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.

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.

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.