 On the 1st of October, in the pouring autumn rain, a group of local residents, farmers and landowners from the village of Bagendon, in the Cotswolds UK, teamed up with archaeologists from Durham University working on a project called Resituating Europe’s First Town’s (REFIT). The aim of the project is to explore how different types of stakeholders (farmers, residents, local business people etc.) use and understand their local landscapes through interviews and engagement events. For this particular event, with help from Past Environment expert Mike Allen, the group investigated the stories about past land use and environmental change that are hidden in Bagendon’s soil. Using hand augers, everyone had a go a taking and analyzing soil cores and learnt just how much information we can glean about the past from changes in soil type to even the tiniest snail shell or burnt seed remains.
It was a great opportunity for people with different interests and knowledge related to the landscape, both past and present, to meet and share their views on the ways in which human and environmental action can change the shape and quality of the land beneath our feet. To learn more about the event and how it changed participants perceptions of the local landscape, please check out the video below:
The workshop built on positive responses to the REFIT project’s ‘Love your Landscape’ event which was held at Greystones Farm (Salmonsbury oppidum) earlier in the year, in which visitors were able to take part in varied events from Iron Age cooking to exploring a modern robotic milking machine in order to better understand similarities and differences in land use over time. The REFIT project hopes to offer more events like this in the future as a novel way of engaging people with the time-depth and changing nature of their local landscapes.
Written by: Dr Gemma Tully About the author: Principal Tutor MA Museum and Artifact Studies and Post-Doctoral Research Associate, REFIT Project in the Department of Archaeology at Durham University. Please take a look at the REFIT website www.refitproject.com for more information and all the latest news. Dr. Tully can be reach via phone at 01913 341566 or via email at gemma.tully@durham.ac.uk
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