In February East came to the end of a seven-month excavation in the village of Warboys but conditions on site at this time were extremely wet and muddy. Yes, wet and muddy even for the sticky Cambridgeshire clay! So, what do you do when it’s just not safe (let alone particularly enticing) to invite large numbers of the public to view a commercial archaeological site at the end of an excavation? In this instance, we decided to postpone our outreach event until the summer in order to give local residents a chance to view a selection of the finds, meet the team involved and learn more about the discoveries made in their village.
As Community Archaeology Manager for Oxford Archaeology, I oversee all volunteering, outreach and community work for the organisation. For my ‘Day in Archaeology’, I’m packing away, reviewing the feedback and reflecting on the outreach event we held at Warboys Methodist Church on Saturday.
I don’t think that an indoor exhibition is a substitute for the experience of crossing the threshold of an excavation area and being on the ground to see how the archaeological process works, and I would always choose to do an open day on site where possible, but every cloud has a silver lining. It has been useful to have more time to prepare and publicise this event and being indoors meant we were not subject to the whims of the weather or the ground conditions which can impede people who might struggle to walk very far.
Furthermore, I welcome opportunities to inform people what is involved in the post-excavation process. Hosting outreach events at the point of excavation can give the misleading impression that digging is all there is to archaeology. Five months after finishing this site in Warboys, the vast number of finds have been washed, catalogued and are now being assessed by specialists. It means that we can present a wider range of artefacts and talk about what we hope to learn from them in the coming months, and how this information is synthesised with the contextual information collected on site into a meaningful narrative.
Over 140 local residents dropped in on the half day exhibition, many of them staying a considerable time to speak to our four staff on hand. It’s evident from the feedback that visitors particularly appreciated the chance to talk to and ask questions of archaeologists, creating an interesting two-way dialogue about how we know what we know about the past and what it means to people today.
I was helped in preparing materials for the event by a Year 10 school work experience student who was at our office in Bar Hill last week. He put together information and photos for the display boards, selected finds for display and prepared their object labels and essentially co-curated the exhibition with me and the Project Officer who ran the site. In his own words: “I have enjoyed helping with the outreach event picking out which small finds we want to use and setting up the displays which everyone will see and conveying information in a way that is easy for every on and knowing that without this people would not know about what went on in the local area.”
It was a collaborative venture in another sense. Members of the Warboys Archaeology Group, who were set up by OA East as part of the Lottery funded Jigsaw community archaeology project, not only volunteered on site but they assisted with the logistics for Saturday’s event. It’s invaluable to call upon local knowledge about the best date and location to hold the open day and where to advertise it. WAG also sourced extra tables and came along to support the team – even bringing along bunting to put up outside the church! We were also grateful to the members of the church congregation for the use of the venue and for putting on refreshments for visitors. It’s not every outreach event where you have baked potatoes and homemade cakes on offer!
I’ve particularly enjoyed organising this event, not only for having a fabulous site and set of finds to proudly display, but for the involvement of so many different people in preparing for and hosting the event. It’s not been a typical outreach event but then I don’t think there ever is any such thing as a ‘typical’ day in community archaeology!
For more information about the discoveries at OA East's excavation at Farrier's Way in Warboys, Cambridgeshire, visit the article on our website: https://oxfordarchaeology.com/news/831-early-settlement-at-warboys-cambridgeshire
