Calling all community archaeology projects in the UK!
The CARD Fund has been running for 8 years now and we’re thrilled to reveal we’ve already funded a total of 85 radiocarbon dates so far. What’s more, the intake for 2023’s round of funding is currently open and the applications are already rolling in.
Don’t forget to add yours by the deadline of 30 November! Further details, including how to apply, can be found at www.cardfund.org.
WHAT IS THE CARD FUND
Each year, the Community Archaeology Radiocarbon Dating (CARD) Fund provides funding for radiocarbon dates for volunteer archaeology projects across the British Isles. It is co-sponsored by ARS Ltd and the Scottish Universities Environmental Research Centre (SUERC) and has so far provided funding for over fifty different projects.
AN EXAMPLE OF HOW THE FUND CAN HELP YOUR PROJECT
“Altogether Archaeology is a community archaeology group, working in the North Pennines. It’s an area neglected in the past by all but a handful of archaeologists, where few high-quality excavations have been carried out. Radiocarbon dates of sites are rare so there are still huge questions to answer. For instance, only one settlement has been dated to the early medieval period, and that by a single 40-year-old radiocarbon date with the limited accuracy then possible. The early Iron Age is also a complete blank, with no sites dated to that period. Similarly, there is no good evidence of Viking settlement, though some sites have been suggested. We don’t know when the many late prehistoric farmsteads in the area were founded, nor how far (if at all) into the post-Roman era they continued in use.
The many questions can only be answered by multiple radiocarbon dates to clarify the phases of settlement sites. Finds are too few in these northern upland sites to be very helpful. Altogether Archaeology has a policy of surveying, excavating, and publishing all our work to the highest “professional” standards, but we have no steady financial backing, just the contributions of our members and some small grants. To be able to use the CARD Fund to increase the number of radiocarbon dates means that we can do justice to our sites, clarifying phasing and untangling the “story” that the site is trying to tell us. With 40 or more enthusiastic participants in each of our digs, we have plenty of skilled excavators, but we need outside help from the CARD Fund and others to extract the maximum information.
For instance, at Gueswick, in 2021 we excavated a palisade ditch that encircles a hilltop on which there is evidence of Iron Age settlement. Such palisade ditches are common in upland north Northumberland, sometimes the precursors of hillforts, but not in the North Pennines. The radiocarbon dates (two out of three funded by the CARD Fund) showed that this was a late Iron Age palisade. The ditch finally silted up around the end of the Iron Age, and was paved over in the Romano British era. In 2022 we returned to the site and further radiocarbon dates have established that an inner ditch dates to the middle Iron Age and that the settlement area was in use through to at least the middle of the Romano-British period. Thus, we have a far richer picture of the evolution of the settlement than would have been possibly with only a single radiocarbon date.
We are back on site in August for a further 3 weeks excavation so, depending on what we find, we may be applying to the fund again!”
Martin Green, Fieldwork Co-ordinator, Altogether Archaeology