This March, some of the ADS team of CATS (Curatorial and Technical Staff) undertook a focused week of accessioning, processing, disseminating and releasing digital archives that had been deposited through our website’s ADS-easy interface. Many of the submissions we get through ADS-easy are from development-led archaeology, including the archives highlighted below. The CATS managed to work through over 40 archive collections from 12 different archaeological organisations across 4 days. Data comprised images, reports, site records, geophysics, CAD and GIS. The archives recorded over this week represented a huge variety of sites, dating from the Neolithic all the way up to the 20th century; from Roman cremations burials to medieval ditches to Second World War air raid shelters.
We saw many sites from around the county of Suffolk excavated by Archaeology South-East, which provide great examples of Iron Age and Roman period archaeology. Evaluations at Aldham Mill Hill and Bury St Edmunds revealed landscapes of Bronze Age, Iron Age and Roman activity, including ring-ditches, ditched enclosures, a trackway and horse burial. Two phases of excavations at Featherbroom Gardens in 2013 and 2014 revealed a series of Late Iron Age to Early Roman cremations burials.
The archives included some fantastic finds, including some examples from Lincolnshire and Essex. Wessex Archaeology undertook a multi-phase watching brief as part of the Boston Barriers Tidal Scheme between 2018 and 2021. Almost 200 post-medieval objects were recorded across the phases of work, with a decorated glass decanter (see below), a leather shoe and an anchor standing out as noteworthy finds. An excavation at Braintree Road, Felsted undertaken by Archaeology South-East revealed 12th to 14th century enclosure ditches with numerous artefacts of varying status, including a medieval chess piece (see below).
There were also some interesting sites dating to the 19th and 20th centuries presenting examples of industrial and military history. Excavation by Rocket Heritage and Archaeology at Eleanor Street, Blackburn uncovered boiler room equipment of a previously demolished Victorian Cotton Mill. Cotswold Archaeology found remains of some Second World War Anderson air raid shelters during an evaluation at the Former Ford Site, Southampton. This work confirmed their location just south of the 1930s Flight Shed as they were shown on a 1955 illustrated plan.
Working intensively like this really gives us a snapshot of the diversity of archaeological data we preserve and the varied types of archives we make available for public access through the ADS website. All digital collections worked on during Archives Week and many more are available to explore via the archives search interface on the ADS website.
For a comprehensive list of the recent additions to the ADS archive you can also view our Collections History page.
-Becky Hirst, ADS Digital Archives Assistant
