When most people think of archaeology they have visions of digging large trenches on your hands and knees using a trowel. Well, that certainly is a part of it although not all the digging is done with a trowel. A considerable amount of work is done with Non-Invasive Methods or Landscape Archaeology. This means investigating the area by any and every effective means at our disposal, and there are quite a few, without digging holes or destroying any of the remaining evidence.

Treasure. Archaeology. In popular culture, they go together: after all, Indiana Jones seems to find a lot of it, as does Lara Croft. In the workaday world of field archaeology we know the reality is very different. We're more likely to get excited by a layer of grey-brown soil with pottery inclusions than to find buried treasure. Except when we really do find buried treasure... In August 2003, during a last-week routine metal-detector sweep of the site by Kev and Terry to cle

In 2018 we are introducing a new course delving deep into the medieval history of the very typical English village of Sedgeford. Organised by Brian Fraser, John Jolleys and Kathryn Oliana, and featuring the assistance of the Landscape team, the course will run from Sunday 8th July to Friday 13th July during the forthcoming 2018 excavation season. The team has the challenge of understanding the workings of the manors, agricultural practice, the economy and everyday life of the

In the 22 years that SHARP has been digging in Norfolk, we have had many amazing people come to join us and, sadly, some have also gone. John Hensby - nicknamed 'Miner John' to distinguish him from the various other Johns on site - was a member of the SHARP team for many years until a cancer diagnosis called an end to his time on the Boneyard in early 2012. A former coal miner from Lancashire with a classic Liverpudlian accent, John came to SHARP in the early 2000s. Like so m

Archaeologists dig up plenty of interesting stuff, but arguably none of it is more interesting - or meaningful - than excavating the remains of the people who put the archaeology there for us to dig up in the first place. It was the ancient cemetery that gave Boneyard its name, and formed the core of the first decade of SHARP's activities. But even though we haven't been excavating burials on a regular basis for a long time, the human remains are still an intrinsic part of ou

Rather than undertaking our usual field walking exercise this Easter, we spent the time on a number of mini projects. To give us a more comfortable working environment we used the New Village Hall as our base which was lovely and warm! We had Ian continuing his analysis of the daub from the ovens in Trench 23; Mark, Janice, Perry and Min identified and carried out an analysis of the pottery finds from the field walking exercises undertaken in 2015, 2016 and 2017, plotting the

Modern graffiti ranges from the highly sought-after art of Banksy to that quoted in a Cambridge Part II Philosophy examination paper ("Crick for God" - graffito, Free School Lane - discuss) to the more basic "Shaz and Gaz woz 'ere". Graffiti were also common in the medieval period and many are to be found incised into the stonework of our churches - not as acts of boredom or vandalism, but having a meaning and protective influence which the modern world can only, in part, com