Lecture tour will take Ness dig director to Texas

The Ness of Brodgar excavation director is heading back to the USA next week for a lecture tour brought about by last year’s article in National Geographic magazine.

Nick Card, of the UHI Archaeology Institute, has been invited, and funded, to tour Texas, taking in a number of venues including the University of Texas in Austin, Trinity University in San Antonio, the  Museum of Natural Science in Houston and the George Bush Museum at the Texas A & M University.

According to Mr Card, the tour will allow him to promote not only the Ness and its archaeology, but Orkney and the UHI to a variety of audiences through public, society and university lectures and seminars.

It was also announced this week that Mr Card has been awarded the Archaeological Institute of America’s (AIA) Samuel H. Kress Lectureship for 2016-17.

The Kress lectureship is administered by the AIA and underwritten by the Kress Foundation in New York. It allows the AIA to invite “distinguished” foreign scholars to lecture to AIA members, university communities and the general public as part of the AIA’s annual Lecture Programme.

This will entail lecturing at 12 or so venues across the USA, starting in autumn 2016.