Day Two The day started wet and windy, to the surprise of absolutely nobody. But hot baths, even hotter showers and, in one suspected case, a good hosing, seemed to have cleaned the diggers and restored their spirits and muscle function ready for the new day. Muscles were needed for …
Day One Off to a blustery start Welcome to the Ness of Brodgar for another season of stunning Neolithic archaeology. It’s hard to believe that almost a year has passed since this astonishing site vanished under billowing protective plastic sheeting and tons of rock. Yet, if it disappeared physically, it …
Excavations on the Neolithic site on Ness of Brodgar, in Stenness, will resume on July 15, 2013, running until August 23. During this time, the Orkney Research Centre for Archaeology (ORCA) dig will be open to the public, with daily guided tours, from July 17 until August 21.
A new video from Adam Stanford, of www.aerial-cam.co.uk, who worked on the site this summer.
I’ve added links to Ken Stuart’s new, and wonderful, panoramas of the 2012 Ness of Brodgar excavation site. The links can be found in the links panel to the right, or alternatively visit http://kenstuart.com/orkney-2012/panos.html for a list of all the Ness of Brodgar panoramas and others from Ken’s stay in …
Day Twenty-Seven Well, it had to come. This is the last daily diary of the 2012 excavation season at the Ness. We could expand at great length on all we have doing, and at the end of this diary we will give you a little flavour of what happened today. …
Day Twenty-Six The end is nigh If the morning was bright and breezy, the afternoon brought a pall of cloud, which hung over the site and reflected, to some degree, the mood of those below. The Ness has been such a humming, buzzing hive of activity and noise for so …
Day Twenty-Five A star attraction We guess from the number of visitors we have attracted today that all of you reading this blog saw at first hand the excavations today! After a less than promising start, with drizzle, the sun came out, as did the visitors to our Open Day …
Day Twenty-Four With just a week left on site, and a good deal of that time to be taken up with planning and, eventually, the covering over of the site for winter, there has been an opportunity for site director Nick to gather some of his thoughts and to have …
Day Twenty-Three First of all, a confession . . . We confess, here and now, in the presence of thousands of readers of the diary, out there in the archaeosphere, that we have regularly used superlatives to desc artefacts found at the Ness. Now, the slide back into sin. We are …
Day Twenty-Two Thwarted by the elements The weather has been an ever-present element in the diary this year, and for good reason. Working out-of-doors quickly brings the realisation that it is absolutely vital to what you do. Not just in the matter of comfort, but also in efficiency and in …
Day Twenty-One Regarding ‘dressers’ While removing the rubble near the end of the central east pier in Structure Fourteen, in the closing hour of today’s work, Neralie discovered another star find – a beautifully polished stone slab, similar to a red one discovered in Structure Eight last year. But this is …
Day Twenty Paint and people It is wonderful to see the expression on visitors’ faces when you explain that the folk of the Late Neolithic, who built the Ness complex, delighted in colour — on the pottery, their walls and probably on themselves. Colour is such an integral part of …
