Decorated rock discovered at Orkney’s Bay of Skaill

Incised rock surface at the Bay of Skaill, Orkney. (Sigurd Towrie)

The Bay of Skaill in Orkney’s West Mainland is well-known as the location of Skara Brae, a 5,000-year-old Neolithic settlement that sits above the beach at its southern end.

But the bay is equally renowned for the coastal erosion that plagues it and which, in early January, led to the discovery of a large decorated rock on the shoreline.

Sigurd Towrie, from the University of the Highlands and Islands Archaeology Institute, takes up the story.

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