Fieldwalking Day 2 - A Discovery!

On the following Saturday the weather was not so kind to us.  In fact, conditions in the afternoon were pretty atrocious with rain, wind – even hail at one point.  Our fingers got so numb and the pens so damp we could barely label up the finds bags.  

We were getting close to finishing the day and feeling somewhat demoralised when a shout went up from a group walking the far edge of the field. 

They were calling for Howard.  I relayed the message and carried on walking my section.  I glanced up once and remarked to the other people in my group, ‘Well, they’re not jumping up and down – it can’t be that good.’  The next time I glanced over, someone was jumping up and down.

I arrived at the group and they split apart to reveal something lying on the surface of the soil.  Unmistakable even to a novice like me – a flint axe head.  I flung an arm around Nat, splattering his coat with mud and congratulated him on his discovery. 

Unable to resist any more, I picked the axe up as more excited voices joined us.  Someone turned to Howard and asked the question ‘How old do you think it is?’  ‘Could be up to 10,000 years old’, he replied. 

There was a moment of silence as we gazed at the object sitting in my hand.  Faceted, carefully worked for a purpose.  An invisible thread connecting one human being to another, compressing time. 

I passed it on and looked around.  We were all grinning.  

Eventually we turned to leave, still smiling, still exclaiming, cold, damp and discomfort forgotten.  Nat turned to me.   ‘Archaeology is cool’, he said.  Couldn’t agree more.

Fieldwalking Day 1

Our first fieldwalking session took place on Saturday 20^th April under a cloudless sky on a beautiful Spring day.

In the morning Barbara Butler and the team brought along a group from the Colchester Young Archaeologists.  Following a briefing by Howard Brooks from Colchester Archaeological Trust, they set out to walk across the field scanning the ground as they went.

Archaeological fieldwalking ‘does what it says on the tin.’  The piece of ground under investigation is measured off into sections and you walk each section keeping your eyes peeled for anything man-made or worked by human hand.  You pick up anything you find and put it in a bag labeled with the section number ready for later washing and inspection. It’s good practice to try and keep to a certain amount of time for each section so that you end up with a uniform sample.  It sounds simple because it is!  But it’s surprising what you can find just sitting on the surface of the soil.  

There was a lot of discussion as we tried to identify worked flints but we had plenty of help from Hilary, Emma, Kate, Amy and Barbara who are the enthusiastic leaders of Colchester Young Archaeologists.  

The 10 young people who came along were interested in the project and keen to find artefacts.  I really think they have an advantage over adults when it comes to fieldwalking - they've got sharp eyesight and being closer to the ground they're much more likely to spot things!  They certainly seemed to be finding flints and also fossils - not what we were looking for but interesting none the less.  

Some things we put in our bags were definitely maybes, some we weren't sure about at all but included 'just in case'.  We'll be able to see our discoveries at the finds washing session at WCEC on Saturday May 4th 2.00 - 4.00pm.  Join us there!

Thanks to YAC members, Barbara Butler and the team of helpers, also to Howard Brooks from CAT for organising us so well, and not forgetting the people who joined us for the afternoon session to carry on the search for finds.

Landmarks Begins film

I included film making as part of the Landmarks project because as an ex BBC type person it's a return to my roots and it's one of the best ways to get your message across.  It doesn't hurt that the Landmarks site is in the middle of a particularly beautiful landscape which I think is one of those places where you can feel the weight of history - to me it is saturated with memory.

It's one thing to feel it but quite another to put it across in a film.  On what felt like the first day in months where it wasn't snowing, raining or blowing a gale I set out with Steve Dorrington and Tristan Syrett from Aura Films to spend a few hours trying to capture the feel of that landscape and to create a film that would introduce the project.

Also that day we recorded commentary with Neil Catchpole.  I wanted a voice with a local accent and Neil lives just down the road from where you can see us filming here.  He knows the area well and has a passion for the natural world and history of the area, so he felt like the right choice.  Although he's happy talking (and singing) in front of groups of people, this was a different experience for him.  I think he did a great job!

Editing the film was not an easy job and long hours were spent adding the treatments and effects to give the right mood and atmosphere.  I hope you enjoy the results...

What happened to March?  Well I had flu which wrote off 2 weeks and I don't think I've caught up yet...  It also interrupted my fasting diet (stay with me - there is a relevant point coming up) which I started without realising it has a lot in common with a typical hunter-gatherer diet ie eating when there's plenty of food, fasting when there's no food about.  Good to know I'm actually living the research as well as reading about it!

We have a new logo, designed for us by Iris Sebba who co-founded the Art Hub at Wormingford Community Education Centre - spot the landscape features in her clever design.  And we have dates for our first events.  See below for the info - come and join us!

