This meeting is cancelled due to a class with the Historic Ridgeway introduction – see below.

Please note that the meeting fee is £3 per head

Committee Room, Woosehill Community Centre, Emmview Cl, Wokingham RG41 3DA. Starting 19:30 and ending 21:30. There is ample parking alongside the Community Centre and in the adjacent Morrisons supermarket car park.

Anyone else wishing to join should contact Andrew Hutt on andrew_hutt(at)talktalk.net

For security we are not publishing email addresses as direct links. Please re-type substituting the @ symbol for (at)

The agenda for this meeting is:

Introducing the SOKKIA SET600 by James Peddle
This is a review of James’s use of the system at Blounts Court
 
The BAS Shared File Store

Wickham House excavations: by Keith Abbot

All welcome.

Committee Room, Woosehill Community Centre, Emmview Cl, Wokingham RG41 3DA and on Zoom. Starting 14:30 and ending 16:30. Room open from 14:15 – not before.

There is ample parking alongside the Community Centre and in the adjacent Morrisons supermarket car park.

Please note that the meeting fee is £3 per head

This meeting will also be conducted on Zoom. Regular participants will receive an email with login details. Anyone else wishing to join should contact Andrew Hutt on andrew_hutt(at)talktalk.net

For security we are not publishing email addresses as direct links. Please re-type substituting the @ symbol for (at)

by Dr Chris Smart. Exeter University

A Roman road network that spanned Devon and Cornwall and connected significant settlements with military forts across the two counties as well as wider Britannia has been discovered for the first time.

Archaeologists at the University have used laser scans collected as part of the Environment Agency’s National LiDAR Programme to identify new sections of road west of the previously understood boundary. Using sophisticated geographical modelling techniques, which incorporate information around gradients and flood risk, the researchers have then been able to map out the full extent of the network and begin to understand the rationale for its existence. Among the things it reveals is that far from Exeter being the main nerve centre of the network, it was North Tawton that supported strategically vital connections with tidal estuaries north and south of Bodmin and Dartmoor.

These findings are explored in Remote Sensing and GIS Modelling of Roman Roads in South West Britain, which has been published in the Journal of Computer Applications in Archaeology. The research was led by Dr Christopher Smart and Dr João Fonte, specialists in landscape archaeology and the heritage of the Roman Empire, in Exeter’s Department of Archaeology and History. Dr César Parcero Oubiña, from the Institute of Heritage Sciences, Spanish National Research Council in Spain, specialist in geospatial technologies applied to archaeology, led the modelling of the Roman roads network

Chris Smart is a landscape archaeologist who specialises in the heritage of Roman and medieval Britain, and public engagement in academic research. Having studied for a BA in Archaeology in the late 1990s, Chris subsequently obtained both his MA and PhD in Landscape Archaeology (funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council) from Exeter. His Doctoral thesis ‘Continuity over Crisis’ explored the transition between Roman Britain and Early Medieval England in SW Britain. Since 2005 Chris has been employed as a researcher and project manager in the Department of Archaeology and History, and has led or undertaken work on no fewer than 12 major grant-funded projects, supported by Leverhulme Trust, National Lottery Heritage Fund, Historic England, Natural England, Devon County Council, Blackdown Hills and Tamar Valley National Landscapes.

2.00 pm for 2.30 pm at the RISC Centre, London Street, Reading RG1 4PS and from 2:15 on Zoom

Google map reference

Image copyright University of Exeter