Upcoming Events for FoYAT Members
Study trip to Isle of Man-Sun 9th to Fri 14th June 2024
Staying at the Empress Hotel, Douglas. We will be accompanied by Jon Kenny, Community Archaeologist and plan to visit the following places:
Cronk ny Merrin (Hill of the Dead)
Meayll Circle
Castle Rushden
Peel Castle
House of Mamannan
Manx Museum
Nautical Museum
Rushden Abbey
Cregneash
Great Laxey Wheel
Grove Museum of Victorian Life
Cashtal yn Ard
The Manx Crosses
Balladoole
Tynwald Hill
Price:
£750 per person sharing a room
£940 per person in a single room
Full payment required between Wednesday 1st May and Friday 10th May 2024
These prices are based on membership of English Heritage (EH) or the National Trust (NT) and include 5 nights half board at the Empress Hotel, 4 days coach travel for our visits and all entry fees. Any extra payment for non-EH or NT members is not expected to be more than about £70. You should make your own travel arrangements to/from the Isle of Man, however, we intend arranging a coach from York to connect with the Easyjet flight from Liverpool Airport & from Ronaldsway Airport to the Hotel & return journeys, at an additional cost.
For further information on FoYAT Events contact foyatcontact@gmail.com
Friends of YAT Events
From October to April every year, YAT stages public lunchtime lectures, supported by the Friends of YAT, on various YAT-related activities. Held in the Quaker Meeting House, Friargate, the lectures are free for FoYAT members to attend (£2.50 for non-members) providing an interesting insight into recent YAT archaeology projects and offer an opportunity to catch up on Friends activities.
Lectures start at 12:30 (doors open 12:00), duration 30mins, with Q&A after.
Along with lectures members also have the opportunity to take part in exclusive site tours and behind the scenes visits; and have the opportunity to join expertly-guided exclusive archaeology and history study trips throughout the UK and continental Europe. Recent exclusive tours, led by YAT’s expert archaeologists, have included visits to world-renowned sites throughout England, Scotland, Wales, Normandy and Denmark. Regular bespoke evening and day trip opportunities exploring the rich archaeology and heritage of the North and Midlands of England are also held throughout the spring and summer each year.
Dates of upcoming lectures
Wednesday 2nd October 2024
Wednesday 6th November 2024
Wednesday 4th December 2024
Wednesday 5th February 2025
Wednesday 5th March 2025
Wednesday 2nd April 2025
AGM
Saturday 19th October 2024, 14:00 Quaker Meeting House, Friargate, York
Previous Events
Past Friends of YAT Lectures:
2023
George Loffman - Work at 105-111 Micklegate, York
George is a Project Officer in York Archaeology’s York Fieldwork department.
Martin Millet - Roman York Beneath the Streets – update
The Cambridge–Reading University project to provide an updated synthesis of Roman York draws to an end in April 2024. The project includes drawing together information from all previous excavations and combining this information in a Geographical Information System along with the results of new Ground-Penetrating Radar survey. This talk gives an updated summary of the results of the project and offers some thoughts on future research priorities.
Martin Millett is Emeritus Laurence Professor of Classical Archaeology University of Cambridge and Principal Investigator on the Roman York Beneath the Streets project. He is also President of the Society of Antiquaries of London.
Ben Savine - Ebb and Flow The tides of time and change on the north-east bank of the River Ouse (York Guildhall North Annexe, analysis and final findings)
Ben is a Project Officer in the York Fieldwork department whose current responsibilities are focused on the successful delivery of a broad range of fieldwork projects, including site management, client liaison, and coordinating post-excavation assessment and analysis through to publication.
York Archaeology Online Collections: Opening the Archive, with Ellie Drew
The Collections and Archives Department has embarked on an ambitious project to make much of the collection and archival material available online. This talk covers their approach to the project, some of the technical challenges faced along the way, and how these resources can expand and enhance use of the collection both within York Archaeology and in the broader heritage community.