Six thousand years of Wormingford!
Discover more about the first people to settle in this area. The monuments
they left behind can only be seen now as crop marks, so what can these
remains tell us about the people who made them? Help us to explore the
archaeological evidence from this neolithic/Bronze Age site and make your own connection
with the past. Come and find out more at our free events in April:
Walk and Talk
Saturday 13th April 10.30am
Andrew White and Don Goodman from Colchester Archaeological Group present a talk on
ʻCrop marks of the middle Stour Valleyʼ, followed by a walk to the Landmarks site and a
look at previous finds from the area. Free entry, refreshments available.
Wormingford Landmarks Open meeting
Tuesday 16th April 7.30pm
For anyone interested in the project - come along, meet the archaeologists and find out
how you can get involved. You can sign up for fieldwalking and other activities like art
workshops, documentary research or the ancient seed project. Also opportunities for
younger people in film-making, creating a soundscape, stop animation and more.
Fieldwalking
Saturday 20th and Saturday 27th April, sessions starting at 10.00am and 2.00pm
Saturday 4th May will be a reserve fieldwalking day in case of wet weather and/or an opportunity
to take part in washing and taking a closer look at the finds. Take part in the archaeological
investigation of this site near Wormingford by booking in on one of our free
fieldwalking sessions led by Howard Brooks from Colchester Archaeological Trust.
All events take place at Wormingford Community Education Centre, The Old
School, Church Lane, Wormingford CO6 3AZ. More activities to come this
summer!
Please check our website http://wormingfordcec.org.uk/, like our Facebook
page or follow the blog http://wormingfordlandmarks.blogspot.co.uk/ to keep
up to date.
For more information or to book a place for any of these events please call
Amanda Findley on 01206 337338 or email wcec12@gmail.com.

So the envelope arrived from the Heritage Lottery Fund and when I opened it the first word I read was 'Congratulations..'  'Fantastic!', I thought, swiftly followed by 'What have I done...?'  I am not a historian or an archaeologist.  I have a keen interest in history and heritage - I've written about the English Civil War, made films about Victorian Britain, campaigned to save the Roman Circus in Colchester - but prehistory?  What do I know about ancient history?  Worryingly, the answer is very little.

It's all Michael Woods fault - I loved his series 'The Great British Story - A People's History' which told the history of the country through the eyes of one village, with the participation of the villagers.  So when the HLF ran a new fund called 'All our Stories' in support of the series with the specific aim to explore the heritage on your doorstep, I wanted in.

I volunteer with Wormingford Community Education Centre and the area around the village has more than it's fair share of historical interest.  The name itself has it's origin in dragon stories, which is a great start.  There are archaeological remains from the neolithic period onwards.  The Romans were here - I've picked up bagfuls of Roman brick and tile on a previous fieldwalk nearby.

I got talking to the local experts - members of Colchester Archaeological Group who have surveyed, researched, fieldwalked, dug and reported on finds in the area.  One site in particular caught my imagination (probably because I'm a hopeless romantic), located in the river valley visible only from cropmarks indicating numerous ancient man-made structures with an account by a 19th century clergyman who witnessed the destruction of a barrow there which contained 'hundreds of urns in rows... like streets'.  Even better, there are numerous theories about that story - someone even claiming that the urns contained what was left of the 9th Roman legion!

I began to think about a project based on this site but it was daunting - what could we add to the existing knowledge?  What possible connections could we make to a people who lived here so long ago, who left no written word behind them?  The starting point had to be the cropmarks - those enigmatic traces of human interaction with the landscape....

We’ve been successful in our Heritage Lottery Fund bid - hooray!  This fund was 9 times over-subscribed but we were one of the lucky ones and now we have £10,000 to spend on a year-long project called Wormingford Landmarks which will explore a prehistoric site near the River Stour to discover more about the first people to settle in the area thousands of years ago. 

The money has come from the All Our Stories Fund which followed on from the BBC series The Great British Story – A People’s History presented by the gorgeous Michael Wood. The idea is to get people inspired to find out about the heritage in their local area.

So we’re going to learn archaeological techniques like fieldwalking and geophys but we’ve also got a variety of hands-on activities designed to make connections with the past which we hope will appeal to everyone - walks, talks, making an ancient soundscape, documentary film-making, Art workshops, an Exploration day with demonstrations, finds handling, stop animation sessions and a historic garden.

We would love to hear from schools, colleges, teachers, students, families and individuals - anyone interested in getting involved with the project.  Please have a look at our website www.wormingfordcec.org.uk, email wcec12@gmail or call 01787 227307 to register your interest.

This blog is under construction - please come back soon!