Issue 118

May / June 2011

Contents

news

All the latest archaeology news from around the country

on the web

Fieldwork opportunities and the South Downs

letters

Your views and responses

features

THE BIG DIG: Gough's Cave, Somerset

6 Threatened Sites

Overthrowing Egypt's Past

ISSN 1357-4442

Editor Mike Pitts

on the web

I want to dig!

Opportunities to join excavations have never been stronger: and as commercial practices suffer in the recession, community projects flourish. Your next trench starts here.

As summer approaches the archaeologist's thoughts turn to fieldwork. How to take part? The Council for British Archaeology provides a comprehensive listing of opportunities, some free and some requiring payment. Sums vary from a low cost per day, to a substantial contribution in return for more specific training. This, together with Archaeology Abroad, and the CBA's guide to Volunteering in Archaeology, is, in many ways, all you need.

Similar opportunities are not, curiously, listed on the Go Digging section of the Current Archaeology website, but there is advice on working as an excavation volunteer or student excavator. Some digs are listed in the Join In pages, and the company is advertising for an unpaid intern to help compile its Digs Guide 2011.

Past Horizons, ambitiously, offers to help find the "perfect fieldschool or volunteer project"; in addition, they will sell you every conceivable piece of kit, from a WHS trowel to first aid. The related website, BAJR, provides a plethora of free guides to help along the way, from Surviving Your First Dig (number 31) to Recovering Human Remains (number 13).

It is also worth contacting commercial archaeological field practices, many of whom provide volunteer training or opportunities. AOC Archaeology profiles volunteer involvement on their homepage. North Pennines Archaeology Ltd's education section offers a variety of fieldwork.

Many local societies run excavations or act as clearing houses to place volunteers on fieldwork. Orkney Archaeology Society matches a list of volunteers with local excavations, while the Chichester and District Archaeology Society runs training courses, and gets out and about to dig.

English Heritage has varied opportunities for voluntary work, if not excavation. Cadw offers work experience and placements. Similar work may be available at Historic Scotland and DOE Northern Ireland, but is less well advertised. The National Trust, in contrast, actively seeks a variety of volunteers, as does the National Trust for Scotland.

Further opportunities are for specific types of work. Archaeology Scotland offers an Archaeology Summer School, and the ambitious, but successful, Adopt-a-Monument scheme. Scotland's Rural Past provides training for those who wish to get out and record settlement remains. Shorewatch targets those interested in recording the disappearing archaeology of the coast. Research and training is provided (for a fee) at the Scottish Crannog Centre, as at many private ventures around the UK (eg Butser Ancient Farm, Hampshire; West Stow Anglo-Saxon Village, Suffolk; Celtic Harmony Camp, Hertfordshire).

There are also organisations dedicated to the promotion of voluntary scientific work as a charitable, yet profitable, business. Perhaps the best known in archaeology is Earthwatch. Many archaeology projects throughout the UK have benefited from Earthwatch volunteers and funding, and it is possible to join fieldwork in hotter climes if you wish. Projects Abroad will arrange for you to join work in Peru or Romania. There is no excuse to be a couch potato this summer.

Digging on the web

• CBA Briefing – britarch.ac.uk/briefing
  • Succinct first port of call for anyone looking to join an excavation
• ShovelBums – shovelbums.org
  • Fieldwork opportunities around the world (and paid employment in the US)
• Past Horizons World Projects – pasthorizons.com/WorldProjects
  • Pick from well-described projects using a handy Google world map
• Shorewatch – shorewatch.co.uk
  • Fabulous Scottish locations, training, support and a worthwhile end product
• AOC Archaeology Group – aocarchaeology.com
  • Few commercial practices are so upfront about encouraging the community

Caroline Wickham-Jones teaches archaeology at the University of Aberdeen

Sharing the fragile history of a beautiful landscape

A website to help you savour the historic remains of the Hampshire and Sussex chalklands launched on 1 April, as the new South Downs National Park became fully operational. David McOmish reports.

Cissbury, a major landscape feature embracing neolithic flint mines, a substantial iron age hillfort and much else

It is a year since Hilary Benn, then Defra Secretary of State, signed the designation order that confirmed the South Downs as Britain's newest National Park. Now, on the eve of the formal establishment of the National Park Authority, English Heritage has launched a website aimed at introducing the archaeology of the area to as wide an audience as possible.

The site is not designed to be a comprehensive presentation of everything that has ever been said about archaeology in the National Park – in recent years there have been a good number of publications directed towards this. Instead, we wish to develop something that engages with a very wide and disparate audience, and also encourages people to get out there, and experience and enjoy the historic sites and landscapes for themselves.

Our view is, "Let's make archaeology a much more shared and democratic experience". When we have been working in the National Park, many people have asked us, "How do you know that is a barrow?" Or a field system, or a hillfort? Some of us take such features, and words, for granted, but this is something that we have to address – to demystify the secret codes by which field archaeologists communicate.

Archaeologists should be reassured that they are well placed to make a significant contribution in these days of "localism" and "community action". In all that we have done on the South Downs, putting "energy" back into the system has been paramount. By this I mean a widespread concern for the historic environment, and a willingness for people who are not archaeologists to take a lead in discovering, understanding and caring for the historic environment.

Any archaeologist has, on occasion, experienced the incredible excitement of, say, field research with all its new insights, only to see this dulled by pulling the publication together and then, finally, producing something that though worthy, is of little interest to more than a handful of people. That might sound a bit harsh, but it is a real challenge for us in developing the South Downs material, to ensure that we communicate the excitement of research and discovery, and that the energy created by this is enough to inspire the people who really matter – those living and working in, and visiting the South Downs – to appreciate and value the fabric of the world around them.

The focus of the website is to provide a general introduction to the landscapes of the South Downs, and underscore the value of their historic environment. We have attempted to address many of the concerns that arise from threat and risk to archaeological sites and their settings, and then to foster wider understanding and engagement. The South Downs National Park is a working environment, itself a product of farming across the millennia – the paradox, of course, is that it is modern farming that has done so much to remove or alter traces of past human activity.

The website's main components are three films which explore some of the issues in key locations within the park. These have been made and produced by a small team in English Heritage – Alun Bull, Steve Cole, James Davies, Eddie Lyons and Rebecca Pullen. Each is 15 minutes long and presented by Al Oswald as a very personal, choreographed walk through remarkably complex and beautiful landscapes. The journeys – Chanctonbury to Cissbury; Devil's Dyke to Edburton; Beachy Head to Lewes – introduce the viewer to rare and attractive sites, but they also ask questions of what it is we value and why and how we might be able to help others manage the land better. The hope is that it will inspire many to ask the same questions and provide solutions.

David McOmish is a senior archaeological investigator at English Heritage, Cambridge.

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