Are you a UK-based community archaeology project in need of radiocarbon dating?
There is now only a week left to get your application into the CARD Fund!
The deadline is 30 November and it’s really easy to apply, but you need to be quick. To find out more and complete the application form go to: www.cardfund.org.
WHAT IS THE CARD FUND?
For eight years, the Community Archaeology Radiocarbon Dating (CARD) Fund has provided 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 projects and 85 radiocarbon dates.
AN EXAMPLE OF HOW THE FUND CAN HELP YOUR PROJECT
“In 2014, the Romsey Local History Society embarked on a community project to study Romsey and the Lower Test Valley in the Anglo-Saxon period. Project members with a background in archaeology re-examined unpublished excavations carried out in the 1980s. One excavation was identified which could provide dating evidence for two important aspects of Anglo-Saxon Romsey – its iron smelting industry (iron smelting debris covers a large area to the south of Romsey Abbey) and its artificial waterway known as the Fishlake.
At Creatures Pet Shop, 4 Market Place, a deep deposit of charcoal, ash and slag was cut by a water channel. Located on a dry river terrace, this channel must have been on the original course of the Fishlake. The water is sourced on a bend of the Test a mile north of town, carried along an aqueduct across the floodplain to the terrace and through a cutting into town. Our successful CARD Fund bid funded the dating of one sample from our site: a fragment of cattle tibia from the bottom of the Creatures channel.
This returned a radiocarbon date between 645-669 AD (68.3% probability), 605-772 (95.4% probability). This early date suggests that the bone was residual, eroded from the side of the channel. Charcoal from the base of the iron smelting deposit was dated between 604-665 (95.4% probability) and a charcoal sample from a block of slag 667-774 (95.4% probability). Tips of waste within the fill of the channel showed continuing smelting activity. The latest pottery was Saxo Norman.
The Fishlake was probably constructed in the 960s by King Edgar and Bishop Æthelwold. More information is available on the Anglo-Saxon Romsey website: https://www.romseysaxonlandscape.co.uk/”
– Karen Anderson, Romsey Local History Society