Ellie Drew is Collections and Archives Officer for York Archaeology. She has an MSc in Digital Heritage from the University of York, and is especially interested in improving access to collections through both digital and analogue methods.
Victoria Owen, Project Manager (Osteologist), York Archaeology (Nottingham Office) - The Kilham East Yorkshire Anglo-Saxon cemetery & prehistoric barrow
Initial case studies in trauma and disease from a Prehistoric barrow and Early Medieval mortuary site in Kilham, East Riding of Yorkshire.
Richard Jackson - The Archaeology of West Bar, Sheffield
Sandwiched between the edge of a growing Post Medieval town and the industrialising Don Valley, the story of West Bar was investigated by York Archaeology between July 2021 and May 2022. It began with the Soho Grinding Wheel, which represented a revolutionary approach to the cutlery industry of the Georgian era, and grew into one of the largest of its kind whilst also becoming a focus for the kind of radical dissent that was to become a hallmark of Industrial Victorian Sheffield. The subsequent landscape of crucible furnaces crowding up against domestic housing symbolises the best and the worst of those turbulent times.
Richard began working in commercial archaeology in 2001, and is too stubborn to quit. After 6 months of finding palaeolithic handaxes in Norfolk, he returned to Yorkshire and eventually sidled into Industrial Archaeology, amongst other things. He has worked for the Trust since 2009.
2022
Elisha Meadows - The melting pot of Eboracum: diversity and identity through skeletal and burial evidence in Roman York as seen through a bioarchaeological lens
This partnership project aims to deepen our understanding and perception of diversity and inclusion in past societies by applying an innovative, multifaceted approach to burial evidence from Roman York. It considers mobility, identity, and health and diet, placing the results within their wider contemporary social context.
WRoCAH Collaborative Doctoral Awards (CDAs) nurture the next generation by offering unique and internationalised training across three of the UK’s top
universities, York, Leeds and Sheffield. Alongside traditional research, the training is set within an increasingly global context of scholarship and fosters collaborations
with partner organisations inside and outside of academia.
Elisha talks about the project in its early stages, the scientific research techniques she has at her disposal and the potential it has to engage with modern-day concerns and audiences via the Trust’s and others’ public-facing activities.
Dr David Orton - Rats as proxies for urbanism and communications in medieval Europe
David is about to begin a major 5-year UKRI (formerly ERC) funded project exploring the long-term history of rats across Europe: how have humans influenced the distribution of these fascinating rodents, and what in turn they can tell us about major developments in urbanism, trade, and disease over the past two millennia.
David introduces this project and presents the results of pilot zooarchaeological and archaeogenetic research on rats, with a particular focus on York.
Gwendolene Pepper - Unravelling a tale of the medieval European silk trade
Gwendoline explains how she is unravelling a tale of the medieval European silk trade by using high resolution microscopy to re-examine textile fragments from Coppergate Gwendoline is combining both experimental and analytical research to develop techniques for global study of the production methods , trade networks and raw material sources to enrich our understanding of the medieval silk trade. Gwendoline is also a re-enactor which brings an added dimension to her work.
Katrien Dierick - SeaChanges: Flatfish from medieval York. Using bio-molecular techniques to take a long-term perspective on the human exploitation of marine vertebrates
Katrien explores how her study of archaeological fish remains in YAT collections, and especially those from Coppergate, has contributed to this project, how new biomolecular techniques can provide novel insights, and how society, practices, the environment, and the fish themselves have changed over time.
Frances Bennett & Giulia Gallio - Ancient Dust Busters: Exploring the Archaeology of Air Pollution with Young People
How can archaeology develop our understanding of air pollution and its impact on human health? In 2021 and 2022, YAT was a partner in the Ancient Dust Busters public engagement project with Dr Anita Radini and the University of York’s Department of Archaeology, with funding from the Wellcome Trust. The programme aimed to reach a public audience of families and school groups to share new archaeological research into dental calculus samples from individuals found in Roman contexts in York and elsewhere. Frances and Giulia explored how the investigation was designed with Anita and communicated to young people to both explore the connection between science and archaeology and to involve them in interpreting the complex but contemporary issues of air quality and human health.
