[4] A project called The Ring of Brodgar Excavation 2008 was undertaken in the summer of that year in an attempt to settle the age issue and help answer other questions about a site that remains relatively poorly understood.

[11] Captain Thomas was in the area drawing up Admiralty Charts in 1848–49, and he and his crew performed archaeological surveys as well resulting in the publication in 1852 of The Celtic Antiquities of Orkney.

[12] Ongoing excavations by Orkney College at the nearby Ness of Brodgar site located roughly midway between the Ring and the Stones of Stenness have uncovered several buildings, both ritual and domestic.

[14] Others view these fanciful names with skepticism; Sigurd Towrie suggests that "they were simply erroneous terms applied by the antiquarians of the 18th or 19th centuries – romantic additions, in the same vein as the infamous "Druid's Circle" and "Sacrificial Altar".

[20] Thom and his father made other controversial contentions, for example, that Brodgar and the burial mounds that surround it were designed specifically as backsights for astronomical observations of the Moon.

Euan MacKie suggested that the nearby village of Skara Brae might be the home of a privileged theocratic class of wise men who engaged in astronomical and magical ceremonies at sites like Brodgar and Stenness.

[23] Graham and Anna Ritchie cast doubt on this interpretation noting that there is no archaeological evidence for the claim,[24] although a Neolithic "low road" connects Skara Brae with the chambered tomb of Maeshowe, passing near Brodgar and Stenness.

The Heart of Neolithic Orkney includes, in addition to the Ring of Brodgar, Maeshowe, Skara Brae, the Standing Stones of Stenness and other nearby sites.

It is managed by Historic Environment 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.

[28] In Troika Games 2001 title Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura, the Ring of Brodgar appears in the town of Roseborough and is pivotal to the plot.