Diary extra – marking the first International Mark Edmonds Day

Thursday, August 15, 2024 (9:04 PM)

The man himself (far right) with the striped-tribute. (📷 Rosalind Neville-Smith) — The man himself (far right) with the striped tribute in his honour. (📷 Rosalind Neville-Smith)

A few weeks before the start of the 2024 season, I sprang from my bed, hit the shower and dressed.

Striding into the kitchen, ready to tackle the day ahead, I was greeted with: “Why are you dressed like Mark Edmonds?”

Professor Mark Edmonds during tea-break outside Structure Twelve. (📷 Jo Bourne)

The reason? I had inadvertently thrown on a blue-and-white striped T-shirt.

Crestfallen? Nope.

You see Professor Edmonds has a very distinctive wardrobe. One in which the stripe is king!

And it was clearly indicative of the affection and respect in which the dig team hold our esteemed Ness co-director that Thursday was declared the first International Mark Edmonds Day.

With much behind-the-scenes plotting, the plans to mark that momentous event were quietly drawn up the night before.

As diggers congregated on site this morning, it became abundantly clear that stripes were the apparel du jour – relegating Ness of Brodgar T-shirts to laundry baskets across the Mainland.

And to mark the end of International Mark Edmonds Day 2024, a photographic session was hosted outside the finds hut – an event we really felt we should share.

As we’ve said many times before, the friends we have made over two decades of excavation are just as important as the archaeology. Although we probably won’t witness a second IMED (or will we?), the swathes of striped material across the site today really drove that fact home.