Examples of past events and activities at Canterbury YAC meetings -2019 report produced for Kent Archaeological Society
Dec 292019
Thankfully the YAC’s were able to visit and get to help excavate Lees Court in September events outside of our control having caused disruption or last minute cancellation of our site visits in the previous three months.
The club members look forward to being able to visit sites and see actual archaeology in practice so they were desperate to actually get on site again. In August the storm the night before brought a tree down and caused other damage to trees on the site rendering it dangerous and our June site visit was similarly deemed unsafe for the YAC’s to visit in the week of the visit. Whilst in July only two made it to Sittingbourne to renew our acquaintance with HRGS whilst the rest spent the two hours going nowhere due to an accident on the motorway.
Upto Christmas 2018, we focused on the medieval period kicking off in October with joining CAT on their excavation to find the watercourse for Folkestone monastery and an informative talk and interaction between members with Andrew and Annie. This linked neatly into the next two meetings at the first of which using the collections at the Beeney members discussed and handled objects from day to day medieval life before looking at the history of stain glass windows and the imagery used at the December meeting.
After Christmas saw the members wearing surgical gloves to get to grips with environmental archaeology and changes in diet over time through the medium of dissecting artificial pooh to identify seeds, fruit pips, fish scales amongst others.
Andy Harmsworth then lead members and their parents in a warm sunny March morning on a thoroughly entertaining and informative 2 hour circular walk of the Canterbury Walls, pointing out the changes to the walls and why the changes had occurred over the years.
Whilst April saw the club based at St Mary of Charity Church in Faversham teaching members how to interpret a building and church and in particular examine closely the architecture to identify how it has been modified over the centuries . Several members have since commented on how they now look more closely at buildings they visit to spot doorways or windows that have been modified or blocked up.
The Trust for Thanet Archaeology were kind enough in spring to host a session for the club to allow members hands on access to the Trust’s store of considerable artefacts, to consider and discuss the purpose and types of pre-iron age tools as well as revisit the historical timeline.
Over the winter months we will again be mainly based at the Baptist Hall in Faversham with sessions on South American archaeology , facial reconstruction and first aid planned.