Final Excavation Planned at Scotland’s Ness of Brodgar

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."