Exploring your Heritage – A community archaeological toolkit

Starting on the 29^th September GGAT will be running a free community workshop at the Blaenavon World Heritage Centre.

This course is set out to encourage and promote the appreciation of the rich and diverse heritage of Blaenavon World Heritage Landscape and to provide a toolkit of skills so that members can take ownership of their local heritage and historic environment and have a hand in maintaining historic sites for present and future generations.

The course runs over 10 weeks and covers such topics as:

• What’s in my area?  Learn about the rich and diverse archaeological resource in the Blaenavon World Heritage area.

• Landscape Detective Understand the evolution of landscape, find out how maps are used in archaeology and historic landscape studies. Have a go at interpretation of cartographic information plotting information onto base maps and storing results on a electronic database.

• Community Archaeology Show and Tell Create new historical records through shared memories, personal histories, old photographs and sketches.

• The Way of the Archaeologist Learn basic archaeological recording methods through a practical hands-on workshop led by a recording specialist. Produce a visual record of an archaeological site, comprised of a brief written statement, photographs along-side measured drawings.

For more information or to enrol please contact the Glamorgan-Gwent Archaeological Trust on 01792 655208 or enquiries@ggat.org.uk

 

New Roman discoveries in the offing

My name is Martin Tuck, a Project Officer with GGAT. My role alternates between fieldwork and  office based report writing.

At the moment I am engaged on the preparation of an archaeological excavation design, including Scheduled Monument Consent from Cadw, for additional work relating to the site of a Roman fort in Neath, where the Trust carried out an archaeological excavation during 2010, which continued through to the early part of 2011.

The  Roman remains discovered related to a 1st century Roman fort, which included defensive ditches and associated rampart, cooking areas and an internal circuit road.  The forthcoming works are likely to reveal details of part of the barracks.

GGAT’s Commercial Dept

Welcome to a series of blogs today from the commercial department (GGAT Projects) of the Glamorgan-Gwent Archaeological Trust Ltd. My name is Richard Lewis and I am the Head of Projects for the Trust. My role involves supervising all of the many projects we undertake and making sure we have many new projects too!

The kind of projects we carryout are quite diverse and range from Prehistoric and Roman excavations (Swansea Bay and at Neath Nidum) to recording relict early-Industrial iron-stone extractive landscapes in the south Wales valleys.

This morning, my time has been taken up with liaising with the Local Planning Authority’s archaeological advisor (GGAT Curatorial) to provide archaeological cover for an emergency arising in Merthyr Tydfil.

My next problem to solve is how to cover all of our archaeological watching briefs next week with so many staff on holiday. I may have to dust off my old boots and trowel…!!

Day in the life of an archaeological planning officer

I am Neil Maylan and I work as the Archeological Planning Manager for the Glamorgan-Gwent Archaeological Trust, based in Swansea, Wales. We provide advice to 13 local planning authorities in South East Wales and I hope to be able to provide a work diary for today.

I started my working day circa 7.30am. As part of my job I am responsible for the Trust’s IT network and e-mails, so my first job is to check the e-mails that have come in overnight, delete the vast number of spam messages that are sent to our open e-mail accounts and redirect any messages that have been wrongly addressed or sent to the open accounts and need to be answered by a specific member of staff.

I also check my own e-mails received over night, fortunately few today and read the weekly newsletter from the Institute for Archaeologists (IfA) Maritime Affairs Group, which always has some fascinating information on an area of archaeology I really don’t know enough about.

Visit Day of Archaeology to learn more about what archaeologist do.

Day of Archaeology

Have you ever wondered what archaeologists really get up to?  Well, now’s your chance to find out! 

The Day of Archaeology 2011 aims to give the public a window into the daily lives of archaeologists.  The event will chronicle what archaeologist do on one single day, July 29th 2011.

So, if you’ve ever wondered what happens here at GGAT or in archaeology in general, visit the DoA website tomorrow, 29th July,  to find out what archaeology is really all about.

Visit the Day of Archaeology website here

GGAT is training all its staff in ‘social networking’

Hello

My name is Andrew Marvell. I am the Chief Executive at GGAT.

In order that we can reach as wide an audience as possible through new technology the Trust added to its website outputs by setting up a range of social networking links (blogger, wordpress, twitter and so forth). We realised that only a few of our staff were using these facilities and most were relying on our outreach officer to post content. So we have set up a series of internal training sessions so that all our staff can get up to speed with using these information conduits with the intention that we will be able to let you know more quickly about the projects that we are undertaking, the events that we have planned, and perhaps most importantly the discoveries that we make both during fieldwork and during post-excavation studies.

Today I and colleagues are in the third group to be trained by out Web Manager Paul Huckfield. This is my second blog and I have learnt so far how basically to use blogger and wordpress. Although as is ever the case practice will be the key. Neverless the excitement in learning a new skill is great – must check to see whether I can include this in my IFA professional CPD Log.