Dr Colleen Morgan - Being Digital Romans: the OTHER EYES Project
The OTHER EYES project uses 21st century digital technology and advanced archaeological science to make 3D digital avatars of past people. This York based research features York Archaeological Trust’s data and collaboration with YAT has deeply informed both the investigation and outreach potential of the project. Colleen explored what benefits might this approach bring and what questions does it raise: How do we digitally reconstruct past people and does authenticity matter? Does the ability to digitally embody a past person of a different age, sex, or with a disability change the way we think about the past? What are the ethics of "resurrecting" past people based on bioarchaeological evidence and can (and should) reconstructions of past people be archived to encourage their creative reuse?
2019
Southburn Archaeological Museum (SAM) - A "Hidden Gem" in the heart of the Yorkshire Wolds by Bill Coultard.
During his talk Bill revealed how a farm worker spent 40 years collecting and recording artefacts in and around Southburn and left us an invaluable legacy in terms of both finds and information about 6,000 years of East Yorkshire history. He illustrated how local volunteers have embraced this collection and developed a museum to keep the finds local and make them available to the public, along with interpretive information and 'hands on' activities for young and older visitors alike.
Bill also described some of the artefacts in the collection and also some of the background context of archaeology in the Wolds and eastern Yorkshire. Further information: SAM has worked with several partner organisations including York Archaeological Trust, the British Museum and the Star Carr project as well as local societies such as the East Riding Archaeological Society and the Battle of Stamford Bridge Society to bring the heritage of the Wolds to life.
Sin & Punishment In Medieval Life - A Parable For Christmas by Jane McComish, York Fieldwork Project Officer.
During her talk Jane looked though late medieval eyes at sin and the associated punishments in hell, but fear not…. she will also had a look at ways that God-fearing medieval Christians could redeem themselves. Food for thought as the season of festive over-indulgence, greed and gluttony approaches!
Hidden Landscape: The Archaeology of the Humber Lowlands, Excavations at Skeffling 2016 – 2018 by Clare Jackson, YAT Project Officer
In November 2016, Ian Milsted (the Head of YAT’s York based field team) presented a Lunchtime Lecture that delved into the landscape around Skeffling in East Yorkshire, and the fieldwork that was about to happen there. After the initial phase of fieldwork was completed in late 2016 the team returned to Skeffling in 2018 and through further fieldwork found a complex landscape shaped by 12,000 years of natural action and human activity, starting from when the area was a post-glacial inland river valley up to the period it became a major coastal estuary. The 2018 work was overseen by Clare Jackson and Clare’s talk will focus on the archaeology of the Roman to medieval periods that was uncovered during this work; archaeology that undoubtedly reflects the important land-use changes in this most fluid of landscapes.
Recent Archaeological Work At Nottingham Castle by Laura Binns, Trent & Peak Archaeology.
During her talk Laura will present the initial results of Trent & Peak’s recent archaeological work on the world famous Nottingham Castle. Laura will reveal how the excavations have not only gained new insights into the development of the castle but how they tie into the future of the castle – enabling renovations, a new exhibition space and a new visitor centre. Laura will finish her talk with further insights gained during the ‘We Dig the Castle’ participatory training excavation.
2018
”Take the 3rd exit and head back in time” by Tom Coates, Supervising Archaeologist, York Fieldwork Department.
During his talk Tom discussed the archaeological discoveries made at the City of York Council upgrade of the Wetherby Road roundabout during the Summer of 2018. Tom revealed details on the first possible Iron Age/Romano-British settlement situated immediately west of York, and his talk included insights into an array of finds, such as the environmental and timber structural remains that have survived within waterlogged deposits, as well as possible localised ancient industrial activity.
“Jailbreak: Community excavation at HMP Northallerton” by Emma Boast, Project Archaeologist, York Fieldwork Department.
