The Writing Up and Publication of Past Archaeological Excavations in Kent
Just over two years ago, the KAS Council decided that the Society should take the initiative and try to do something positive about the writing up and publication of some of the past archaeological excavations and fieldwork carried out in the Ancient County of Kent. It recognised that this would be a formidable task but that it should try and do something before more records and results are lost. This brief review aims to summarise what has happened. A special sub-committee of the Society's Fieldwork Committee was set up, with the brief to progress the project. Its members were widely drawn for their experience and I was asked to act as its Chairman. The sub-committee met on four occasions.
Anyone involved in any way with archaeology will know of excavations and fieldwork, which have not been written up, let alone published. Depending on the extent of an excavation, once it has been done, then the results, particularly the stratigraphy, cannot be replicated, so, unless the results are written up, they are effectively lost to future archaeologists, historians and the general public.
The sub-committee made extensive enquiries and using the National Monuments Record (NMR) Event Records, and their own experience, found that only about 25% of the excavations carried out by amateurs since 1945 had been published - a frightening figure. The sub-committee's final estimate was that in the whole of the Ancient County of Kent, including the four London Boroughs, about 600 amateur excavations had been carried out post 1945, which had not been published. The sub-committee recognised that many of these would never be written up for a whole variety of reasons, but that many could be, given the right spirit, reasonable resources and good organisation.
Plans were considered for publicising the initiative throughout the course of the project, in order to ensure a flow of information about sites and results from them and the basis for prioritising the writing up of results was set down.
It was recognised that because of the magnitude of the task, it would be impractical for it to be done on a volunteer basis, so it was decided that it could only realistically be considered if an experienced archaeologist, with a good track record of writing up reports, be engaged. The cost of such an approach would be well outside the financial reach of the KAS, so discussions were held with the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) to see if they could help. We were given every encouragement and a detailed budget costing just under £100,000 – 90% of this would be funded by Grant from the HLF and 10% from the Society, who would also pay for the reasonable costs of publication (much of the material for publication would be offered to Archaeologia Cantiana, the primary medium for publication of archaeological material in Kent). The project would last between 2.5 and 3 years, depending on various factors. In order to ensure good progress, a Project Advisory Committee would be set up, to include independent experts, including the County Archaeological Officer and English Heritage.
A detailed proposal was then submitted to the HLF, with reasonable expectations that it would be accepted, subject perhaps to negotiations on points of detail. Sadly it was not. Much correspondence has ensued. This is not the place to try and summarise it, but the proposal was not supported for a number of reasons, despite the earlier encouragement which we had been given. One reason was that we were unable to say specifically how many sites would be written up, the basis for their specific selection and their specific heritage benefits - we could not do any of these things without first collecting detailed information (i.e. the results of the excavations & fieldwork) on all of the sites. From a practical point of view we had seen this as an ongoing part of the project, gathering momentum as it progressed. To complete such an exercise in isolation would be a very time consuming and expensive project in its own right, which we would be expected to fund 100% out of our own financial resources before a project with HLF support could be started. Clearly we could not contemplate such an exercise. Another reason was that the HLF wish to widen popular access to our heritage to develop new audiences. In other words, presenting results in such a way that projects from them could be read and understood by a much wider audience. At first sight this seemed a laudable objective but when thought through, we recognised that it would be expensive in time and effort and would significantly detract from our primary objective i.e. the writing up and publication of as many excavation reports as possible.
So, despite an enormous effort by members of the Society, the project file has been closed. That in itself is sad, but even more sadly it means that the results from many of the 600 or so excavations and fieldwork identified will never see the light of day and be available to a wider audience.
Before closing this very brief review, I would like to thank those members of the Council, Fieldwork Committee and its sub-committee who gave freely of their time to progress the project and in particular Paul Oldham, our President, who has been 100% supportive throughout.
Tom Holbrook OBE