As many of you know, I have previously been involved in archaeological projects in the middle east (the central Jordanian sites of Tall Hisban and Tall Jalul). Well, this year I am digging much closer to home and in a significantly cooler climate. Located just a few miles from our house in Durham, Binchester was the site of a Roman fort along the main North-South road in Britain. Work begins in three weeks, but my participation won’t start until late June.
The project is a joint effort by Durham University’s Department of Archaeology and the Classics Department at Stanford University. The project is a full-scale field school, providing archaeological training to students of both universities. The first three weeks will be undertaken by undergraduate archaeology students at Durham, while the final three weeks will include Durham post-grads and students from Stanford. After the field school phase, an additional four weeks of work will be undertaken by a local archaeological society. The field school project is currently slated for five full seasons.
When my work begins, I’ll try to keep you all posted via this site. For more information on the site, and to keep even more up-to-date than I can promise, be sure to check out the official project blog: http://binchester.blogspot.com. It’s an exciting site, and I’m looking forward to getting to work on it soon.
View of Binchester Fort from Google Earth
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Darrell J. Rohl BSc (Hons) (Andrews), MA (Dunelm): I'm a PhD candidate in 