Category Archives: Project Officers

Lockdown Archaeology: a walk in the woods

By Rob Evershed, Project Officer (Geophysics)

Due to the ongoing coronavirus situation I’ve found myself confined for the majority of my time to my home. I’m fortunate in so much as I can continue working on writing up various projects, but it’s still a little claustrophobic, a feeling I imagine a lot of people are having at the moment. So my daily escapism comes in the form of walking my dog just after 4pm. I’m lucky to have some woods just up the road where I can easily go, and where I have turned my archaeological eye on.

hector the dog looking for archaeology — Hector looking for archaeology

The woods are part of a landscape of managed woodland in the area, although parts of it are slowly returning back to nature as at the moment there appears to be limited removal and replanting of trees. I’ve always been interested in the slightly unusual lumps and bumps within the wood, but never got any further than thinking it might be interesting to try and work out what might be going on.

Well finally with the lockdown I got round to doing a bit of detective work. The Environment Agency has Lidar data they provide for free on their website, and this proved perfect for getting a better look at what might be going on.

As you can see from the image, the area available for dog walking has a number of lumps and bumps, including a sub-circular swamp area extending from the southern edge. It does continue further to the south, but that’s private woodland.

However the most interesting feature I’ve noticed is the strange square feature towards the northeast corner of the area. Here’s a zoomed in Lidar image.

square feature in the lidar image — Detail of the square feature seen in the Lidar image

Exploring the area this feature has fairly clear banks surrounding a lower flattened area that sloped gently to the west. Without all the trees and vegetation it would undoubtedly stand out very clearly as a distinct feature, but with the trees and vegetation it is actually very difficult to see. Taking good photos of earthworks is notoriously difficult, and being in the woods makes it even trickier. However here are a few shots from which you might be able to make out some of the banks.

looking across the woods — The southeast corner of the woods

From it’s square shape, and distinct ninety degree angles, it definitely looks like a manmade feature. The surface geology is sand and gravel, but the woods in this area definitely pre-date the twentieth century as they are present on the 1^st Edition OS map. Nearby heritage features include a deer park, a deserted medieval settlement, and the site of a former priory. But apart from the woodland potentially being used for one or all of these places, I’m at a bit of a loss for what the square feature might be, or why it was created. Currently my imagination is suggesting it’s an Iron Age fort, but I have no evidence to back that up. What do you think?

Differing approaches to archaeological fieldwork

Written by Michał Górzyński, Project Archaeologist (Heritage Research)

During my studies and after graduation I worked on a number of excavations conducted by universities, museums and private companies in Poland. This gave me a basic understanding of the methods used in archaeological fieldwork and I then assumed that these methods would be the same elsewhere! That’s why after my first day of work on an archaeological excavation in Britain, I was so surprised to find many differences between the methods I had learnt in Poland and the methods used in the UK.

The basic structure of field investigation (excavating features and then recording them and the artefacts) is the same, but the methods of how to excavate, and the type of tools to use are different (except maybe using shovels!).

For example let’s use the excavation of a pit. The first step is the same, make a line to divide the feature in two and then start excavating one half to get a section through the feature. After that, according to Polish methodology, you would cut a box shape around the feature to explore the surrounding stratigraphy. This results in one half of the feature staying untouched and the other half showing a full section plus a small area around it. This is opposed to British fieldwork methods where only the feature is half-sectioned and the surrounding ‘natural’ is left untouched (unless there are other archaeological features).

The next step is to record the feature by drawing and photographing the section. In Poland, there is often only one person is doing the recording, most often the site supervisor. There are no context sheets, all the necessary information is inputted into excavation notebooks. When this is done the half of the pit which is left needs to be excavated, but this time following the cut of the feature. Again, after excavation of this half, drawing and photographic documentation is undertaken by the field supervisor. All measurements on site are taken with a dumpy level and staff and it is rare that a GPS is used. In my work in the UK, as is common on most archaeological excavations, the features are recorded by the excavator using context sheets, photography and drawing, as well as a GPS to mark where the features are spatially within the site.

Michal Gorzynski — Michal looking very happy on site!

I’m really happy that I have had the opportunity to learn Polish and British fieldwork methods, because both make me better archaeologist. I am now enjoying my time working on a secondment in the Heritage Research Team at Allen Archaeology where I am building on my knowledge of British archaeology.

if you’re interested in finding out more about British fieldwork and the work we do at Allen Archaeology have a read through some of our previous blog posts!

Weekly Round-up

Following on from yesterday’s ‘Ask and Archaeologist’ day we thought we’d do a little office round up to give you an insight into what our staff have been working on this week!

Our Finds and Archive Department have been busy this week preparing finds for archive deposition and preparing material to go off to the relevant specialists. We have also had a number of volunteers come to work with us from the University of Lincoln over the past month and this week we welcomed Roksana and Louise who have been washing various finds from some of our recent sites and marking the pottery ready for archive deposition.

