Unstan ware

Unstan ware is the name used by archaeologists for a type of finely made and decorated Neolithic pottery from the 4th and 3rd millennia BC.

Typical are elegant and distinctive shallow bowls with a band of grooved patterning below the rim,[1] a type of decoration which was created using a technique known as "stab-and-drag".

[6] Unstan ware has been found occasionally at sites in Orkney other than tombs; for example, the farmstead of Knap of Howar on Papa Westray.

[12] Hedges sums up his view this way: What is important is an understanding that the neolithic population of Orkney can be divided into two major parts on the basis of some elements of their material cultures.

[13]However, he also notes: One point that should be made at the outset is that there is no discernable difference in the culture- in the social anthropological sense- of the Grooved Ware and Unstan Ware people...it is only apparent from limited aspects of material culture and the evidence...shows it to have been subordinate to a tribal level of unity which took in the whole of Orkney.