Just occasionally other people make use of my work. This week there are two such publications.Landscapes Revealed, now published by Oxbow Books, details the results of geophysical survey around the Heart of Neolithic Orkney World Heritage Site. It has been a mammoth effort, incorporating nearly 20 yeasrs of work from first inception to publication, but the result is well worthwhile. Not only do you have a listing of all the sites recorded (and this is a full landscape), but you also have a detailed discussion of the changing patterns of human activity across the area set into the wider Orkney context. It makes for a fascinating read.
Sadly the decision was taken not to annotate individual contributions other than in the acknowledgements, but you will find two sections that detail the results of the research undertaken by myself and my colleagues around Skara Brae (pp 61-65) and on the submerged landscape of the Loch of Stenness (pp 216-220).
The second ‘publication’ takes me further back. In 1988 I was lucky enough to journey through Pakistan and China. In common with other academics I took many photographs – all on slide film. In recent years I have been worrying about the deterioration of the slides all neatly boxed up in drawers in my study. Luckily an organisation known as the Historic Environment Image Resource, in Oxford, were able to come to the rescue. They seek to digitise old slides, particularly of sites and landscapes, with a view to preserving images of these locations for posterity. It is a fantastic service and an important one.
Some of my images were labled, many were not. They have recently completed their work on my material and used it to illustrate a blog about the work they do. I’d urge you to have a look at their website – there is a wealth of amazing material there. Where better to escape our current anxieties than losing yourself in the glories of the past?
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