CITiZAN, the Coastal and Intertidal Zone Archaeological Network, is a National Lottery Heritage Fund supported community archaeology project. Within our six Discovery Programme areas we work with volunteers to record the rich archaeology of England’s coast and estuaries, to mitigate climate change effects and monitor coastal change.

By March each year we’re out on site. We’ve pored over tide tables, gathered landowner permissions, liaised with project partners and planned the majority of our fieldwork, training and workshops for the year. Volunteers have started to sign up and we’re looking forward to spending the rest of the season on the foreshore with them.

On Saturday 14 March this year the East Kent Coast Discovery Programme (my colleague Lawrence Northall and I, and our fantastic volunteers) were at Sandwich Bay. We were finishing our third phase of parallel fieldwork with the Nautical Archaeology Society: while they record the wrecks we’re busy surveying in the lines and groups of timber stakes that, in all probability, are the remains of fish weirs. It was the last day of a residential week in relative isolation: intermittent wi-fi, only snippets of news. We’d been handwashing diligently and practising elbow and foot bumps instead of handshakes and hugs. For us, and CITiZAN more widely, it still seemed possible we’d be on the foreshore over spring and summer.

Ten days later the UK was in lockdown. With fieldwork impossible we switched to digital outreach and have been busy, across the project with initiatives including my colleague Dani’s Crafting with CITiZAN (link below) series, our South West team’s webinars and the pan-CITiZAN project Armchair Archaeology (link below). We’ve also been catching up with fieldwork reports and that’s where the Stake(s) and ships come back in….

This is the fourth Day of Archaeology I’ve contributed to over the years and this time I’m in my garden (fully appreciative of the fact I have one) writing a blog based on our interim report over our work at beautiful Sandwich Bay. But I won’t give more away here and now! You’ll be able to read about the work we’ve done there and the conclusions we’ve come to on our website on 18 July, in a blog written especially for Festival of Archaeology Digital Week. You’ll also be able to read about what we’re planning to do there next and how YOU can get involved!

Keep an eye out for our Tweets, Instagram and Facebook posts over the Festival of Archaeology Digital Week: these will take you to updates, blogs and other information about the wonderful coastal and estuarine sites we work on with our fantastic volunteers, how you can get involved, and what we get up to on all the other days of the year...