Figure A: Map of the vicinity of Barnhouse showing locations of igneous dykes (Jones 2002, Fig. 6.15)
Excavations of the houses belonging to the Late Neolithic settlement at Barnhouse close to the Stones of Stenness, Maeshowe and Ness on Mainland Orkney revealed much Grooved Ware pottery (Fig. B). Jones’ study (2002, 2005) of this pottery looked at correlations between size of vessel, its decoration, fabric, content and findspot, enabling a detailed view of the production and consumption of this pottery to be built up.
There were five main fabric types, one shell-tempered, two rock-tempered which contained fragments of igneous rocks from different dyke outcrops in the vicinity of the settlement and common sedimentary rocks (sandstone, siltstone) and two untempered. The catchment area that the potters visited for these raw materials was evidently quite wide (Fig. A). In any case the source of clay or the way the clay was treated seems to have been matter of deliberate personal choice on the part of each potter or potters in each house. Each potter or house may have had its own ‘recipe(s)’. Furthermore, rock-tempered pots were found at the settlement’s periphery, while shell-tempered vessels were more common closer to the central area where the communal firing presumably took place. ORA has established a range of foodstuffs in the pots – milk, beef, barley, fruit (apples?) and multiple contents – this range being wider than that encountered in Grooved Ware elsewhere in Orkney which appears to be more commonly restricted to porcine and ruminant fats (Mukherjee, Gibson and Evershed 2008).
Figure B: Grooved Ware vessel SF 3720 from Barnhouse
Photomicrographs of thin sections of Grooved Ware at Barnhouse: 552 siltstone and camptonite 3507 granite and X; 1316 sandstone and siltstone
Return to Section 3.4 Ceramics