Emma will present the initial results of YAT’s community excavation at Northallerton Prison last October. Northallerton Prison has 18th century origins, with some of the original buildings designed by John Carr. YAT led a programme of community excavation and research into the Prison’s workshop, yard and detention wings, including the site of the famous punishment treadmill. YAT also provided access for special needs groups, including the RNIB, lead by Jen Jackson (YAT’s Community Engagement Manager) which explored innovative ways of experiencing archaeology.
Emma started her career at the Jorvik Viking Centre as an interactive and is well known for her expertise in Viking nålebinding techniques. She joined the York Fieldwork team three years ago and is a key member of the excavation staff.
“Marvellous Mesolithic Mycology” by Charlotte Wilkinson, YAT Conservator.
In her lecture Charlotte will cover the challenges and the approaches required to tackle the conservation of an unusual collection of humanly modified Mesolithic fungus found at the world famous Star Carr site in North Yorkshire. Over the last few years the YAT Conservation team have had the pleasure of working on numerous interesting materials and objects from this site including antler frontlets and birch bark rolls. This lecture will offer a rare insight into an unusual archaeological conservation conundrum – when a hazard becomes the object!
“Misunderstanding the Mesolithic” by Don Henson (University of York).
Don asks: When you think of the Mesolithic what do you imagine? Is it, by any chance, a group of hairy men hunting a woolly mammoth with spears?In his talk Don will investigate how images of the Mesolithic are often stereotyped and betray biases in how the past is portrayed. He will explore how the clichés of gender, age, dress and activity can be taken apart to reveal a far more diverse, engaging and exciting understanding of our shared Mesolithic past.
“Revealing a Roman Cemetery, Excavations at the former Newington Hotel, Tadcaster Road, York” by Ben Savine, YAT Project Officer.
During his talk Ben will take in an overview of the previous Roman discoveries at and around Newington Place/Trentholme Drive from the 1820’s to the 2017 YAT excavation and the new research opportunities this recent work has opened up due to the discoveries made during post ex analysis.
“YAT’s Five-Year Strategy: Building Better Lives Through Heritage” by David Jennings, YAT CEO.
David will talk about the thinking behind YAT’s new Five-Year Strategy and reflect on ways in which YAT’s supporters, the Friends of YAT and many other partners, could help YAT to achieve those goals and deliver the key aspects of the strategy that will lead YAT into the next 50 exciting years.
2017
“Collections at the Heart of JORVIK” by Christine McDonnell, Head of Collections & Archives.
During her talk Christine will illustrate how YAT’s archaeological collections and collections knowledge sits at the heart of the Trust’s exhibitions; informing narratives, reconstructions and visitor enjoyment. She will also give a glimpse into some of the activity which happens behind the scenes before an exhibition can be launched to the public.
“Bringing the Past, Present and Future together: JORVIK Group Community Engagement in 2017” by Jennifer Jackson, Community Engagement Manager.
In her talk Jen will focus on two of the community projects that she is currently involved with: Waterproof Memories, an oral history of the 2015 Boxing day floods in York and The Tang Hall Big Local Archaeology project, which has been investigating the area’s Roman pottery production. She will finish her talk by looking at plans for the future and a new upcoming exhibition in DIG.
“How Did That Get There?” Investigating the archaeology of disposal by Peter Connelly, YAT Project Director.
During his talk Peter delved into the archaeology of disposal over the last 500 years to uncover the not so obvious reasons as to why some objects get into the ground and others don’t.
The Varied World of Community Archaeology
Dr Jon Kenny talked about the wide variety of local interests encapsulated by different communities around Yorkshire and his role in helping them to find out more about the past.
2016
Hearthside stories: new research on food, cooking, and identity in the Age of Vikings
Dr Steven Ashby, Senior Lecturer, Department of Archaeology, University of York, presented findings on a new research project at the University of York that uses cutting-edge scientific techniques to explore the ways in which pottery was used to transport, store, prepare and serve food and drink in Viking-age York.
