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A Day In The Life Of A Council Archaeologist!

Hello to everyone from West Berkshire! A Day In The Life Of A Council Archaeologist… A Day in the life of a Historic Environment Countryside Advisory Assistant Norfolk update A day in the life of a Community Archaeologist Variety – The spice of life? A day in the life of… a community archaeologist!

Archaeology at Letchworth Museum: telling stories about the past Tenth-century sword chape from Ashwell © North Hertfordshire District Council
 Museum Archaeology in North Hertfordshire The Saving Treasures; Telling Stories Project Curating a Small Archaeology Museum New Bronze Age finds from the British Museum: why… Hitchin Museum: Social History & Archaeology

Community Heritage at Heeley City Farm

July 29, 2011Sally RodgersCommunity Archaeology, Day of Archaeology, Day of Archaeology 2011, Education, Excavation, Finds, Periods, Post MedievalArchaeology, Archaeology Department, artist, BBC, BBC Radio Sheffield, Children's University, Districts of Sheffield, Hampshire, Heeley, Heeley City, Heeley City Farm, Heritage Photographer, Kelham Island Museum, Local government in England, Megan, Morgan, officer, producer, Roger Doonan, Sheffield, Sheffield University, Trench, University of Sheffield, Young Archaeologists' Club

I am the Community Heritage Officer at Heeley City Farm in Sheffield.

We are running a Community Excavation ‘Life at No.57: The Sheffield Terraced House Dig’, its part of the CBA Festival for British Archaeology. Today is Day 14 of 16 days of excavation. It is a community dig run in partnership with the University of Sheffield but with lots of volunteers of all sorts and ages. The project really wouldn’t be possible without our amazing volunteers who are doing everything from keeping the finds room under control to supervising the trenches and keeping me organised. The Dig is free and open to everyone.

My Day started with a live phone interview with BBC Radio Sheffield to promote the Dig, my phone contribution was part of a large piece which had been record on site the day before with interviews with Dr Roger Doonan from the University of Sheffield, Megan and Morgan two 10 year old volunteers on their first dig and Joseph one of our volunteer supervisors who began his career in Archaeology through the Sheffield YAC (Young Archaeologists Club) and who is now just waiting for his A-Level results, we all have our fingers crossed for him as he wants to take up his university place to study Archaeology. We talked about why we are excavating 3 Victorian terraced houses on a city farm, who lived in them what we have found and who has taken part so far. 
During the interview a lady living in rang the radio station, she lives in Hampshire and had been listening on-line as she used to live in Sheffield, it turns out that she lived on the very street we are excavating! The houses were all demolished in the 1970’s and she lived there as a child just before they were pulled down. The BBC producer passed on my number to her and we had a lovely chat, she is going to e-mail me her memories of the street.

When I began work on site the volunteers had already started and our 3 trenches were going very well. We have 3 large trenches, Trench A has the front wall of No.50 Richards Road, Trench B has the front cellars of No.52 and 54 Richards Road and a passage into the back yards, the biggest trench , trench C has the back yards of 4 houses and an outhouse. This is the third year of this project and its getting better each year, this year we have been looking for evidence of light trades and home-working, trades such as button-making and handle-finishing, we have found evidence of this in previous years. Our work will be supported this year by an exhibition all about trades in Heeley 100 years ago at Kelham Island Museum.

I spent most of the Day supervising volunteers and the trenches. Today we had about 40? volunteers or visitors to the site (it might be more, not had time to add everyone up yet) all the children are getting credit for their involvement through the Children’s University so i spend some time registering people for this.

We had a visit from a local Heritage Photographer who is artist in residence at the moment in the Archaeology Department at Sheffield University he took lots of lovely photos of people at work in the trenches as well as a few of our reconstructed Iron Age Roundhouse which happens to be in the same field as the trenches.

We finished and packed up at 4, I said some sad goodbyes to volunteers digging for their last day, tidied and locked up up our finds room and came to do some paper work.

I’m working on getting ready for a lovely new storytelling project next week, a summer holiday week of activities built around a historical mystery with lots of trips out for 9 to 11 year old’s.

Community Heritage always involves doing at least 3 projects at once. its now 5.30 and I’m going to walk home for my tea.
 Heeley City Farm Community Dig, Sheffield, South Yorkshire Shelley Dootson (MOLA): Community Dig at Stepney City Farm RCAHMS – Amy Gillespie CBA Community Archaeology Placement Norton Community Archaeology Group investigates a suspected formative henge Shorne Woods Community Archaeology Project, Gravesend, Kent Reconnecting people with their heritage Medieval & Post Medieval artefacts from the River Wear, Durham City


July 29, 2011nicolesmithDay of Archaeology, Day of Archaeology 2011, Digital Archaeology, Excavationblog, blogging, Counties of England, croatia, Hampshire, Internet, Local government in England, Nicole Beale, Person Communication and Meetings, semantic web, Social information processing, southampton, Southampton University, subscriber, supervisor, surveying, Toast, University of Southampton, Zupanja Museum

I am Nicole Beale (nee Smith),  a PhD student at the University of Southampton, looking at the impact that the Web is having on professional practice in the cultural heritage sector.  As with every weekday, my morning has begun with some toast, a cup of tea, and my RSS feeds.  I have a meeting with my supervisor later today, so I’ll mostly be spending time with my own thoughts this morning, but there’s still time  to do a few little fun ‘archaeology’ themed jobs.

Firstly, after I have brushed my teeth I am planning to clean up a blog that I set up for a great project that is run by two insanely motivated archaeologists, between Southampton University and Zupanja Museum in Croatia.  The blog is quite dusty and needs a spring-clean before the next load of students begin to populate it with this year’s fieldwork data (they survey/dig through August).  The blog aims to give updates about the fieldwork season as it goes on, but invariably has been updated at the end of a season with a few personal thoughts and then a season summary.  I’m going to try to encourage more ‘raw’ content this season, but don’t know if those digging and surveying will be able to find time to contribute content.

In an attempt to lessen the frustrations of visiting a blog that doesn’t have regular content updates, I have tried to fashion it more like a static website.  Not sure if that does actually make the lack of new content less frustrating for the subscribers, but it certainly does lessen my guilt for not spending much time cleaning it up as I should have last year (or the year before).  Time is the biggest barrier I think to the success of communication avenues like the blogs we set up every year.  Along with persuading team members that content can be brief and still worthy of inclusion.

Next up; the semantic web and art gallery data sets…
 Coffee and Geometry Hengistbury Head Survey Project 2012 Finding Neanderthals in France, article reviews, and conference planning. Planning & Archaeology in Wales writing about fieldwork not as fun as fieldwork Day in the life of an archaeological planning officer



