page_title: Architecture of Scotland in the Prehistoric era
section_title: Stone Age
hierarchical_section_title: Architecture of Scotland in the Prehistoric era / Stone Age
context_page_description: The architecture of Scotland in the prehistoric era includes all human building within the modern borders of Scotland, before the arrival of the Romans in Britain in the first century BCE. Stone Age settlers began to build in wood in what is now Scotland from at least 8,000 years ago. The first permanent houses of stone were constructed around 6,000 years ago, as at Knap of Howar, Orkney and settlements like Skara Brae. There are also large numbers of chambered tombs and cairns from this era, particularly in the west and north. In the south and east there are earthen barrows, often linked to timber monuments of which only remnants remain. Related structures include bank barrows, cursus monuments, mortuary enclosures and timber halls. From the Bronze Age there are fewer new buildings, but there is evidence of crannogs, roundhouses built on an artificial islands and of Clava cairns and the first hillforts. From the Iron Age there is evidence of substantial stone Atlantic roundhouses, which include broch towers, smaller duns. There is also evidence of about 1,000 hillforts in Scotland, most located below the Clyde-Forth line.
context_section_description: The oldest house for which there is evidence in Britain is the oval structure of wooden posts found at South Queensferry near the Firth of Forth, dating from the Mesolithic period, about 8240 BCE. The earliest stone structures are probably the three hearths found at Jura, dated to about 6000 BCE. With the development of agriculture, groups of settlers began building stone houses on what is now Scottish soil in the Neolithic era, around 6,000 years ago, and the first villages around 500 years later. Neolithic habitation, burial and ritual sites are particularly common and well-preserved in the Northern and Western Isles, where a lack of trees led to most structures being built of local stone. The stone building at Knap of Howar at Papa Westray, Orkney is one of the oldest surviving houses in north-west Europe, making use of locally gathered rubble in a dry-stone construction, it was probably occupied for 900 years, between 3700 and 2800 BCE. Skara Brae on the Mainland of Orkney also dates from this era, occupied from about 3100 to 2500 BCE and is Europe's most complete Neolithic village.
  There are also large numbers of chambered tombs and cairns from this period. Many different types have been identified, but they can be roughly grouped into passage graves, gallery graves and stone cists. Cists are relatively simple box-like graves, usually made up of stone slaps and covered with a large stone or slab. Maes Howe, near Stenness on the mainland of Orkney (dated 3400–3200 BCE) and Monamore, Isle of Arran (dated approximately 3500 BCE) are passage graves, of megalith construction, built with large stones, many of which weigh several tons. Gallery graves are rectangular gallery-like spaces, where the entrance at one end is the width of the gallery. These were sometimes lined or roofed with slabs and then covered with earth. Among the most impressive surviving monuments of the period are the first sets of standing stones in Scotland, such as those at Stenness on the mainland of Orkney, which date from about 3100 BCE, of four stones, the tallest of which is 16 feet (5 m) in height.
  In contrast to the Highlands and Islands where stone was extensively used, in the south and east the most visible architectural survivals of the Neolithic are mainly earthen barrows, the earliest probably dating from the beginning of the fourth millennium BCE. Today these monuments consist of massive mounds of earth or stone, most commonly trapezoidal in plan and often orientated to the east. They are widely distributed in the Lowlands, particularly in Aberdeenshire, Angus, Dumfries and Galloway and the Scottish Borders. Related structures include bank barrows, cursus monuments, mortuary enclosures, timber halls, and other forms of enclosure. Bank barrows are parallel-sided mounds, usually flanked by ditches on either side. Originally believed to be Roman in origin, cursus monuments also consist of long parallel lengths of banks of earth with external ditches, but with an open avenue or enclose between. Both forms are usually associated with burial chambers. Examples of bank barrows in Scotland include from Perthshire the long mound at Auchenlaich and the hybrid bank barrow/cursus monument and at Cleaven Dyke, which stretches for over 1.5 miles (2 km). Mortuary enclosures are usually sub-rectangular banks with external ditches and raised platforms of stone or wood within them, thought by J. G. Scott to be used for the exposure of corpses prior to burial elsewhere, although this interpretation is disputed. Remains of mortuary enclosures of this period are often found under long barrows. Key examples include Pitnacree, Perthshire and two closely related sites at Lochhill and Slewcairn, both in Kirkcudbright. The timber halls are probably unique to Scotland and were massive roofed buildings made of oak, all of which seem to have been subsequently burnt down. There is debate as to the role of these buildings, which have been seen variously as regular farming homesteads of Neolithic families and as related to a series of monumental constructions such as ba
caption: The Callanish Stones, one of the finest stone circles in Scotland
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