Grooved ware

Unlike the later Beaker ware, Grooved culture was not an import from the continent but seems to have developed in Orkney, early in the 3rd millennium BC, and was soon adopted in Great Britain and Ireland.

[1] The diagnostic shape for the style is a flat-bottomed pot with straight sides sloping outwards and grooved decoration around the top.

The theory that the first British farmers (c. 4000 BC) had the knowledge and ability to make ale from their crops with their pottery appears to be controversial[citation needed] and not yet widely discussed by the archaeological community.

Excavations at nearby Ness of Brodgar have revealed many sherds of finely decorated Grooved ware pottery, some of it representing very large pots.

Grooved ware pottery has been found in abundance in excavations at Durrington Walls and Marden Henge in Wiltshire.