Dear Followers,

We wish everybody well during these extraordinary times. COVID19 has and will continue to have impacts on all of our lives, personal, professional, aspirations in many cases. Our heritage and archaeological ambitions are also on hold – not least for very practical reasons while on lock-down, but also because, understandably, grant funding bodies and our partner organisations such as Cleveland Ironstone Mining Museum, are also impacted. The Heritage Lottery for example have frozen all grants and created a £50m emergency fund for heritage and museum organisations at risk. We must all wait and see.

Music Be The Food of Love

In the meantime, I’m delighted to share a recent song by John D Hastings, a native of Eston. This track here on Youtube, “When It’s Gone” is very moving, inspired by some of the challenges we have with arson and anti-social behaviour, launched on Earth Day 2020.

Words, Music and Vocals: John D Hastings. Piano: Ira Thomas. Recorded at Crown Lane Studios, Morden. Surrey

Peeking Into The Past

As a lock-down treat, here’s a fantastic picture, courtesy of © Adam Stanford of Aerial-cam.co.uk of three prehistoric round houses. While these are reconstructions at Castell Henllys, Pembrokeshire (2012), they resemble the cluster we have at Airy Hill within an enclosure dating to the Bronze Age or Iron Age, and revealed by geophysical survey in Field 7 last year. Don’t be deceived. Roundhouses are huge! Read more about the 2019 results »

Visibility

I’m also delighted to have presented our projects, ICE & FIRE (Eston Hills) and REAPING TIME (Airy Hill) at the Lithics Studies Society 40th Anniversary Conference in Newark last October, and then again at their AGM at the British Museum. In an alternative to talking about prehistoric stone tools, the presentation focused with dramatic images on the community aspects of our projects: Archaeology For All with a little bit of shock-and-awe! That’s me in the back centre amongst national experts.Lastly for now, we also submitted an article about CAT, our work and ambitions, to the latest Teesside Archaeological Society Bulletin journal No. 24 (2020), published in February. While they’re updating their website (that’s me), you can download the journal for free here (PDF) »

And Finally

With more news to come, we have been successful with ongoing grant funding for an allied Mesolithic Transitions project, although dependent on university laboratories re-opening. Read more »You can register your interest in future involvement, without commitment. We’ll be sending news updates through the year.

Spencer Carter (Spence)
Managing Director