Interments at Skara Brae

Extract from "Report on the Excavations at Skara Brae. The Excavations in 1927, by J. Wilson Paterson."

"At the back of pen Y we had at once been struck by a large upright slab against the north-west wall which, on examination, proved to be firmly built in. On clearing out the floor of the pen it was seen that this slab rested on a horizontal slab that passed beneath it under the wall behind, but also projected forwards some 2 feet in the red clay of the floor and partially covered thereby. At the front edge of this slab was found another slab on edge, running almost parallel to the wall. The horizontal slab had been broken in antiquity, and the front fragment, less than one-fifth of the whole was at once raised. Its removal disclosed a skull and other human bones lying in loose earth. Fearing to undermine the chamber wall if we removed the rest of the cover-stone, we took out the slab on the edge that formed the front side of the tomb and extracted the skeleton sideways. Though the earth round the head was looser and drier than the clay of the floor the corpse firmly proved to be embedded in a glutinous mass of clay and limpet shells mixed with a few burnt animal bones. In this same mass were found one Skail flake and a chip of translucent flint devoid of secondary working. There is no reason to suppose that these had filtered in through the crack in the cover-stone, so that they, together with the limpet shells and animal bones, must rank as funerary gifts. In view of the cramped space for working and the bad light the exact position of the skeleton is not as clear as could be wished. It could, indeed, never be viewed, but had to be traced by touch. As the ribs and vertebrae were little harder than the tenacious matrix in which they were embedded their exact disposition is questionable. However, it is certain that the legs were doubled up and that the whole body lay in the contracted posture, probably on its right side, facing outwards. But after skeleton 1 had been extracted, the pelvis and long bones of a second came into view. It was then resolved to suspend operations till the wall had been supported with shores and then to remove the cap-stone. When this was done, it appeared that a gap 30 inches wide had been left in the foundations of the chamber wall. This gap was spanned by a cross-beam like a lintel, under which the cap-stone passed.The north-west wall of the cist was formed of a few courses of thin stones lying horizontally at a right angle to the hut wall, but the top course, at least of this side of the cist, was askew, spanning the left-hand (from the observer's standpoint) corner of the cist. The same method of construction was used on the opposite side. The whole cist wastherefore roughly rectangular, 3 feet 6 inches long by 2 feet 8 inches wide by 1 foot 2 inches deep. Of the total length 1 foot 6 inches was beneath the wall of the chamber. The bottom may have been formed of one or more very thin slate slabs, as rotten fragments of slate were found under the skeleton, but too badly decayed to allow of any certain conclusions. In any case the grave-trench extended right through the red clay of the floor into the subjacent sand.(In estimating its depth the under surface of the stone pillow has been taken as lying flush with the bottom.) Skeleton 2 lay in the contracted position on the left side with thelegs drawn up nearly to the chin. The left arm was extended beneath the body and legs, while the right was bent at the elbow to an angleof 45 degrees, so that the hand was in front of the face. The skull lay far in under the chamber wall, reposing on a stone pillow and crushed in by another stone that came from some undeterminable point above. Mixed up with the bones of this skeleton too were many limpet shells, forming an integral part of the mass previously mentioned. The position of the two skeletons and the grave that contained them make it certain that their interment was anterior to the building of the present chamber wall. The tomb formed an integral part of the hut as it stood before its desertion. It might have been argued that the tomb, like the short-cist interment with a cinerary urn under the wall of an alleged cashel in Arran (Book of Arran, p. 205), had no immediate connection with the hut builders; they might have discovered and respected a much older interment. The fortunate discovery of the Skailflake is, however, fatal to such an explanation. Beyond all possibilityof reasonable doubt the tomb was built and the bodies deposited in it by the same people who built the village of Skara Brae. It is surelynot far-fetched to regard the individuals thus buried with a minimum of funerary gifts under the walls of such a luxurious and elaborate chamber as victims of a foundation sacrifice. The belief that theimmolation of human victims was necessary to give stability to house walls is so widespread among primitive peoples to-day and is so well attested both archseologically and textually in oriental antiquity (seearticle "Foundation" in Basting's Encyclopaedia) that its existence in early Scotland need give no cause for surprise. "