On the other hand Carl, just at the moment there is heightened anxiety about a terrorist attack on London or the Olympics ... what's to stop someone determined to destroy in the name of some deep held belief. We live in worrying times - the idea of someone travelling to a remote archaeological site on a fairly remote island off the north-east coast of Scotland to make a notorious name for themselves must be quite low down the list.

Was thinking about this earlier. Its worth reminding ourselves that the biggest threat to Skara Brae is from the sea and the weather and not just Skara Brae ...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/north_east/8181061.stm
(News link three years old but still relevant)

Well I for one hope they don't over protect, ive been once before and was bitterly disappointed at the restricted access, hoping to one day have a proper look round and get into the place proper. Granted , if I find anyone wirth a sledgehammer or spraypaint their body wont be found for several days.
The idea that only an outsider would be that much of an arse to deface it is I think setting the islanders on too high a pedestal, there are arses everywhere and I mean everywhere.

I'm off back to Arran on Saturday for more stoning, rock art (wherever you are Jan I'm keeping on rocking!) and a full-on family holiday. On Arran the Kings Caves have graffiti going back thousands of years - from cups to fish to curly snakes to Ogham Script to christian crosses and some weird human figures. I don't know where the line is to be drawn regarding defacement, as the christianised element of the site means that some christians come and paint up the crosses each year. Is this defacement/ graffitti/ vandalism of a earlier non-christian site? Also nearby, if you know where to look, there is also a slab with two human footprints carved into it - but I'm no telling where...
Up at Giant's Graves there is a monster slab of a capstone which is totally covered in graffiti. These people didn't just take hammers... they took chisels as well! One vertical row of names are the crew of a 1st World War warship which was sunk with total loss of life. But sometime before that the ship was moored in Whiting Bay, the crew were on shore leave and tramped up to the Giant's Graves and carved their names. I always think about those dead guys who thought that the Giant's Graves were important enough to visit before their battle deployment and bad deaths. Harry Lauder carved his name there as well! You can see them in this photo.

http://www.themodernantiquarian.com/img_fullsize/92197.jpg

There is something I really like about that capstone. The graffitti hasn't destroyed the stone (thankfully it didn't shatter under all the hammer and chisel blows) but in some way I feel the graffiti has added something, maybe a new layer of history to it. The other year I had to remove the remains of a fire and hearth which had been constructed by idiots within the Giant's Graves. The site is unprotectable from idiots. Many of the tall monoliths on Machrie have Victorian and 20th C vandalism. Indeed one stone was felled for shaping into a millstone. It still lies there, roughly shaped and snapped like a discarded jammy-ring biscuit.
I found some new (old) rock art panels near Rutherford's Witnesses in Galloway in October last year. Beside the cups and rings were two people's names and the date of 1870. The "1870" was the only thing exposed at first (which caught my eye). It was peeling the turf back around it which revealed the older stuff which I suspected would be there.
I'm not saying vandalism and graffiti are good things to do with ancient monuments. We cannot undo some stuff like the Roman and Norse graffiti and the later christianising of monoliths, stone circles and Pictish Symbol Stones. The Victorian period left a lot of individuals names and marks on stones as has the 20th Century. Most of the "defacements" I have come across are really part of a historical record and add another layer of human interaction with a site.

I used to get my wing mirrors kicked off regularly when I lived in Central Edinburgh. Mindless vandalism. Beyond sitting in my car all day and night I couldn't do anything to protect against it. CCTV might help but I dont think we can actually protect any sites from people determined to destroy.