Archaeological treasures

Nothing's new under the sun

However true that statement may or may not be it's certainly the impression one can get rambling over some of the remoter parts of Scotland like Shetland, Caithness, Sutherland, Lewis, Arran or Galloway: ancient monuments are to be found aplenty. And on Orkney one has to be careful, at first, not to crick one's neck with serial double-takes for on a short walk or drive passing a broch, a stone circle and a burial chamber seems as much an everyday ordinary experience as passing a policeman, a pub or a post-box. The oldest monuments, like the world-famous Skara Brae, have notched up an amazing five millennia. And a unique triangle of sites, Ring of Brodgar, Stenness and Maeshowe seem to reveal something of the mindset of the long-vanished, record-less architects.

They chart the annual journey of the sun by the precise alignment of edifice, landscape and compass point, Brodgar and Maeshowe marking the summer and winter solstices respectively and Stenness the autumn equinox. Was there a corresponding observatory or temple for the spring equinox? If so it remains undiscovered but as new sites continue to be unearthed, edging the total ever nearer 3000, there's hope yet.

It's little wonder therefore, with such a rich legacy dotting the landscape, that Orkney College offers one of the most hands-on archaeology postgraduate courses going. The Postgraduate Diploma and MA in Archaeological practice receives input from other University of the Highlands and Islands colleges Shetland and North Highland as well as Edinburgh's Heriot Watt International. It prepares graduates for careers within specific areas of archaeology such as government agencies, planning, tourism, heritage sites, national and countryside parks, historic houses, contract units and consultancy.

New ways of seeing the past

The University of Glasgow's Department of Archaeology is a hive of exciting research activity. It has close links with the University's Science Departments and is a national centre for excellence for historical and archaeological computing, with various specialised features, such as for computer graphics. The collections of the University's Hunterian Museum and the other city museums are further major archaeological resources.

Postgraduates are encouraged to be actively involved in the research environment. Beyond the Department's long-term commitments to the study of archaeology within Scotland, Britain and northwest Europe, newer emphases cover Italy, Sardinia, Cyprus and the Aegean as well as the North Atlantic regions. Projects range from the Mesolithic/Neolithic periods to the modern industrial era.

Projects within Scotland have included documenting all of the sculptured stones of early mediaeval Scotland (approximately 2000 remain) using a host of traditional and digital techniques and the innovative use of three-dimensional modelling. One of the objectives of the project was to create a definitive database with internet access for schools, to augment projects like the National Museum's SCRAN project (the award-winning Scottish history and culture website providing instant access to images, sounds, movies and learning resources).

In 2003, the 'Two Men in a Trench' (Dr Tony Pollard of the University of Glasgow and freelance archaeologist Neil Oliver) compiled Scotland's Ancient Top Ten. These included two 4,500-year-old flint axes; Britain's oldest bow (6000 years); a Viking burial boat found in Orkney; and the famous 12th Century Lewis chessmen found by a farmer on the island of Lewis in 1831. The Viking boat is at the Orkney Museum in Kirkwall; the Lewis chessmen are divided between the British Museum in London and the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, where the other two artefacts are also exhibited.

But delving into the past doesn't go much deeper than the dinosaurs. The University was involved in two key Jurassic projects one, grant-aided by Scottish Natural Heritage, involving making rubber moulds of large dinosaur footprints on the island of Skye and the other involving rapid prototyping (non-invasive techniques using modern medical scanners) of a red sandstone block near Elgin containing priceless fossils. The scanning revealed instantaneously that the archaeologists were dealing with the entire skull of a mammal-like reptile.