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Note
Date 1983
Event ID 1156068
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Note
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1156068
Knap of Howar HY 4830 5180 HY45SE 1
The remains of two oblong stone-built houses represent a Neolithic farmstead dating from the later fourth millennium BC. Excavated in the 1930s and the 1970s, the house-walls survive to a maximum height of 1.6m and enclose areas of about 10.0m by ~.Orn (house 1) and about 7.5m by 3.0m (house 2), divided into rooms by upright stone sfabs. They were furnished with hearths, pits, built-in cupboards, stone and possibly wooden benches. The walls have a core of midden derived from an earlier structural period, bu{the artefacts and radiocarbon dates from the primary and secondary middens demonstrate cultural and chronological uniformity. The mode of subsistence was primarily pastoral rearing cattle,
sheep and pigs, but there was some evidence for cereal cultivation and for exploitation of marine resources, especially fish and shell-fish. The use of Unstan ware links the settlement with stalled cairns, and there are few similarities with contemporary grooved ware settlements such as Skara Brae. (A Ritchie)
RCAHMS 1983.
(Traill and Kirkness, 1937; RCAHMS 1946, ii, pp. 182-4, No. 524; DES, 1973, 68-9; DES 1975, 35-7; Ritchie and Ritchie 1978, 39-42. The finds are in NMAS: AB 1615; HD 628-46, 1899-1900, 2003-16, 2020-9).
