Visit to the Birmingham University Field Archaeology Unit

23rd February, 1998

he visit to the Birmingham University Field Archaeology Unit was extremely informative and we were able to see various aspects of the work of the Unit. After an introduction we went to see some of the more interesting ceramic andmetal finds, saw where the plans and drawings are produced, and visited the computer room where we were allowed to try for ourselves some of the many packages designed for archaeologists. Our next stop was the animal bones lab, where we looked at a variety of animal bones and learnt the importance of building up a comprehensive reference bone collection - who would have guessed that a small bone found on an English site would have come from a parrot? We completed our tour by peering down microscopes at organic deposits and learnt how insect remains in these deposits can give an indication of environmental conditions prevailing at the time of the deposition.

We would like to thank all the staff at BUFAU who kindly gave up so much of their time to bring us up to date on current work in the fields. We all appreciated it very much.

David Torvell
Excursions Secretary