stromness

Exciting New Project for Stromness-Listening to the Piers

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Stromness Piers_Credit Diana Leslie

Stories, Stones and Bones: Listening to the Piers – Exploring the history of Stromness through the town piers.

The Stromness Museum celebrates £9700.00 Heritage Lottery Fund grant as part of the Year of History, Heritage and Archaeology 2017

IMG_1907The Orkney Natural History Society Museum, Stromness, has received a Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) Stories, Stones and Bones grant. This exciting project, Listening to the Piers – Exploring the history of Stromness through the town piers is led by Stromness Museum in partnership with the University of the Highlands and Islands Archaeology Institute. The programme involves organising arts and science workshops for the public and local schools and is aimed at exploring the history of Stromness through the town piers. This project is part of Scotland’s Year of History, Heritage and Archaeology.

The Stromness Museum is teaming up with the UHI Archaeology Institute, local artists, and marine scientists from the International Centre for Island Technology (ICIT) Orkney Campus to give the local community a chance to learn about life on and around the town’s stone-built piers, past and present. The events form part of the ‘Per Mare’ during 2017 when Stromness celebrates the 200 year anniversary of becoming a Burgh of Barony. The project will provide the opportunity for all ages of the community to explore different ways of seeing and interpreting the piers using innovative science and arts workshops held on a ‘Piers Day’ (Tuesday 25th July) during the Per Mare week (24-30th July).

The project team will work with local school children and residents to record stories,IMG_1894 memories and the history of the piers during May and June. Workshops on Piers Day will include archaeological test pit excavation on the town beaches to explore what the town threw away, sea life in the piers and intertidal zone, drawing (5-minute sketches), photography (artefacts and sea life) and time-lapse filming. Participants will learn new science and arts-based skills and help create new insights into the piers. These events are free and open to all ages.

The project will culminate in a temporary exhibition this autumn at the Stromness Museum, including artefacts, drawings, photographs and a new listening post with stories collected during the sound recording workshops.

Commenting on the award, Janette Park (Honorary Curator) said: “The museum is delighted to be able to run such a ground breaking project during such an important year as the 200th anniversary of Stromness becoming a Burgh of Barony. The piers of Stromness are a hugely important part of the shared community history of the town. The opportunity to explore and document the piers for the future will be a lasting legacy.”

Dan Lee (Lifelong Learning and Outreach Archaeologist, UHI Archaeology Institute) added: “We are really looking forward to exploring these iconic piers and the history of Stromness with such exciting arts/science workshops; combined they will help us all learn about the piers and understand them in new ways”.

IMG_1901

Credits: Stromness Piers artwork: Diana Leslie, Photographs: UHI Archaeology.

Stories, Stones and Bones is designed for any not-for-profit group wanting to engage more people with the heritage and take part in the Year of History, Heritage and Archaeology. Stories, Stones and Bones grants between £3,000 and £10,000 are available to groups who want to discover their local heritage. Projects can cover a wide spectrum of subject matter from exploring local archaeology and a community’s cultures and traditions to identifying and recording local wildlife and protecting the surrounding environment to managing and training volunteers and holding festivals and events to commemorate the past.

The Stromness Museum is an independent museum maintained and managed by a committee of volunteers elected from the members of the Orkney Natural History Society Museum SCIO. The Stromness Museum exists to promote natural science, to preserve local history and to offer an enjoyable educational and informative experience to as large a range of people as possible. The museum contains natural and cultural history with galleries focussing upon Canada and the Arctic, maritime history and models, natural history, wartime Orkney and ethnographic material.

See their website for more information: http://www.orkneycommunities.co.uk/stromnessmuseum/index.asp

Map Orkney Month: New Paper Published

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Hoy. Thanks to Linda Heath.

Map Orkney Month: Imagining archaeological mappings has just been published in a new open access online journal Livingmaps Review (Vol. 1, No. 1).

The paper is based on Dan Lee’s (Lifelong Learning and Outreach Archaeologist)  contribution to the wider Public Archaeology 2015 project, in which 6 archaeologists and 6 non-archaeologists each had a month long project throughout the year.

Map drawn by volunteer
Participant mapping of Stromness

Map Orkney Month proposed new forms of creative mapping for archaeology. When volunteers were asked to map their world for a day, the idea was to create a new collaborative map of the Orkney archipelago based on everyday journeys and places; a kind of countywide archaeological walkover survey with a twist. In the process, the project challenged traditional archaeological power structures, destabilised the way archaeological knowledge is produced by using non-specialists, and experimented with new modes of archaeological mapping. In the end, each contribution became its own map without the need for traditional archaeological cartography. In particular, the role of imagination in both traditional and experimental mappings became an important theme. Above all, mappers were challenged to think about archaeology in a new way, and in the process contributed something new to the discipline.

