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ABOUT THIS BOOK

PUBLISHER: Oxbow Books

FORMAT: Hardback

ISBN: 9781789256079

RRP: £60.00

PAGES: 688

PUBLICATION DATE:
January 15, 2021

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The Birsay Bay Project Volume 3: The Brough of Birsay, Orkney: Investigations 1954-2014

Christopher D. Morris

Rachel Barrowman

The Brough of Birsay was the power-centre of the Viking earldom of Orkney and is one of Historic Environment Scotland’s key monuments and visitor attractions on the islands. This publication is the culmination of 60 years of investigations that took place on the site between 1954 and 2014.This new volume incorporates comprehensive accounts of work undertaken by Dr Ralegh Radford and Mr Stewart Cruden between 1954 and 1964, excavations by the Viking and Early Settlement Research Project under the direction of the author on site between 1974 and 1981, a rescue excavation in 1993, a geophysical survey in 2007 and archival research up to 2014.Specialist artefactual and palaeobiological studies of metallurgical material, ogham inscriptions and a gilt-bronze mount of Insular origin are included, together with re-analysis of the radiocarbon dates from all sites in Birsay Bay, and a re-assessment of the architecture and dating of the church and related buildings on the Brough itself.The final two chapters put the Brough, as both a Pictish power-centre and the hub of the Viking earldom, in the overall context of Birsay Bay and Viking and late Norse Orkney, and the wider world between the Pictish and late Norse/Medieval periods.As well as being the author’s third and final volume reporting on work for the Birsay Bay Project, this volume completes a trilogy of studies of the Brough itself, alongside Mrs Cecil Curle’s and Prof John Hunter’s earlier monographs.

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Christopher D. Morris

Christopher D. Morris is Emeritus Professor of Archaeology at the University of Glasgow, having previously been Reader in Viking Archaeology at the University of Durham. His lifelong research interests have been in the Early Medieval period, especially post-Roman, Anglo-Scandinavian, Pictish, Viking and Late Norse. He has carried out archaeological fieldwork in Orkney, Shetland, Caithness, Sutherland, the Isle of Man, northern England and Cornwall, and his many publications include four major site monographs together with two edited volumes on the Viking Age and Late Norse settlements across the North Atlantic region. Rachel Barrowman is a research associate at the University of Glasgow. She worked with colleagues on the Viking and Early Settlement Archaeological Research Project in the 1990s, when she was involved in excavations at Tintagel in Cornwall. She has since published work on the chapel and burial ground on St Ninian’s Isle, Shetland, the late medieval clan stronghold of Dun Eistean, and the chapel-sites of Lewis. She lives and works with her husband and family in Ness at the north end of Lewis.