Archive

Our Find of the Month is a Roman pot with a chequered past, discovered at Ruardean Hill in the Forest of Dean during a recent Foresters’ Forest community excavation. We were investigating a rectangular earthwork which had been identified using LiDAR. It’s one of 1700 potential archaeological sites being investigated over the 5 year course...

We went looking for a Roman Road and all we found were buttons! In a scruffy corner of an old sports field in Perry Barr, RPS Group asked us to dig some trenches to look for remains of a Roman Road which once passed beneath the proposed location of a new school. There was little...

It's International Lefthanders Day. Roughly 10% of the world's population are left-hand dominant. But for how long has this been the case? There's plenty of evidence in the archaeological record to suggest that handedness runs deep in our evolutionary history.

  Over 3000 years ago, fingertips were pressed into the damp clay of a large pot, creating a patterned band and dimpling the top. Once dry, it was fired and used before being broken – several large fragments were put into an isolated pit on the gravel ridge east of the River Severn. Prehistoric pots,...

  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...

  Archaeologists don’t metal detect, do they? Walk over a ploughed field and you’re bound to see bits of pot and metal sticking out the ground. Artefacts are easily disturbed and moved over time from their original location into the topsoil – metal detecting is an easy way to check for interesting finds missed in...

  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...

  One of the many things our archaeologists found in August is this beautiful piece of bluegreen tinted glass. The tiny bubbles in the glass tell us that it’s old: Roman, to be precise. Roman glass was high quality and survives impressively well in the ground – so much so that it’s hard to believe...

  Ever dropped a plate or mug? Almost everyone has broken crockery at some point, but what did you do then – repair it, or throw it away? This month we found evidence of Roman thriftiness near Evesham: a pot repaired with lead. Yes, you read that correctly. Before the invention of superglue and epoxy...

  What to pick this month? June began by finding a mammoth tusk, which is now on display at Worcester City Museum & Art Gallery (as it turned up just in time for our Ice Age exhibition). We also found a mysterious decorated ceramic object in Worcester, but this remains a mystery that no one’s...