| Established | 2014 |
|---|---|
Parent institution | University of the Highlands and Islands |
| Director | Jane Downes |
Academic staff | 17 [1] |
| Location | Orkney College UHI, East Road, Kirkwall , UK 58°59′11″N2°56′49″W / 58.9865°N 2.9470°W |
| Website | archaeologyorkney |
UHI Archaeology Institute is an academic department of the University of the Highlands and Islands in Scotland. It was founded in 2014, incorporating Orkney College's archaeology department and the Orkney Research Centre for Archaeology. The director is Professor Jane Downes. The institute offers both undergraduate and postgraduate teaching. The Orkney Research Centre for Archaeology (ORCA) is the institute's commercial archaeology branch and is registered with the Chartered Institute for Archaeologists.
The institute was founded in 2014, expanding on the archaeology department hosted by Orkney College, part of the University of the Highlands and Islands. The Institute received funding from The Robertson Trust, Orkney Islands Council, and Highlands and Islands Enterprise. [2] [3] The UHI started running undergraduates programmes in archaeology in 2011. [4]
The institute was created to carry out teaching and research, with a branch providing commercial archaeology services, the Orkney Research Centre for Archaeology (ORCA) which was founded in 2007 and is registered with the Chartered Institute for Archaeologists. [3] [5] [6]
Tourism is a key component of Orkney's economy, [7] with 700,000 visiting the Heart of Neolithic Orkney World Heritage Site between 2014 and 2020. Tourism to contributed £50 million to Orkney's economy in 2017. Excavations at the Ness of Brodgar and investigations across the World Heritage Site led by UHI Archaeology Institute led to news coverage and increased tourism to Orkney. [8]
In the 2021 Postgraduate Taught Experience Survey, the institute's Masters courses on Contemporary Art and Archaeology, Archaeological Practice, and Archaeological Studies received satisfaction ratings of 100%, 86%, and 70% respectively; [9] the university overall scored 87% in the survey. [10]
Orkney, also known as the Orkney Islands, is an archipelago off the north coast of mainland Scotland. The plural name the Orkneys is also sometimes used, but is now considered incorrect. Part of the Northern Isles along with Shetland, Orkney is 10 miles (16 km) north of Caithness and has about 70 islands, of which 20 are inhabited. The largest island, the Mainland, has an area of 523 square kilometres (202 sq mi), making it the sixth-largest Scottish island and the tenth-largest island in the British Isles. Orkney's largest settlement, and also its administrative centre, is Kirkwall.
Skara Brae is a stone-built Neolithic settlement, located on the Bay of Skaill in the parish of Sandwick, on the west coast of Mainland, the largest island in the Orkney archipelago of Scotland. It consisted of ten clustered houses, made of flagstones, in earthen dams that provided support for the walls; the houses included stone hearths, beds, and cupboards. A primitive sewer system, with "toilets" and drains in each house, included water used to flush waste into a drain and out to the ocean.
Shetland, also called the Shetland Islands, is an archipelago in Scotland lying between Orkney, the Faroe Islands, and Norway. It is the northernmost region of the United Kingdom. Until 1975, it was known as Zetland.
The Ring of Brodgar is a Neolithic henge and stone circle about 6 miles north-east of Stromness on Mainland, the largest island in Orkney, Scotland. It is part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site known as the Heart of Neolithic Orkney.
Dornoch is a town, seaside resort, parish and former royal burgh in the county of Sutherland in the Highlands of Scotland. It lies on the north shore of the Dornoch Firth, near to where it opens into the Moray Firth to the east.
Sanday is one of the inhabited islands of Orkney that lies off the north coast of mainland Scotland. With an area of 50.43 km2 (19.5 sq mi), it is the third largest of the Orkney Islands. The main centres of population are Lady Village and Kettletoft. Sanday can be reached by Orkney Ferries or by plane from Kirkwall on the Orkney Mainland. On Sanday, an on-demand public minibus service allows connecting to the ferry.
Westray is one of the Orkney Islands in Scotland, with a usual resident population of just under 600 people. Its main village is Pierowall, with a heritage centre, the 15th-century Lady Kirk church and pedestrian ferry service to nearby Papa Westray island. Westray has a number of archeological sites dating from 3500 BC, and remains of several Norse-Viking settlements. The spectacular sea cliffs around Noup Head are home to thousands of seabirds.
