Cotswold Archaeology

#CASiteTeam's discovery of an incredible Anglo-Norman execution cemetery in Andover has been nominated for Current Archaeology Magazine's Rescue Dig of the year!!!
This sobering site revealed the graves of at least 124 individuals, mainly young males; many had been laid face down, 27 had been bound at the hands and feet, and 23 had been decapitated.
See more about this nationally important site below, and please support #CASiteTeam's hard work by voting for them here:... https://www.archaeology.co.uk/vote
#Hampshire #Andover #Archaeology #PleaseAndThankYou
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Back to the grind with Day 7 of our #ArchiveCalendar...
Box T contains a late Iron Age/early Roman, lower rotary quernstone (geddit? *Ho ho ho*... 😳), found in a pit during excavations in Exeter. Querns tend to be purposefully fragmented before deposition, so it's possible that this one was deliberately placed for reasons other than pure practicality. Have included a nice shot of the grinding surface, for all the quern-nerds out there 👍
Tomorrow's votes below please 😊
... #Devon #Archaeology #Grindstone
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Corr, Box D is a stunner! Great choice!
It's a small plastic box containing this beautifully blue, Iron Age, glass annular (ring-shaped) bead, recovered from a Worcestershire site just this year, by #CASiteTeam. Whilst it's not unusual to find Iron Age glass beads, to see one intact is a rare treat! 😊
#ArchiveCalendar #Archaeology #GoodChoiceFolks

Our Milton Keynes team is looking for an additional, full-time, Post-Excavation Finds Processor, to start in the new year. An interest in archaeology would be an advantage, but no experience is necessary!
So if our #ArchivesCalendar has got you all worked up and realising how much you love archaeology, and you fancy working alongside our Finds and Archives team yourself, check out the link below...
#NewYearsResolutions #Archaeology #Start2019Fresh

#ArchiveCalendar day 5, Box W, and archaeology just got real.
No shiny stuff here, just the good, honest, degraded and rusted remnants of a human's existence. This iron brooch, which looks just as it would've when #CASiteTeam recovered it from the ground, was found during works near Bath. It originally dates to the mid to late 1st century AD, and its style is very typical for those found in southern and southwestern Britain.
Votes below, please (we've used A, C, L, W & X) 😊
... #Roman #RealArchaeology #ConservatorSTAT
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Look, archaeologists don't dig dinosaurs, ok? They absolutely, categorically, 100% don't ever dig dinosaurs - that's palaeontology.
Here's the contents of #ArchiveCalendar box X - the fossil vertebra of a marine reptile, most likely an ichthyosaur, recovered during excavations in Gloucestershire. Ichthyosaurs lived throughout the Mesozoic Era, but were most prolific and diverse in the Triassic and Jurassic periods (around 250-145 million years BP) 🐬
Votes below!
... #CAA18 #Errr #Dinosaurs
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Day 3 of the #ArchiveCalendar! The most votes went for Box C, which appears to have been a rather good choice...⠀ ⠀ A small plastic box reveals a gorgeous glass bead, recovered from an undated ditch during excavations in Northampton. The rich colouring is reminiscent of later Roman or post-Roman dating, and the most similar example from the record is from an early Anglo-Saxon burial at Kingston Down, Kent. Our Finds gurus are dating this one to around the 7th century AD.⠀ ⠀ #CAA18 #Archaeology #DearSanta

Oh, hello beautiful...!
#ArchiveCalendar Box L has revealed this lovely lady - a coiffured Roman face, dating to around 350-400AD. She would originally have sat proudly on the neck of a flagon and - we can just tell from the remnants of a coloured 'slip' coating - would have appeared a deep, lustrous red. It's unclear who this beauty is, but there is some evidence that vessels of this type are most common in towns and at temple sites, which may suggest a partly religious use.... The flagon was originally made in Oxford, although our piece was recovered in Cheltenham.
Thanks for all of yesterday's votes! Please vote for tomorrow's box (anything but A or L) below...
#CAA18 #Roman #Archaeology #whatsinthebox
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Good morning and welcome to the first day of our #ArchivesCalendar! 😁 We've picked today's box for you ourselves (let's call it box A), and since tonight is our company Christmas party, you'll see it's on a theme...
Box A contains a bottle of genuine Victorian wine, dating to between 1862 and 1900, still with the cork in! (Which is miraculous around here) It also contains a curious and rather beautiful little bottle of... something that smells very medicinal... Originally fr...om Bristol General Hospital. ’Morning after the night before’ tonic? 😉🍻
Vote below for which box you'd like to see tomorrow, from B - X. And for anyone who's interested in historical wine info, relevant to the time this bottle was made, read on for some fascinating facts our Archivist (Hazel) has 'curated' for you from the internet...
"In 1862 a case of American vines arrived on the right bank of the Rhône, imported from New York by a Roquemaure wine-merchant, a Monsieur Borty. The vines carried in their roots the dry-leaf devastator, phylloxera vastatrix, a tiny yellow aphid which breeds with astonishing speed; a single female will produce 25.6 billion descendants in eight months without any male assistance (!). By 1884 one million hectares of French vineyards had been destroyed, and a further 660,000 were dying. As the plague spread, church bells were rung in alarm, anti-phylloxera syndicates were formed, and a burn-or-perish approach was fitfully adopted. The economic consequences for the French countryside were dire. It took 40 years for wine production to recover. French peasants abandoned their ruined vineyards and headed for Algeria, Argentina, and Chile, taking their wine-making skills with them." We aren't saying our bottle was buried by someone fearing the worst for their beloved wine supply, but we are just saying it's probably what we'd do...
#CAA18 #EducationalAndFun #Cheers! 🍷
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We've been frustratedly sitting on our hands for ages, but now it's FINALLY time to tell you all about this year's CA #Christmas Calendar!! 🥳
After the success of the Twitter #ArchiveLottery, we're doing things a bit differently this year and taking you on a trip to the archaeology winter wonderland that is our Archive (literally winter wonderland - it gets really quite chilly in there 🥶). In preparation, our brilliant Finds and Archives team have been dusting off their boxes and sprucing up their spreadsheets, ready to show you some of the best finds you've never seen! So join us from the 1st December to see your first box, then join us every day to vote for which of the remaining 23 boxes you'd like to see opened next... Your calendar, your choice! 🎁
#CAA18 #FestiveFun #ArchivesCalendar

