Neolithic ‘dressers’ – was there more to them than just a set of shelves?

Friday, April 25, 2025 (12:41 PM)

“A curious feature which is found in [Skara Brae’s] chambers three and six is an arrangement of two stone shelves, erected one above the other and abutting against one of the stone walls. They remind one of double berths in a ship, but they were used, more probably, for storing pottery utensils in, when not in use, and Professor Childe’s descriptive term – ‘dresser’ – is probably not very wide of the mark.”

Hugh Marwick. Skerrabrae. (1928)

By Sigurd Towrie

In the years since Skara Brae’s excavation, there has been much debate over the role, and significance, of the so-called “dressers” that have become icons for the site.

Built to the same design and placed in the same position – directly opposite the entrance – these substantial “shelves” were fashioned from large, stone slabs supported by uprights. and generally placed in the same position – directly opposite the entrance. But were they, as the early excavators suggested, merely storage units? Or was there more to them?

“[T]here is plenty of speculation as to their significance. Some suggest a role as household shrines, while others emphasise the more mundane storage of food and other materials; it depends on what you bring to the interpretation.

“Drawing the eye when you came in through the door, dressers may have served like mantelpieces, useful shelves that were sometimes also home to things that mattered, objects of reverence and those that helped you to remember; heirlooms and gifts, an old arrowhead found while out watching the beasts.” [1]

The issue was raised again by the discovery and excavation of the Barnhouse settlement in the 1980s. Among the typical dwellings at this lochside site was a massive, later building – Structure Eight.

Constructed around 2900BC, after the settlement had been abandoned, Eight was a large, hall-like building with incredibly thick outer walls. Although, at eight square metres, the interior of Structure Eight was not much bigger than House One at Skara Brae, the sum of its parts placed the building firmly in the monumental category.

It stood on a large, carefully constructed platform of yellow clay and was surrounded by a substantial enclosing wall that formed an internal courtyard 20 metres across. These elements not only linked the building to the chambered cairn of Maeshowe but gave it a spatial layout closely resembling that of the nearby Stones of Stenness.

From the archaeological evidence it is clear that Structure Eight was not a “domestic” building in the generally understood sense. But it did contain a “dresser”. One that did not last the lifetime of the building but was dismantled and replaced by a large, stone-built box.

Whatever the original significance of this “dresser”, it seems something changed. And this resurrected the notion there was more to these stone features than met the eye.

The dresser of House One at Skara Brae from the doorway. (📷 Sigurd Towrie)

Fast forward to the early 21st century and the discovery of the Ness of Brodgar complex.

Like Barnhouse’s Structure Eight, Structure Ten at the Ness was built around 2900BC, but on an even more monumental scale. Measuring 25 metres long by 20 metres wide, its outer walls survived to a height of approximately one metre.

Ten’s inner chamber was again reminiscent of Maeshowe, but larger, and its scale and elaborate architecture, together with the excavation evidence, showed this was no dwelling.

But again, Structure Ten had “dressers”!

Structure Ten's original phase with the remains of the dresser directly opposite the entrance. — Structure Ten’s original phase with the remains of the dresser directly opposite the entrance.

In its original form, Structure Ten had a dresser-like feature directly opposite its entrance.

Around 2800BC, during the building’s rebuilding/remodelling, this “dresser” was replaced by a more elaborate, heavily decorated version that incorporated decorated stone and dressed slabs of striking red and yellow sandstone — probably reused material from Ten’s primary phase that had been brought to the site specifically for its construction.

But unlike those visible at Skara Brae, where they were built against the walls in the later dwellings, Ten’s dresser was free-standing, a drystone wall defining its back.

Only two of the excavated piered buildings at the Ness (c.3100BC) produced evidence of possible “dressers” – one in Structure Fourteen and the 20-metre-long Structure Eight. In both cases they were located in the end recess directly opposite an entrance.

The location of the stone furniture features in Structure Five. (📷 Tom O’Brien)

And then there is Structure Five!

Dating from c.3300BC, Five was the earliest excavated building on site. In the excavated section of its primary section were the remains of eight stone furniture features set against the inner walls. The upper sections were long gone, making interpretation difficult but, in 2022, it was suggested at least some might be variants of Skara Brae-type “dressers”.

