Skara Brae is a stone-built Neolithic settlement on the island of Mainlan, largest of the Orkney Islands, off the north coast of the Scottish mainland. It was occupied between about 3180 and 2500 BCE. A violent storm exposed the site in the winter of 1850, but it was not until 1927, after part of it had been washed away in another violent storm, that the first professional excavation was conducted. Today it is part of the ‘Heart of Neolithic Orkney’, a UNESCO World Heritage Site designated in December 1999. The other three sites making up the Heart of Neolithic Orkney are the Standing Stones of Stennes, The Ring of Brodgar and Maeshowe. Although today the Orkneys seem remote to us, in Neolithic times, when long- and even middle-distance journeys would have been conducted by boat owing to the difficult of travelling overland, Orkney would have been a central crossroads in the economy of northwestern Europe.