Archaeology Notes

Event ID 656189

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Archaeology Notes

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/656189

ND49SW 2 42436 94026

(ND 4243 9403) Little Howe (NR)

OS 6" map (1900)

The Orcadian and The Orkney Herald newspapers describe the excavation of this site in June 1871.

(Undated) information in NMRS.

An almost shapeless heap of stones covering an area c.100ft square and 5ft high with only some isolated fragments of masonry rising a little from the overgrown hollowed interior.

It was excavated by Petrie and his plan shows a central chamber, of irregular form, 20ft in diameter, surrounded by a circular wall 13ft wide increasing to c.21ft on either side of the entrance passage in the S. This passage is intersected by a narrow intra-mural gallery which runs entirely round the building, another passage connecting it with the inner court on the N. The passages and the gallery had been lintelled. Traces of an avenue of stones leading from "Little Howe" to the broch (ND49SW 1) can still be seen. Fragments of "dark pottery", a saddle-quern and several whale vertebrae, scorched by fire, were found. Thought to be an immediate pre-broch or broch period homestead (F T Wainwright 1962).

RCAHMS 1946, visited 1929

"Little Howe" is a turf-covered hollowed circular mound measuring about 19.0m in overall diameter and about 1.5m high, with sufficient details evident to show that Petrie's plan and description are basically correct.

A ruined modern wall running N-S across the mound, has obscured much of the interior, but a short stretch of the inner face (0.3m high) is visible in the NW arc. The course of the gallery is visible as a slight trench and at one point in the NNW access to it can be gained and it is clear for about 5.0m to the W before being blocked by rubble. The "avenue of stones" is one of several turf- covered linear stone clearance heaps which run up the NW slope of the ridge on which the broch (ND49SW 1) is built.

Surveyed at 1/2500.

Visited by OS (ISS) 27 April 1973

ND 424 940 Little Howe: circular structure, disturbed, ?prehistoric settlement.

Sponsors: Historic Scotland, Orkney Archaeological Trust

G Wilson and H Moore 1997.