The real treasures of an archaeological excavation
A new blog post from PhD candidate Julia Becher, who is analysing lipids on pottery sherds from the Ness of Brodgar as part of the international ChemArch project. Read more
Author: Sigurd
Wednesday wildlife – otter hunting in the snow
Site director Nick Card braved the gales and snow showers on Sunday and captured these pictures of an aquatic neighbour hunting in the loch.… Read more
‘Art of Neolithic Orkney’ podcast
The ‘Brodgar Stone’ found on the Ness in February 1925. (Picture courtesy of Orkney Library Photographic Archive)We have another History Hit podcast for you today, this time a splendid introduction… Read more
Link: ‘Orkney – Centre of the Stone Age’ podcast
A new podcast from History Hit, looking at Orkney's Neolithic remains, including Maeshowe, the Ring of Brodgar, Skara Brae and a section on the Ness of Brodgar, featuring Nick Card and Roy Towers. Read more
Staneyhill long horned cairn
Across the waters of the Harray loch, just over two miles north-east of the Ness of Brodgar complex, is one of the few known Orcadian examples of a Neolithic long horned cairn. Read more
The central paved area and standing stone
An update to our excavation background section this week, dealing with the “central paved area” and standing stone between Structures One, Eight, Twelve and Twenty-Nine.
Click here to read.… Read more
2022’s top ten: rethinking Structure Eight’s original entrance
Unlike other Ness buildings, Structure Eight stands out as having a single entrance.
Measuring over 18 metres long by 9.5 metres wide, Structure Eight is the largest of the piered… Read more
Link: The Ness of Brodgar – marking 20 years of Neolithic discoveries
In the summer of 2022, Current Archaeology‘s Carly Hilts visited the excavation to see progress on the site and hear the latest thinking on the Neolithic complex.
Her subsequent article,… Read more
2022’s top ten: paved area between Structures Seventeen and Eighteen
Structures Seventeen and Eighteen are two earlier buildings (c3200BC) that pre-date, and lie beneath, Structure Eight (c3100BC).
A focus of the 2022 excavation season was to reveal more of the… Read more
2022’s top ten: another ‘butterfly’ stone
The “butterfly” motif has been found incised into numerous stones and surfaces across the site, and this year was no exception.
The stone slab pictured above had been incorporated into… Read more
2022’s top ten: two more thumb-pots
We have a growing collection of tiny “thumb pots” at the Ness, and another two were found this summer within two days of each other.
The first came from the… Read more
Harking back to summer with the sounds of the Ness
This was one of the special events at the Ness in 2022, when Suzy Angus made us a sound poem of the excavations.
Pour a glass of… Read more
2022’s top ten: multiple post-holes in Structure Five
Two covered depressions on either side of the blocked south-western entrance were found to be large, well-built post-holes, indicating that the doorway was also flanked by a pair of substantial… Read more
The Stones of Via
One of the most puzzling prehistoric features on the Orkney Mainland goes by the name of the Stones of Via. Most accounts over the past two centuries slotted it into one of two categories – a toppled dolmen or a denuded chambered cairn. But, as always, it is not that simple. Read more
