After completing a BA(Hons) and two Masters degrees with the UHI Archaeology Institute, Gary Lloyd has won a prestigious PhD scholarship to investigate Neolithic stone tools from Orkney.
Moving from Dallas, Texas, in 2016 to begin his studies, Gary earned his BA in 2020, followed by an MLitt in Archaeological Studies in 2022. In 2024, he completed a Masters by Research (MRes), which looked at multi-hollow cobbles from the Ness of Brodgar – multi-purpose, cuboid stone tools with up to six depressions ground, chipped, or pecked into their faces.
Gary’s work on multi-cobbled hollows was singled out to feature in the current Ness of Brodgar: Past, Present & Future exhibition at the Orkney Museum.
In 2020, Gary was also named UHI Higher Education Student of the Year and took home two special awards for “Best Performance in Undergraduate Archaeology student” and “Best Undergraduate Archaeology student dissertation”.
Earlier this year, he applied to the Scottish Graduate School for Arts and Humanities Doctoral Training Programme, a highly competitive PhD studentship funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) that provides a grant to cover research costs, tuition and living expenses for the duration of PhD.
Entitled Made Through Making: Stonework, skill and social change in Neolithic Orkney, Gary’s four-year PhD project will explore the changing significance of stoneworking among the earliest farming communities of Orkney.
He will be working under the supervision of Dr Ben Elliott and Dr Antonia Thomas, and Professor Mark Edmonds, and with support from the Orkney Museum and the Ness of Brodgar Trust.
Drawing on the islands’ remarkable legacy of Neolithic archaeology, it will apply a method developed during Gary’s MRes to study coarse stone tools.
Combining digital analysis, experimental research, and knowledge exchange with communities interested in the form and use of tools, the project will explore how changes in creating these artefacts over time were linked to the emergence of a new division of labour based on skill and task specialisation.
