The Ness of Brodgar excavations are over and the site is covered – but the study of the finds continues, with new insights emerging, and new questions about what the discoveries may mean. Ness of Brodgar director Nick Card leads a walk around the site, to look at its position within a wider landscape, and provides at first hand the latest news of the progress of analysis.

The diagram shows access to the site and parking.

The atmosphere of excavations at the Ness of Brodgar is captured in a composition of drawing, painting and sound, Drawing Archaeology, made by Dr Karen Wallis who was an Artist in Residence on the site from 2016. It’s more than a documentary, aiming instead to evoke the physical existence of the dig and the process and the everyday processes of the archaeologists, in a flow of voices and images.

In 2020 during the Covid break, Nick Card gave a progress report on the continuing work of scientific analysis of the finds in The Science of the Ness. He was joined by two other members of the Orkney-based UHI Archaeology Institute team. Dr Ingrid Mainland spoke on the animal teeth found over time and the clues to a possible marine diet, and Dr Scott Timpany described plants, pollen and Brodgar’s Neolithic landscape.

That same year, in a film made by Mark Jenkins, Stories in Stones, Prof. Mark Edmonds went in search for the origins of some of the stone artefacts discovered on the site.

Numbers limited to 40: booking essential. Tickets £15.