Roksana and Louise marking some pottery from a recent site

The head of our geophysics team, Rob, has been doing some digitisation for a large linear infrastructure site in Lincolnshire as well as doing a watching brief in a small village just outside Lincoln. Mia, one of our Project Supervisors, has been busy working on some building recording reports for a range of sites in Lancashire and Cambridgeshire.

Rob of our Geophysics team looking very studious!

The Heritage Research Team (affectionately known as Heritage HQ) have been working on a variety of desk-based assessments for sites in Nottinghamshire, Cambridgeshire, and Lancashire. Heritage team member Harvey has been out visiting sites in Cambridgeshire and Nottinghamshire and has discovered some interesting cropmarks just outside of the Cambridgeshire Archives at Shire Hall which relate to the site of the old county prison. He thought it might have been a Roman building associated with a known Roman settlement to the north. Better luck with your interpretation next time Harvey, it happens to the best of us! Thanks to the effect of the hot weather on the ground, a lot of cropmarks have now become clearly visible across the UK.

Possible cropmarks visible outside of the Cambridgeshire Archives

And of course, our field teams have been busy across the country! With sites in Lincolnshire, Leicestershire, Suffolk, and Cambridgeshire (amongst others!) our field archaeologists have been working hard to excavate and record an array of archaeological features. We’ve also had some great finds from our sites this week, including some complete Roman vessels from a site in Lincolnshire!

Our field team having fun on site in Leicestershire

So it has been a busy week for us all here at Allen Archaeology and with the food festival coming to Lincoln this weekend I’m sure a few of our staff will be visiting!

Mental Health Awareness

By Craig Huddart, Senior Project Officer

The taboos surrounding mental health finally seem to be lifting but it is still a sensitive and deeply personal issue that people aren’t always comfortable about airing or even ‘admitting’ to. People can struggle with mental health issues on a daily basis or it can pop up out of nowhere and take you by surprise, manifesting in many different ways. With one in four people in the UK suffering from a mental health disorder, having an understanding employer and a network of sympathetic colleagues and friends can literally be lifesaving. Although big steps have been taken in the last few years, further measures can and should be taken to help people suffering with mental health disorders.

Mental health disorders appear to be particularly prevalent within archaeology and, as a large proportion of archaeologists are on fixed term and short-term contracts, they often slip through the cracks and don’t get the help that they need. There needs to be a major attitude shift within the industry and employers need to start recognising employees (temporary or not) as just that, employees. Having suffered with depression myself, I’m writing as someone who has had rather mixed experiences within archaeology, but on the whole I was lucky enough for my symptoms to be recognised for what they were and I was given help, understanding and time to be in a more ‘comfortable’ frame of mind.

I feel that staff with any type of supervisory responsibility, who manage people in the office, in the field or remotely, should be given some basic form of training to enable them to recognise certain signs, to be able to have a conversation with someone suffering from mental health issues and to know how obtain the relevant help. This kind of help can be genuinely lifesaving, so let’s try and make a change in someone’s life and be seen as a considerate profession. You never know, one day that person needing help could be you.

Here at Allen Archaeology we are trying to ‘buck the trend’ and make a tangible and positive difference in the lives of our staff. We have started the process of sending supervisors on Mental Health Awareness First Aid courses and arranging bespoke in-house training of all staff, hopefully within the next twelve months. Additionally, all staff (and in particular supervisors) are made aware of existing mental health guidance and are actively encouraged to be on the alert for any tell-tale signs amongst friends and colleagues. We understand that a happy and healthy team is the key to successfully moving forwards.

Digital Past Conference Workshop

By Shoned Jones (Project Supervisor)

During this year’s Digital Past Conference in Aberystwyth, we were invited to attend and take part in a workshop discussing the management and archiving of digital datasets. A number of organisations were asked to attend the workshop and give short presentations on how they use digital data.

Along with Allen Archaeology the speakers were from; Archaeology Data Service, The Discovery Programme, DigVentures, Historic England, Wessex Archaeology and the University of Bradford.

Chris Casswell, the head of fieldwork at DigVentures and Li Sou, a PhD student from Bradford hosted the workshop.

While a number of topics, including storage space and metadata were covered, the one most affecting our sector was archiving. In commercial and field archaeology we are required by law to archive the data that we collect for clients as part of the planning process. If you are unfamiliar with this archiving method please follow the link here to our blog explaining archiving.

The main observation was of a blinkered understanding by research groups of the differing archiving requirements commercial units deal with on a daily basis. There is a lack of cohesion with regard to the physical archives and the proposed use of digital archiving with ADS.

Archiving requirements and field methodologies differ from county to county. Field methodologies are usually very similar with differences usually in the kind of cameras used and the specificity of the sampling method (how much we excavate and environmentally sample). However, archive requirements can differ greatly and with technology changing at such a rapid pace and companies working in all different parts of the country it is an issue that is becoming more and more important.

While in the past a small to medium archaeology companies may only work in one county and only deposit in one archive, the nature of commercial archaeology now enables companies to work all over the country. This is a wonderful opportunity for a company and for archaeologists to encounter all sorts of archaeology in their career without having to work the ‘archaeological circuit’ (working on temporary contracts from company to company). However, it does make the work of our post-excavation archiving teams difficult.

