Colchester YAC excavation session at Marks Hall

Today (12th July), the Colchester Young Archaeologists’ Club (YAC) met for their annual excavation session at Marks Hall near Coggeshall in Essex, with volunteers of the Colchester Archaeological Group (CAG). It is very appropriate that the YAC went excavating today, as it is the first day of the two-week Festival of Archaeology in the UK.

Colchester YAC organiser Barbara Butler writes:

‘… Colchester YAC met at Marks Hall this morning to dig sections of the site. Twenty members of the group found their way to the CAG excavation at the Marks Hall estate, today. Having buried their time capsule at Colchester Castle Museum last week, it was time to do some excavating this week.

After an explanation of the site from John Mallinson of the CAG, twelve of our members who had no digging experience were equipped with buckets, shovels and trowels. Archaeologist Kate Clover, Louise Harrison of the CAG and John gave the young people some initial training and they started to work on the site and fill up their finds trays. The experienced diggers of the group were shown some previous finds from the site by Gillian Brown, who processes finds as a volunteer for the Colchester Archaeological Trust at Roman Circus House and on site at Marks Hall for the CAG. The group were interested by such things as a rat-trap, a pilgrim badge, an Elizabethan coin and a fragment of quernstone and what the items told us about the people who had lived on the site. With some of the ideas of what the finds signified, it is clear that we have some keen archaeologists in the group! After all of the group had tried excavating, they all met up to tell each other what they had found. The bricks, tiles, pieces of coke, oyster shells, bones and fragments of glass indicated that they had been digging near the kitchen area of the site of the mansion of Marks Hall.

We are all looking forward to meeting back in Roman Circus House again on the 20th September …’

Visit the CAG web-site at http://caguk.net/ and the Marks Hall Gardens and Arboretum web-site at www.markshall.org.uk/ .

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If you are aged under 17 and interested in joining the Young Archaeologists’ Club in Colchester, then please contact Barbara Butler on 07808 968766 or at barbara[at]peterbutlerdesign.co.uk or Barbara Butler, Colchester YAC Branch, c/o the Colchester Archaeological Trust, Roman Circus House, off Circular Road North, Colchester, Essex CO2 7GZ.

The National Young Archaeologists’ Club web-site is at www.yac-uk.org/

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The images show the Colchester YAC members being trained by Gillian and then working on site, supervised by Louise.

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