Transcript: Dr Julie Gibson VFT 2: The Heart of Neolithic
Orkney
Question 3: Who are the key stakeholders in the World Heritage site?
Well, the key stakeholders in the World Heritage site are: Historic Scotland, who have the World Heritage
sites themselves; they’re those sites that are in guardianship mainly. So you can tell…they just go up to the
end of the fence and that’s a World Heritage site. Around the World Heritage site there is a lot more
landscape than just the individual sites, like Maeshowe is one site; the Barnhouse Stone is another site; the
Watch Stone is another site – very small pockets in the landscape. And then joining them up of course is all
this Neolithic landscape which is now more and more coming to view.
So, you have Historic Scotland, who look after the sites, you have the Orkney Islands Council who have a
general duty of care and signed up to the inscription document. You have other stakeholders, I don’t know
if they’re actually official stakeholders but the Orkney Archaeology Society, which is the successor to the
Orkney Archaeology Trust; and the Orkney Archaeology Trust was the voluntary group that was also a
signatory in the original inscription. So Orkney Archaeology Society maintains a view, whether or not they
are an official stakeholder.
There’s the RSPB. They’re a stakeholder because they own land immediate around Brodgar and in fact they
purchased land immediately round Brodgar when it became a World Heritage area because I think not only
was it good for birds but it was good for their profile to have that land.
We have Scottish Natural Heritage who are there because the lochs of Stenness and Brodgar are SSSI,
which is Sites of Special Scientific Interest and that’s there because of the brackish nature of those lochs.
We also have community councils; we have one or two councillors (that’s Islands Council – but they would
come in under the Orkney Islands Council I suppose) and we have other landowners who have land within
the area such as the people who own the Ness of Brodgar for instance, where Nick Card is working.
And then we have Orkney College Archaeology department who are stakeholders in that they work in the
area and that they have led and are leading on the research strategy and agenda.
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