Considering the non-domestic role of Structure Ten, it is possible that these “dressers” had a function beyond storage or display. However, this raises the question of why Structure Five had at least eight!

The stone features along the interior of Structure Five's original north wall. (Sigurd Towrie) — 2022: The remains of one of Structure Five’s ‘dressers’ – this one positioned against the interior of the original north-eastern wall. (📷 Sigurd Towrie)

What Five’s represent is still open to question. The north-eastern feature, for example, extended across most of the width of the building. Was this a bench-like feature akin to those encountered in stalled cairns? But for the living?

Whatever their role, the presence of beautiful stone tools, buried in the clay floor next to each dismantled “dresser”, strongly suggested they were significant to its users.

A typical dresser at Skara Brae, with Professor Dame Mary Beard to give an idea of their size. (📷 Sigurd Towrie)

At Westray’s Links of Noltland, the excavators found a number of examples in two areas of Neolithic activity. Like the earlier houses at Skara Brae, the “dresser” in Structure Seven at the Links had been built into a wall recess opposite the entrance [2]. The “Grobust House”, in comparison, had no dresser – instead there was a shelved recess directly opposite the entrance.[3]

Childe's 1928 schematic of House Seven at Skara Brae. — Childe’s 1928 schematic of House Seven at Skara Brae.

These discoveries were enough to reignite the debate and question the weight carried by the term “dresser”, coined by Vere Gordon Childe during his early 20th century excavations at Skara Brae:

“Built against the rear wall, in the centre, was a two-storeyed erection of stone slabs, resembling a dresser.” [4]

From 1928 to 1932, Childe applied “dresser” to the stone features encountered at the rear of the dwellings – despite stating that “no relics found in these structures give any clue to their function”. [5]

At the same time, he cemented the notion that, despite their length, the stone boxes on either side of the central hearth were “beds” – although in a 1928 plan of House Seven the term “sty” was used! – despite no evidence for that function.

As a result, Childe interpretations are now widely accepted as indisputable fact rather than assumptions.

The interior of House One, Skara Brae, with the 'beds' visible on either side of the central hearth. (📷 Sigurd Towrie) — The interior of House One, Skara Brae, with the ‘beds’ visible on either side of the central hearth. (📷 Sigurd Towrie)

As Professors Jane Downes and Colin Richards put it:

“While, images of snug, straw- or hide-lined beds may appeal to our view of domesticity in the past, there seems little evidence to support the belief that both left- and right-hand stone boxes performed the same role, let alone acted as beds for individual men and women.” [6]

They added:

“[T]he same caution should be given to the label of ‘dresser’ as that of ‘beds’; language shapes understanding and the maintenance of such labels supresses other possibilities in the same way that it restricts change. Just consider the difference the term ‘altar’ would have had on understanding the Skara Brae houses if Childe had decided on an alternative label.” [6]

3d model of the interior of House One, Skara Brae. (📷 Hugo Anderson-Whymark)

Centuries of excavation strongly suggests that Neolithic architecture was imbued with meaning. This was probably a society where there was no distinct separation between “religion” and daily, domestic life.

With houses it seems there was a special significance attached to the rear – the innermost area – of the dwelling. In the Late Neolithic this meaning was perhaps marked by the construction of the “dressers”. [7]

That said, just because they may have had some symbolic significance does not mean “dressers” were not used to display or storing certain items. It may be no coincidence that two of the finest polished stone axes found at the Ness came from the area around Structure Ten’s “dresser”.

“It is clear that the rear shelving is highly visible on entry to the house because it is elevated and faces the entrance. Structurally, it is in the deepest space of the house being located at the rear. There is also little doubt of its role as shelving for the display or containment of objects, but such objects could range from a pottery vessel to ancestral skull.

“Perhaps, given its position at the rear of the house, the ‘dresser’ could have embodied particular beliefs, in much the same way as is argued for the hearth.” [6]

If that were the case, it may be that rear cells encountered in earlier Neolithic dwellings were a precursor to the “dressers” – sacred, or special, areas that “endured, developing into the ‘dressers’ or house altars…” [7]

And those special areas were an evolution of an architectural feature noted in the earliest stalled cairns, such as Midhowe and Unstan.

