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Lights, Camera, Action!

By Project Florence on July 2, 2012 in Anglo-Saxon, Community Archaeology, Day of Archaeology, DayOfArch2012, Film Making

My Day of Archaeology 2012 has been an exciting one, as my volunteers arrived on site for the first time, not to dig, but to make a movie.

I am the lucky archaeologist leading Project Florence, a community project aiming to get local residents involved in spreading the word about an exciting army excavation taking place on Salisbury Plain. This excavation is part of Operation Nightingale, a rehabilitation programme for wounded soldiers.

One of our key aims for the project is for volunteers to produce a DVD about the excavation as a record of the dig and to provide a legacy for Operation Nightingale. The volunteers, aged between 14 and 25, are being trained by professional film-makers to plan, film and edit the movie, which will be premiered at the Salisbury Arts Centre (SAC) in November.

Today was the first day of filming on site, following training sessions at SAC last week, and we were all eager to start catching the action. As I have no experience of movie-production, I am making the most of the chance to learn some new skills along with my volunteers. We are all working towards an Arts Award certificate.

We started our after-school training session with the basics, running over the things we learnt last week like how to frame the shot and how to find the best angle. Our ever-patient instructors, Jamie and Simon, explained that we need to take a mixture of interviews and ‘pretty pictures’ to stick together in the edit. So, we set about filming wide shots of trench activity, interviews with the archaeologists and soldiers, and close ups of interesting finds, so far including an Anglo-Saxon brooch and some amber beads. Our highlight of the day was getting to film one of the soldiers, Al, and his son Ben, lifting the most complete skeleton on site so far.

At the end of a busy two hours, I asked the group what they thought of the session:

“I found the archaeology interesting and liked learning about excavation and watching the skeleton being lifted.” Matt, 17

“I really enjoyed learning to use the sound equipment today, especially the boom. I can’t wait to put all our shots together to make the DVD!” Jess, 15

To find out more about both Project Florence and Operation Nightingale check out our blog – click here

Laura Joyner

Project Florence Officer

Wessex Archaeology

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Day of Archaeology in Macedonia 3

By NGO Archaeologica on June 30, 2012 in DayOfArch2012, Film Making, Maritime Archaeology

We already sent our documentary and our letter of participation. Our third post is about underwater archaeology and making documentaries for archaeological sites.

Some of our colleagues are doing underwater archaeology, so in the following video you can see their working day, little bit different of ours working days on the field

NGO Archaeologica together with MA Goran Sanev and Michail Stojanovski, archaeologists from Museum of Macedonia made film about the archaeological site Golemo Gradiste – Konjuh in Macedonia. Every year this site is researched by international team of archaeologists from Museum of Macedonia and Ms. Carolyn S. Snively from Gettysburg College, USA and hers students. The film is in post production and it will be presented in about few months.

This is how we celebrated The Day of Archaeology 2012. See you next year with more informations and new archaeological findings. Congratulations about the Day of Archaeology.

NGO Archaeologica – Skopje, Republic of Macedonia

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The John D. Cooper Center series: archaeoLOGIC

By CooperCenter on June 29, 2012 in Community Archaeology, Day of Archaeology, DayOfArch2012, Film Making, Prehistory

At the Dr. John D. Cooper Archaeological and Paleontological Center, we feel it is our duty to not only share Orange County’s heritage with our residents, but with the world. So we started The Cooper Channel! Our very own YouTube channel where we can educate the world the wonderful and rich history that Southern California has.

This series is called archaeoLOGIC, an archaeology quiz show, where Cooper Channel host and archaeologist, Diana Gurfein, presents local artifacts for our viewers to try and guess.

So in honor of Day of Archaeology 2012, we are presenting a few of our best episodes of archaeoLOGIC. Give it a watch and see if you identify the artifacts.

Good Luck!

For more information on the Cooper Center, visit our websites!

http://coopercenter.fullerton.edu/

http://www.youtube.com/user/CooperCenterOC?feature=mhee

https://twitter.com/#!/CooperCenter_OC

http://www.facebook.com/pages/John-D-Cooper-Center-Archaeology-Lab/170839769650965

http://www.facebook.com/OrangeCountyPaleo

Some Previous Episodes

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Archaeology at the End of the Date Line – Vicarious Video from Nukunonu, Tokelau

By Jesse Stephen on September 1, 2011 in Archaeological Prospection, Community Archaeology, Conservation, Day of Archaeology, DayofArch2011, Education, Excavation, Expeditions, Film Making, Osteology, Prehistory, Science, Survey

Just west of here other countries are a day ahead. But here on Nukunonu atoll, we’re still living it up as Friday, the 29^th of July 2011 .

