It was with some pleasure that we took the story of our recent archaeological excavations over to the Shirenewton Local History Society, just last week. A packet room was in attendance to hear about the latest season of excavations to be conducted in Llanfihangel Tor y Mynydd, in what has been branded as a ‘world exclusive’ Cyfarwydd lecture. We might be getting ahead of ourselves with such grandiose titles, but, given that we had formally spoken to no one about the excavation results, technically at least, this was a world exclusive!
The archaeological excavations in Llanfihangel have now entered their third season, having originally commenced in summer 2013. Now being conducted under the Cyfarwydd brand, these excavations first started back in 2012, as part of the research agenda of the History Department at the former University of Wales, Newport. Back then, we had not conducted any archaeological excavation work for some time, but we had always had that itch to go back into the field once more.
One more go, instead became a regular feature, and we have now completed three seasons worth of excavations, in just two years. The results, spectacular. The full summary of the Cyfarwydd excavations can be found over at: http://excavate.weebly.com/excavation-progress, a website which also charts the history of our previous projects. In short though, when we started, we thought we were excavating a relatively small building, maybe a couple of meters in either direction, perhaps no more important than a storage building for animals. How wrong we were. Instead of a pig sty, or sheep holding, we unearthed a massive 16m long structure, complete with a standing bread oven, multiple well preserved flag stone floor surfaces, mysterious window glass, not to mention a liberal spread of medieval and late medieval pottery – which ended up making the building a lot older than we expected it to be, as well as being much larger!
Everyone who has been involved in this project has had the privilege of contributing to a site which has surpassed all expectations. But it is the team who I would like to talk about in this post, rather than the excavation itself. At Cyfarwydd, we have had a long standing commitment to open up the historical resources of south Wales (and beyond) to as wide a demographic as possible. Put simply, if you are interested in it, you are in. This rationale is no different when it comes to our excavations.
This year we put out an open invitation: if you are interested in archaeology, and want to give it a go, come on up and join in, no experience required. Now, while we had plenty of people role up to pitch in who had years of experience under their belt, we had a fair spread of individuals who had no background in archaeology at all. Indeed, of those participating with previous experience, many of them joined in having first started their archaeological adventure with us a couple of years earlier. We like to think we have an excellent track record in making archaeologists! And that, in part at least, is what we are all about. The excavation is of course exciting, and great results go a long way to making a project enjoyable. But opening access to the sometimes impenetrable field of archaeology is one of the most important things that we hope can come out of a project like this.
With that in mind, we are not done yet. There will need to be at least one more season of excavations on this particular project in the future. So if you fancy a go, experienced or not, please do get in touch, we can always find space for a budding archaeologist!