The three-year project “Island of the dead? The buried Neolithic landscape of Herm” began in 2008 with a geophysical survey followed by augering to sample the buried soils. The first archaeological excavations were undertaken in September 2008, supported by OSL (luminescence) dating to provide a chronology for the sequence of sand deposits. In 2008 we excavated four trenches: A and B next to known megalithic monuments; C and D further out into the plain. As this first season of fieldwork has shown, the sand cover has preserved traces of settlement and other activity that elsewhere would have been destroyed by more recent agricultural activities.
Text copyright Professor Chris Scarre, Department of Archaeology, Durham University.