groundworks, groundwork and background work

Here at Roman Circus House, we are busy getting the circus centre and site ready for visitors and organising the opening day itself – on Saturday 28th March. Despite all that, and all the excitement, the daily work of the Trust continues. Our daily work is commercial archaeology and consists of liaising with clients, producing quotes on projects, and the ‘groundwork’ of writing WSIs and desktop studies, research, and all the attendant admin. . This is followed by fieldwork, processing and studying finds, archiving our digital photo.s, the writing of site reports, etc. Our excavators are currently working on our site at Brightlingsea, which is one kind of ‘groundwork’. Another is the ‘groundworks’ on our new visitor walkway over the remains of part of the circus, in front of Roman Circus House, which are in progress.

To stretch the analogy even further, there is also a substantial ‘background work’ which is on-going at the Trust, and that is our contribution to the archaeological record. This includes the uploading of all our fieldwork reports into our online archive where they are accessible to all. It also includes our production of fieldwork summaries for inclusion in archaeological journals. Senior Trust archaeologist Howard Brooks has been busy fulfilling several commitments which we undertake every year, in writing annual collections of summaries on our fieldwork projects for publication in the journals of other organisations. The Trust provides summaries on our fieldwork in Suffolk for the Suffolk Institute for Archaeology and History and on any evidence of the medieval period which we uncover for the Society for Medieval Archaeology. Today (23rd March), Howard was working on the annual summaries of our fieldwork in Essex for the Essex Society for Archaeology and History. He also started to work on the form for the Trust’s annual registration as an accredited archaeological field unit with the Chartered Institute for Archaeologists (CIfA).

Visit the CIfA web-site at www.archaeologists.net/ and the web-sites of the Essex Society for Archaeology and History, the Suffolk Institute for Archaeology and History, and the Society for Medieval Archaeology respectively at www.essex.ac.uk/history/esah/ , at www.suffolkinstitute.org.uk/ , and at www.medievalarchaeology.co.uk/ .

The Roman circus centre and site will be open to visitors from the 28th March. On the 28th, we are hosting an opening day at the circus centre with special events: for details on the opening day, please go to www.thecolchesterarchaeologist.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/poster-data-z.jpg .

The images show the logos of the four organisations: the SIAH, the SMA, ESAH and CIfA.

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