Skara Brae - Hut 7 - the floor

 

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

"A description and list of the finds from the excavation is given below. Here it will be convenient to give some account of the disposition of objects on the floor of Hut 7 since no such observations have previously been published. In this way some idea may be formed of conditions of life in the hut at the moment of its final abandonment.

As already stated, the floor-level was covered over with a dark coloured slime, through which projected, beside the slabs of the fixtures ("pens" and the hearth), a number of broken beam-slabs in complete disorder, and therefore not in siiu. It was, in general, under the levelof these that finds were made. I believe them to have fallen from above. In their fall they would have smashed slate paving-slabs had such been present. Broken pieces of thin slates were, in fact, found all about the floor mixed up with the slime and refuse. All were brittle and badly decayed. The entrance passage inside the door, as well as the area immediately in front of it, had certainly been paved with such slates,and the remains just noted may indicate a similar pavement over a larger area. None the less, bones and relics were unearthed below as well as above such slabs. Some, indeed, give the impression of having been laid down to serve as stepping-stones through the morass of filth that covered the floor, or to mask deposits of bone and refuse that the inhabitants were too lazy to remove. The general impression produced by the floor was chaotic and disgusting. Bits of bone, ashes, fragments of pottery, and, mingled therewith, stray implements and ornaments, were littered about everywhere.The pens D and Y were no cleaner than the rest of the floor—a fact which militates against the view that they served as beds. Indeed,in the south-west corner of D we found a deep deposit of greenish matter, apparently excreta,going down into the sand layer. Still a certain number of objects could be identified as found in situ.In both the front corners of enclosure Z stood, on the slate floor, largecooking-pots containing a mess of animal bones—doubtless a prehistoric stew. Next to the more southerly pot stood a large basin of cetaceous bone, and immediately behind it a stone mortar. In the corner, against the wall, stood a small cup made out of the vertebra of a whale. In Y there was little but bones, a huge quartzite pebble, and a decorated pot that fell to pieces when touched (No. 330). A large pot in bad condition had been resting on the floor against the wall between cists W and X. On the opposite side a small cup made from the rear vertebra of a whale stood in the corner E. In the north-east end of pen D the skull of a short-horned bull was lying on a slate slab. Just outside the southern slab of this pen and right against the wall in corner F stood a fine little stone mortar, and close by remains of a pot. In front, but still close to D, lay together two bone picks and scapula that had been used as a shovel. Several tusk pendants lay embedded in the floor in the same corner. Cell K sheltered a large pot, as usual incapable of preservation. Behind it, against the wall, we found a small cachet beads and pendants. At the south side of the hearth had stood a very large pot with a decorated rim. Unfortunately this had been smashed by the fall of I, and the rim part, in particular, had been reduced to pulp."