Hello and welcome!

Hello!

Welcome to my brand spanking new blog! This is the first time I've ever really blogged so bear with and we'll see how we go.

My name is Annie and I am the new Council for British Archaeology's Community Archaeologist Training Placement at Canterbury Archaeological Trust. Or CBA's CATP at CAT if you're a fan of acronyms. I will attempt to put a link on this page somewhere so you can read more about the CBA and the placement scheme, or even apply if you like the sound of it. I've been at my post since 2nd April, so nearly a month, and boy what an month it's been!

As the days go by I will bring you up to speed on what's occurring but for now I will give you a brief overview to ease you in gently. I'll include some handy links so you can get some more information and I don't have to whitter on so much. So here's a 'quick' summary of the things I've been up to and the projects I'm working on:

• I went to the IFA (Institute of Field Archaeologists) conference in Oxford. I met some of the other placements (there are 10 in total all over the country) and attended an afternoon session on Community Archaeology, which was very interesting and gave me some ideas for future projects.    
• I've spent quite a lot of time at Dover on the Boat 1550BC project.(http://www.canterburytrust.co.uk/news/projectdiaries/boat_1550/#may18). This is a project which has been run in conjunction with Canterbury Christ Church University, the University of Lille 3, Ghent University, INRAP (the French national archaeology service), the Conseil general du Pas-de-Calais, the town of Boulogne-sur-Mer and the British Museum. The project aims to construct a half scale replica of the Bronze Age Dover Boat (http://www.doverdc.co.uk/museum/bronze_age_boat.aspx) found during construction of an underpass in the town. Unfortunately they could only lift half of it and it now resides in Dover Museum, the other half is still under the underpass. I've been going down to help on open days (every Wednesday and Saturday on the museum lawn behind the library) and very occasionally the boat builders let me do some small jobs. So for I've painted the boat with linseed oil and picked moss clean (more on that another time). The other thing I've been doing is organising the launch; more on that later.
• A Town Unearthed: Folkestone before 1500 (http://www.atownunearthed.co.uk/) is the other project I've been working on. This project is the 3rd year and will finish next Spring. Previous seasons have included an community led excavation on a Roman Villa but this year I get to be in charge of Keyhole excavations in people's back gardens. The website has some fantastic pictures of last years findings and the background to the project.
• CSI: Sittingbourne (http://anglosaxoncsi.wordpress.com/) - Conservation, Science, Investigation - is a fantastic project based in Sittingbourne. Tesco have very kindly lent them 2 shops that would have otherwise been empty to carry out conservation work on the finds from an Anglo-Saxon cemetery found underneath what is now the 'Jenny Wren' Marston pub. Some really great things came from this site (pictures to follow) including hundreds of beads made of glass, amber and amethyst. There's an exhibition there too so if you're around go take a look!
• The Viking's Invaded Canterbury and we opened up the finds department at the Trust to display some of our finds from around that period. Unfortunately Viking finds are rare in Canterbury but we used some from the Sittingbourne excavation and people seemed impressed enough with them. The event was organised by Canterbury Heritage Museum (http://www.canterbury.co.uk/thedms.aspx?dms=13&venue=3030489) and consisted of a trail around the town visiting re-enactors in key locations around the city.

...and that's not everything!

So I'm being kept busy and with more projects in the pipeline it looks like it's set to continue for the placement! I will leave you to digest all this for now but will be back very soon.

...to be continued....