Dig- Besthorpe Mons Pool Community Excavation (Besthorpe)

The ongoing developer-led excavation at Mons Pool, Besthorpe Quarry, opens up to volunteer diggers for a fortnight from the 8th to the 19th August (excluding weekends). As part of the Trent Vale Landscape Partnership, the University of Salford’s Centre for Applied Archaeology are teaming up with Nottinghamshire County Council’s Community Archaeologists for this fortnight of community archaeology to celebrate the Festival of British Archaeology.

Volunteers will have the opportunity to excavate parts of a Romano-British settlement that once overlooked the River Trent. The site also has fascinating prehistoric origins that stretch back into the Stone Age.

Places on the dig are filling up fast, so email community.archaeology@nottscc.gov.uk or call or call 0115 977 2160 if you want to come along. Also visit our website at www.nottinghamshire.gov.uk/communityarchaeology for a video and photos from last year’s dig.

From: http://trentvale.wordpress.com/2011/08/02/besthorpe-mons-pool-community-excavation/

Website - Notts County Council Community Archaeology

Nottinghamshire County Council have recently updated their Community Archaeology website at http://www3.nottinghamshire.gov.uk/learning/history/archaeology/communityarchaeology/ this is much more accessible than the previous incarnations.  It includes details of their forthcoming work including the dig on the Romano-British site at Besthorpe in August

There is also a new online volunteering form at 

https://secure.nottinghamshire.gov.uk/learningandwork/historyheritage/communityarchaeology/contactcommunityarchaeology/. This will help them to get more volunteers and is a great way to get updates on what's happening in our county.  Please join as the more people willing to help will hopefully mean they will do more projects in the future

Event - Quarry artefacts shedding light on lives of our early ancestors (Besthorpe Quarry)

ROMAN coffin nails and Bronze Age pottery found at a Notts quarry are shedding light on the lives of our early ancestors.

The discoveries are part of collection of artefacts gathered during investigations at Lafarge Aggregates & Concrete UK's Besthorpe sand and gravel site near Newark.

Last year Roman bodies were unearthed during a visit by the excavation team from the University of Salford's Centre for Applied Archaeology.

A team has worked on the site since 1996, digging up, storing, cataloguing and studying as part of the ongoing programme of works required under extraction conditions.

Adam Thompson, principal archaeologist, said: "From these discoveries we think the site may have been used to supply by the Roman army, but we are yet to prove that.

"We have also found at least nine burials. In some cases only the coffin nails have survived but in others there are parts of the skeleton. In one grave we found a head and body which weren't attached."

All human remains have been stabilised at a special unit at the York Archaeological Trust where experts should be able to at least determine the sex and age of the dead before the remains are re-interred.

This year the site will be the subject of an open day on Saturday, July 23, as part of the Festival of British Archaeology, and 'community dig' will also run from August 8 to 19.

From: http://www.thisisnottingham.co.uk/Quarry-artefacts-shedding-light-lives-early/story-12802055-detail/story.html