Excavation and reassessment provides new timeline for the Knap of Howar

A new paper on the Knap of Howar has confirmed suspicions that the two Neolithic structures are much later than once thought.

In 1983, the published report of the 1970s excavation placed the occupation of the Papa Westray buildings between 3500-3100BC. In later accounts, the given dates varied from 3700BC to 3600BC. With those came the notion that Orkney’s earliest farmers lived in dispersed, isolated, single farmsteads.

But now, following excavation in 2014, and a reassessment of the available material, Westray-based archaeologists Hazel Moore and Graeme Wilson place the stone houses to the latter part of the fourth millennium BC – “the final chapter of several centuries of Neolithic settlement on this site.”

The authors conclude: “While they can no longer be considered the earliest houses in Orkney, the Knap of Howar structures are still among some of the earliest stone-walled buildings known.”

Although the new date range of c.3300-3205BC fits with current thinking on the structures’ age, it also raises an intriguing question regarding Grooved Ware pottery.

It is currently thought that this flat-bottomed ceramic style appeared around 3200BC. But the examples found at the Knap of Howar lay under the stone structures, so must pre-date them. If that were the case it pushes back the emergence of Grooved Ware by centuries.

Revisiting Knap of Howar, Papa Westray, Orkney, by Hazel Moore and Graeme Wilson, with contributions from Seren Griffiths, appears in Volume 154 of the Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland and available online here.