The mainland too, of course, had its burial chambers, like the long barrow at West Kennet.
And there were also the great stone circles.
The largest at Avebury，but the most spectacular of all at Stonehenge.
By 1,000 BC, things were changing fast.
All over the British landscape, a protracted struggle for good land was taking place.
Forests were cleared so that Iron Age Britain was not, as was once romantically imagined.
An unbroken forest kingdom stretching from Cornwall to Inverness.
It was rather a patchwork of open fields, dotted here and there with woodland copses giving cover for game, especially wild pigs.
And it was a crowded island.
We now think that as many people lived on this land as during the reign of Elizabeth 2,500 years later.
Some archaeologists believe that almost as much land was being farmed in the Iron Age as in 1914.
So it comes no surprise to see one spectacular difference from the little world of Skara Brae, great windowless towers.
They were built in the centuries before the Roman invasions.
When population pressure was at its most intense and farmers had growing need of protection.
First from the elements, but later from each other.