Banter over date lines aside, the Day of Archaeology has come at a good time for us. Lots going on, and lots to report. Too much, really. We’re a diverse group of folks who have come together for the Tokelau Science Education and Research Project.

We’re interested in learning more about the prehistory of the three atolls that are to be found in this expanse of the Pacific Ocean, from the moment the very first human being landed on these coral-covered shores right through to the present day and the approximately 400 folks who continue to live beautiful lives here.

Of course archaeology is best experienced firsthand, but when that’s an impossibility the next best thing just might come from cameras. With that in mind, the team here (including both “outside” and “inside” members) has contributed a number of interviews and so I’ve cobbled together a short piece for your viewing, one that will hopefully get you just a bit closer to Tokelau and to everything we’re seeing and experiencing out here…

Cheers to all the other contributors and the organizers of Day of Archaeology, and all the best from Tokelau!

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Shorne Woods Community Archaeology Project, Gravesend, Kent

By Andrew Mayfield on August 15, 2011 in Community Archaeology, DayofArch2011, Education, Environmental Archaeology, Excavation, Film Making, Finds, Medieval, Periods, Science

Randall Manor Dig 2011

Greetings from Shorne Woods! From the 9th to the 31st of July, schools, volunteers, members of the public, local archaeology groups and societies worked on the excavations taking place at Randall Manor. The excavations form part of a wider community archaeology project to investigate the archaeology and history of the Shorne Woods Country Park. On the Day of Archaeology itself we were all hard at work trying to understand the latest in a long line of questions prompted by our excavations. How do the different building phases relate to each other? How many times was the kitchen rebuilt? Do we have a bakehouse, a brewery or even a smokehouse structure in the north east corner of the site? We have been running a daily blog about the dig on our facebook site www.facebook.com/archaeologyinkent and also have a page at www.kent.gov.uk/randallmanor

One of our youngest aspiring photographers on site has also taken a series of shots to reflect a Day in the Life of the Randall Manor Dig and I will be posting these on facebook shortly…

The manor site was occupied from the 12th century through to the early 16th century, with our pottery assemblage and historical research in agreement over the main period of occupation. The manor was home to a branch of the de Cobham family, who lived at the site from c.1250-1360. We have what we believe to be a large timber hall, it’s northern end rebuilt in stone, with an additional building containing a garderobe then built onto the main building. Detached from it all is a kitchen building with successive tile and then stone hearths.

Elsewhere within the Park we have a large scatter of mesolithic waste flakes, an RAF and Army Camp and the remains of a twentieth century clayworks. LiDAR has revealed an extensive collection of earthworks relating to all periods of the Park’s past, that we still need to groundtruth!

School group on site during the 2011 season

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Moving a dune, eroding archaeology on Scotland’s north east coast.

By tomdawson on August 9, 2011 in Archaeological Prospection, Community Archaeology, DayofArch2011, Excavation, Film Making, Survey

The sand dunes at Brora, Sutherland, on Scotland’s north east coast, are over four metres high. Buried within them are the remains of the late 16^th / early 17^th century saltpans. Over the centuries, the wind had blown sand over the site, completely covering it until it became forgotten about.

Sand dune at Brora

In recent years, coastal erosion had exposed part of the front wall of one of the buildings, and on the Day of Archaeology, we finished machining and started cleaning up the site.

We knew that masonry remained buried in the dunes as we had uncovered half of a building in 201. Although we had seen the front wall of the buried portion, we did not know how much would survive.

In order to uncover the site, we had to remove hundreds of tons of sand and had spent the previous two days landscaping the dune. Removing the sand would allow us to work safely , but we had to make sure that the wind would not blow away the reshaped dune, so were replacing the turf on the remodelled dune as quickly as possible.

Machine stripping of dune

We were finished with the machine by 9:00am (the machine driver had another job to go to so started early, one of the benefits of long summer days up in the north!). The machine had taken out the bulk of the sand while we dug close to the walls to ensure that the machine bucket didn’t damage the masonry.

Cleaning site by hand

When the machine had gone, the walls plotted with the EDM, and loose of unsafe masonry was drawn, photographed and then removed.

