Tag Archives: archaeology

Jousting

There’s nothing better than a cool drink in a pub on a sunny day off followed by a spot of jousting. Yes, jousting and not watching it but actually doing it! I recently returned to The Knights of Middle England at Warwick to feed my rapidly growing addiction.

Horse riding in its less violent forms has been a huge part of my life since I was a child. My love of horses is part of the reason why I am interested in history with its Mongolian hordes, the Charge of the Light Brigade and medieval Knights with their chivalry and tournaments.

As most people probably know, jousting was a medieval sport where two knights cantered towards each other, aiming to break their lance on certain parts of the body to score points. It was initially a training for warfare, alongside other war games, but towards the mid to late medieval period, it began to become more of a spectacle, a bit like football nowadays but a lot more aggressive!

During the two hour lesson I attempted to master three skills; the rings, tent pegging and the quintain. The aim of the lessons are to get you up to a standard to be able to compete in the bi-annual amateur competitions which feature these skills; as well as jousting at an experienced knight, and of course to have a lot of fun.

The Rings!

We began with the rings; the lance looked like it would barely fit through! I succeeded with the largest rings they had, but they can get a lot smaller. The rings are placed on props above the tilt line rather than on the gallows; like in A Knight’s Tale. It was fairly easy to get one ring, but then I often ended up trying too hard to aim at the second ring rather than keep it level and straight to secure the first ring before getting to the second.

The hardest event: tent pegging

We then moved on to tent pegging, where we are told that the ‘sport’ began during the crusades with target practice on the heads of buried enemies. It has been used as a training exercise since the 4th Century BC in Asia, it was also very popular in India against elephant-mounted troops. This was the event in which I had the least skill, my timing was awful. I would get in position to spear the peg then wait too long, hitting the ground behind the peg! I did manage to get it a few times, which is some consolation.

Hitting the quintain

Then we moved on the final skill and the one that was the most fun – hitting the quintain, a revolving shield with a ball on a string which follows it round on the opposite side. This packs a hell of a punch. On your first run you are mostly concerned with the ball hitting you in the back, but this changes to worrying about the force that travels down the lance as you hit a solid metal object!

The whole event left me on such an adrenaline high, it was fantastic! Although it also left with a nasty three week long bruise on my chest!

I thoroughly enjoyed my brief time as a woman warrior in training (check out this Guardian article about the inclusion of women in English Heritage events) and it has me completely hooked, I’m planning my next lesson as we speak!

Best site hut biscuit with Mia

What is your job role?
Project Officer

Loving life in 2008

How long have you worked for Allen Archaeology?
For nine years in September

How would describe your excavation technique?
Once upon a time I suppose it could have been described as fast and furious, but with a bun in the oven the spade has been put on a shelf for a while

How long have you been working in archaeology?
About ten years

How did you get into archaeology?
It has always interested me, but I never considered it an occupation until I somehow found myself with a degree in it and thought, why not? I started off in Ireland and a year later ended up at Allen Archaeology.

What is the best thing about your job?
Probably that I’m still learning new things with every job. In the beginning, everything was new and the learning curve steep and interesting. When I started it was a really small company with less than a handful of people and so I got to try everything almost in one go. As the years have gone by, different staff and people with different skills, have helped me deepen and broaden my own.

Specialist skills?
I don’t know about special, but I’ve done a few building surveys throughout the years. I believe I wrote a few clay tobacco pipe reports as well, but that only lasted for a short and sweet time; they’ve got someone much more skillful to do this these days.

Best site hut biscuit?
Well, any biscuit or cookie with a gooey nougat centre rates high on my list, although their lifespan tend to be quite short in my presence.

A roundup of the week

It’s been a busy week at AAL so this weeks blog is a little round-up of what we’ve been up to.

Warning: Images of human remains feature in this post

You might have already seen the excitement on our site at University of Lincoln. During monitoring works we uncovered human remains dating from the Roman period close to the River Witham.

Tobin has been visiting a site in Cumbria where we have been undertaking a Watching Brief

Rachel working on Damian's site near Peterborough

Damian has had a team out working on an evaluation near Peterborough.

The geophysics team enjoying a break in coastal Lincolnshire

Rob has been out with a team to start a large geophysics project on the Lincolnshire coast where they’ve been contending with a lot of weather but enjoying the location!

Fee’s been working hard in London

Al is dealing with challenging conditions in Brentford

Work is continuing on our “big” project in Market Harborough where the team are undertaking an open area excavation

Bryn has been working hard processing environmental samples

Yvonne has joined the archives team and is getting up to speed as Cova heads off on maternity leave

Nasha has been busy editing reports and dealing with publicity.

Josh has been analysing lithics for a specialist report

What is a watching brief?

Following on from our post “Evaluation by trial trenching” this weeks post is going to explain what a “watching brief” is.

A watching brief, scheme of works, or programme of monitoring and recording, is usually the final stage of archaeological investigation, and may follow on from desk-based studies, evaluation trenching or excavation. Usually one archaeologist works closely with the groundworkers, monitoring their excavations which might be for foundation trenches, services, drainage or landscaping. The archaeologist records any archaeological remains that are exposed.