Our CEO, Neil Holbrook, will be at The Ashcroft Centre, Ashcroft Road, Cirencester, on the evening of Wednesday 28th November, presenting a talk on 'Francis Haverfield's Roman Cirencester'.
Francis John Haverfield (1860-1919) has been described as the greatest archaeologist of Roman Britain. Neil will talk about the 1920 publication of his paper on Cirencester, and its relevance to our understanding of the town’s archaeology today.
The talk starts at 7.30pm, is just £3 to att...end (free for full-time students) and is open to the public. (More details: http://www.cirenhistory.org.uk/talks2018- 9.htm)
#Roman #Cirencester #Cotswolds #Archaeology
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Our Senior Marine Heritage Consultant, Michael, has presented a talk on The London Wreck, to the rather cheery South-Oxfordshire Archaeological Group, pictured below!
Here's Michael (right), enjoying the group's post-talk Christmas party (we tend to find that all the best talks finish with wine🍷). Central is the Chairman, Dave Carless, and the lady to Michael's right is Hazel Williams, leader of their long-running villa dig near Goring (incidentally, worth looking up: http://...www.soagarch.org.uk/projects/vi lla/villa.html).
The warship London sank in the Thames Estuary on 7th March 1665 while preparing for the second Anglo-Dutch war, which had been declared by Charles II only three days earlier. Our Marine team have been involved in the multi-disciplinary project of recording The London for several years (more info on the wreck, here: http://cotswoldarchaeology.co.uk/the-lond on-wreck-1665/)
#LondonWreck1665 #MarineHeritage #MarineArchaeology #NiceGlassOfRed
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We are so, so sorry to have to do this, but due to poor weather and increasingly difficult on-site conditions, we are having to cancel Saturday's open day.
We won't be able to re-schedule this due to time limitations, but we will now share an update and a site video in the coming month or so. There will possibly also be an event/lecture in the new year. So, please keep an eye out for those.
Please share as possible? And, we promise, we're as sad about this as you are.

Project Supervisor, Anna Moosbauer, in action at Biggleswade Academy - inspiring the next generation of #Archaeologists! 😊👍🏺 ⠀ #CASiteTeam #Archaeology #Bedfordshire #ArchaeologistsInTheMaking

We got so excited this morning - we saw the #HairyArchives hashtag trending on Twitter and thought we had some stinky hair stashed in the fridge that we could share with you! But, sadly, it's been deposited (Booo...! But also, well done to our extremely efficient Archives Team... 😏)
Anyway, we can't let you miss out, so here instead is a beautifully decorated Late-Saxon (c. 900–1100 AD), animal-bone comb, which #CASiteTeam recovered from a site in Suffolk! 😀
#Suffolk #Saxon #Archaeology #PrettyGoodAlternative

Well, our Exeter team have clearly wasted no time in taking advantage of the extra space in their new office - they've clubbed together and bought themselves a table-tennis table..!
Lunchtime is now officially more energetic 😏🏓
#Archaeology #Exeter #Fit

Project Officer Jonathan recently presented the results of our excavations at High Nansloe Farm, Helston, Cornwall, at the Archaeology in Cornwall Symposium of the Cornwall Archaeological Society.
This brilliant site revealed five phases of prehistoric activity, including two Bronze Age sunken-floored roundhouses and two remarkable Iron Age stone cists!
#CAS2018 #CASiteTeam #IronAge #BronzeAge #Cornwall #Archaeology

Update: We've unfortunately had to cancel this event 😔 More details are available here: https://buff.ly/2FAGjwG
** OPEN DAY ALERT!!! **
If you fancy getting your hands, eyes and... ears (?) on some of our lovely archaeology, head over to our Wickham Open Excavation on Saturday 24th November! It's a brilliant little Roman roadside settlement (think, ancient service station), on the Roman road linking Chichester and Clausentum (most likely modern Bitterne), with several buildi...ngs and evidence of both metalworking and pottery production.
See the map below for the location, and join us between 11am and 2pm. Don't forget your boots though - it's a muddy one!
#CASiteTeam #Roman #Archaeology #Hampshire
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