Minehowe, Tankerness - 2002

This fantastic ritual monument consisting of an underground stair and cells surrounded by an impressive ditch is central to a wider Iron Age landscape. Jane Downes and Nick Card will be co-directing an excavation and field school looking at aspects of this.
The houses from the Pictish and Iron Age periods that sit just outside the causeway-entrance to Minehowe have only just had their surface scratched by excavation two years ago.
Yet the finds from the houses and their associated middens have already produced the largest collection of moulds for bronze objects of the period in Scotland.
Nearby, and probably contemporary with Minehowe, is a broch set out into wetland. We will be investigating this broch and its siting as well as looking for connections between Minehowe and the broch.