Rare Skara Brae Figurine Rediscovered in Scotland

News June 15, 2016

(Rebecca Marr, Stromness Museum)
Scotland Skara Brae Buddo
(Rebecca Marr, Stromness Museum)

STROMNESS, SCOTLAND—According to a report in The Orcadian, a figurine unearthed on the largest of the Orkney Islands in the 1860s has been rediscovered in a box at Stromness Museum. Dubbed the “Skara Brae Buddo,” the figurine had been packed away among artifacts from Skaill House, a historic manor overlooking the Neolithic site of Skara Brae, since the 1930s. The 5,000-year-old figurine, carved from a piece of whalebone, was originally found in the remains of a house in the Neolithic village. Modern scholars only knew of the sculpture, which has eyes and a mouth cut in its face and a navel in its body, from a sketch in the nineteenth-century notebooks kept by antiquarian George Petrie. Researchers think the holes in the carving may have been used to suspend it. For more, go to "Neolithic Europe's Remote Heart."

  • Artifacts May/June 2016

    Medieval Spoon Finial

    Read Article
    (© Suffolk County Council)
  • Around the World May/June 2016

    AUSTRALIA

    Read Article
    (Peter Trusler, Monash University)
  • Digs & Discoveries May/June 2016

    Dressing for the Ages

    Read Article
    (Courtesy Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology)
  • Features May/June 2016

    An Overlooked Inca Wonder

    Thousands of aligned holes in Peru’s Pisco Valley have attracted the attention of archaeologists

    Read Article
    (American Museum of Natural History)