For this Hillforts Wednesday we wanted to highlight the first ever recipient of the Open Access Archaeology Fund, back in 2017 – the geophysical survey of the Breedon HIll hillfort in Leicestershire. This dataset and accompanying article presents the results of a non-intrusive investigation conducted in 2016 at the scheduled multi-period site at Breedon Hill, Leicestershire.
The author of this dataset and article, Chris Whittaker, applied to the fund to both deposit a dataset with the ADS and to publish an article in Internet Archaeology.
- Breedon Hill, Leicestershire: Geophysical surveys. [Released: 10 June 2019]. Collection doi: https://doi.org/10.5284/1052664
- Whittaker, C. 2019 Breedon Hill, Leicestershire: new surveys and their implications, Internet Archaeology 52. https://doi.org/10.11141/ia.52.6
This hilltop is the site of a possible Early-Middle Iron Age univallate hillfort, a 7th century AD minster church and, in the 12th century, the site of an Augustinian Priory in the 12th century. Approximately two-thirds of the hilltop has been irretrievably lost due to quarrying and as such this important dataset that preserves this information in perpetuity.
When asked recently about his experience with the fund, Chris said:
“The Open Access Archaeology fund was super easy to apply for. It offered me peace of mind that the survey results I’d collected would be visible, accessible and reusable to other researchers after I’d finished my university studies. It also sparked an interest in open data and data preservation, which I’ve gone on to explore in my career working in heritage data management.”
Since becoming a recipient of the fund while studying at Newcastle University, Chris has gone onto a successful career in heritage and currently works as a Historic Environment Data Roadmap Project Manager at the National Trust.