Using an EDM for survey

There was also much collapsed masonry within the building, and once the machine had left, this had to be removed by hand.

Heavy work, moving stones

We also spent time videoing Calum, a young volunteer who helped us out last year also, and had been inspired to use the Brora dig for a school project.

By the end of the day, we had cleared enough sand to reveal a small room, roughly 4 m x 4.5m, with a doorway facing the sea and a fireplace in one wall. While machining we had seen the lintel of the fireplace and it seemed to have initials carved into it. As we removed more sand from around it, we could see that there were further initials on one of the jambs; the other had nicks etched into its edge, perhaps where people had sharpened their knives.

Fireplace

The project had been initiated due to Jacqueline Aitken’s passion for, and concerns about, the archaeology of Brora. Jacquie remembers playing on eroding masonry (now long gone) when she was a child and was worried that Brora’s industrial heritage was being washed away by the sea. A member of the Clyne Heritage Society, she contacted SCAPE (Scottish Coastal Archaeology and the Problem of Erosion) and a joint project, (also involving the University of St Andrews where Jo and I are based), was established. Thanks to funding from Historic Scotland, a small bit of Brora’s past is being recorded before it is lost forever.

Clyne Heritage group members

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Swords, sandals and early Heritage sites

By hartk on July 29, 2011 in Commercial Archaeology, DayofArch2011, Film Making, Journalism, Roman

Local media

Our local media – print, broadcast and online – are still excellent ways to reach people involved with the community project and attract new visitors. Not everyone’s online yet. You are though: do take a look at our Facebook page.

One of our volunteers has built up a terrific relationship with them and gains lots of publicity for the different activities and events that ATU runs. Here’s a piece published today about a screening of The Eagle of the Ninth, based on Rosemary Sutcliff’s classic tale which visited our villa site.

There’ll also be a talk by Andy Brockman, who specialises in community archaeology and the Archaeology of Modern Conflict.

All Because of Tutankhamun?

Here’s another contribution with thoughts about promotion from Dr Lesley Hardy:

‘I’m writing this in a brief break from a longer writing task. Two weeks of study leave is hopefully going to allow me to make some further headway looking at the culture which took place in the 1920s.

In part, the appetite for all things archaeological was linked to the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922 but I argue its roots go back much further into the C19th and are also explained by the shifts that take place in culture and society post-WW1.

In order to trace these changes and their significance for how we look at archaeology today, I’m following the excavation of the Roman villa site at Folkestone. These were excavated by S.E. Winbolt in 1924 and in many ways epitomise the turn towards the promotion and integration of archaeology (especially, I think, Romano-British archaeology) through a wide range of media – newspapers, books, radio even.

The Earliest Heritage Site?

In other words, Folkestone is one of the first ‘Heritage sites’ in the country.

Must get back to the job in hand – production of this article: ‘The Romans in Folkestone: S.E. Winbolt and the evolution of Public Archaeology in the 1920s.”

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A day of commercial archaeology in York.

By duncans on July 29, 2011 in Commercial Archaeology, Day of Archaeology, DayofArch2011, Film Making, Romano-British

7:57am

I arrive on site at West Offices in York after a 10 minute walk. This is probably the closest site I have ever worked on to my home, and I am enjoying the short commute. It is the exception rather than the rule.

We have just finished a 7 week excavation of a Roman bath-house and parts of the civilian settlement beneath one of the platforms on the site which is a former railway station. A photoblog of the excavation is available here.

A lot of the finds, samples and tools from the excavation are still on site and need moving before the builders appropriate or throw them away. Three of our four barrows have already gone missing. So the first job of the day is loading finds into the car. Then we have to transfer some soil samples from rubble sacks into sample tubs.

Transferring samples.

When the car is as full as it can get, Tim heads off to the office and I descend to the cellar.

08:30am

I go to the room in the cellar that is beneath the hotel that was attached to the railway station. This is my journey. Quite often the builders block access in part of the building, but it is maze-like, so we can always find a way through.

The trench in the cellar.

We are working in the cellar to determine what if any archaeological remains survive beneath the cellar floors in the hotel. The developer needs to reduce the ground level in one of these rooms, and if archaeological deposits survive they will be damaged. In an adjacent room we found what seems to be an archaeological cut feature containing large blocks of stone. We have started excavating in this room to see if there are surviving archaeological deposits here also. I have made a short film explaining this, which has been broken into episodes for the purposes of this blog.