The Northern Isles are a chain of islands of Scotland, located off the north coast of the Scottish mainland. The climate is cool and temperate and highly influenced by the surrounding seas. There are two main island groups: Shetland and Orkney. There are a total of 36 inhabited islands, with the fertile agricultural islands of Orkney contrasting with the more rugged Shetland islands to the north, where the economy is more dependent on fishing and the oil wealth of the surrounding seas. Both archipelagos have a developing renewable energy industry. They share a common Pictish and Norse history, and were part of the Kingdom of Norway before being absorbed into the Kingdom of Scotland in the 15th century. The islands played a significant naval role during the world wars of the 20th century.
The University of the Highlands and Islands (UHI) is an integrated, tertiary institution encompassing both further and higher education. It is composed of 12 colleges and research institutions spread around the Highlands and Islands, Moray and Perthshire regions of Scotland. UHI offers further education, undergraduate, postgraduate and research programmes which can be studied at a range of locations across the area and online. It has 31,000 students, including 19,779 further education students and 11,210 higher education students.
UHI Inverness is one of the thirteen partners that make up the University of the Highlands and Islands, based in Inverness in the Highland council area of Scotland. A new main building at Inverness Campus was opened in August 2015, with most students and staff now located there. UHI Inverness has a second campus at The Scottish School of Forestry, based near Balloch. UHI Inverness is a tertiary organisation providing education to school pupils, and at further education, higher education and postgraduate levels, together with training for apprentices and a wide range of short courses for business. Student accommodation is also available on the new campus.
Heart of Neolithic Orkney is a group of Neolithic monuments on the Mainland of the Orkney Islands, Scotland. The name was adopted by UNESCO when it proclaimed these sites as a World Heritage Site in December 1999.
Prehistoric Orkney refers only to the prehistory of the Orkney archipelago of Scotland that begins with human occupation. Although some records referring to Orkney survive that were written during the Roman invasions of Scotland, “prehistory” in northern Scotland is defined as lasting until the start of Scotland's Early Historic Period.
Links of Noltland is a large prehistoric settlement located on the north coast of the island of Westray in Orkney, Scotland. The extensive ruins includes several late Neolithic and early Bronze Age dwellings and is place of discovery of the Westray Wife figurine, uncovered during an excavation in 2009. Historic Environment Scotland established the site as a scheduled monument in 1993.
Bere, pronounced "bear," is a six-row barley cultivated mainly on 5-15 hectares of land in Orkney, Scotland. It is also grown in Shetland, Caithness and on a very small scale by a few crofters on some of the Western Isles, such as North Uist, Benbecula, South Uist, Islay and Barra. It is probably Britain's oldest cereal in continuous commercial cultivation.
The Ness of Brodgar is an archaeological site covering 2.5 hectares between the Ring of Brodgar and the Stones of Stenness in the Heart of Neolithic Orkney World Heritage Site on the main Island of Orkney, Scotland. The site was excavated from 2003 to 2024, when it was infilled due to concerns about damage to the structures exposed by excavation.
The Westray Wife is a small Neolithic figurine, 4 centimetres (1.6 in) in height, carved from sandstone. It was discovered during an Historic Scotland dig at the Links of Noltland, on Westray, Orkney, Scotland, in the summer of 2009. It was the first Neolithic carving of a human form to have been found in Scotland, and to date it is the earliest depiction of a face found in the United Kingdom.
Alexandra Bayliss is a British archaeologist and academic. She is Head of Scientific Dating at Historic England, and a part-time Professor of Archaeological Science at the University of Stirling in Scotland. Her research focuses on the construction of exact chronologies of European Neolithic archaeological sites, through the application of Bayesian statistical modelling of radiocarbon dates.
Sally M. Foster is a Scottish archaeologist and senior lecturer at the University of Stirling. She specialises in the archaeology of Scotland, particularly the Picts and their neighbours in the early medieval period.
Caroline Rosa Wickham-Jones MA MSocSci FSA HonFSAScot MCIfA(25 April 1955 – 13 January 2022) was a British archaeologist specialising in Stone Age Orkney. She was a lecturer at the University of Aberdeen until her retirement in 2015.
Barbara Elizabeth Crawford OBE FRSE FSA FSAScot is a British historian. She is a leading authority on the mediaeval history of the Northern Isles of Scotland and Norwegian-Scottish 'frontier' and relations across the North Sea. She is Honorary Reader in Mediaeval History at the University of St Andrews, and Honorary Professor at the University of the Highlands and Islands. She was awarded an OBE for services to History and Archaeology in 2011. She became a Member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters in 1997 and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2001.
