Overview

Winner, Current Archaeology Book of the Year 2023 This volume brings together several years of work devoted to the wider landscape of the Heart of Neolithic Orkney World Heritage Site. It documents the results of a programme of geophysical and related survey across an area of c. 285 hectares between Skara Brae on the west Orkney coast and Maeshowe, by the Loch of Stenness. The project has made it possible to talk for the first time about the landscape context of some of the most remarkable and renowned prehistoric monuments in Western Europe. The aims are to synthesise the data from different forms of survey and to document the changing character and development of this landscape over time. The results are genuinely remarkable are presented in a manner which makes the material of interest and value to a relatively wide readership, with an array of images which fully document and interpret the evidence. Survey work at a landscape scale tends to deal with palimpsests. Here descriptive sections are set within a thematic structure designed to explore the changing use and significance of different areas over time. The results shed important new light on the character and extent of known prehistoric sites and ceremonial monuments. But they also document the afterlives of these and other places and their relation to the lived landscapes of the historic and more recent past. In tracing the changing configuration of the World Heritage Area, we can begin appreciate this landscape as an artefact of several millennia of dwelling, working land, attending to wider worlds and to the past itself.

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9781789255065

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This lavishly illustrated book gets to the heart of what a total Neolithic landscape is, exposing through various non-intrusive surveys, through targeted excavation, and thoughtful synthesis the complexities of later prehistoric island life. Supported by excellent mapping, geophysics plans, and atmospheric photography, this book makes an important statement on the way non-intrusive methods should be employed in one of Europe’s most archaeologically sensitive areas. * Current Archaeology *

This lavishly illustrated book gets to the heart of what a total Neolithic landscape is, exposing through various non-intrusive surveys, through targeted excavation, and thoughtful synthesis the complexities of later prehistoric island life. Supported by excellent mapping, geophysics plans, and atmospheric photography, this book makes an important statement on the way non-intrusive methods should be employed in one of Europe's most archaeologically sensitive areas. * Current Archaeology *

Author Information

Amanda Brend works as a Project Officer for Orkney Research Centre for Archaeology and is studying for a PhD at Glasgow University. Nick Card has been a lecturer at several universities in the UK and USA. He currently teaches for the University of the Highlands & Islands (UHI). Since the inscription of Orkney's World Heritage Site (WHS), the Heart of Neolithic Orkney, he has directed a series of excavations including at the Ness of Brodgar. Jane Downes is Director of the Archaeological Institute of the University of the Highlands and Islands, Scotland. She has a PhD in the study of Bronze Age burial practices in Orkney from Sheffield University. Her research interests are in burial archaeology, particularly cremation, and in prehistoric and landscape archaeology. She also has research interests in the management and sustainable development of landscape and cultural heritage resources, and has involvement in the research of several World Heritage Sites in connection with this. Mark Edmonds teaches for the UHI having recently retired as a lecturer in archaeology at York. He specialises in flint artefacts and prehistoric landscapes. James Moore also teaches for UHI and specialises in geophysical survey. He hols a PhD in Landscape and Society in Orkney during the First Millenium BC from UHI.

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