The first of these episodes is available here.

The second episode explaining the archaeology in the adjacent room is explained here.

Archaeology in the adjacent room.

I finish removing a mixed clay and sand deposit that is located beneath the concrete floor and concrete rubble make-up for the floor. I also take the opportunity while Tim is away to make some of the films for this blog. Some groundworkers have been on hand to remove the spoil that we are creating, but they get called away to do other jobs and the spoil heap gets alarmingly large and spills into the trench. Once the deposit is removed I trowel it clean, which entails removing any loose material to produce a uniform flat surface. This helps us identify any potential archaeological features through differences in colour and textural changes.

The film of this process is here.

I get a call from Tim that the work car has broken down, not as feared a result of the weight of the samples and finds, but an unrelated clutch problem thankfully!

A second film of my lonely and boring work is here.

9:55am

Tim makes it back to site after his car-related adventures. Just in time for tea-break!

10:45am

Final cleaning up for photography.

11:15am

Photographing the deposits below the floor.

This is what we reveal. Disappointingly, there seem to be no archaeological features beneath the cellar floor. The stripes of sand and silty clay are typical alluvial glacial deposits laid down when the glaciers melted. This is typical of the geology beneath York.

Geological natural?

A film of this is here.

11:43am

I lay out a sondge along one edge of the trench. This is a trench within the trench, where we will excavate a limited portion of the deposits that we have revealed. Although they look like geological deposits, what we call ‘natural’, we have to excavate a portion to prove this hypothesis. Some of the deposits contain charcoal which is usually, but not always ‘anthropogenic’ meaning caused by human activity.

A film of us excavating the sondage is here.

1:00pm

Lunch! The sondage is almost finished and it still all looks geological. It looks like we will wrap this up early, which is nice, but very disappointing as we had high hopes for surviving Roman archaeology in the trench. Worse still, I’m going to be out of a job for the rest of the week.

I eat my lunch at the nearby war memorial. While a canteen hut and facilities are provided by the main contractors it has become over-full of builders. Even though the archaeologists look almost identical to everyone else on the site we are regarded with suspicion by the builders, so most of us have breaks off-site. Luckily, the weather is nice enough for al-fresco dining.

1:40pm

Back in the cellar we finish the sondage and I clean it.

A film of the revealed deposits is here.

Section through the geological deposits.

We are both certain now that it is glacial geology and not archaeological. Tim goes to notify the clients of this. They will be pleased I imagine.

All that remains for us to do is photograph and record the revealed deposits. Even though Tim and I are certain that there are no archaeological deposits within the trench, we need to prove this. We need to demonstrate this to both the local authority archaeologist who monitors our work, but also to any future archaeologists. While this particular piece of work isn’t that interesting, it does however add a very small piece to the archaeological picture for York. The record we make of this is photographs, descriptive context sheets for each deposit, a scale plan drawing, and a scale section drawing.

A film of me drawing the section is here.

Once the recording is completed we take the opportunity to examine a lovely old safe that is still in the cellar. This was presumably for hotel guest’s valuables. I joke to Tim that it would be funny if the key that I found yesterday below the concrete floor fit the safe. eventually we can’t resist giving it a go. It doesn’t fit. While we are testing it though I find a key on the top of the safe!

I’ve found the key to the safe!

Amazingly it fits! However, some muppet has ruined the lock by trying to break into it. The treasures within will have to remain undisturbed. This interlude was actually the most interesting part of our day, but it is fairly typical of the things archaeologist will find to entertain themselves on an otherwise dull site.

3:00pm

Well, that’s it. All finished. We start moving our tools and equipment up to the tool chest.

A film of my last trip is here.

3:15pm

An early finish to what has been a relatively typical day in commercial archaeology. As often as not we get negative results, in that we haven’t found archaeological deposits. After the last seven weeks of excavating amazing Roman archaeology on the same site (pictures here), this seems about right.

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The Star Carr project gets visitors!

By Pat Hadley on July 29, 2011 in DayofArch2011, Film Making, Finds, Prehistory, Science

On Tuesday 26th of July the Star Carr project at the University of York got a visit from Dr Alice Roberts and a film crew from 360 production for the new series of the BBC’s Digging for Britain.

Alice talked to Nicky Milner (one of the project’s co-directors) and Ben Elliott (a Mesolithic antler-work specialist).

Project assistant, Pat Hadley tells the story of a great day learning about a brilliant site.