Laying siege to the vegetable patch

Kit studies some old maps on his computer

KIT BAILEY of the Peak District Young Archaeologists’ Club did not let the lockdown dampen his enthusiasm for ‘YAC-tivities’

When YAC stopped running due to Covid 19, I decided I wouldn’t let that stop me doing archaeology. Fortunately, although I missed the YAC meetings, I found many other ways to learn. Like a lot of people, I have been learning at home much more over the past year, and Dig School, a series of online archaeology workshops, was a great place to start. It was brilliant for understanding all kinds of archaeology. Another thing I did was to watch old Channel 4 Time Team documentaries. We spent a lot of evenings doing this, and I think we’ve watched all the episodes available now. During the first lockdown, we studied old maps of our local area and tried to match the roads, houses and other features to what we could see in the landscape today. We went for lots of walks and tried to find the route of the old roads and tracks on the maps. It’s surprising how many of them are now footpaths. We also looked in the fields for traces of ridge-and-furrow, a medieval method of cultivation. Now I can usually recognise it anywhere. I also dug a test pit in the garden, though didn’t find much – as usual. In some nearby fields I found several pieces of pottery, which I have tried to identify using information I found online. I have also experimented making pots from clay dug out of the garden. The best one so far is a large Bronze Age style pot. I haven’t fired this one but I did try firing a smaller one in a bonfire. The clay fired, but the pot broke. I think I need to improve my prehistoric pottery skills! After watching a documentary about an experimental archaeology site in Guédelon, France, where people are building a castle using medieval methods, I tried stone carving. It was rather difficult, and I expect it would take me a long time to build a castle, so the medieval masons were probably very much better at it than me. After visiting the ruins of Duffield Castle, I did a detailed drawing of a stone keep. I learned about castles, why they were built and how they were defended. I also made a working trebuchet out of an old pallet. It fired pebbles… and made a bit of a mess of the vegetable garden! It hasn’t just been my ideas, though. Natalie, our YAC leader, sent several “YAC-tivities”, including a recipe for yummy Anglo-Saxon inspired oatcakes, instructions for a “puzzle purse”, and a coin template to design your own medieval coin. I’m looking forward to YAC starting up again soon. Doing archaeology on your own is great but doing it with others is even better! The only thing I haven’t been able to do at home is geophysics. Maybe I should ask for a magnetometry set for my birthday?