The Department

The staff in the department have a wide range of expertise and interests, ranging from the treatment of the dead in the Bronze Age to the relationship between archaeology and the media, and are involved in a number of research projects both in Orkney and further afield.

The Archaeology Department is located in a purpose-built suite of rooms, which includes facilities for wet sieving, finds processing, finds storage, graphics, and project work as well as teaching rooms. Postgraduate students also have access to dedicated study rooms, providing workspace and computers.

The Department is co-located with the Orkney Research Centre for Archaeology (ORCA) and the Orkney Sites and Monuments Record (SMR), and as such the presence of the County Archaeologist Julie Gibson and the ORCA Senior Projects Manager Nick Card make for a unique and fruitful relationship between teaching, research, and commercial projects.

The Orkney College library houses a range of archaeology periodicals, journals and books, and students at Orkney College also have access to the wider network of UHI libraries. In addition students regularly make use of the Kirkwall Library Orkney Room that comprises an outstanding reference collection relating to Orkney’s cultural and natural heritage.