Talk this wednesday

A quick reminder for everyone about our guest speaker at FARI tomorrow night (Wednesday 27th June)

Laura Binns is a Project and Community Archaeologist for Trent and Peak Archaeology where she has worked for the last 8 Years. She studied at Sheffield University, graduating in 2009. In addition to her degree she has an MA in Community Archaeology.  

Laura is coming to FARI to talk about the ongoing excavations at Nottingham Castle. These are being undertaken in advance of redevelopment of parts of the site with work currently concentrating on the Service Courtyard which is part of the remodelled Ducal Palace that was rebuilt in 1878. It is hoped that these excavations will reveal the line of the ditch of the inner bailey - part of the original medieval castle that was destroyed in the aftermath of the Civil War.

The castle itself will be closing for two years on July 1st due to a major redevelopment programme but there will be an opportunity to take part in the digging alongside Trent and Peak between 16th July and 17th August.

More details of this can be found on the website at: 'We Dig The Castle'

Laura will have a lot more information on all of this tomorrow night so hopefully we will have a good turnout for the talk.

A Brief Interlude

As much as we would love to spend all our time in the field uncovering the ancient history of Ancaster, the real world does tend to intrude every once in a while and work commitments mean we will not now be digging again at Ancaster until early July.

I will have the dates for digging in July ready shortly but in the meantime we are starting to plan for other projects which  can continue when we are not digging and particularly which can be pursued through the winter.

First and foremost of these is the Parish Boundary Project being organised by the Council for British Archaeology East Midlands.  

In the words of the CBA website:

"The idea of this project is to involve local groups in a regional exercise to map their local parish boundaries and identify features  of archaeological and historic interest. The result will be a unique online resource accessible to anyone with an interest in historic landscapes and will serve as an important record. The database will be built up over time and it is hoped  that eventually the whole of the  East Midlands will be covered"

The two parishes we are initially interested in are of course Farndon in Nottinghamshire and Ancaster in Lincolnshire. 

To begin with we will have a Wednesday night session looking at current and old maps to identify the existing parish boundaries and whether or not they have changed over the last couple of centuries. After this we will begin mapping the features that delineate the boundaries using the system developed on the pilot project in Bingham. All the details of how this will be done can be found on the CBA Parish Boundary Project website. 

Ian Ross is in the process of registering FARI to carry out the work at Farndon and once it is underway we will also begin work at Ancaster. Depending on how well the project develops we can then look at expanding it into adjacent parishes. 

The first meeting to kick off the project for FARI will be on Wednesday 25th July. 

If anyone has any input, suggestions or questions please contact either myself or Ian Ross. 

2018 Ancaster Fieldwork Season - Update 2

It has been a week of very changeable weather and whilst Friday was a great digging day - if a little humid - a fair bit of today was spent dodging thunder storms. Standing in the middle of a field waving a metal pole around is never a good idea when there is lightning about so we went without surveying today and alternated between excavations and, when the rain got too heavy, extended tea breaks.

Still, there has been a lot of advance in our understanding of the site over the last few days and the ability to get the drone in the air and get some photos of the main linear features we are seeing in the trenches did help to confirm that a number of them are very extensive across the site.

First of all there is the road of course. We are successfully locating this in each trench across the site from west to east with the northern side of the road just having appeared in our most easterly trench (10) this afternoon. We have also now identified the remains of a wall on the northern side of, and running parallel to, the road in three trenches. At the same time we are finding the ditch on the southern side of the road is also to be found right across the site and potentially has another wall similar to that on the northern side built after it had almost completely filled in.

It is this ditch - which appears to have been recut at least twice after its original digging - which is providing the best and most exciting dating evidence on the site with plenty of late Iron Age or early RB pottery coming out. And today it produced another rarity for us - a complete pot, found by John Goree in the fill of the first recut of the ditch.

 Whilst somewhat smaller this looks to be remarkably similar to another almost complete pot we found in what we believe to be the same ditch in trench 6 a few years ago.

What is particularly interesting is that both these pots seem to have been discarded because they had blown during firing. The smaller pot had blown out through a small hole in the base.

Whilst the larger pot had blown out at the base and on one side. 

The presence of two discarded failures might indicate there is a kiln site nearby.

Here are the two pots side by side. They probably date to the late 1st or early 2nd century.

Other exciting finds today included a 2nd Century T Brooch and a selection of late Iron Age or early RB tempered ware.

We are back digging again on Thursday and Friday of next week so do come along for a look if you are interested.