Yearly Archive: 2020
Wednesday wildlife – selkie sunbathers
This week’s photographs of the wildlife around the Ness of Brodgar from dig director Nick Card.… Read more
Covid uncertainty remains over 2021 Ness excavation season
With 2020 drawing to a close, we have been receiving queries from visitors and interested volunteers about the 2021 excavation season.
Unfortunately, due to the ongoing restrictions surrounding Covid-19, we… Read more
Maeshowe and the winter solstice
With its south-westerly facing entrance, Maeshowe’s best known attribute is its orientation towards the setting sun around midwinter. Read more
A standing stone at Maeshowe and the structure that lies beneath
The solstice, an earlier building and standing stone and Norse runes. Read more
Buildings through time: Structure Twenty-Seven
For the next in our series looking at the excavation of each major building on site over time, we jump across to Trench T and the enigmatic Structure Twenty-Seven.
See… Read more
Wednesday wildlife – Farewell Pinkie
Sadly, a week ago today, the body of Pinkie, the dog otter, was found by the side of the Stenness loch. He had died of natural causes.
Site director Nick… Read more
Book review: ‘The Ness of Brodgar: As it Stands’
Book review by Dr Howie Firth MBE, director of the Orkney International Science Festival.
It was a spring ploughing that did it, in Ola and Arnie Tait’s field at Brodgar… Read more
Video: Book launch event and talk
After months of hard work, the Ness of Brodgar interim monograph was launched at a special, socially distanced, event in Kirkwall last night.
Discovered in 2003, excavation at the… Read more
Ness of Brodgar: As it Stands – contents
Excavation at the Ness of Brodgar began in 2005 and The Ness of Brodgar: As it Stands features contributions from University of the Highlands and Islands Archaeology Institute staff as… Read more
A Ness team stalwart and a true gentleman – farewell Fraser…
We were deeply saddened to learn that one of our regular team members, Fraser Dixon, has passed away.
Fraser was one of our regular “meet-and-greet” volunteers during the summer excavation… Read more
Buildings through time: Structure Twenty-Six
The next in our series looking at the excavation of each major building on site over time focuses on the smaller and later Structure Twenty-Six.
The excavation of Structure Twenty-Six… Read more
Wednesday Wildlife – Pinkie and the wren
Wednesday again, so time for this week’s selection of photographs from dig director Nick Card.… Read more
Video: ‘Neolithic Carved Stone Balls in context’
Dr Hugo Anderson-Whymark, curator of prehistory (Palaeolithic to Neolithic) at the National Museums of Scotland, and Mark Hall, history officer at Perth Museum and Art Gallery, talk carved stone balls… Read more
Destruction and reconstruction at the Stones of Stenness
In December 1814, disaster struck the Stones of Stenness when a tenant farmer took it upon himself to obliterate them. Read more
