The Fairfield Landscape Archaeology Project 2007
Last August, a dozen 13- to 15-year-olds converged on Kilve Court from as far afield as Manchester, to become immersed in an intensive week of real archaeology.
The Fairfield Estate has evolved from medieval settlement to country house and landscaped park with many stages in between. Documentary and pictorial evidence give glimpses of the story and a recent resistivity survey by GSB Prospecting revealed earlier features possibly corresponding to those on eighteenth century maps and paintings. The Fairfield Project is adding to our understanding by targeted fieldwork. The young people studied maps, air photos and paintings, explored the landscape, investigated and recorded buildings, took part in a geophysical survey and interpreted the data, excavated, processed finds, undertook fieldwalking, kept records, got blisters, organized their site HQ (Lady Gass’s garage!) and mounted an exhibition, with handouts and digital displays, for their parents! If these enthusiastic and talented youngsters are anything to go by, then archaeology’s future looks very promising.
The project is supported by SCC Heritage Services, Kilve Court Education Centre, the Gray Fund of Somerset Archaeological & Natural History Society and the landowner, Lady Elizabeth Gass.
Rachel Shaw (email rcshaw@blueyonder.co.uk )
12/20/2007
For details of 2008 Season at Fairfield click
here
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Resistivity Survey with Barry Lane of the Somerset Archaeological and Natural History Society
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The Team
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It's the end of the world as we know it! Planning what was excavated.
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Tea break and a talk from Bob Croft, County Archaeologist.
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Historic Environment here we come!
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Processing the dig finds back at HQ
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Building Survey
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The Interpretation panels and some big questions
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