Teesside Archaeological Society’s annual journal, published since 1994, is open access and free to download as a PDF file. Enjoy 70 pages of the latest archaeology in our region!

Maureen Norrie, who has edited the Bulletin for several years, is now stepping down from this role. We are looking for a volunteer or volunteers to take this on. If you’re interested in joining the TAS team and have experience with Microsoft Word, whether you are a professional archaeologist or simply interested in archaeology, contact us at:
teesarchsoc.news@gmail.com 

Bulletin No 26 2022 | Download PDF

Excavations at Kirklevington, Stockton-on-Tees 2021; Experiences of getting young people interested in archaeology; Recording St Mary’s Churchyard, Norton, 2021 – Monuments; Recording St Mary’s Churchyard, Norton, 2021 – People; Discovery and Excavation of the site of the Medieval Chapel of St Hilda in Kildale – Discovering Kildale’s lost Chapel of St. Hilda and its history;  Discovery and Excavation of the site of the Medieval Chapel of St Hilda in Kildale – Excavation of the site; Archaeology in County Durham and Darlington 2019-2021; The Portable Antiquities Scheme; Revealing Magna – 2021 Preliminary work results; Low Mill in Bilsdale – an 800-year old watermill; Some thoughts on new woodlands and archaeology in the North York Moors National Park.

Visit the Publications page to download previous editions.

Communities and archaeology in North Yorkshire | Jon Kenny

Jon Kenny [AG1] is a community archaeologist, awarded the prestigious Marsh Trust Award for Community Archaeologist of the Year in 2015. Formerly of York Archaeological Trust, Jon now works independently.

In this talk, Jon will outline his recent work with different communities in North Yorkshire, including with Beyond Boundaries, a group of people with learning disabilities investigating varied local industrial heritage in Commondale in the North York Moors, and with the Canals and Rivers Trust at Pocklington head canal.

If you want to attend, please email teesarchsoc.news@gmail.com for virtual membership.

Altogether Archaeology and community archaeology | Tony Metcalfe

Tony Metcalfe is the Chair of Altogether Archaeology (AA). A former teacher, he now serves on the advisory committees for the North East of England Research Framework (Historic England), and Belief in the North East project (Durham University) representing community archaeology groups.

Tony will outline the history and activities of AA, which began as a group set up by the North Pennines AONB and now operates independently. The aim of AA is to promote awareness of the archaeological heritage of the North Pennines and the surrounding area; by the involvement of its members of all ages; in archaeological fieldwork and research. AA provides opportunities for members to extend their knowledge of archaeological methods and practice by research, fieldwork and training. Activities have ranged from Name Books, surveys, excavations to finds processing, involving people from schoolchildren to members in their 80s.

Teesside Archaeological Society is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Topic: TAS talk May 2021
Time: May 25, 2021 07:30 PM London

Join Zoom Meeting
https://teesarchaeology.us4.list-manage.com/track/click?u=87579a941929db934ca16d02a&id=c04fa3653f&e=d2fbff3669

Meeting ID: 889 6784 9166
Passcode: 126011

Zoom etiquette

A. The link to join the talk by Zoom is below. The link will be open from 7:20, for a lecture start at 7:30.

B. All participants will be muted for the duration of the talk. This is to avoid any unnecessary background noise and the potential for people to talk over the speakers.

C. For Q&A at the end, please use the chat function. Once the questions are in the chat, the host will then pick up on these for the speaker to answer them. Hopefully this way, nobody’s questions will be missed.

D. We may periodically mute the Zoom microphones or switch off the Zoom camera feed from all or some members at any point in the event. Please don’t be alarmed if this happens to you: we’re just tweaking the settings for what happens between the Zoom server and the Zoom software used by participants, to conserve bandwidth, prevent technical feedback, or minimise distraction.

E. Finally, UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES MAY THESE TALKS BE RECORDED OR PHOTOGRAPHS BE TAKEN OF THE SPEAKER OR MEMBERS. Some members have expressed that they DO NOT CONSENT to having their photographs taken or to being recorded so we are not permitting any recording or photography for our online lectures. Thank you all in advance for respecting this and for complying.

F. Please do not share the Zoom link below – if you have friends who would like to join TAS temporarily for free to access our talks please suggest that they email us via  teesarchsoc.news@gmail.com (mailto:teesarchsoc.news@gmail.com) – to be added as a virtual member.

We hope to “see” as many of you as we can! 
Best wishes, 
Kira 
Deputy chair and communications

This is the first comprehensive study in print of County Durham during the Roman period. Perhaps overshadowed by Hadrian’s Wall, the network of roads, forts and farming communities in its eastern hinterland formed a vital part of the infrastructure that supported the linear frontier and its garrisons, exerting a major influence upon the county’s history and development.

The county’s wealth of Roman military archaeology comprises seven forts with their attendant civilian settlements – including some of the best-preserved Roman buildings in Britain. Discoveries made in the last twenty years have transformed our understanding of life beyond the military communities.