A watching brief can be applied to a scheme of any size. For example, on a large linear scheme such as a pipeline, it can follow stages of non-intrusive and intrusive survey that have (hopefully) identified and investigated the areas of greatest archaeological interest. The watching brief is used as a ‘failsafe’ to double check stripped areas where little or no archaeology is likely to be present. This often requires a degree of patience – watching a machine strip topsoil for kilometre after kilometre without finding anything! It is also essential to take a good book, for any delays as spoil is moved and machines are repaired or refuelled.

A small team working on a watching brief for a linear scheme. A good book is essential!

Many small watching briefs are undertaken as the only stage of archaeological work on a site. For example they might take place during the groundworks for one or two new houses or an extension to an existing one. These clients may never have dealt with archaeology before and may never need to again, and so we are often asked ‘What happens if you find stuff? Will it stop the job?’ The answer is almost always no and on the rare occasions that unexpected or significant archaeology is exposed, additional staff can be deployed to site to limit delays.

Watching briefs can be interesting and challenging. Working on a busy construction site you need to keep your wits about you and have a keen understanding of health and safety. We inspect and clean the exposed sides and bases of the foundation trenches to piece together the evidence provided by these cross sections through the site, tying together fragments of field boundary ditches, pits, landscaping layers or other features to gain an understanding of the area. We will also recover dating evidence, such as pieces of pottery, whenever possible.

When the archaeological fieldwork is complete, the developer will carry on with their building programme and we still have plenty of work left to do, cleaning and analysing any finds from the site, preparing the report and depositing the project archive with the local museum to sign off the client’s archaeological condition and make the results publically accessible to this and future generations.

The AAL trainee scheme

I graduated from University of Bournemouth in the summer of 2015. I had worked on some research projects as part of my degree and had some experience of volunteering, but no commercial archaeological experience. Without experience it’s normally very hard to get into commercial archaeology, as some of my fellow graduates can attest to. I was lucky enough to apply to Allen Archaeology at just the right time and was offered a start as a trainee in November.

Working at Lincoln University

I started out in the office washing and marking finds. These are important skills but they can get a bit repetitive so I jumped at the opportunity to go out on site for the first time – to Whisby quarry. It was certainly a bit of a culture shock compared to the academic digs I’d been on before! Work was fast paced, colder, muddier and harder work. However, the site was fairly straightforward and with some help from my supervisor Damian Podlinski I got through it all right.

From there it was time to move into Lincoln, where the company was digging in preparation for construction to start on a new building for the university. The site was next to the river and fairly deep, which meant it was under water most of the time. So again, wet, muddy, cold. We had a great team though and halfway through the site we’d figured out a system that made light work of it.

“Work is fast paced” this site in Yorkshire demonstrated how quickly I could work given training

Perhaps one of the most informative parts of my traineeship was the last week; I was taught GIS in the office by the GIS guru Chris Casswell. Although I knew about the program, I’d never used it before and after some initial hiccups everything went smoothly. As an added bonus using GIS didn’t involve getting either wet, mud or cold in January!

At the end of the traineeship I went to broaden my range of experience by working for another archaeological company in London for 5 weeks before returning to AAL in March. Since then I’ve worked on a number of different sites and types of job; I’ve done watching briefs both alone and supervised, I’ve excavated Roman settlements and most recently I worked on a medieval building near Lincoln Cathedral. No doubt there will be more interesting sites to come – and some cold, wet and muddy ones but the trainee scheme has allowed me to get my foot in the door working in commercial archaeology.

A secondment to the Archives

I joined the company as a project archaeologist in June 2015. For the majority of my time here so far I have been out onsite digging, firstly working on the large Roman site at North Killingholme and since then a variety of other sites across the country. Every now and again, I’m posted in the office where I participate in post excavation tasks such as washing and marking finds, which I quite enjoy.

At the end of February there was an advert on the front desk advertising a temporary secondment as an archives assistant; I jumped at the opportunity to apply. I saw it as a good opportunity to learn valuable skills; develop my interest in post-excavation processes further and increase my knowledge of artefacts.

My application was successful and for the best part of March and April I undertook the secondment; temporarily becoming an archives assistant. During this time I had the opportunity to learn a variety of new skills and experience more of the processes that happen in post-ex, alongside getting to handle all the exciting artefacts that come back from site. I helped to package artefacts to be sent to the specialists, sort and catalogue skeletons, write inventories and help organise finds from incoming projects.

My primary role was to assist and prepare a number of site archives to be deposited to their corresponding museums across the country. In this I prepared both the written site archive, so all the registers, drawings, context sheets etc. and boxed the associated site artefacts. The whole process for each site had to adhere to their associated museum guidelines, each of which was different. I assisted with site collections from Leicestershire, Lincolnshire and Winchester. Some of the tasks within this were quite repetitive, such as numbering and labelling digital photographs to correspond to the photograph registers or writing accession numbers on all the documents. Nevertheless these repetitive aspects are quite necessary as without it the allotted archive wouldn’t adhere to the correct format and so would be at risk of being rejected by the museums.

