It’s an extraordinary site, with two decades of discoveries and then a hint of even more, leading to the opening of a new trench and a special Time Team broadcast.

By the time of the festival, everything will be covered up again, but we have an opportunity to join Ness of Brodgar director Nick Card on a walk around the site, to learn about its position within a wider landscape, and to hear at first hand the latest news of what was found and the new questions that have been opened up by this summer’s investigation.

Image taken from the GPR results from last year (NOT showing the strange anomaly we will be investigating this summer!) plus photo of the GPR in action – also image of the new magnetometry results and action image of some of the volunteers who assisted in the geophysics workshops (funded by HLF)

The diagram shows access to the site and parking.

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

This is one of several events marking the post-excavation progress for the Ness of Brodgar. It follows the closure of the main excavations two years ago, the ongoing work on the vast array of finds, and the four-week reopening of a small area for an additional investigation this past summer.

News from the finds comes from Prof. Ingrid Mainland, Assoc. Prof. Scott Timpany, and Prof. Mark Edmonds, while Nick Card reports on this summer’s work and also leads a walk around the site and provides at first hand the latest updates.

In 2020 during the Covid break, Nick Card, Ingrid Mainland and Scott Timpany gave a progress report on the continuing work of scientific analysis of the finds in The Science of the Ness. That same year, in a film made by Mark Jenkins, Stories in Stones, Mark Edmonds went in search for some of the stone artefacts discovered on the site.

The atmosphere of excavations at the Ness of Brodgar has been 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 presence of the archaeologists, in a flow of voices and images.

For the latest information at any time, the Ness of Brodgar website has a wealth of details and resources.