page_title: Tankerness
section_title: Prehistory
hierarchical_section_title: Tankerness / Prehistory
caption_attribution_description: English: Mine Howe. Excavation of the earthwork adjacent to the main shaft. There is uncertainty about the age and purpose. Neolithic? Iron Age? Subject of one of the Time Team programs on TV in 2000.
context_page_description: Tankerness is a district in the St Andrews parish in Mainland, Orkney, Scotland. Essentially a peninsula, it is about 13 kilometres south-east of Kirkwall and 1 kilometre east of Kirkwall Airport. The origin of the place name is uncertain, but it may derive from the Norse personal name "Tannskári". A "ness" is a promontory.
context_section_description: A charred hazelnut shell, recovered during the excavations at Longhowe in 2007, has been dated to 6820-6660 BC. This pushed back the earliest confirmed date of the occupation of Orkney by 3,000 years.
  Mine Howe, at Toab in the south of Tankerness, is a prehistoric subterranean man-made chamber dug into a large mound. Its walls are lined with stones fitted to form an arch over the cavity and 29 steps lead to a rock floor.  These steps descend to a half-landing where they turn back on themselves and a further steps descend to a chamber. This chamber is only about 1.3 metres (4.3 ft)  in diameter but is over 4 metres (13 ft) high and has a corbelled roof. The mound is surrounded by a substantial causewayed ditch. The origin of the howe (from Old Norse word haugr meaning barrow) is not perfectly understood, although it is thought to date from the Iron Age.   There is some similarity to the well inside the Broch of Gurness.
  The Howie of the Manse is a ruined broch on the southern shore of Loch of Tankerness. Further east at Taing of Beeman there is a scattered prehistoric settlement, the remains of which are of unknown provenance.
  In 1867 at nearby Groatsetter a fringed woollen hood was discovered lying in peat. It has thought to date from the late Iron Age and may be the oldest textile ever found in Britain.
caption: Mine Howe excavations
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