Dig Greater Manchester Online Festival Part 3 – the Podcasts

Welcome to the third and final part of our online Dig Greater Manchester Archaeology Festival for 2020. Over three days (12 to 14 December) we have been posting new material on the GMAF website for you to explore. On day one we added nine pdfs from the Greater Manchester’s Past Revealed book series for you to download. We also added a clutch of archaeology information boards from sites around the county. On day two we added three video talks on mobile phone heritage, excavations around the Bridgewater Canal in Worsley, and a roundup of archaeological work across Greater Manchester in 2020.

On the final day of our GMAF Online festival we are making available, free to download, a short series of podcasts. These podcasts have been put together by a small team led by Dr Mike Nevell from the newly established Archaeotea Podcasts (Welcome to the Archaeotea Podcast by Archaeotea | Free Listening on SoundCloud)

Mike and his Archaeotea Podcast team have recorded three episodes specifically for GMAF Online 2020. In the first podcast he looks at the excavation of Hulme Barracks in Manchester, a site associated with the Peterloo Massacre of 1819. Founded in the 1790s and closed in 1915, by the mid-19th century it was the largest such barracks in the UK. It’s best known, though, as the barracks from which the cavalry rode out on that fateful morning in August 1819 to police the peaceful protest at Petersfield in Manchester. The site was excavated as part of the Dig Greater Manchester Community project in 2013.

1. Digging up the Hulme Barracks and the Peterloo Massacre by Archaeotea | Free Listening on SoundCloud

In the second episode the subject is the long-running investigations at Buckton Castle, Tameside, a hilltop fortress of the 12th and 13th centuries overlooking the River Tame c. 10km eats of Manchester. It was surveyed and excavated between 1996 and 2010 by archaeologists from the Universities of Manchester and Salford. What they found was the remains of an unfinished stone castle, almost certainly built for the Earls of Chester.

2 – Buckton Castle Mysteries by Archaeotea | Free Listening on SoundCloud

In the third episode Mike looks at the founding of the Greater Manchester Archaeological Unit (GMAU) in 1980. GMAU was the forerunner of the present-day Greater Manchester Archaeological Advisory Service who advise the ten local authorities in the Manchester city region on archaeology impacted by the planning process. GMAU was responsible for pioneering archaeological work across Greater Manchester throughout the 1980s, conserving the Roman forts at Castleshaw and conducting the first excavation of a late prehistoric and Romano-British rural settlement in the county, at Great Woolden in Salford.

The Founding of GMAU by Archaeotea | Free Listening on SoundCloud

GMAU was the first professional archaeology unit in Greater Manchester and their legacy includes the precursors of both the Greater Manchester Archaeology Federation and the Greater Manchester Archaeology Day. Which is a good point at which to close this year’s archaeology festival.

We hope to see many of you in person in 2021. Until then, dig safely.

Happy Second Birthday DGM

Surveying at Etherstone Hall, Wigan, the first DGM site in March 2012.

October marks the second birthday of the Dig Greater Manchester project. To recap, DGM is a five year community archaeology project designed to provide places for than 6000 school children and more than 1000 adult volunteers over that time, through the investigation of eleven sites in the ten boroughs of Greater Manchester, plus Blackburn and Darwen. It is thus one of the largest community archaeology projects currently running in Britain. So far several thousand school children and more than 600 adult volunteers have been involved in the project across seven digs.

Although professionally led the overall aim of DGM is to involve the highest number of people from local communities in the investigation of their own heritage under the theme of ‘Accessing, Exploring and Celebrating Your Heritage’. DGM builds upon the methodologies and strategies established during the Dig Moston and Dig Manchester community projects, which ran from 2003 to 2008,¹ and the community projects developed by the Centre for Applied Archaeology since 2009. It also draws upon the experience of museum professionals as captured in the guidance documents of the now defunct Museums and Libraries Association (MLA). What has emerged is a methodology that combines both guided archaeological work and the empowerment of local communities through:

• Encouraging participation by local communities and individuals that have never taken part in archaeological activities before.
• Accessing as wide a range of local groups and individuals as possible.
• Work on local authority land so as to minimise health and safety risks.
• The investigation of urban archaeological sites not threatened by redevelopment.  
• Providing the local community with the skills to continue independent research into their own archaeology and heritage.
• A structured research framework.

The project is also looking at three broad research themes: the significance of community archaeology; the practice of community archaeology; and the archaeology of industrialisation in the Manchester City Region. The results of the project will then be disseminated through conferences papers, training seminars, academic articles and books, as well as popular publications and an open access on-line archive. Which is why we are about to publish the Archaeology for All monograph which contains examples of community archaeology practice from around Britain and elsewhere on the globe. In the meantime the eighth Dig Greater Manchester community excavation begins on the 30th September at Buile Hill Park in Salford.

 ^{1) Nevell M, 2013, ‘Archaeology for All: Managing Expectations and Learning from the Past for the Future – the Dig Manchester Community Archaeology Experience’, in Dalglesh C, (ed.), Archaeology, the Public and the Recent Past. Society for Post-Medieval Archaeology, London.}