Brit Archaeol News 5

Offers guidelines on the relationship between excavators and specialists working on scientific aspects of excavations, with the intention of fostering cooperation between the different disciplines involved in British archaeology, to make the whole process from pre-excavation planning to publication more efficient and productive. Guidance is offered on organization, finding the specialists, paying them, procedures before, during, and after the excavation, recording, analysis, publication, difficulties, and priority of access.

Announces the launch of possibly the largest volunteer recording project ever undertaken in the UK -- a joint CBA/Fortress Study Group survey of the military remains of the two world wars (see also 94/744).

An account of the work of the Association of Certified Field Archaeologists (ACFA) -- holders of the University of Glasgow Certificate in Field Archaeology. The course aims to teach the fundamentals of field survey adult students who carry out archaeological work in their spare time.

Reports briefly on the involvement of local groups, school children and work experience placements during the recent salvage excavations of the Berwick Field Iron Age settlement site, near Winchester.

Reports the discovery, at Southampton, of a slate bearing an engraved drawing of a fifteenth-century trading vessel.

Reports that the author has completed a campaign of aerial survey in Ireland. Areas covered include the Nore and Barrow rivers, and the Dingle Peninsula; evidence from the latter is compared with Professor St Joseph's photographs taken in the 1960s, indicating the degradation of this internationally significant landscape. The photographs are to be exhibited in a travelling exhibition in 1994.

Discusses twenty-five years experience of the CBA, and considers its future.

Considers the salient points of a recent report by the parliamentary Welsh Affairs Committee which recommended a resurvey of listed buildings, a stronger role in conservation for all local authorities, better protection for churches and chapels, and a generally more positive application of existing powers.

Fieldwork has identified earthworks of a large artificial water channel in woodland at Riverside park, Southampton. This is believed to be a Saxon waterway that may have served traffic to Winchester. The canal is thought to have been built to bypass watermills and fisheries which, by the eleventh century, had caused major obstacles on the river.

Summarises the documented history of the twelfth-century castle and details the sequence of the Saxon, medieval, and later defences as identified in the August 1992 excavations.