Excavation Experience

In 2010 I returned to SHARP during their excavation season. This was to report on the analysis of the iron knives from the site at one of the Tuesday night seminars, but also to provide some training in slag identification.

Now I regularly attend the excavations during the summer as a supervisor. I teach a week long archaeometallurgy course during the season and also provide on site expertise in metallurgy. I have taught sessions and supervised the Basic Excavation and Recording Techniques (BERT) course, or just simply assisted by digging or planning where needed. I also assist during the open days giving talks and demonstrations or helping with children activities.

Part of Bradford’s archaeology degree required me to gain valuable excavation experience. I applied to attend the Whithorn field school run by Headland Archaeology. This was a small research excavation to determine the extent and type of activities taking place north of the priory. During the excavations we found occasional ditches and pits, a possible sunken feature building and a large stone built building.

During this excavation I got the chance to run my own trench. We also had the opportunity to visit some of the key sites in the area.

During the summer of 2003 I also took the opportunity to work for a local archaeological consultantcy based in and around York. During the seven weeks I learnt new skills not gained during my time at Sedgeford, including how to instruct a JCB driver. I dug on two sites both with mostly Roman and Medieval remains.

The volunteer based excavations at Sedgeford are part of a larger, village wide archaeological project, SHARP (Sedgeford Historical and Archaeological Research Project). Before my undergraduate degree I spent a total of eight weeks over the summers of 2000, 2001 and 2002. Over these years I went from novice to someone they asked to help during the packing up (back filling) week.

The during my time at Sedgeford I completed two weeks of basic training in excavation and recording techniques. I also took to opportunity to try out all the different jobs on site, finds cleaning and sorting, environmental archaeology, geophysics, surveying and bones handling and analysis. I spent a large amount of time planning some of the larger areas, flint by flint. I also took part in the excavation open day wearing Anglo-Saxon re-enacting clothes and demonstrated ancient sewing techniques and explaining various finds.