Author: boxfordparish (Page 8 of 11)

A busy day – surface mapping before the digger arrives…………………………

Janet and

Nancy looking for treasures and marking them up on a grid!

Lunch break for some in the party tent!

Anyway due to everyone’s efforts we are all ready for the digger tomorrow – trenches marked up, field walking pretty well finished and geophys well underway.

And we are off……………………………………….with Steve Clark and Janet Firth on Total Station and Richard Miller on gradiometer! Great strides all round with half of the gridding out done and some geophys to boot – despite some heavy and blustery showers. Thanks to all who made such a good start today. We hope to finish the gridding out tomorrow with more geophys if it’s not too wet. If you want to join in this HLF community dig, please contact joy@appleton.uk.net – you don’t need previous experience, training is given on site by a professional company, Cotswold Archaeology.

Most people in Boxford will know there is to be a further Roman dig this summer – this time at Wyfield two weeks from 20th August. But you don’t have to live in Boxford to take part! If you haven’t already signed up to dig but would like to have ago – no previous experience is necessary – please let me know. Students over 16 are very welcome. We know from some of our previous student volunteers, how good this kind of activity looks on a CV. For those who have already expressed an interest in digging this summer, would you be kind enough to let me know your availability during the period 22nd August to 3rd September as soon as possible please. Although the farmer has not yet confirmed our dates, we hope this time guide will be near enough and hope to have an Open Day for the public at the end – most likely on September 4th. But more on that later.

 Access is not as easy as Hoar Hill and we cannot get a site hut near enough to the site. If you have a tent we can borrow for the two weeks, we would be most grateful – full height frame tents or similar for shelter as the site is quite exposed. We shall be using them to keep papers and personal belongings safe and accessible. We would also need help to put them up!

If you can help, please contact me at joy@appleton.uk.net

 The fact that we have a number of Roman buildings in such a small geographical area would suggest that Boxford was a very busy place during the Roman era. For those of you in the parish of Boxford – if you have found any Roman artifacts in your garden – and this is quite possible – please add them to the National database yourself or contact the local liaison finds officer Anni Byard email Anni.Byard@Oxfordshire.gov.uk. If you want help with this, please let us know. Any information added to the National database just increases our overall understanding of what was going on here nearly 2000 years ago. 

 Many thanks and we look forward to hearing from you.

 Joy 

The Motley Crew

The Boxford History Project (BHP) and Berkshire Archaeology Research Group (BARG) will be excavating a new Roman site within the parish of Boxford this summer; supported by Cotswold Archaeology as usual.  Bearing in mind the vagaries of the English weather and it being difficult to predict harvest exactly, the farmer has advised that we can expect to be on the site between crops from 20th August to a maximum of 20th September. So we will hope to be working for 2 weeks from the 20th August – please make a note in your diary. We are a motley crew but very welcoming, so if it’s your first time don’t worry. you would like to join us – no previous knowledge required as training will be given on site – please contact joy@appleton.uk.net. There are lots of different types of work on a dig – it’s not all digging the ground with a mattock! Please come along to find out a little more of what’s under your feet! We look forward to meeting you.

Following the informative and entertaining talk with which Neil Holbrook kick-started the BHP Roman lecture series in January, Sam Moorhead – coin specialist from the British Museum will be giving a lecture entitled “Roman coins from Boxford, Berkshire and Britannia!”

Date: Wednesday 15th June 2016 at 7.30pm.
Venue: Boxford Village Hall, Lambourn Valley Road, Boxford, Berks. RG20 8DD.
It would be helpful to have an idea of numbers, so please email to confirm you are coming: joy@appleton.uk.net

Many thanks and look forward to seeing you.

We look forward to seeing you on the Boxford Big Dig 2016 in August and at any or all of the Roman Boxford Lecture Series 2016 – so please put these dates in the new diary that you found in your Christmas stocking! We have been lucky enough to secure some really great speakers for this coming year … … … .. and you won’t want to miss them when you read all about them – please see below! All lectures will be in Boxford Village Hall, Lambourn Valley Road RG20 8DD at 7.30pm.

We anticipate a high demand for places, so if you plan to come please RSVP your name to: parishcouncil@boxford.org.uk to secure a seat. Thank you.

10th February 2016 – Neil Holbrook -“The Villa in Roman Britain: Design, Evolution and Use.”

Neil gained a first class degree in archaeology from Newcastle University in 1984 before starting work in professional archaeology. He went straight from University to direct excavations on Hadrian’s Wall for English Heritage and spent a number of happy years developing a specialism in Roman archaeology whilst working in the North East. He moved on to Exeter Museum where he worked on Roman finds before being appointed Archaeological Manager at Cotswold Archaeology in 1991. In addition to his managerial duties Neil maintains his interest in Roman archaeology and continues to publish widely. He will be known to a wider audience through the popular Time Team TV programme.

