Archaeology Digs in the United Kingdom and Ireland

June 4-July 29, 2012. Bamburgh Research Project. Ongoing excavations (since 1996) in and around the grounds of Bamburgh Castle, a site occupied continuously for 2000 years.

June 4-July 29, 2012. Bamburgh Research Project. Preliminary survey and excavation at an extensive wetland area, 40 km south of the Scottish border in north Northumberland. Following on from two seasons of very promising trial trenching, our work at the ancient wetland of Newham bog at Bradford Kaims in Northumberland will expand significantly this year as we have recently been awarded funding from English Heritage and the Heritage Lottery Fund to support a pilot study of the area, and involve local volunteers and schools throughout 2011-2012.

TBA 2012. York Archaeological Trust. York Archaeological Trust has begun excavations on Hungate, a massive archaeological site in the historic centre of the City of York. The excavation hopes to answer a number of questions about the Hungate site, which has already been shown to contain deeply stratified archaeology from the Roman period onwards. Small-scale excavations in 2000 and 2002 revealed a complex sequence of burials, structures, occupation deposits and road surfaces dating from as early as the 3rd century AD. Significant archaeology lay relatively close to the modern ground surface and was generally well preserved

June 2-July 14, 2012. University of Liverpool. Surface survey and recording in historic Irish churches; excavation at the Iron Age Port y Candas site on the Isle of Man. This field school is based in two beautiful Celtic countries: Ireland and the Isle of Man, which lies between Ireland and Britain. A programme of training in all aspects of graveyard survey will take place in Ireland at a variety of historic burial grounds. Students will then be transferred to the Isle of Man where excavation and geophysical survey training will take place on prehistoric and historic sites. There are also visits to museums and sites of all periods from the Neolithic to historic.

May 30-June 29, 2012. Bournemouth University. The Durotriges Project is an archaeological investigation studying the transition from the late Iron Age to the early Roman period in southern England. The fieldwork, takes place within Dorset, a county of outstanding natural beauty and one of the best preserved archaeological landscapes in Britain. The project is run as a Bournemouth University summer field school.

Ongoing. University of Oxford. These excavations are concentrating on the site of Marcham/Frilford which is well known from previous excavations (see the interim reports for references) and often referred to as just ‘Frilford’. Marcham/Frilford is located in the Vale of the White Horse (on the A338 to Wantage at what used to be The Noah’s Ark pub) not far from the sites we excavated as the Hillforts of the Ridgeway Project. Together the two projects explore life in this area through the later prehistoric and Romano-British periods.

April-August, 2012. Saveock Water Archaeology. In fine Time Team tradition during the last week we excavated a Neolithic Leaf arrowhead and a number of fire cracked stones indicating a cooking area. Both these items are a first at Saveock. We have had the diggers and dumpers in this Autumn and moved the spoil from next to the area we found the arrowhead and fire stones and are going to be digging that in our 2012 season. So maybe we are going to be excavating a feasting area next to the Neolithic ritual pool in trench A1. The arrowhead could have been embedded in some meat being cooked by the firestones. This is just an idea, it will probably be something completely different! This is the joy of digging here it is never predictable.

July 2-August 12, 2012. University of Reading. The Silchester Field School takes place every summer for six weeks during which time all first year archaeology students at Reading attend along with external participants from all over the world. The excavation, which investigates Insula IX of one of Britain's most enigmatic Roman cities, has gradually increased in numbers participating year by year since its beginning in 1997.

June 27-July 31, 2010. Cotsen Institute, UCLA. The current focus of the project is on a Cistercian monastery founded in 1172.