Old friends still coming back as six-week pottery triage project begins

When fieldwork ended last August, the realisation that we probably wouldn’t see some of our digging colleagues again was jarring.

But just as the Ness of Brodgar complex served as a gathering place for centuries in the Neolithic, it seems to have retained some of that magic. Why? Because it continues to draw people back to Orkney from all over.

For the past two weeks we had Paul Durdin (Trench J supervisor), Chris Gee, Travis, Sigurd (although technically he never left) and Ray back on site carrying out geophysics.

At the same time, Jo Hofmann, who worked in Structure Ten, is carrying out a basic assessment of the 2019-24 flint assemblage for her undergraduate dissertation at the Philipps-University Marburg, Germany. This will complement the analysis done on previous years by Dr Hugo Anderson Whymark of National Museums Scotland.

Also in Ness HQ for the past fortnight was Judy Suchting, who had made her way back from Australia as a volunteer to lend a hand with the excavation paperwork.

No stranger to Orcadian archaeology, Judy was a volunteer digger at the excavations at Minehowe, an Iron Age site in Orkney’s East Mainland, when she lived in Orkney a quarter of a century ago.

Although she returned to her native Australia, Judy was back in 2024 as a Ness meet-and-greeter. This year, however, her time was spent getting our decorated stone paperwork ship-shape as well as checking through the thousands of context sheets and plans.

Judy has now begun her journey back to Australia, but the old friends keep coming.

Our six-week pottery triage project gets under way today with a batch of volunteers starting to work through the Ness’ considerable ceramics assemblage. These include previous diggers and meet-and-greeters who want to stay involved in the Ness project and we’re delighted to welcome them back.

Working with the existing ceramics volunteers, Vicki Redpath, Alison Gough and Kathie Touin, the new arrivals will be recording every sherd of Ness pottery. Our specialists Jan Blatchford and Roy Towers will be giving the team of 19 training in the work they need to do, with Anne and Nick supervising, with support from another member of the pottery team, Sarah Carter.

To many the Ness remains a focus of their world.