Advisory Committee on Essex Archaeology: Trust attends meeting

Yesterday (24th September), senior Trust archaeologist Howard Brooks went to Chelmsford to represent the Trust at a meeting of the Advisory Committee on Essex Archaeology, hosted by the Historic Environment team (formerly the ‘County Archaeology Section’) of Essex County Council.

In the 1970s, the Advisory Committee advised the Historic Buildings and Monuments Commission (now English Heritage) on how best to spend taxpayers’ money on archaeological research and excavation in Essex. But, as the years passed, the Committee gradually lost its primary function. English Heritage also stopped funding archaeological work in the 1980s. However, all the members of the Advisory Committee agreed to continue because it is the only county-based forum in which practitioners can meet to exchange news and reports (and gossip!), and to keep abreast of what we are all doing. The practitioners include archaeologists (both amateur and professional), museum curators, elected local councillors, the Portable Antiquities Officer for Essex (based at Colchester Museum), Essex County Council’s Historic Environment team, members of national and county archaeological societies (such as the Essex Society for Archaeology and History), and others in the heritage industry. At this meeting, the Trust was the only archaeological field unit taking part.

Under discussion were recent archaeological projects in the county, archaeology, the acquisition of the former Essex County Council archaeological field unit by University College London, and the future of the Committee itself. Howard talked about two of the Trust’s recent excavations on the former garrison site at Colchester, when we recorded a remarkable Roman cemetery (the Butt Road car-park site) and Roman burials associated with an enclosure (the St John’s Green Primary School annexe site). The Committee also discussed the Essex Place-Names Project, a study led by Dr James Kemble, which is an ambitious project to catalogue all the place-names in Essex, as recorded on maps and in documentary sources. The model for this project is widely admired and is being copied elsewhere in Britain. Dr Kemble represents the Essex Place-Names Project on the Committee.

Communication is what it’s all about these days and, as Howard says, long may the Committee continue!

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