Best wishes

DDCAG wish all our blog viewers around the world a healthy and happy 2016 and hope that you will all look in to see what we find in Dorset over the next twelve months.

Quizdig

                                       
Members and friends had a great first DDCAG quiz night at the weekend at The Lugger near Weymouth. Hopefully this can will be an annual event.

                                       
Congratulations to the winners.

Roman around

A possible project near Dorchester, where MD club members found some R/B artefacts. DDCAG may be able to do some geophiz work here and see if there are any hidden buildings on the site as well as the extant round barrows, of which there are many. More news later.

SOS - Save Our Sites!

The South Dorset Ridgeway Landscape Partnership held a morning introduction to monitoring and recording ‘at risk’ monuments in our landscape today.

Many of our monuments are being de-scheduled by Historic England at the moment, which means that it is important that volunteers go out and monitor the state of our many round and long barrows, hillforts and stone circles for example and record any problems. This may include animal burrows, natural erosion, stock erosion (through grazing or just trampling) or anything that has an impact on the monument.

The project is running until July 2018 and the SDRLP are looking to have the first six month results starting now and hope that monitoring can continue after that with extra funding. All the paperwork needed to do the recording will be sent to us, including maps.

It is suggested that DDCAG could take on an area and monitor it over the six months and this area will be sent to me very soon, so if anyone wants to be put on a rota please get in touch. We can then have a meeting of the volunteers and go through the process and paperwork. This is an important project for us to be involved in, especially for those that cannot or don’t want to dig. The only criteria are to be able to walk in the landscape and not mind getting a bit muddy!    

We have lift off!

Our chair, David Northam, has the new geophiz software up and running and tested out the Rez Meter on his garden! All works well and the data downloaded. No archaeology in David's garden, unfortunately. This is a vital piece of kit for future independent work in this very technical area of archaeology surveying [see above!].

And the award goes to...

Elizabeth Adam, of Nether Compton, Dorset was presented a certificate and one of the 4th century hoard coins in recognition of her support and contribution to the project. She was the instigator and inspiration for the geophysics and excavation of the archaeology at Kitton Lane and even though coming up for 90 also gave us a hand with digging! Thanks Elizabeth, from all the members and committee.

Possible new project

We have been contacted by a group of people in South Somerset to help out with a possible Norman priory project. This could be very big and we are hoping to do some geophiz at the site soon to see what features may be lying beneath two fields. More reports later.