Final Excavation Planned at Scotland's Ness of Brodgar

[Judi Lynn]

Tuesday, May 14, 2024

ORKNEY, SCOTLAND—According to a report in The Guardian, a final excavation will be conducted at the Ness of Brodgar this summer. Discovered in 2003, the six-acre site is located on an isthmus in the West Mainland of Orkney that separates the Loch of Stenness and the Loch of Harray. “There are more than 100 buildings here,” said archaeologist Nick Card. The monumental Neolithic structures include buildings linked to outhouses and kitchens by stone walkways. Cattle bones, pottery, and painted ceramics were also uncovered in the 5,000-year-old complex. One type of pottery known as grooved ware may have been developed at the site and adopted across the British Isles, Card added. Neolithic people are thought to have traveled to the Ness of Brodgar to socialize, exchange produce, and worship for a period spanning 60 to 70 generations. Yet even older structures lie under the Neolithic ones, Card said. Studying them, however, would require the removal and destruction of the Neolithic buildings. “So, we are going to leave that task to future archaeologists who will have the benefit, we hope, of new technologies,” Card said. Backfilling the site will protect its quarried stone structures from erosion until then. “Cataloging and publishing the vast amount of finds we have uncovered is going to keep teams of us busy for years to come,” Card concluded. For more on the excavations, go to "Neolithic Europe's Remote Heart."

https://www.archaeology.org/news/12391-240514-ness-of-brodgar

[Judi Lynn]

1. Guardian: Neolithic site in Orkney to be reburied after 20 years of excavation

After one final dig, Ness of Brodgar is to be covered up to protect it for future generations

Robin McKie Science editor
Sat 11 May 2024 10.00 EDT
Last modified on Sun 12 May 2024 05.34 EDT

In a few weeks, archaeologists will gather at the Ness of Brodgar in Orkney and for the next two months excavate at one of Europe’s greatest prehistoric sites. For the last 20 summers, scientists and volunteers have dug here, revealing wonders that include 5,000-year-old remains of temples, hearths, a ceramic figurine, and elegant pottery.

Then, on 16 August, the team will down their trowels and brushes for the last time. Soil will be tipped over the ancient walls they have striven to uncover over the past two decades, the ground across the Ness will be returfed and the site returned, in perpetuity, to its former status: an anonymous green field.

It seems an extraordinary decision, one akin to tipping mounds of earth over Stonehenge to hide it from future generations. Nevertheless, archaeologists are adamant that this year’s dig at the Ness should be their final excavation there for the foreseeable future.

“What we have discovered is just the tip of a huge archaeological iceberg,” said Nick Card, who has directed excavations at the Ness since the site was revealed in 2003. “There are more than 100 buildings here. Underneath the most recent ones lie countless older edifices.

“We want to leave these later buildings intact. We want to avoid destroying them in order to get at those that lie underneath. So we are going to leave that task to future archaeologists who will have the benefit, we hope, of new technologies. As it is, we have amassed a vast collection of finds from the Ness that we must now study in laboratories and museums.”

More:
https://www.theguardian.com/science/article/2024/may/11/orkney-ness-of-brodgar-neolithic-site-reburied-after-excavation

[3catwoman3]

2. This is what makes me wish time travel were possible.