After a month of collaborative mapping a new map of Orkney has been created. By thinking big, Map Orkney Month seems to have captured people’s imagination. Our map looks like Orkney, however it is far removed from the Ordnance Survey and the tourist trail of Neolithic World Heritage Sites, brochs and bird watching. Our map is an unfamiliar Orkney, revealed through the experience and creativity of its inhabitants.

The emphasis was on everyday journeys, less familiar places, and recording individual stories and memories of place. The only loose instructions were to record journeys for a single day within March using a handheld GPS or smart phone, and record one site of significance.

You can access the article free here (just register): https://www.livingmaps.review/journal/index.php/LMR/index

A new research paper: “Imagining Archaeological Mapping” has just been published by Dan Lee (Lifelong Learning and…

Posted by Archaeology Institute UHI on Thursday, 17 March 2016

The Rocks that Don`t Belong.

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Ness of Brodgar
Ness of Brodgar
Selection of rocks found at The Ness of Brodgar including a water worn cobble originating from Stromness – 8km distance from the Ness

The Rocks that Don’t Belong: Macro Petrologic* Analysis of Rock Recovered from the Ness of Brodgar Excavation

Martha Johnson writes about her research into non structural and non tool rocks found at The Ness of Brodgar.

All stone is rock but most rock is not stone. In the index or glossary of most geology texts there is no listing for stone, conversely, in most archaeology texts, there is no listing for rock.

This research has been structured to include rock in an archaeological setting. As a naturally occurring material composed of crystals or grains of one or more minerals, rock is not recognized in most archaeological sites until it has been quarried and placed upright in the ground; or it has been dressed for use in a foundation or wall; or it has been struck to form a sharp edge or ground into a tool. Until a rock is a stone something; standing stone, stone wall, flaked stone axe, or ground stone mace, it is not usually recognized as a material in its own right with information to provide. On many Neolithic sites there is incidental or non-structural, non-tool rock situated at occupation levels but this material is usually not recovered and recorded as either general or small finds.

The Rocks That Don’t Belong research project is investigating the non-structural, non-tool rocks recovered from the Late Neolithic site, the Ness of Brodgar, Orkney. These rocks, termed Foreign Stone for this research, are more often found on the spoils pile than in a finds tray. It should be noted the word “foreign” used in the archaeological finds classification, “Foreign Stone,” denotes rock originating from outside the area of excavation, not from another country. The recovery, recording and identification of these rocks as discrete rock (and mineral) species will add a petrological and geological dimension to post-excavation interpretation not commonly included in most archaeological settings.

During the 2013, 2014 and 2015 excavation seasons at the Ness of Brodgar, over 2000 Foreign Stone finds were recovered.  Each specimen has had the trench, structure and context recorded, their visible physical properties identified and recorded (colour, composition, texture/grain size, morphology…), and has had their specific rock (or mineral) species identified. Each specimen has also been examined for any evidence of heating.

The recording both archaeological and petrological data in this research will permit the cross referencing of rock species to structure or context. Though all rock recovered as Foreign Stone has been recorded and identified, the Foreign Stone of particular interest to this research involves those species not outcropping of the portion of the Stenness-Brodgar isthmus occupied by the Ness of Brodgar site. The recovery of these rocks at or near occupation levels, give indication of transport to the site during its period of use. Broad questions can then be asked concerning the presence of these rock species at the site.

The second portion of this research involved the compilation of all current and archival references regarding the location and description of any rock (or mineral) species found in Orkney. This species/location gazetteer permits an overall assessment of the rock types and species available within the Orcadian archipelago to people of the Neolithic. Questions can then be asked with respect to the distance(s) specific rock (or mineral) species recovered from the Ness of Brodgar could have been transported from its outcrop source(s) to the site.

Combining the knowledge of what rock species are found in Orkney and where they can be found with what rock species have been recovered from the Ness of Brodgar and where within the site they have been recovered generates the remaining post-excavation questions.   Specific questions will be posed to determine if there is any concentration of a specific rock species within a structure or within a context.

*Definition of petrology:  a science that deals with the origin, history, occurrence, structure, chemical composition, and classification of rocks