Archive

Dig a hole in any medieval town or village in England, and you’ll find pottery. On most medieval excavations, potsherds are likely to be the most abundant type of artefact. Popular ideas about medieval crafts such as pot-making are dominated by images of bearded men in dirty aprons, such as this extract from this article...

An article has just been published which sheds light on the regions from which cattle were brought to Worcester in Roman times. The results, using evidence from bones excavated on the site of The Hive, are in the latest edition of the Journal of Archaeological Science and show how with scientific advances new discoveries can...

  It’s fairly common to find animal bones on archaeological sites. Most often there’s a range of different bones from an assortment of animals, left over from cooking or butchery. So when the finds trays start filling up with just one or two different bones, it’s a cue that something particular was going on. This...

Ridge and furrow earthworks, the remains of former field systems, exist across Worcestershire. They are often overlaid by the straight boundaries of later inclosed fields and form an important part of the landscape character in Worcestershire and the identity of local areas.  The pressure for land for development and changes in agriculture in the second...

  Ruardean Castle, in the Forest of Dean, is a nationally important site. Despite this, relatively little is known about it – when was it first built and occupied until? Did it start life as a motte and bailey castle or ringwork (defensive site protected by a ditch and bank), and when was it converted...

  Few areas of science generate as much controversy and debate as human evolution. The teapot sherd discovered during an excavation at Kilbury Drive, Worcester, shows a snippet of a scene in which apes dressed in human clothes are brawling in a tavern. It is an example of a popular Victorian ‘meme’: satirising the idea...

  Keep your eyes open! You don’t need to be an archaeologist to discover fascinating finds. This month’s star artefact was found by a volunteer on our community excavation in the Forest of Dean. During October, we ran a dig at Ruardean Castle – a nationally important and protected monument – as part of the...

  Our species evolved in an Ice Age world. 99% of the span of human life in Britain falls within the Ice Age. There have been at least four human species in Britain over the last million years. For most of human history, there have been multiple human species living at the same time. Today,...

  All analysis of the Cathedral Square excavation is now finished and a report has been produced. As the report is very long and technical, we thought we’d summarise our results here too. The Dig Lich Street blog is also still available. In 2015, an archaeological dig took place prior to the Cathedral Square redevelopment....

Members of our staff are speaking at the next four Worcestershire Archaeological Society’s evening talks, explaining about some of the projects and work we have been running.   Monday 8 October The Broad View: Investigations on the Broadway Flood Alleviation Scheme Richard Bradley Over the course of several months a team of archaeologists carried out an...