Some idiot has seen fit to engrave some graffiti on to one of the stones at Brodgar.
Report and picture of the damage in the Orcadian
Ravenfeather
A crowdfunding campaign has been launched to help fund this year’s excavation and post-excavation at the Ness of Brodgar archaeological site.
On July 2, archaeologists and volunteers will return to the Neolithic complex after ten months of careful planning and research.
But with the costs of the annual excavation and subsequent post-excavation work increasing as more needs to be done, the trust behind the dig is looking to online crowdfunding to help meet those costs, and is asking if £25,000 of those costs can be raised by public support.
Funds will not only go towards mounting post-excavation analysis of finds but will help with scaffolding platform hire, specialists, tour guides and transport as well as equipment for the annual excavation – from plastic bags to safety equipment.
Plans for 2018 include the further investigation of an enigmatic structure on the outskirts of the site – possibly a chambered tomb – as well as extending existing trenches to look at earlier buildings and, hopefully, find more evidence of the massive stone wall that once surrounded the complex.
orcadian.co.uk/ness-of-brodgar-crowdfunding-campaign-is-launched/
Report from the Orcadian with details of the new visitor centre.
From the Orcadian:
“A prehistoric underground structure has been rediscovered in Harray – rediscovered in that the archaeologists found it to be full of Victorian rubbish!
But although it had obviously been opened, entered and used in the 19th century, the chamber appears to have gone unrecorded.
Martin Carruthers, of the Archaeology Institute UHI, and county archaeologist Julie Gibson made their way out to the site, near the Harray Manse, last weekend.
Martin explained: “It’s either a souterrain or a ‘well’ and, given similar examples elsewhere in the county, probably dates to the Iron Age”
Read More: orcadian.co.uk/2016/05/two-finds-one-harray-chamber/
From the Orcadian:
“Archaeological discoveries are often made when least expected, and this is exactly what happened on Monday, at Tresness, Sanday.
In very poor weather, Professor Jane Downes (University of the Highlands and Islands), Professor Colin Richards (University of Manchester), Dr Vicki Cummings (University of Central Lancaster) and Christopher Gee (ORCA, UHI) were walking out to Tresness to examine the eroding stalled cairn on the point.
But en route, they discovered the remains of no less than 14 Bronze Age houses, distributed over a kilometre stretch of sand.
What this discovery reveals is that an entire Bronze Age landscape on Sanday was covered by as the sand dunes formed in the second millennium BC.
But it was the scale and density of occupation that really surprised the archaeologists as they proceeded along the ness. Not only are house structures present but working areas are also visible”
orcadian.co.uk/2015/12/chance-discovery-of-massive-bronze-age-settlement-in-sanday/