Day of Archaeology 2014: today, 11th July

Today (11th July) it is the world Day of Archaeology 2014. The Day of Archaeology web-site explains its purpose:

‘… The Day of Archaeology project aims to provide a window into the daily lives of archaeologists from all over the world.  The project asks people working, studying or volunteering in the archaeological world to participate with us in a “Day of Archaeology” each year in the summer by recording their day and sharing it through text, images or video …  The resulting Day of Archaeology project demonstrates the wide variety of work our profession undertakes day-to-day across the globe, and helps to raise public awareness of the relevance and importance of archaeology to the modern world …’

Last year, the Trust took part by contributing a post to the Day of Archaeology 2013 web-site, describing all our work on that day. This year, we took part by Tweeting several photo.s during the day of what we were doing, in the world of commercial archaeology. We are busy excavating at the Williams & Griffin store in Colchester this summer, and the site is producing a large quantity of finds and material, as well as layers of evidence of the Roman and post-Roman town. We have also had a very exciting couple of weeks, with two really remarkable discoveries, at opposite ends of the High Street in Colchester. We have discovered two fragments of extremely rare burnt human bone from Colchester’s famous Boudican destruction debris, at the Williams & Griffin store, and parts of the monumental Roman arcade of the town’s Temple of Claudius, on a site at the rear of 97 High Street. So our work today was mainly excavation and various post-excavation tasks resulting from that and from other sites. Trust archaeologists Ben Holloway, Chris Lister and Adam Wightman, and volunteer Shirley, were also busy, with Ben writing a Written Scheme of Investigation as a preliminary to the Trust’s starting work on a site; Chris being on secondment to the Borough Council; Adam supervising the Williams & Griffin site; and Shirley polishing all the original (1937) brass window and door fittings at Roman Circus House!

With many thanks to all our volunteers, as always.

Visit the Day of Archaeology web-site at www.dayofarchaeology.com .

Follow the Trust (as CATRomancircus) on Twitter at https://twitter.com/CATRomanCircus .

The images here are the images which we Tweeted today, and they show just some of the things that we were doing today: our circus super-model in the circus centre, with its turning-posts and obelisk just added; senior Trust archaeologist Howard Brooks working on the plans of a Roman cemetery which we excavated on a site at the old garrison in Colchester; Trust volunteers Sarah and Brenda processing some of the Roman finds from our Williams & Griffin site; Trust archaeologist Don Shimmin drawing a Roman column which we have uncovered and which formed part of the arcade of the Temple of Claudius; self-effacing Trust director Philip Crummy illustrating one of the fragments of burnt human bone from the Williams & Griffin site; and members of our excavation team enjoying themselves as they worked and/or posed on the Williams & Griffin site…

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