[7] It was the main subject of a 2016 BBC Scotland documentary, Britain’s Ancient Capital: Secrets of Orkney, presented by Neil Oliver, Chris Packham, Shini Somara, Andy Torbet, and Doug Allan.

[14] The structures at the Ness of Brodgar are made of flagstone, a sedimentary rock found abundantly throughout Orkney.

[15] Flagstone is easily split into flat stones and was therefore a good material for fine building work using Neolithic tools.

[20] Some of the individual stones of structure 1 were painted in yellows, reds, and oranges using ochre pigment made of haematite mixed with animal fat, milk or eggs.

The remains of at least two earlier buildings lie beneath it and structure 8 appears to have undergone severe subsidence itself.

Its floor slumped in antiquity, causing the roof to fall in, and some of its stones were used to form structure 10.

[26] Other finds from this structure included a whalebone mace head[28] and a whale's tooth set in stone.

[5] This is the largest structure of its kind anywhere in the north of Britain and it would have dominated the ritual landscape of the peninsula.

Structure 10 was used until around 2,400–2,200 BC, when it appears to have been "closed" in an extraordinary and unique episode of ceremonial demolition[29] involving the slaughter of several hundred cattle.

[30] After the feast, the whole carcasses of several red deer were placed atop the broken bones, and structure 10 was largely destroyed.

It was made of well-dressed stone but, like several other buildings on the site, appears to have suffered from structural problems and was partly rebuilt.

[31] This annexe contained masses of grooved ware pottery, including some very large vessels, some made with techniques not otherwise known from the Neolithic, and some coloured black, red or white.

[26] An unusual axehead, made from gneiss,[34] and a carinated bowl from the early Neolithic which may predate grooved ware,[35] have been found in this structure.

It appears to traverse the entire peninsula where the site is located, and may have been a symbolic barrier between the ritual landscape of the Ring and the mundane world around it.

[41][42] A baked clay artefact known as the "Brodgar Boy", and thought to be a figurine with a head, body, and two eyes, was unearthed in the rubble of one structure in 2011.

A few days later archaeologists discovered a carved stone ball, a very rare find of such an object in situ in "a modern archaeological context".

It is managed by Historic Scotland, whose "Statement of Significance" for the site begins: The monuments at the heart of Neolithic Orkney and Skara Brae proclaim the triumphs of the human spirit in early ages and isolated places.

They were approximately contemporary with the mastabas of the archaic period of Egypt (first and second dynasties), the brick temples of Sumeria, and the first cities of the Harappa culture in India, and a century or two earlier than the Golden Age of China.

... Stenness is a unique and early expression of the ritual customs of the people who buried their dead in tombs like Maes Howe and lived in settlements like Skara Brae.