News update December 2018

Firstly, CAGG was shorted listed for the CBA Marsh Award for Best Community Archaeology Project.  The CBA Archaeology day / AGM was held yesterday in York.  Kris, Ruth, Peter and Jim went up for the event.

Although we didn’t win (and congratulations to the group from Woking who did), it was a pleasing result to be listed in the top three projects.  Congratulations to all our volunteers who have worked at Verulamium over the years.

 

Secondly, this Tuesday sees the biennial “Near Surface Geophysics Group” conference at the Geological Society in Burlington House, Piccadilly.  Those of you with good memories will recall that I gave a paper about the work at Verulamium at the last conference in 2016 (sadly, the link to storify.com no longer works as that service has been discontinued). This time round I decided to make a poster instead.  As the poster is A0 (i.e., huge!), I won’t post a link to the 145mgb PDF file but I have posted a much reduced file below.  Please note, however, that even this is 10mgb so you’ll probably not want to click on it on your smart phone (for those of you who have such a thing).

Lastly, depending on the weather, a small group of us may be out surveying at Ashwell Church this Sunday.

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UCL film

Members of CAGG star in a film made by UCL to advertise their public engagement strategy. It can be seen on Youtube.  We are about a minute in, surveying at Darrowfield.

Forthcoming talk

Just to let you all know that Kris will be speaking at the Welwyn Festival on Friday June 23rd, presenting a talk entitled “Verulamium Revealed” on our survey results from the town. More details at http://www.welwynfestival.org.uk/news/welwyn-archaeological-society/

Hope to see some of you there.

Upgrading our mag cart

New to the blog or geophysics in archaeology?  Check out the “Geophysical survey in Archaeology” page.

What do you think? clicky linky thingywotsit.

I believe Jim enjoys mountain biking!

Recognition

Just a quick post to say we have been awarded the UCL Provost’s Award for Public Engagement 2017 in the established researcher category. Although the award is to me, I really see it as an acknowledgment of the success of the group as a whole. We should all award ourselves a firm pat on the back.  Well done everyone, and very many thanks to Ruth Halliwell for nominating us for the prize.

Infamy, infamy (they’ve all got it in for me)?

Those of you who know Bloomsbury probably imagine I have a lovely view across one of the squares from my office window. Until recently, you would be right!  UCL are building a new student hub (everything is a ‘hub’ these days) and had to have somewhere to house the workers.  The solution? … a two storey stack of portacabins in a tunnel over the pavement.

The Institute of Archaeology, UCL.

Just to add to my joy, the staircase between levels is just by my window, so they have covered it in plastic…

The view from my office.

It is scheduled to be like this until December 2018.  No wonder I prefer being out surveying. Jarrod Burks, who many of you will remember from the course, was out surveying the other day.

Jarrod surveying, December 2016.

Seems a bit too extreme for my liking!

You may wonder what this tale of woe has to do with geophysics and CAGG?  UCL have put up a nice set of panels on the hoardings to advertise what the Institute does and to make the place slightly more inviting.  I was really pleased to see…

The Verulamium survey on the hoardings.

Yay, fame at last!  Sadly, the only caption near the image of our survey doesn’t mention CAGG, Verulamium or geophysics.

The caption.

Oh well, never mind.  Perhaps I should find a plastic holder for our CAGG postcards and leave a few there for the curious.

Local Hertfordians maybe interested to see the article on Batford in this week’s Herts Advertiser and compare that to my posting about the survey.

Merry Christmas everybody.

Season’s Greetings to all our followers

John Dent kindly sent a photograph of his birthday cake beautifully decorated with an icing GPR.

Which reminded me that I should wish everyone a happy festive season.

I doubt we will be doing any more geophysics until the New Year, but I have some older work to catch-up on so there may be the odd post or two.

Best wishes from Kris and Ellen.