Pre Excavation Season
We’re excited to welcome everyone back to the trenches at Magna for the 2026 excavation season, beginning on 6th April. The dig diary will once again bring you behind the scenes of the excavation, sharing discoveries and what happens on site.
But the dig season doesn’t begin when the first trowel hits the soil. Before the season begins, the archaeology team is hard at work behind the scenes. So what exactly happens during the winter months? Hear from the archaeology team about what they’ve been up to.
Cristina: Pottery Specialist – coming soon!
Franki: Geoarchaeologist – coming soon!
Rachel – Senior Archaeologist
We often get questions about what all the archaeological staff get up to in the winter; indeed, many of our volunteers can’t imagine us anywhere other than in the trenches making new discoveries! Unfortunately, the Northumberland winter weather is not normally the sort of conditions to make you want to spend large amounts of time in the outdoors, so we close up the site for the winter and move indoors instead.
However, this doesn’t mean we aren’t still learning more about the history of Magna and its ancient inhabitants. Much of the in-depth research into the archaeological features and artefacts is done during the winter months, reassessing the material that we found and comparing it to other examples from the Roman world. This is then shared with our audiences through public lectures, press releases and publications. The annual interim reports are our chance to update everyone on the latest results from the project and our current interpretation, though these can sometimes change as we continue to excavate and learn more about the site!
One artefact that I have been researching in more detail this winter is a terracotta statue head found in the backfill of the fort ditch. Part of this has involved investigating terracotta statues and figurines in the wider Roman world to understand what they were used for and where they have been found previously. I have also been searching for other comparable statue heads and have found a very similar example close to home, in the Great North Museum: Hancock. You can read more about the ongoing research here, or come and see the Magna head on display at the Roman Army Museum.
As archaeologists, it’s also equally important for us to make sure that all of the paperwork and other recording is completed and added to the project archive for long-term storage. While this isn’t information that’s typically available to the general public (or necessarily of interest to them!) it’s very important for us to leave detailed records of the work we have done as archaeology is a destructive process – once we have excavated an area we can’t put it back. This information can then be used by other researchers studying similar features, or future archaeologists excavating at Magna, to fully understand the work we have done and how the data backs up the final interpretation of the site. Rachel
