Month: June 2019

End of Excavation Lecture

A few days ago we had a lecture to sum up everything that we discovered, achieved and uncovered over the course of the excavation; as well as some of the goals. The lecture was an hour long and I can’t include everything we spoke about here but I there’s a couple of things that I wanted to highlight.

Steve Roskams (lecturer and site manager) stressed that there was a higher focus on heritage this year (well done guys!) and that there was an increased interest from the local community. He mentioned that he wanted to do more of this in the coming years and that what we did this year was successful but it could be expanded upon a lot because the community was obviously interested in it.

Steve spefically commented that himself and Historic England were impressed with the heritage work that went on, especially with the school visit that we did the other day (let me know if you’re interested in this and I will make a post all about it).

He raised the point there was a slight issue with the fact that when people came around the site that we couldn’t tell them everything because they’re visiting when we ourselves don’t know anything. I think this is an issue but there isn’t really too much we could do about it.

There was a bunch of other stuff that we spoke about but I’m not 100% sure what I can and can’t talk about so I’m just gonna leave it at that for now. Thanks for reading!

~Amy 🙂

End of term Exhibition

At the end of every excavation period it’s the jobs of the heritage students to organise a end of year exhibition to showcase everything we’ve learned and we had it the other day!

We had a couple of elements: the part everyone enjoyed the most was definitely the free wine reception! But we also had a kids activity table to showcase all the childrens activities we’d created, we had copies of blog posts and recipe books on the tables and most importantly we had the posters! Every group, as part of their assessment, needs to produce a powerpoint poster and they were on display for everyone to look at and vote on. I’m super proud of my group for winning: well done guys!

Afterwards we packed up and I had to run off to help set up SummerFest which was the Archaeology Society ball (which I was on the committee for) so I never really got to say goodbye to everyone but if you’re reading this then I had I had a great time working with you the last couple of months and I hope you have a good summer! Summerfest was also a success so generally it was a great, if not rather hectic, day.

Thank you for everyone who came I had a lovely time. I leave you with some pictures from the evening.

  • James reading out the scores.
  • Everyone who came to the exhibition.
  • The Summerfest banner.
  • Everyone milling around.
  • James reading out the scores: part two.
  • Looking at our blog posts.
  • The heritage gang together for the last time!

How to Give a Site Tour

Before we gave our public site tours, the site leader (Steve Roskams) gave US a tour to tell us what to say to the public. This resulted in a video which gives you all an insight into how site tours are ran and how we talk to the public about excavation. It’s also a great way for you guys to see the site if you couldn’t make it in person! Check it out below.

Hope you enjoyed the video! If you have an questions then please let me know and I’ll be happy to answer them.

~Amy 🙂

Resources Masterpost

This will (most likely) be my last post so I wanted to make something that brought together everything we’ve done as a team in one place for anyone who might want to go through it all in the future. If you produce any more content or if I find something I think might be interesting then I will post it here.

Let’s start with the blogs, click on the persons name to find out what they have to say about the dig. Seren. Sarah. Victoria. Chloe. Rose. and of course this blog: Amy. I also created a blog post for the university blog which can be read here.

Click on this link here to view all of the Youtube videos (there should be 6 by the time I get them all out) I have made about the excavation. Shout out to everyone on the dig that helped me produce these!

The next thing I would like to show you is the Newsletters. We have produced two so far but a third one may also be happening. I’ll amend this post if/when that happens.

Newsletter Issue 1Download
Newsletter Issue 2Download

Then we have the kids (or adults) activities booklets. The first one is primarily for use on site and the second one can be used anywhere.

We have a fun Roman recipe for you to try at home!

On top of making all of this we have done countless public site tours, visited Malton Museum, had 90 school children come to Kings Manor, put posters and Newsletters around Malton, filmed for Digging for Britain, ran an end-of-excavation exhibition and more! We’ve had a busy few weeks but it’s been so much fun. I hope you’ve enjoyed following along, if you want any more information that I haven’t linked in this post then please comment below and I’ll be happy to help.

~Amy 🙂

Interviewing Students

We’re gonna do some timetravel today as this video was filmed onsite during the dig a few weeks ago. I asked some students how they were finding the dig. We talked about how it matched their expectations, how it compared to other digs and some other stuff. If you would like an insight into what it’s like to work on a dig like this then this is a good place to start!

Let me know if you have any questions for our students I will be sure to pass them and a big thank you goes to the people who helped me make this video! Thank you for letting me take you into the woods for an ‘interview’ and trust that I wasn’t going to murder you (I didn’t).

~Amy 🙂

Post Excavation: Records

If today has taught me anything it is the importance of making sure your plans are correct.

This morning I spent doing Records post excavation work. This means that we take all the paperwork that we created during the excavation and convert it into an online form. I was only there this morning as I was working with emotive in the afternoon but here is what we did!

When on site you have to create drawing plans, these are very detailed and to-scale and can take hours! When doing these you also have to fill out a drawing sheet, on this it has a list of all the drawing that have been done, the context number, drawing number and what it was of. It was our job to go through the list, recreate it in excel and make sure it was all right. You would be surprised how easy it is to make a mistake in a form when you’re writing in the wind/rain/hail etc.

  • Sorting through drawings.

There was also other people sorting through photographs which is a similar process. Photographs are taken on site. In the photo you include a scale and context information. This information is then taken, a long with the photograph number, and inputted into a database for later use.

That about covers it! If you have any questions then please comment down below and I will be happy to answer them for you.

~Amy 🙂