In mainland Britain and Ireland, when archaeologists excavate the remains of Neolithic buildings, they usually encounter only outlines formed from post-holes and beam slots: the ghosts of long-decayed timbers. In Orkney, though, contemporary communities seem to have done things differently. Stone structures – from the settlement at Skara Brae to individual houses like that at Smerquoy – have been identified across the archipelago, but they appear on another scale altogether at the Ness of Brodgar. This name officially refers to the thin strip of land separating the lochs of Harray and Stenness, but it has become inseparably linked with a remarkable archaeological site that was first identified there in 2003. Its discovery transformed our understanding of a landscape that had long been interpreted as an exclusive ceremonial space where funerary monuments and stone circles stood seemingly in splendid isolation (see CA 199 and 212).
Instead, geophysical surveys and initial excavations revealed that what appeared to be open, empty space had once been crowded with stone buildings whose remains are still preserved beneath the surface. Since then, two decades of fieldwork (managed by the Ness of Brodgar Trust in partnership with the UHI Archaeology Institute, and led by Nick Card, Mark Edmonds, and Anne Mitchell) has shed vivid light on a spectacular settlement sprawling over an area of around 2.5ha (6 acres). The site was as long-lived as it was large, with excavated evidence testifying to dozens of buildings big (sometimes extremely big) and small rising and falling over a period of around 1,200 years, about 60 generations, though perhaps not continuously. Many of them had been constructed over the remains of earlier structures, creating dense layers of archaeology that the team have been painstakingly unpicking for the last 20 years (see CA 241, 335, and 395 for various reports on this work).
The extent of this prehistoric palimpsest becomes clear when you appreciate that just 10% of the complex has been excavated to-date, but these investigations have produced a wealth of data, offering illuminating insights into diverse aspects of Neolithic experience and imagination, and of the architectural ambition of this particular lochside community. They were capable of creating soaring stone structures boasting metres-thick walls and flagstone roofs weighing up to 15-20 tonnes, all without the aid of modern tools and technology. These imposing buildings form the focus of Ness of Brodgar: Elements of Architecture, the latest publication in a planned series drawing on the team’s ongoing post-excavation research (see ‘Further reading’ below). In 2024, they made the decision to pause their long-running excavations and to focus on analysing what has already been uncovered. While digging has (mostly; see ‘News from the Ness’ below) stopped, this phase has already proven fruitful – complemented by a new programme of non- invasive investigations, including magnetometer, resistance, and ground-penetrating radar (GPR) surveys that have revealed that the settlement was even more extensive than previously thought. While the results of this recent work are still being processed, footprints of further Neolithic buildings can be seen all across the Ness – and these only represent the remains lying closest to the surface: it is likely that they, too, cover further layers of earlier structures.
