Archaeology

Covington History Group affiliated with Jigsaw (Cambridgeshire) in 2011. Jigsaw is a Heritage Lottery funded organisation with the aim of setting up and supporting community archaeology groups. In 2012, they supported us in our Covington Big Dig weekend. We dug 9 test pits around the village, to see what we could find! The most productive test pit contained what appeared to be the entire contents of an early 20th century kitchen, including pots and pans, a large quantity of glassware and a 1902 Coronation commemorative enamelled mug. One pit excitingly produced some medieval pottery and another a Napoleonic coin.

In 2013, we concentrated on using magnetometry to accurately locate our small Roman farm. Jigsaw provided training for this and lent us the equipment. The Roman farm is clearly on top of an Iron Age farm, with a clear 'ladder' type structure and trackways leading off towards adjacent farms.

A lottery grant obtained in March 2014 has enabled us to realise our ambition to discover more about people who lived here in the past. The project was called 'Looking back, moving forward: Learning and sharing through archaeology in Covington'. Its objectives were to buy equipment so that we could find out more about the Roman and medieval periods in Covington, to produce Roman and medieval pottery reference collections, to write a guide to archaeology in Covington, to hold a Family Archaeology Event open to all communities in our area, and to hold an end of project celebration event.

Our aims in 2015 were to date some of the ditches on the northern side of the Roman site and to put some testpits into the Saxon site. Initial results from both projects strongly indicate Iron Age origins to the features.

Follow the links below to find out more:

Archaeology of Covington Leaflet
Replica Roman Kiln
Manor Field Training Dig
Guide to the Archaeology of Covington
Prehistoric and Saxon Pottery Reference Collection
Roman Pottery Reference Collection
Medieval Pottery Reference Collection
COVTP14 Report
Durobrivae
Family Archaeology Event - September 2014

For more information, check out @CovingtonDigs on Twitter.