The excavations ran from the 14th – 25th of July 2014, and was Mercian’s contribution to the Festival of British Archaeology.
The project so far has been a fantastic success, recognised as Sherwood Forest’s biggest ever volunteer excavation with 117 different people digging over the course of 12 days, producing over 1,374.75 hours of FREE Community Archaeology and you can view the project page here: http://www.mercian-as.co.uk/robinhood.htmlThe dig engaged a large number of people in the village of Edwinstowe with 15 test pits dug in gardens around the village. A significant number of properties have now signed up for stage 2 which is now being organised for the autumn by popular demand. Alongside the local community people volunteered from all over the region and around the United Kingdom with people coming from around England and Northern Ireland.The project was also joined by a volunteer all the way from Queensland Australia- here is what she had to say about her experiences:
“I’d just like to say thank you so much to Andy, David and Sean for the last three days of getting dirty in test pits. I have made new friends, had loads of fun and have definitely learnt a lot from this experience. Could not have asked for a better first dig! I’m sure you’ll be glad to know this has been the highlight of my trip and that I am so glad I came along.” – Dana Abbott, Queensland, Australia.
The project has also had a significant international following online via the Sherwood Forest Archaeology Project Facebook page with over 300 new followers joining us during the duration of the dig and we now have over 5,500 followers for the Project on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/sherwoodforesthistory so why not join them!
We were also joined by the Newark and District branch of the Young Archaeology Club, members of the Edwinstowe Beavers Group, and members from the Southwell, and Newark branches of Reach Learning Disabilities Group.We were also fortunate to have the Member of Parliament for Newark and Sherwood, Mark Spencer MP, Robin Hood (aka Ezekial Bone http://www.ezekialbone.com/robinhood ), and Patrick Candler of Sherwood Forest Trust join us to open the dig on the 14th of July.All this has been possible partly due to a new way of funding Community Archaeology in Nottinghamshire- with no expense to the tax payer!
All money raised goes to support the project so that people can continue to benefit from FREE access to Community Archaeology in the heart of Sherwood Forest!
This forms part of Mercian’s attempt to create a sustainable future for Community Archaeology in Nottinghamshire and Sherwood Forest.
In other newsnews…
Mercian are proud to announce that we have so clocked up 2,608.75 hours of Community Archaeology since the 1st of August 2014. This is equal to 347.83 days in just 4 months!
