The 1998 Conference

Who will do Research Archaeology?

  A Report on the Conference held at The Society of Antiquaries, London, on 16th May 1998

  Neil Faulkner reports

  Andrew Selkirk, CIA Chairman, opened the conference with general observations on the state of research archaeology. The PPG16-driven professional units can offer little, English Heritage will not fund more than a handful of projects, and even the universities are opting for foreign rather than British digs because these have more kudos and earn them higher grants. Nor, when professionals do research, are the results invariably impressive. Independents should be central to research archaeology - involved as a standard feature of professional projects, but also leading and doing their own.

The Curators: have they any role in research archaeology?

  John Samuels of the Newark Castle Project was the first of many contributors who gave witness to a thriving independent sector - a key conclusion of the conference. Newark was a large-scale excavation project, with a wide base of support and funding, which put a teaM of six professionals and 25 volunteers on site to reveal Saxon, Norman and later medieval levels. Visitor access was excellent and local interest high. A well of popular enthusiasm was tapped. What a pity, then, that John and colleagues had to fight every inch to overcome the opposition of English Heritage (EH) and the County Archaeologist. Newark is a scheduled site, so the bureaucratic hurdle-race was formidable. John also told the conference, in discussion, that the number of scheduled sites is rising fast.. from 12,500 in 1984, to a proposed 60,000 in 2007. The Planners are about 5,000 behind schedule, and some additions are reclassifications, but a fourfold real-terms increase is likely. The potential for more restriction of independent fieldwork is obvious.

  Michael de Bootman spoke about Pentney Abbey . In an area well-known as the centre of the Romano-British Nar Valley pottery industry, there is also the finest medieval monastic gatehouse in Norfolk. Electrical resistivity survey has shown a site on the same scale as nearby Castle Acre. But there the matter rests, since official archaeology in Norfolk is not keen to back an independent project to carry out further research. Why not? Should it not be a primary role of county curators to foster volunteer fieldwork?

  Bob Croft of the Association of Local Government Archaeology Officers argued that that is exactly what they should be doing. The Association now has 92 members (there are only one or two gaps), and his view is that the role of these curators includes training, advice and resource back-up to local independent fieldworkers. He gave many examples from Somerset, including the long-running Shapwick Project headed by Mick Aston, a county-run training dig which was FREE (!), and a hands-on, have-a-go, experimental archaeology centre. With three or four million people tuned into TV archaeology, Bob's view is that curators should be turning some of that potential into new fieldwork.

  Less happy was the contribution of Adrian Olivier for English Heritage. The rescue/research and professional/independent distinctions were overdrawn, he maintained, and anyone had the right to do field archaeology. EH's role was to provide co-ordination and support for the efforts of all sectors, and central to this would be the new 'regional research frameworks'. Consultation, partnership and joint ownership would be major features, and independents would be 'encouraged and enabled' to play a full role. But all too significant was Adrian's explicit refusal to discuss access to scheduled sites - the very heart of the problem. So one was left with the contrast between fellow fieldworkers enthusing about their projects and what seemed like apparatchik waffle - a contrast, one felt, between the dynamism of grassroots activity and the suffocating bureaucracy of the planners.

  Jez Reeves spoke for the London Division of English Heritage, where there seem to be glimmers of hope in the Kafkaesque gloom of Fortress House. She insisted on the centrality of research to the work of her department - though conceding this did not, under PPG16, extend to choice of sites and on the role of independents and young people. The main problem in Greater London archaeology is disparity between the groups carrying out fieldwork and the sorts of data they generate, so that the EH role here is to co-ordinate, plan and knit together the various contributions. Good. The key thing about Jez's vision is that she sees her department as a facilitator of fieldwork and a clearing -house for data - not an overlord.

Major independent research projects

  Anna Cronin talked about local society involvement in the Thames Archaeological Survey (TAS). The Richmond Archaeological Society groups together professionals and (often highly skilled) amateurs - though all work unpaid - and they got in early on the TAS when first mooted by Gus Milne. The project now has EH-funded professional co-ordination under Mike Webber at the Museum of London, but the fieldwork, a survey of features exposed on the Thames foreshore at low tides, is carried on by local volunteers. The 30-strong Richmond team have logged some 250 features, including prehistoric peats, Saxon fish-traps, and a probable Tudor jetty and landing-stage for Richmond Palace. Notable aspects of the work have been the back-up (e.g. on dendro-dating and pot-identification) provided by the professional co-ordinators, the involvement of non-fieldworkers in map and documents research, an increase in membership from 80 to 130 in the period of the project, and a very high public profile (including a spot on Time Team!). The TAS is partly rescue work - the Thames is fast eroding many archaeological deposits, so recording is urgent. But professional resources are not available so it depends on the independents, and this, the need for strong independent groups to carry out rescue-work when needed, was an important conference theme.

  David O'Regan , recently appointed to co-ordinate the (lavishly funded!) Defence of Britain Project , explained how this too, like the TAS, depends entirely on volunteer fieldworkers. Two hundred active surveyors, organised by eight regional co-ordinators (often WWII veterans), have, in three years, submitted some 6000 record-sheets. The aim is a comprehensive data-base of Britain's 20th-century defences, including First, Second and Cold Wars. Alastair Graham-Kerr has been a volunteer since 1996, and he spoke of his involvement in map and air-photo research, his use of local public appeals for information, his own follow-up fieldwork, and his immense enthusiasm for the project.