I really enjoyed my time in archive department, it was great working with the Archive team and getting to know the ins and outs of what goes on downstairs. It was an enlightening experience, as I have now seen first-hand the full process to which each site and it’s artefacts and documents, takes before it finally it ends up in a museum. From being excavated in the field, then in post ex getting washed, dried, marked, sorted, catalogued, sent to a specialist, reports written, stored then finally boxed up with the related documents and deposited to a museum.

Best site hut biscuit with Catriona

Cat working in the archives at AAL

What is your job role?
Project Archaeology (Archives)

How long have you worked for Allen Archaeology?
1 year and 7 months

How would describe your excavation technique?
Pick and Mix

How long have you been working in archaeology?
1 year and 7 months

How did you get into archaeology?
Came for a week’s volunteering at Allen, became a trainee and have never looked back.

What is the best thing about your job?
Seeing all the nice shiny finds come back from the conservator.

Excavating a skeleton in October 2014

Specialist skills?
Organising baking competitions at North Killingholme- we’ve had mince pies, biscuits and tarts!

Best site hut biscuit?
I like to jazz it up with a pink wafer 

Evaluation by trial trenching

An evaluation by trial trenching is sometimes requested as a condition of planning consent, or more frequently since the advent of NPPF, on advice from the planning authority prior to the application being submitted or determined. The condition or advice is based on the likelihood that the site holds archaeological potential. The applications vary but could for instance concern a small or large scale development that involves any below ground impacts such as housing developments, industrial developments or landscaping.

Company director Chris Clay watching a trench being opened

Several factors play a part for allocating the trenches within the development area. Some may be based on geophysical survey results that target certain anomalies of archaeological potential, whilst others may be strategically placed within the area to try and determine the extent of any potential archaeology. How much of the site that will be sampled is usually down to the local authorities and their policies, but tends to vary between 2% and 5% of a development area GPS survey equipment allows us to target our trenches at agreed locations to centimetre accuracy.

The majority of trenches are excavated by a mechanical excavator fitted with a smooth ditching bucket. However, to everyone’s dread, there are those cases where hand dug trenches are the only way forward! In either case, it is up to the supervising archaeologist to decide on the appropriate depth. Either this will be on the first significant archaeological horizon or when the natural geology has been reached.

Once open, the trench is ready to be investigated and recorded. If there are any archaeological features, these will be excavated by hand. Any finds will be retained, bagged and labelled and soil samples may be taken to identify the feature’s function or to give information about the past surrounding landscape and environment. Plans, section drawings, descriptions of deposits and further photographs will also be taken.

When all the trenches have been recorded, they are backfilled and the post-excavation work can begin in the office. Finds are washed and marked and submitted to the relevant specialists for detailed analysis.

After all the data has been compiled and a report has been written and sent off to the client and the local planning authority, a decision will be made by the county or city archaeologist for that area, whether any further work is required. If the results show the potential for significant archaeology, or features of archaeological importance, the evaluation may be followed by an open area excavation, where a large part of the development area is stripped down to the archaeological horizon. If the evaluation shows some more limited archaeological presence that requires further investigation, but none that warrants an excavation, the evaluation may be followed by an archaeological watching brief. This work will be carried out during the actual development groundworks.

A secondment to the Geophysics team

Getting the hang of magenetometry

In February 2016 AAL opened internal applications for a Project Archaeologist to undertake a three month secondment with the Geophysics Project Officer, Rob Evershed. The secondment would give someone experience in basic geophysical survey including; undertaking the surveys, setting up surveys (gridding out and the use of GPS), data analysis and interpretations, the post-fieldwork reporting process and preparations of illustrations and preparing the archive.

I applied as I have always enjoyed taking part in geophysics projects; being able to create my own interpretations of the sites as my understanding of them develops, and the physical nature of the role which allows me to loose myself in the task at hand.

Still going

Prior to working with AAL I had experience of working on archaeological geophysics projects at another company. I hoped this role would allow me to develop my skills and put me in a position to specialise in archaeological geophysics.

GIS training with Rob

Rob has been a great (and patient!) tutor allowing me to get involved with all elements of the work. It has been challenging physically (Rob works at a very fast pace, sometimes completing 20-30 grids a day, almost twice as many as normal people), and mentally, as I have very limited experience with writing and producing reports.

Like everyone I have really enjoyed the sunny days on site, but I have also found I like seeing the project through to completion. Being able to put together background research with any topographic clues and finally seeing the processed results is a really engaging task. Equally the sites which provide us with complete surprises are great, as we are the first people to discover them; one site we uncovered evidence for a medieval settlement which had not been picked up in the background research.

I have come away feeling I know a lot more about what happens after the geophysical survey and a lot more confident in my abilities. I hope that following the completion of my secondment I might be able to start running my own, small, projects and processing my own data for producing reports.