Beaker Folk
Beaker Folk in the Hebrides
Beaker folk are identified by the distinctive kind of pottery they made as the Beaker folk, the most portentous new technique they brought with them was metallurgy. The arrival of the Beaker folk in Britain has been dated to 2,500 BC, a few years later than the building of Macs Howe, and it was perhaps another 500 years before their knowledge of metal-working spread among the islands - the secret of mixing copper with tin to form a less brittle alloy called bronze. The Beaker folk settlements at Northton in Harris and Staneydale in Shetland date from as late as 1500 BC, and this corresponds with the antiquity of a bronze dagger blade discovered at Blackwaterfoot in Arran.
Whether or not the earlier, stone-using islanders had been organised in an entirely egalitarian society, the Beaker folk evidently introduced a more stratified one. It appears especially in the individual interment of top people with rich grave goods, in contrast to the old communal burial practices. As usual, Orkney possesses outstanding examples, notably one of the barrows of the Knowes of Trotty, in which four gold sun-discs were found, judged to have been fashioned from Irish gold, and an amber necklace of a style found also in the tombs of Mycenae in Greece. The same people also left testimonies to their skills in their tools, buildings and stone carvings, as well as in their ornaments and pottery.
More details on the beaker occupation at Northton are available on www.southharris.com