He sits on a number of Committees, including the Federation of Archaeological Managers and Employers (formally SCAUM); the Archaeology Committee of the Roman Society and the Publications Committee of the Bristol & Gloucestershire Archaeological Society. He is also a Visiting Research Fellow in the Department of Archaeology at Reading University.

15th June 2016 – Sam Moorhead – Coin specialist at the British Museum – lecture title to be announced.

Sam Moorhead taught Classics and Archaeology for many years before joining the British Museum in 1997 as Staff Lecturer for Archaeology. He was on the team that made the award-winning Virtually the Ice Age website for Creswell Crags, and he produced a CD-Rom with Channel 4, Roman Journeys. Having worked in interpretation for galleries and exhibitions, such as Persia and Michelangelo for three years, he joined the Department of Britain, Europe and Prehistory in July 2006.

He has written about ancient and early mediaeval coins since publishing the Ackland Art Museum collection at the University North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1984). Since the early 1980s, he has published Roman coin finds from Wiltshire. This was to be the basis for his M.Phil thesis for the Insititute of Archaeology, University College London, in 2001. He worked on the excavations at Tel Jezreel (1992-6) where, in addition to working on the coins and the Roman to Umayyad periods, he assisted in the ceramic research which initiated the major reappraisal of Iron Age chronology in the Levant. He also worked with the University of East Anglia at San Vincenzo in the Molise and has published the coins from the villa site (1997).

Presently, he works as a numismatist on the UEA/Butrint Foundation excavations at Butrint in Albania where he is responsible for the ancient coins. Thousands of coins have been found on different parts of the site and he is currrently working on the nummus economy of the fourth to seventh centuries AD.

Sam is the Finds Adviser for Iron Age and Roman coins overseeing the recording and researching of Iron Age and Roman coins on the Portable Antiquities Scheme database: www.finds.org.uk

9th November 2016 – Julian Richards – lecture title to be announced.

Julian is a Wessex based archaeologist and broadcaster with a passion for Stonehenge.

From 1975 to 1980 Julian worked for the Berkshire Archaeological Unit, helping to build the County Sites and Monuments Record, excavating and carrying out a survey of the Berkshire Downs. This was where he had his first encounter with human burials, something that sowed the seeds for his Ancestors TV series nearly 25 years later.

In 1980 he was moved to Salisbury to work for the newly created Wessex Archaeology, spending the next decade running the ‘Stonehenge Environs Project’, a detailed study of Stonehenge and its surrounding landscape. This project contributed in a small way to several programmes about Stonehenge. In 1994 he left to work for English Heritage on their Monuments Protection Programme (the MPP). This took him back to his solitary fieldwork roots, inspecting and preparing reports on the protection of important archaeological sites in Wiltshire, Hampshire and the Isle of Wight.

However, shortly after starting work on the MPP he was asked to contribute to another TV programme, this one about how Stonehenge was built. This programme was centred around an ambitious experiment involving a full scale concrete replica of the tallest of the Stonehenge trilithons and led to a new idea for television that eventually became ‘Meet the Ancestors’.The first series of MTA was commissioned in the autumn of 1996 and he worked in broadcasting and writing until 2004 This involved seven series of ‘Meet the Ancestors’ (1998 – 2004), a five part series ‘Blood of the Vikings’ in 2000 and over 60 programmes in the series ‘Mapping the Town’ on Radio 4 (1999-2004). Since 2004 he has continued writing and broadcasting including the 2011 “Meet the Ancestors revisited”

After a hectic fortnight and busy Open Day yesterday, the site was very quiet today – save for the sound of the hexicopter. The little drone controlled by Keith and John was taking some  aerial shots of the site without the distraction of people! We look forward to seeing the film in the future. All the tools and equipment have been returned to different archaeological organisations. The finds will be sent to specialists.

The BHP would like to offer heartfelt thanks to the following for making this dig  productive, memorable and really enjoyable:

BARG members and Steve and Lindsey in particular – Steve for leading the dig and Lindsey for purloining equipment from other archaeology groups and all members for imparting knowledge and expertise graciously.
Cotswold Archaeology – as our lead professionals  but with an easy touch when working with volunteers
Landowners and local farmers for being so accommodating and supportive.
Keith and John for bringing the hexicopter to give us spectacular shots
Dave for delivering equipment up to the site on a daily basis in his 4×4
Neighbours for accommodating additional parking
Bruce for being such a brilliant digger driver especially over the Roman Baths find
And all our volunteers – 48 at the last count spread over the two week period – some who came every day – diggers and finds processors all.  Every street in Boxford was represented by at least one volunteer. We also had a smattering of students from most of the secondary schools in Newbury – several going on to study at Uni this year. We hope that all our volunteers and other interested folk will come back next year when we dig another Roman site near Boxford. Please subscribe to the blog so you get updates and news about feedback sessions, lectures and information about the finds.