Prof Mick Aston of Time Team fame sadly passed away yesterday. Mick had a long-standing interest in the Lufton area from his time working in Somerset. He was extremely supportive of the current project and some of the geophysical survey has been funded by the Aston Fund of the Somerset Archaeological and Natural History Society.
The project sends its condolences and best wishes to Mick’s family, friends and colleagues. He will be missed.
James and Andy are busy finishing the report on the 2012 excavations. When completed this report will be submitted to the Historic Environment Record.
Andy has spent some time turning the site drawings into a plan of the excavation. The Bronze Age ring ditch is [010] and [030] and is cut by Iron Age ditch [005]/[036].
Further information about the Bronze Age and Iron Age in Somerset can be found in the South Western Archaeological Research Framework.
Plan of the 2012 trench showing prehistoric features © Andrew Agate and The Lufton Project.
James Gerrard will be giving two public lectures during the course of the excavations.
The first will be held on the 27th July 2013 at the Abbey Manor Community Centre. The talk starts at 7.30pm and will be on the current excavations.
The second lecture will be on ‘Somerset and the End of Roman Britain’ and will take place in Seavington Memorial Hall on Thursday 18th July at 7.30pm. Tickets for this event are £6 in advance or £7.50 on the door. Please phone 01460 249730 for further details.
The Newcastle part of the excavation team met today for a briefing about the dig. We had a good think about where we’re going to put this year’s trenches (and why!).
We’ve also also just taken delivery of a Bartington MS3 magnetic susceptibility meter, which we hope to use on site. ‘Mag sus’ meters are used to detect burning and other human activities that change the magnetic properties of a deposit.
James and Andy also did a bit of refresher training on Newcastle’s Geoscan RM15 resistivity meter. We hope to do some resistivity survey that will complement our magnetometer surveys in the field.
There’s a lot going on behind the scenes in the North East. The devil’s in the detail!