WHAT COULD YOU DO?
FOCUS ON COMMUNITY ARCHAEOLOGY
FULHAM: A COMMUNITY DIG IN THE BISHOPS’ PALACE
Beside the river Thames is a large, exceptional garden which served London’s bishops for centuries. Through new projects it now reaches a much wider constituency, from primary school pupils to archaeology students and volunteers – and bees.
JIGSAW: PIECING TOGETHER CAMBRIDGESHIRE’S PAST
Archaeologists have five years to help community archaeology across an English county. They may be starting a revolution in local research.
NEPAL: RESTORING LANGTANG MONASTERY
An archaeological research team based in York set out to learn about prehistoric cultures in the Himalayas. Impressed by local concerns, it launched a community project to save a historic monastery.
CELTIC CARDIFF: THE CAER HERITAGE PROJECT
Cardiff is Europe’s youngest capital city, its history dominated by maritime and industrial heritage. But deep in a suburb is a large, little understood prehistoric monument: Caerau hillfort. In 2011 Cardiff University archaeologists joined residents, schools and community groups to put local people at the heart of cutting-edge research.
AMONG OTHER STORIES
THE BIG DIG – BRISLEY FARM
Archaeologists worked for a decade as construction of new homes continued on former farmland near Ashford in Kent. Heavy clay subsoil made excavation extremely difficult. But a dense complex of late prehistoric and early Roman activity was revealed. Among it all were two remarkable graves.
THE LITTLE HOUSE IN THE BIG RING-DITCH
Excavation seems to support the idea that Anglo-Saxon people respected ancient burial mounds as ancestral places – places to bury their own dead, even places to live. A recent excavation in Suffolk, however, prompted Tom Woolhouse to wonder. Have ancestral barrows become a bit of a bandwagon?
EXCAVATION AT SITE OF CROSBY GARRETT HELMET
An outstanding copper-alloy Roman helmet found in northern England in 2010 and sold for £2.3m five months later, has come out of its closet. There has been no new analysis of the find, but news about fieldwork at the site of its discovery has been released.
ELITE IRON AGE BURIALS FOUND NEAR COLCHESTER
Archaeologists have found two graves near Colchester, Essex, which recall spectacular burials excavated in the area 20 years ago. One of these was dubbed “the doctor”, after a collection of surgical instruments, and all burials date from slightly before or after the Roman invasion.
SURVEY OF LOST ROMAN TOWN FINDS FORT
Aldborough, a pretty village in North Yorkshire, was once the centre of the Brigantes tribe and Roman Britain’s most northerly administrative town.
Cambridge Classics Faculty began a large-scale geophysics project in 2009. Magnetometry survey of the town is now complete, and coverage has been extended over a wide area beyond the walls, where a small fort lay to the north.
WERE ANGLO-SAXON HALLS HOME TO KINGS?
Archaeologists at Lyminge, Kent, are investigating a remarkably well preserved Anglo-Saxon royal complex. Finds included the foundations of three timber halls which succeeded each other on the same spot, with floors made with Roman-style mortar. Potential royal residences, it may be possible to name the kings who lived in them.
CATCHING THE LIGHT: INDOORS
Mick Sharp concludes our series of photography features
* My archaeology
Richard Sorrell remembers his father Alan Sorrell
*Greg Bailey on broadcasting
Egypt on TV
I don’t want to read about archaeologists who wish to overturn the system
Pagan Britain and ancient paths – and an extra book round
The UK’s only archaeological events listing, with exhibition reviews
How the CBA supports local initiatives in protecting archaeology
Cyfarthfa Ironworks, Merthyr Tydfil
The indescribable excitement of ritual