It may not look like much,
but that is one of the most important archeological sites in Western Europe.
When I say it's prehistoric, I mean that literally.
The ruins that are buried here at Ness of Brodgar
are from around 5000 years ago, when writing hadn't really been invented.
And this...
...this is an old worn out tire.
And today, a team of volunteers are putting 500 of these on top of that.
- The Ness of Brodgar is a huge Neolithic complex discovered in 2002
when we did geophysics across this area.
Despite the size of the trenches,
this only covers approximately 10% of the site. It's massive.
It is a place of gathering, 5000 years ago.
We can envisage hundreds of people coming here.
Neolithic society wasn't a static society
and through the thousand years that the Ness was in use,
we see those changes reflected in the architecture.
What the Ness of Brodgar has unlocked for archeologists
is a huge range of information.
We have many new discoveries, new types of discoveries at the Ness of Brodgar.
The preservation is quite remarkable.
Under nine inches of topsoil we have Neolithic walls standing.
And this is because this field has never, ever been deeply ploughed.
- The reason for the tyres, and the plastic underneath, is a bit more obvious when
you know where we are:
the Orkney Islands, off the northern tip of Scotland.
The weather here can be brutal. Sure, it's nice today.
The temperature's usually mild.
We're at the end of the Gulf Stream here, so it rarely gets too hot or too cold.
But we're next to the ocean.
The wind is harsh and fast and it blows in salt spray.
The trouble with exposing the past is that, well, you're exposing the past.
- As soon as it's exposed to the air,
water can start getting into the very fine laminations in the building stone.
And literally, you'd see these walls start to crumble at the end of each season.
We cover the site with layers of plastic,
then to hold all those covers in place, all these hundreds of tyres.
I used to live at the top of the hill just behind us, where we recorded once
a gust of over 120mph.
And after some of the big storms we have in the winter,
despite our best efforts,
sometimes you come back to site and the corner of the polythene
and some of the tyres will have actually been moved by the wind.
- The old tyres are a practical solution.
They're free, they're heavy but they can be moved fairly easily.
And they're just soft enough not to cause damage
when they're on top of the plastic sheeting.
They look ugly. They're going to disappoint any visitors for the next few months,
but it means the site is still going to be there, intact,
When spring comes and archaeology can start again.
- We have to protect it.
We have to do this to the best of our abilities,
because these walls have stood for over 5,000 years.
And it's a top priority for us to hopefully keep them there
and keep them in prime condition for the next 5,000 years.
- To be honest, they didn't actually need the tire there.
They just gave me one so I could be out of the way of
the volunteers who are doing the actual hard work.