The start of the fieldwork season.

With the warming weather (for truth be told we are rather fair weather archaeologists) we are now preparing for a new fieldwork season both at our Ancaster Roman site and on the Farndon Fields Stone Age site.

First up will be augering at Farndon Fields which will take place on Monday 23rd April. This is a vital part of building up a picture of the landscape as it would have appeared 14,000 years ago and also identifying the most likely strata in which elusive flint tools may be uncovered.

 Augering at Farndon Fields

Measuring and recording the recovered core 

Meanwhile we will be restarting excavations at Ancaster House in May. These are the excavations of a Roman Road and associated structures which have been ongoing for several years with each season producing ever more fascinating finds and helping us to build up a picture of Roman occupation in Ancaster which appears to cover almost the entire timeline of Roman settlement in Britain.

Cleaning back the Roman Road surface 

Retaining wall and Ditch beside the road

Fieldwork starts again at Ancaster on Thursday 3rd and Friday 4th May and will continue throughout the spring and summer.

If you would like to take part in any of this fieldwork please contact Richard Tyndall

Forthcoming events

So what do we have coming up at FARI over the next few months?

First of all, this coming Wednesday - 11th April - we will have a presentation from Ian Ross on the next stage of the Ice Age Insights project.

This is a Heritage Lottery funded archaeological project researching Late Upper Palaeolithic (Stone Age) activity some 14,000 years ago at Farndon Fields near Newark. FARI Archaeology were amongst the original instigators of the project and have been closely involved with the research for many years.

Ian will be standing in for our project leader Daryl Garton and will explain how the next stage of the project will unfold. 

More details of the Ice Age Journeys project can be found on the website at:

www.iceagejourneys.org.uk

The programme continuing over the next few months is as follows:

25th April    - Talk on the Bronze Age by Richard Tyndall

9th May       -  Finds Processing

23rd May     - Talk on the Cave Art of Southern France by Jennifer Horseman 

31st May      - Business Meeting

13th June     - Talk on the Archaeology of Nottingham Castle by Laura Binns

There will be more background details on all these meetings over the next few weeks. 

FARI Meetings are held at 7.30pm on the second and fourth Wednesdays of each month at the Farndon Memorial Hall on Marsh Lane in Farndon. Both members and non members are welcome to come along. 

Welcome...

Welcome to the new blog page for FARI Archaeology.

Given that we already have a web page and a Facebook page one might ask why we need a blog as well?

The hope is that this page can fill a much needed gap. Whisper it quietly but... not everyone is on Facebook! And the webpage, whilst useful as a shop window for FARI, is not suited for the sorts of ongoing updates we hope to be putting on here.

So this page will be the go-to place for the latest news on what we are doing, on our meetings and particularly on our fieldwork with regular updates throughout the season as we continue our excavations and other fieldwork at various sites.

And 'Stone to Steel'?  

Well we want to make it clear that we cover all aspects of archaeology from the very earliest material technology to the most recent.

Hence 'Stone to Steel'.

If we ever get to the point where our computers are leaving traces in the archaeological record we will have to change it to 'Stone to Silicon'.