These differences are down to a number of reasons. Funding is foremost in this and it is not an easy fix. The issues that other groups brought in also include differences in storage requirements and having appropriate systems to store and process the metadata. These are also not easy fixes and require much collaboration between many different groups, including commercial archaeology units. This conference was one of the first to begin the conversation and in bringing together people from all sectors of archaeology I am optimistic that we will develop something that is more suited to both research groups and commercial companies.

3D image created by Shoned of a medieval ankle-boot found in Lincoln

P.S Some of the terms used in this blog are quite industry heavy, here for your perusal is a Glossary to give you a hand.

Archiving:

All of the information that we acquire on an archaeological site, context sheets, photographs, the final report and finds are all deposited within the local archive for the area of that site. In order for that data to be compatible with other data that other companies and research groups deposit, it must be submitted to conform with specific requirements which can be unique to each archive, .i.e. photograph formats (TIFF or JPEG), report formatted as pdf.

Digital vs Physical Archiving:

Physical archives are the finds themselves (pottery, animal bone etc) and the paper documents that were created on site, such as the context sheets, printed photographs (in the case of film photographs, slides and negatives), printed copies of the report and such.

Digital archiving are the photographs as digital media (JPEG, TIFF) archived using ADS (Archaeological Data Service), by uploading the files to a digital archive. This can include digital versions of the report, 3D models, GIS projects, CAD drawings, Geophysical data etc. I could go on and on.

Metadata: data that describes and gives information about other data e.g. a photograph that contains information regarding the date and time it was taken.

Best site hut biscuit with Rob

What is your job role?

Geophysics Project Officer

How long have you worked for Allen Archaeology?

6 years and 9 months

How would describe your excavation technique?

Hulk Smash

How long have you been working in archaeology?

6 years and 9 months

How did you get into archaeology?

A long and complicated story involving being a medical student, a holiday entertainer in Cyprus and then finally a stint at Bristol University studying Archaeological Science (mostly playing hockey). That’s very much the short version.

What is the best thing about your job?

Having minions to boss around is certainly a plus, but actually it’s getting out to new sites and through the magic of fluxgate magnetometry getting to be the first person to see archaeological features that have been buried for hundreds if not thousands of years.

Specialist skills?

The ability to continue walking all day every day and cover ridiculous amounts of area whilst surveying in a remarkably short period of time.

Nothing stops Rob’s dedication to walking for geophysics

Best site hut biscuit?

Bourbon. And if you don’t think so, then you’re wrong.

Geophysics as endurance training #OpStretcher

Rob Evershed, Geophysics Project Officer

Normally I’m either found sitting at my desk, analysing geophysical surveys, or out in a field walking around with a machine that goes beep (a lot) whilst the magical pixies within it draw a picture of what’s under the ground. Recently there’s been a very large amount of walking whilst conducting a geophysical survey of a proposed cable location. I’ve probably been averaging 15 to 20km a day, 4 or 5 days a week for a large part of the last 6 to 9 months. This has been wonderful for my fitness if not for the health of my work boots – I’ve managed to wear out two pairs so far.

Nothing stops Rob’s dedication to walking for geophysics

Fortunately all this walking has an added benefit, it’s turned out to be perfect training for a charity event I’m taking part in from the 26th May to the 4rd June. Away from archaeology I like to play a lot of field hockey. Depending on who I’m talking to I either describe myself as an archaeologist who happens to play hockey, or a hockey player with a sideline in archaeology. I have been very fortunate and proud to belong to a charity hockey team called ‘Hockey for Heroes’ for the last five years. We raise funds for Help for Heroes, by mixing exceptional physical exertion combined with playing hockey.

Playing hockey in rather better weather

This year’s challenge is our biggest yet and involves walking from Sophia Gardens in Cardiff to Marlow Hockey Club in Buckinghamshire. Along the way we’ll visit various hockey clubs and play 30 games of hockey over the 10 day period. We will also be taking it in turn to carry a stretcher containing former Royal Marine Dominic Lovett who was injured during a military training exercise and is now tetraplegic.

Duration: 10 days
Distance carrying stretcher: 200 miles
Hockey Games: 30
Squad size: 40

The #OpStretcher squad

We will also have the Great Britain Men’s Hockey Team Manager, Andy Halliday, supporting us on our journey by dribbling a hockey ball along the entire route behind the stretcher!

As you can probably imagine it’s not an easy task we’ve set ourselves this year, and hopefully we will be able to raise as much money as possible. If you’d like to help sponsor me visit https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/Robert-Evershed or text OPST71 £5 or OPST71 £10 to 70070

I’m very hopeful that the many, many weeks of geophysical surveying that I’ve done will provide perfect training for this event, and I’d like to thank you for taking the time to read this. I will be making regular updates on twitter https://twitter.com/robertevershed to let everyone know how we’re getting along, and more information can be found at https://hockeyforheroes.co.uk/