Barbier

Sites in Birsay Village and on the Brough of Birsay Orkney v. 2

1996 · rif. SP-0RF4-2H6L — 1996 Sutton Publishing large format hardcover edition plus microfiche. Light reading wear else very good condition. This volume represents the second report on a major project of archaeological survey and excavation carried out between 1974 and 1982 by the Viking and Early Settlement Archaeological Research Project VESARP based at Durham University together with subsequent work by VESARP on an archival project and reports on fieldwork by other archaeologists between 1978 and 1989 in the area. Birsay Bay Project Volume 1 was concerned with the Brough Road excavations 1976–82. This volume looks at sites in Birsay Village and on the Brough of Birsay. The archaeological importance and significance of the Birsay Bay area of Orkney particularly in the Viking and Late Norse periods is again demonstrated in this volume which concerns itself with the well-known monuments of St Magnus' Kirk the Earl's Palace and the Brough of Birsay together with the newly-identified site at Beachview immediately to the south of the Burn of Boardhouse in Birsay Village. The work directed by John Barber on the St Magnus' Kirk site has demonstrated the existence of remains of earlier ecclesiastical structures below the present building and contributes new information to the discussion of the location of the Christchurch Minster of the Orkneyinga Saga as well as demonstrating the presence of a primary burnt mound on the site. Excavations by John Lewis and Beverley Ballin Smith at the Earl's Palace together with renewed analysis of historical documentation by Denys Pringle enable an up-to-date assessment to be made of the significance of this second major historic monument in the area of Birsay Village. Detailed analyses by Norman Emery and Christopher Morris of the unpublished records of the work on the Brough of Birsay between 1934 and 1939 are here presented for the first time. They demonstrate that this work uncovered a major complex of structures of the Pictish Viking and Late Norse periods around a small church itself discovered in 1866 by Sir Henry Dryden whose work is also assessed here by Richard Fawcett. Sutton Publishing hardcover