This week the castle will welcome what is probably its oldest ever visitor – around 5,000 years of age. Known as the Orkney Venus she is the oldest human figurine ever found in Scotland and the earliest known image of a human face from anywhere in the UK. And from Saturday, 13 March to the following Friday she will be on display in the Chapel Royal.

She is special to me because I had the good fortune to be overseeing the Historic Scotland excavation on the island of Westray, Orkney, where she was found last year. That also meant I was right in the thick of it as news of the discovery spread – which was also quite an experience. Suddenly TV and radio stations, newspapers, magazines and websites all wanted interviews and pictures so they could tell the world about this tiny, but lovely, 4cm tall carved pebble.

In archaeological terms the Orkney Venus is important because she is so old and so rare. Indeed images of the human form may have been largely taboo in Neolithic Britain. But what people really love about her is her simplicity and charm. Shaped and coloured like a gingerbread man (without arms and legs) she has an M-shaped brow, dots for eyes, scratched hair, breasts and what may be a woven cloak on her back. Unlike many artefacts or monuments from the distant past, there is a real sense of the personal about her. Someone much like you or I picked up this scrap of stone, possibly on a beach, and carved it into shape. Their name, language, beliefs – and even their reason for carving her – are long forgotten. But somehow, against the odds, a fragment of their lives survived to be rediscovered in the last remains of a prehistoric farmhouse. And now it is being cherished and admired by people whose 21st-century world the carver could not begin to imagine.

By Richard Strachan, Historic Scotland Senior Archaeologist

Each paying adult can take up to six children into Stirling Castle for free while the exhibition is on. All children under 16 must be accompanied by an adult.

You can also see the Orkney Venus on our YouTube channel - www.youtube.com/historicscotlandtv