Late Sea Ingress
A radically different picture of the prehistoric landscape around Orkney's World Heritage Site is beginning to emerge – a landscape which perhaps didn't feature the Stenness and Harray lochs.
Preliminary results from an archaeo-environmental project indicate that, prior to 1500BC, the Stenness loch was an area of wet marshland surrounding small pools or lochans.
http://www.orkneyjar.com/archaeology/sealevel2008.htm
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Silsbury pill
Geophysics has revealed that thiis is not a chambered cairn but more like Silbury Hill, as with a site at Dunragit in Dumfries and Galloway, the BA cist and animal bones from ?feasting towards the top being later additions http://www.orkneyjar.com/archaeology/saltknowe.htm
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Nut confirms Mesolithic context
The hazelnut was found in a layer beneath the Bronze Age burial mound at Longhowe during excavations earlier this year. The charred shell has been dated to 6820-6660 BC, and its discovery pushes back the known settlement of Orkney by 3,000 years. Mesolithic settlement has long been known from stone tools, but the nut has provided the first definite date.
courtesy http://www.orkneyjar.com/archaeology/minehowemeso20072.htm
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Discovery & Excavation in Scotland online
Now downloadable at http://ads.ahds.ac.uk/catalogue/library/des/index.cfm as a .pdf for each year from 1947-2001. However these are facsimiles, so you really need to know which year you want as these won't be truly searchable
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J.W. Cursiter collection online
The Hunterian museum is re-assembling his(mostly Northern Isles) donation and adding this to their catalogue as they go http://www.huntsearch.gla.ac.uk
At present this is text-only but images will be added over the coming months
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Mesolithic Excavation Starts
Today Radio Orkney reports that a great number of Mesolithic tools have come to light, though presently this is thought to represent a refurbishment workshop rather than a factory per se. They urgently require volunteers to sieve the whole of the spoil heap for microliths missed by the main thrust of the excavation
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90% of Scotland's IA burials on Westray
C14 dates for burials at the Knowe of Skea (HY44SW 2) on the edge of Berst Ness [HY44SW 3] push back the age of these from Viking to 200BCE-400ACE. Many of them (mostly children) consisted of bagged bodies dropped vertically into spaces created by removing material from the structures' walls. Article with photo on Sigurd's site http://www.orkneyjar.com/archaeology/knoweskea2006.htm
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Unemployed and so plenty of spare time for researching contributors' questions and queries and for making corrections. Antiquarian and naturalist. Mode of transport shanks's pony. Talent unnecessary endurance. I love brochs.
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