  Kevan Fadden described his work in Ampthill, where documents, photos, local memories and fieldwork have produced a comprehensive picture of surviving WWII features: motor-cycle traps, slit-trenches, hairpin road-blocks, mortar bases, an observation post, and, of course, a pill-box.

  Contributions from Surrey painted a mixed picture. Mary Alexander of the Guildford Museum lamented how the museum curator, in the 1960s an active fieldworker, was now too overloaded with admin to get out on site. In recent years, the record from threatened sites in Guildford has depended heavily on the (mainly volunteer) efforts of John Boas, though PPG16 has repeatedly failed to provide adequate protection and opportunities to record evidence have been lost. Nonetheless, much new information about medieval and early-modem Guildford has been recovered, including a late-medieval waterfront, and a truly astonishing 17th-century pit-group (salvage-excavated in a desperate six hours!).

  Audrey Monk and Judy English spoke on behalf of the Surrey Archaeological Society , a venerable veteran with 1000 members and some 50-60 local societies under its wing. It provides strong support for its fieldworkers - loans of tools, an insurance scheme, help with publication, and so on - some of whom work directly with the society, others in local groups. The range of projects is impressive - a training excavation at Guildford Castle, and work on a Roman villa and a medieval domestic site, for instance. So, too, is the high regard of officialdom: the society is commissioned to carry out work for both Surrey County Council and the National Trust. Judy emphasised how important independent groups with strong local roots are when it comes to the many minor sites which fall through the PPG16 net - especially in relation to the countless small works routinely carried out by farmers.

  Andrew Selkirk waded in with a challenge to all of us in London and the Home Counties: a Londinium project which would look to substantiate the strong circumstantial evidence - the size of the forum-basilica, the presence of a fort, the absence of villas, and, most intriguing, stretches of dyke which may be boundary-markers - for Roman London being the centre of an imperial territorium. It would be an ideal project for a consortium of local groups in the relevant areas.

  John Funnell described the work of the Brighton and Hove Archaeological Society . It has 200 members, 25 activists, and an interesting age-profile: 80% waged, 10% unemployed, and only 10% retired, with an overall range from 17-74. Relations with the local professionals are good - the society has regular consultations, and members often work on rescue-sites, including recently a large Saxon cemetery near Eastbourne. The outside contractor threatens this - competitive tendering has long been seen as undermining local units, but there is also a serious threat to independents where good links with local professionals have been built up. Like the Surrey society, the Brighton group also gets called on to undertake rescue-work, and provides its own training courses - free of charge.

  Tony Rook , in customary style, took the conference by storm on behalf of the Welwyn Archaeological Society . His contribution cut through all the nonsense about research strategies and resources used to frustrate independent fieldwork. The Welwyn group chose an interesting patch of landscape, started work, and found a Bronze-Age barrow cemetery, Iron-Age enclosures, a Romano-British settlement and cemetery, a motte-and-bailey castle, and a medieval chapel. How on earth could they have come up with a meaningful 'research strategy' beforehand? Instead, they proved that every patch of English landscape is packed with archaeology waiting to be found, and you should get out and start work. As for resources, until you create a focus which draws people out of the woodwork and into activity, how can you know what is possible? Research aims and resources develop through doing the work. (EH's contribution, incidentally, was to schedule two of the sites discovered by the Welwyn group, so that no more work could be done on them!)

  Peter Huggins of the Waltham Abbey Historical Society followed up with an account which included clear professional failure in the Waltham Abbey area. Two professional projects done in the 1970s have never been published, and, more recently, a ditch-retum which an eight-week professional dig failed to locate was found by the local volunteers shortly afterwards! It cannot be stressed enough that locally-based independent groups working on research projects over many years can often achieve far better results than those of the occasional parachute-intervention by outside professional units. The Waltham Abbey group have carried out some 30 excavations altogether, often on sites that would otherwise have been ignored, and the fieldwork is supplemented by systematic desk-top research aimed at placing results in a geographical and historical context. This is where independents are potentially much BETTER than professional units.

Archaeology in adult education

  David Beard lectures for Birkbeck's extramural department in London. He reported on the huge amount of research undertaken in the context of adult classes - a project cataloguing Saxon spearheads from the Thames, for instance, now a possible doctoral thesis - and on how training and experience in fieldwork and post-ex is increasingly being offered in the context of such classes.

  Paul Wilkinson , representing The Oast Archaeological Centre, Faversham , was able to illustrate the potential for adult-student research. In north Kent, on either side of Watling Street, lines of major villas have been located in a fieldwalking survey. The distribution is very regular and a very specific relationship with the landscape is implied. Paul maintains there is enough work here to keep dozens of students busy for years to come!

Summary and Prospect

  The only weakness of the conference was that it exaggerated independent strength. We saw so much of the successes, we easily forgot that most places still do not have strong independent groups. Lack of confidence is often the problem. Many would-be independent fieldworkers do not feel they have the skills, the contacts and the resources to make a start. This, of course, is Catch 22 - resources can only be generated by activity. The CIA needs to generalise the experience of the success stories. Consequently, our two-day conference in 1999 on 'Demystifying Field Archaeology' will aim to provide the nuts and bolts of getting started - everything from how you build a local infrastructure to how you build a flotation tank - and we hope that out of this, in due course, will emerge a series of practical fieldwork booklets which will add up to a comprehensive manual. No one else is going to do it. But then, is it not, if we take ourselves seriously, the CIA's job?

  Neil Faulkner

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