Archive for August, 2012

Day Twenty-seven Well, it had to come. This is the last daily diary of the 2012 excavation season at the Ness. We could expand at great length on all we…

Day Twenty-six If the morning was bright and breezy, the afternoon brought a pall of cloud which hung over the site and reflected, to some degree, the mood of those…

Day Twenty-five We guess from the number of visitors we have attracted today that all of you reading this blog saw at first hand the excavations today! After a less…

Day Twenty-four With just a week left on site, and a good deal of that time to be taken up with planning and, eventually, the covering over of the site…

Day Twenty-three   First of all, confession. We confess, here and now, in the presence of thousands of readers of the diary, out there in the archaeosphere, that we have…

Day Twenty-two The weather has been an ever-present element in the diary this year, and for good reason. Working out-of-doors quickly brings the realisation that it is absolutely vital to…

Day Twenty-One STOP PRESS While removing the rubble near the end of the central east pier in Structure Fourteen, Neralie discovered another star find in the closing hour of today. …

Day Twenty It is wonderful to see the expression on visitors’ faces when you explain that the later Neolithic folk who built the Ness delighted in colour — on the…

Day Nineteen The finds hut on the Ness is a small, wooden hut, containing finds supervisor Anne, her assistants Scott and Sam (whom we will hear from in a future…

Day Eighteen We’ll start today with the star find – a find that caused great excitement and led to our stone tools expert, Professor Mark Edmonds, being recalled from Kirkwall…

Day Seventeen After the torrential rain of yesterday, this has been one of these calm, slightly claustrophobic days at the Ness, where the cloud is low and stationary, the water…

Day Sixteen Oh dear, oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. It has rained and rained on the Ness for most of the day. And not your ordinary, common-or-garden…

Day Fifteen Today, Friday, was a day of excellent archaeology and jaw-dropping technology to assist with the site recording. Mark, from the University of the Highlands and Islands in Kirkwall,…

Day Fourteen Today, we will start with the best, the very best, find we have had in a while. Professor Mark Edmonds arrived on site late in the afternoon and…

The above aerial shot, taken by the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS), shows the 2012 excavation season getting under way last month. For more…

Day Thirteen We have had an interesting day on the Ness, if blowy, wet and intermittently miserable. Hugo, in Structure Fourteen and ancillary areas, was happy. But Hugo is always…