Time and Tide
Project Manager Ian Milsted gave a talk on a major project that YAT are working on with the Environment Agency for a proposed coastal defence scheme in East Yorkshire. As part of the project team YAT are investigating a large and complex landscape where an entire sequence of human habitation over the last 12,000 years may survive in the tidal muds and reclaimed farmland of the North Humber shore.
Dramatic Discoveries at York Theatre Royal
Ben Reeves talked about the discoveries made during the 2015 excavation of part of St Leonard’s medieval hospital, revealed during the recent renovation of York Theatre Royal. With the post-excavation analyses at a preliminary stage Ben shined a spotlight on some of the new structures identified during the recent work, the character of the archaeology the team encountered, the results from environmental samples, some of the fascinating objects recovered from the excavation and of course a little bit about the theatre itself.
The pottery from archaeological investigations at Rutson Hospital, Northallerton, North Yorkshire
During an excavation carried out by YAT in the heart of Northallerton during the Autumn of 2015 a very unusual assemblage of Post-Medieval pottery was recovered from brick lined feature. During the lecture Anne investigated what this intriguing assemblage represented and what it told us about the people who once owned it.
Tree-ring dating late medieval timber-framed buildings in York
Dr Jayne Rimmer explored the use of tree-ring dating (dendrochronology) in the investigation of historic timber-framed buildings. To date, very few timber-framed buildings in York have been dated using this technique. This is despite there being a high number of surviving late medieval timber-framed buildings in the city. With the aid of a research grant from the Vernacular Architecture Group it has now been possible to sample and analyse timbers from a further three well-known late medieval buildings in York (including Lady Row on Goodramgate and All Saints Cottages on North Street). The results of this project has refined our understanding of these buildings and late medieval construction methods, and extended our knowledge of the use of dendrochronology in York.
Archaeological Conservation Abroad.
YAT Conservator, Margrethe Felter, focused on the role of archaeological conservation in the field and on some of the projects she has been involved with outside of the UK over the last 10 years. Working on archaeological sites abroad and volunteering with heritage organisations is enormously rewarding, leading to a whole host of new skills and experiences.
2015
Palaeolithic Archaeology and the Caves of the Southern Magnesian Limestone.
Creswell Crags is famous for its caves, and the Palaeolithic archaeology contained within them, however, these caves represent a small number of those that are located in the Southern Magnesian Limestone of Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire and South Yorkshire. Glyn Davies wtalked about the wider landscape of the Southern Magnesian Limestone and the numerous valleys and gorges that are known to contain caves and rock shelters. The talk also considered the caves archaeological potential, condition and future conservation.
The City of York Council Archaeologist: A Career In Ruins.
John Oxley, archaeologist with City of York Council since 1989, gave an illustrated review of what his role with City of York Council involves and how it has developed over the last 20 years. Attendees learned how a local authority archaeologist contributes to the development of the Local Plan, is involved with assessing and commenting on planning applications, manages the Historic Environment Record, and encourages community involvement.
Moving The Goal Posts: Community Archaeology At Huntington Stadium
Assistant Field Officer Arran Johnson gave an overview of the 2015 Huntington Stadium community project that investigated the archaeological remains of a Roman temporary camp situated a mere 2.5miles northwest of the Roman Fortress of Eboracum
Looking Back and Looking Forward: Archaeology Live! in 2014 & 2015
Toby Kendall, director of YAT’s successful and renowned Archaeology Live! annual summer traing programme, gave an overview of what was discovered at last year’s training dig and discussed what the team could potentially unearth this year.
‘Trading Histories and Imaginary Castles’: two community projects in the heart of Sheffield
Anna Badcock, Regional Director of ArcHeritage, gave a brief overview of community projects based on the site of Sheffield Castle and the 700 year history of market trading at the same site.
Vikings In The High Arctic
The first of the Friends Of YAT 2015 Lunchtime Lecture series was delivered by Dr Ailsa Mainman (President of FOYAT), who investigated the archaeological evidence for Viking trade and habitation in the High Arctic.