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| Skara Brae | |
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The furniture
The local stone provided the Neolithic builders with a readily available material that could be worked easily and turned into items for use within the household. It is also the reason the village is so well-preserved. So, without wood to work with, each house was equipped with an extensive assortment of stone furniture. This ranged from cupboards, dressers and beds to shelves and limpet tanks. Of all the furniture in Skara Brae, it would appear that the stone dressers were regarded as the most important. The dresser faces the entrance in each house and is therefore the first item seen when entering.
Were the objects displayed on the dresser somehow indicative of the status of the house's occupants? The significance of the position of the dresser is further dealt with on the page detailing the layout of the village. At the centre of every house, perhaps the most important area, was a central hearth, which is dealt with here. Flanking the hearth are the beds. Stone built “boxes” that jut out into the middle of the room. The right-hand bed is always larger that the left-hand bed, which has led to the theory that the each house had a specific male and female divide – i.e. the right was the male section, the left female.
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The main source of wood available to the Neolithic inhabitants of Orkney would have been driftwood - items washed up on the islands' many shores. As such it was probably considered too valuable to burn. Flagstone remained a vital building material to Orkney's crofters until the end of the nineteenth century.  |
Given the shortage of wood in Orkney, the people of Skara Brae were forced to make do with the only building material available to them - stone. 
Although it is perfectly possible that the dresser might have been nothing more than a storage unit, it seems more likely that it had a symbolic purpose.