Tim Phillips

Decorating the Houses of the Dead: Incised and Pecked Motifs in Orkney Chambered Tombs

Megalithic art has often been treated as a unitary phenomenon, related to the spread of farming across Western Europe. This approach does not do justice to the very different ways in which tomb decoration was employed by particular communities. This article focuses on the megalithic art of Orkney, much of it recorded for the first time during a recent field survey. This is normally interpreted as a local variant of the style of ‘art’ found in Neolithic Ireland, but on close examination it has much stronger links with the abstract motifs found in local settlements. Whereas the megalithic art of Ireland may have celebrated the passage of the dead to another world, in Orkney it was used to emphasize their continued involvement in the affairs of the living.

The stone circles of northeast Scotland in the light of excavation

The stone circles of northeast Scotland (Figure 1) take a most distinctive form. On one level, they are made up of structural elements that are widely distributed in Britain: they are built from raw materials that had been selected for their colour and texture; the monoliths are graded in height towards the southwest and may have been aligned on the moon (Burl 2000). On another level, they have a character all of their own. They are known as ‘recumbent’ stone circles because their most massive component is a large flat block which is bracketed by two tall pillars or ‘flankers’ (Burl 2000: 215–33).

Archaeology for All? Inclusive Policies for Field Schools

A number of pieces of anti-discrimination legislation have been passed in Britain over the last 15 years. These relate not just to disability, but also to race, religion, gender, age and sexual orientation. The efforts to eliminate discrimination against people with disabilities are now part of a wider agenda addressing this issue experienced by a wide range of “minority” groups. While some discriminatory issues in archaeology have been discussed in other countries, little has been published elsewhere relating to disability and archaeology. The pieces of legislation that related specifically to disability were the Disability Discrimination Acts (DDA 1995, 2005) and the Special Educational Needs and Disability Act (SENDA 2001). These have now been superseded by the Equality Act (DDA 2010) which came into force on 1 October 2010 and combines all the anti-discrimination legislation within a single Act of Parliament.

The living and the dead in northern Scotland 3500-2000 BC

A fieldwalking project focused on the Neolithic/Early Bronze Age of northern Scotland investigates different regional traditions and changing relationships with ancestors.