The end chamber within the Midhowe stalled cairn, Rousay. (📷 Sigurd Towrie)

Within these “tombs” pairs of orthostats, projecting from the inner walls, created a stone-lined pathway that terminated at shelved end cells dominated by massive backslabs against the wall. These end cells have been argued to be the final goal for those entering the structures:

“Indeed, the tomb is, in some ways, no more than a covered pathway through a series of doorways to the ultimate goal; a symbol of the divine or an impassable gateway to another world?” [8]

To Professor Colin Richards the orthostat pairs defined a line of doorways that led to the end chambers and “the doorway to immortality and another world, the door to which is always closed to humanity.” [8]

That the end compartments may be linked to the innermost cells in early dwellings comes as no surprise, given the switch from timber to stone, around 3300BC, replicated the architecture of the only stone buildings erected by this time, stalled cairns:

“With the advent of stone houses, the materiality and architecture of house and tomb now merge.” [9]

How these “special” areas, and the meaning attached to them, developed over the centuries is not known, but the cases where “dressers” were replaced suggests an ongoing process.

House One, Skara Brae. (📷 Sigurd Towrie)

The notion that “dressers” were standard fixtures in all Late Neolithic architecture is also incorrect. They are not found in all dwellings, e.g. House Seven at Barnhouse. The fact they are absent from some houses but can be found in monumental, non-domestic structures adds to the mystery.

To Professor Mike Parker Pearson, the dresser was perhaps a mark of status.

During a visit to the Ness in 2010, fresh from his excavations at the Durrington Walls settlement in Wiltshire, England, he explained:

“We’ve always seen these ‘dressers’ as simple everyday objects – ‘every Neolithic house has a dresser’. But in fact, they don’t.

“This came home to me a couple of summers ago with our houses at Durrington Walls, because only one had the footings for a dresser. In all the others there was no trace of a dresser at all.

“At Durrington Walls, the building with the dresser was the biggest of the houses, and this made me realise that we’ve likely got architectural and social differences between them.

“So, the possession of a dresser, in the south at least, was something that only certain houses have — houses, belonging to people somewhere up the pecking order. That may have all sorts of connotations to do with family seniority.”

So, bearing all this in mind, it was perhaps not just a simple case of “Oh, we’ll just stick up some shelves here.”

Sunset over House One, Skara Brae. (📷 Sigurd Towrie)

Notes

[1] Edmonds, M. (2019) Orcadia: Land, Sea and Stone in Neolithic Orkney. Bloomsbury Publishing.
[2] Moore, H. & Wilson,G. (2011). Shifting Sands, Links of Noltland, Westray: Interim report on Neolithic and Bronze Age Excavations, 2007—2009 (Archaeology Report, 4). Historic Scotland.
[3] Moore, H. and Wilson, G. (2013) Sands of Time: Domestic Rituals at the Links of Noltland. Current Archaeology.
[4] Childe, V.G. (1928) A Prehistoric Village: Traces of Human Sacrifice. Letter to The Glasgow Herald. September 3, 1928
[5] Childe, V. G. (1931). Skara Brae: a Pictish village in Orkney. Kegan Paul: London.
[6] Downes, J. and Richards, C. (2005) The Dwellings at Barnhouse. In Richards, C. (ed) Dwelling among the monuments: the Neolithic village of Barnhouse, Maeshowe passage grave and surrounding monuments at Stenness. Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research. pp. 57-127.
[7] Downes, J., Sharman, P., Challands, A., Guttman-Bond, E., McKenzie, J., Towers, R. and Voke, P.D. (2016). Place in the Past: an early Neolithic house at the Knowes of Trotty barrow cemetery, Harray, Mainland, Orkney. In Richards, C. and Jones R. (eds) The Development of Neolithic House Societies in Orkney. pp.41-63. Oxbow: Oxford.
[8] Richards, C. (1993) An Archaeological Study of Neolithic Orkney: Architecture, Order and Social Order.
[9] Richards, C., Downes, J., Gee, C. and Carter, S. (2016) Materialising Neolithic House Societies in Orkney. In Richards, C. and Jones, R. (eds) The Development of Neolithic House Societies in Orkney: Investigations in the Bay of Firth, Mainland, Orkney (1994–2014). Oxford: Windgather Press, 224-253.