cells lining the walls, using massive boulders as subdividing piers. A radiocarbon date places the occupation of the house in the late 3rd early 2nd millennium BC, but the site as a whole is likely to span a long period. At least three other houses lie further north, and their fields cover an area of about 2 ha. Close to the first house is a perfect circular ring cairn with a kerb of large boulders, bur radiocarbon dating suggests that this may be considerably later than the settlement, perhaps by one and a half thousand years.

Information from ‘Exploring Scotland’s Heritage: Shetland’, (1997).

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