I am keen amateur archaeologist, living in Thetford, Norfolk. Five years ago, I found that I desperately needed a new distraction in life.
Then I saw an episode of Time Team on C4. I remembered that as a kid, I had wanted to be an archaeologist. I had grown up in Norwich during the 1960s/70s and witnessed the digs around the City centre. So I then took up archaeology as a hobby.
I had always been fascinated by late prehistory, and had visited numerous monuments around Britain and Ireland. I started searching for flint artefacts, soon developing an eye for flakes and started to build up a collection of scrapers and arrowheads. But I knew that such private collection had little to do with archaeology. So I studied field archaeology part-time with the University of East Anglia for two years. I launched the Thetford Forest SCS (surface-collection survey) with the permission of the Forestry Commission, and with the support of the archaeological services of Norfolk and Suffolk.
Since then, I have so far carried out 38 ‘forest-walk’ surveys. I simply search the planting furrows of recently restocked forestry compartments for artefacts. I take a sample of the finds, carefully recording every removal with an eight figure grid reference. The finds are plotted against the size of the survey, and then compared with the results of the other forest-walks. I am mapping out the densities and distributions of flint finds across the forest floor, and comparing that with landscape features – such as distance from rivers, soil-types etc. Thetford Forest was planted in the Brecks, an area that is usually regarded as of marginal arable value. I am also mapping out so called ‘manure scatter’ – abraded sherds of ceramics, to map out areas that have been cultivated and manured with domestic waste during the Roman and Medieval periods. And finally, I am looking for ‘sites’. My best so far include a 3 hectare Roman settlement, and a probable 12th century kiln site. Oh yes, I have so far recorded over 2,000 individual finds onto the SMR.
I have launched a website to promote the project, and publish the results. I am a member of the Norfolk & Norwich Archaeological Society, and the Suffolk Institute for Archaeology and Local History.