Following publication on 17 May 2021 the book price is £37.50 (including packaging and delivery). At 557 pages, hard-bound, profusely illustrated, this is a bargain! Order here

Author: David J P Mason
557 pages; 485 illustrations, 350 in colour
Publisher: Durham County Council (2021)

At the beginning of April 2021 national press coverage broke about the latest exciting finds from excavations by Stephen Sherlock and volunteers at Street House, Loftus. Exceeding two metres below the turfline, evidence for salt production and domestic activities date to the very earliest Neolithic in Britain – likely immigrants from north-western France, dating to 3800-3700 BC. This discovery is also one of the very earliest for salt-production in Europe. The many hundreds of finds include pottery, flint tools and artefacts associated with salt evaporation over fires – the making of salt cakes.

• Read a good article here (Guardian no paywall) »
• Read and download the full report here (Antiquity Journal no paywall) »

Images are © Stephen Sherlock.

After his PhD on the Origins and Early Development of Metallurgy in Western Europe, Dr Roberts became Curator at the British Museum, responsible for the European Bronze Age collections, recording Bronze Age hoards found by metal-detecting in England and researching and co-writing 41 programmes in the British Museum/BBC Radio 4 series and accompanying book A History of the World in 100 Objects. Dr Roberts is now Associate Professor of Archaeology at Durham University, researching the transmission of new objects and technologies in northwest and southeast Europe from the Neolithic to the Early Iron Age. 


 

To help people stay connected to heritage and to like-minded people in these difficult circumstances, TAS has temporarily suspended paid subscriptions. Instead, we are offering free virtual memberships.

Benefits: regular email from TAS containing the link to our online lectures, plus other news and opportunities. Our online lecture hosting has a cap on the number who can participate, so we can’t make these lectures open to the broader public. Subscribing (for free) is, for the time being, the only way you will be able to view TAS lectures.

Virtual subscriber members will be invited to convert their membership to a paid subscription when we can revert to physical gatherings, but will be under no compulsion to do this. Virtual subscriber members can simply unsubscribe at that point.

We are using Zoom online for our live events and attendee instructions are provided ahead of each lecture. These are still planned for the last Tuesday of every month where possible.

To join as a virtual subscriber-member, email us at teesarchsoc.news [at] gmail.com. Please replace [at] with [@] – we have to write it this way on here to avoid being spammed by bots!

Due to the success of last month’s trial Zoom meeting, the committee have decided to start offering our monthly talks as online meetings for the foreseeable future.

Our talks will be hosted on Zoom on the last Tuesday of each month at 7:30PM to keep in line with our usual schedule. If you are inrerested in joining on on Tuesday, please contact us on teesarchsoc.news@gmail.com and we will send the link to join to you. The link for the following months will be sent out via mailing list each month so to avoid being missed please contact us to be added or visit our website to do so.

So, this month’s talk will be held on TUESDAY 29th SEPTEMBER at 7:30 and our speaker will be Richard Annis. The talk is titled Deceptively Spacious: Durham Castle and the walls survey. This talk covers the former extent of the Castle and describes a detailed survey carried out a few years ago, ending with some views of what remains hidden today.

Richard Annis is a Senior Archaeologist with Durham University; and has worked on a wide variety of archaeological projects throughout the Northeast of England, Cumbria, Humberside, Yorkshire and Gloucestershire during the past 30 years.

We hope to see you all on Tuesday!

Best wishes,

Kira

(Deputy chair and comms)

Dear all,

I hope you are all well.

This is just a quick update to keep you all informed of our current stance regarding COVID-19.  We have recently had contact from Stockton Library stating that all public meetings are to be cancelled until May 31^st 2020.  This means that both the April and May talks will have to be cancelled. On behalf of the committee, I would like to apologise for this, but I am sure that you all will understand in light of the current global situation.

I have a few updates for you all just in case you are interested:

Firstly, Michael Thompson has asked if any budding artists within TAS would be interested in helping create some artwork for an upcoming talk of his at Bedale History Society in October. The talk is on ‘Women of the ’45’ and this will discuss the stories of 12 women who directly or indirectly helped with the Jacobite Rebellion. These illustrations would be depicting scenes from the stories. Please contact me or Michael if you are interested in this and I will forward on your interest accordingly.

At the last CBA North committee meeting I have volunteered to be a point of contact between members and the larger groups within the North. As such, if anyone has any thoughts/questions/feedback relating to CBA North or National and TAS’ involvement with them please don’t hesitate to contact me and I will either try to respond, pass queries on to the relevant people or give comments as feedback at committee meetings. HOWEVER THIS IS NOT JUST FOR TAS! If anyone is a member of another society or group in the North that would benefit from this please feel free to contact me and I will offer the same for you, just let me know what society or group it is concerning and I will try to help as best I can.

Also, I have come across this link to some online tours of historic sites if anyone is interested in this.

https://www.heritagedaily.com/2020/03/5-virtual-tours-of-historical-sites/126924  and DigVentures has opened up its virtual field school online for free – please see their website and social media for details on this.

Finally, here are some quick links to pages for people that may be struggling at the moment.

For Stockton: https://www.catalyststockton.org/covid-19-community-support/

For other places: https://covidmutualaid.org/local-groups/

Please also continue to follow Government guidelines and seek medical attention where necessary. Local council websites are also good places to look. Again, please contact me if there are any questions.

On behalf of the committee, I hope you are all well and are staying safe and if you have any questions or please don’t hesitate to be in contact us.

Best wishes everyone!

Kira

(Deputy Chair and Communications)