Skara Brae and Banc Llwydlos

I hesitate to suggest that we might have a treasure like Skara Brae up here in the uplands of north Pembrokeshire, but there are interesting similarities.  For a start, the size of the two "villages" is similar.  There are similarities in layout too, with a tight cluster of circular and rectangular dwellings and connecting passages designed for mutual protection and community living for up to ten family groups: 

Both of the sites are exposed and windswept.  At both sites, the natural or easiest building material was stone, since we assume a shortage of timber resources.  At Skara Brae using stone was certainly easier, since the stone slabs there were easy to obtain, carry and use.  Rounded erratic boulders, slabs and cobbles at Banc Llwydlos were not all that easy to use, so the "tidy architecture" of Skara Brae could not have been replicated, no matter what the age of the Banc Llwydlos settlement might be.  But at the latter site there was clay available locally -- in the till deposits around the site and in the thin lacustrine deposits in the Brynberian Moor depression just a few hundred metres away -- and this could have been used in walls for packing spaces and windproofing, as well as adding stability.  Making pottery too.....

What we don't have at Banc Llwydos are the sands and the fish.......... but probably quite abundant hunting and gathering resources in a landscape that might have looked something like this.....

"Climax" vegetation on Banc Llwydlos, within a small fenced enclosure designed to keep animals away from a spring-fed water supply point.  This is what the landscape might look like without the sheep and ponies.  Rowan, willow and blackthorn are thriving, as are heather and bilberry.  All of these are suppressed by grazing and burning for gorse clearance.

Let's assume that wattle and daub walls were used at Banc Llwydlos above the bouldery foundations.  What about roof structures?  I know that most of the reconstructions of Skara Brae assume conical and steeply-pitched roofs over the individual houses, supported by pillars and cross members.  But how well founded are those assumptions?  I remember reading many years ago that the multiple huts at sites like Foed Drygarn and Carningli probably did NOT have steeply pitched conical roofs, partly because those would have been very vulnerable in strong winds, and partly because with their large surface areas they would have been very heavy, requiring extra building skill and a lavish use of scarce resources.  It would have made more sense on those hilltop locations to build low domed roofs with pillar supports and a relatively simple structure of interwoven long timbers, with a cover of thatch or skins, or both.  I like this reconstruction of a Skara Brae house, with a very low conical or ridged roof.  Something like this would have suited very well at Banc Llwydlos...........

I'n not terribly bothered how old the Banc Llwydlos settlement turns out to be, but I am quite intrigued by the POSSIBILITY that we have a rather significant site up there on Mynydd Preseli.........