People of the Heath – An archaeologist’s perspective
Now that we are half way through the People of the Heath project, we caught up with Project Director, George Anelay, to find out his thoughts on the project so far…

What has been the best thing about the project so far?
Two things really – I always enjoy sharing archaeology with people, so being able to spend 6 weeks over the course of this last summer digging up some really interesting archaeology and in the process chatting about it with all the volunteers has been great. But from a purely archaeology point of view finding the two burials in two of the larger barrows was fantastic.

What has been the hardest thing about the project so far?
Sometimes feeling like a tyrant! I am the one who has to always have an eye on the finish line, knowing that if we don’t complete our excavations, we won’t get all the data we really need to answer all our questions, so sometimes that means I have to crack the whip – I’ll live with it though!

Where will you be digging during the next excavation and what do you hope to discover?
The project is really now dividing into two main lines of enquiry – we are looking for more data on the mound barrows, to see if the ones we have done so far are typical of the rest, so we will be looking at another one of these. But the other line is the barrows that are almost flat, and hard to see. These seem to be a very different type of monument which we don’t really understand – so we will be tackling another one of them too.

Picture of George Anelay by Tracey Howe