Category: Around the Ness

The Orkney encountered by the first farmers, around 3700BC, was very different. Not only did lower sea levels mean more lowland areas, but Orkney was also home to wooded areas containing birch, hazel, rowan, willow, oak and pine. Read more

A few weeks ago conversation at excavation HQ drifted from matters Ness and the Neolithic to apparent Viking Age runes found in the 1920s at the nearby Brodgar farm. Read more

The Ness complex was abandoned at the end of the Neolithic, around 2500BC, but at least one section was brought back into use, some 1,800 years later, in the Iron Age. Read more

Stand in the centre of the Stones of Stenness today and a short distance to the south-east, in the adjacent field, you will see a low mound. This is Big Howe, all that remains of a large Iron Age feature that once dominated an area 150 metres away from the stone circle. Read more

Lying around 110 metres downslope and south-west of the Ring of Bookan is the large Bronze Age barrow known as Skaefrue. Read more

Although the Ring of Brodgar dominates the surrounding area, the stone circle is but the tip of an archaeological iceberg. Read more