Sometimes high (very high) profile, but often carried out away from the glare of publicity, the efforts of YAT’s archaeologists this year have been rewarded with some exciting discoveries, the promise of more to come, and the satisfaction of having completed several major, long-running tasks. In all of this we have been helped by a host of volunteers, and have collaborated with many local, regional and national bodies.

Facilitating access to our discoveries for post-graduate researchers, and hosting international placement students in our Conservation Laboratory, are two of the ways by which we help educate the next generation of archaeologists; many more (about two hundred this year) participated in our Archaeology Live 2005 training excavation in the precinct of St Mary’s Abbey, thanks to a collaboration with the York Museums Trust.

This was also the year when the Greater York Community Archaeology Project, funded largely by the Heritage Lottery Fund with input from the Trust, and hosted at YAT, got going in earnest. Anyone wishing to see the whole story can look at the Community Archaeology pages on YAT's website to see how local community groups have been taking forward the investigation of their parts of Greater York. Eliza Gore, the Community Archaeologist, has devised and run training workshops, given a wide variety of talks and advice, facilitated the provision of equipment, and generally been on hand to encourage and help anyone seeking advice. An exhibition of ten local groups’ work was held in York City Library for three weeks in February, incorporating children’s activities; there have also been several collaborations with local schools in ‘Being an Archaeological Detective’, and a joint project with Creative Minds and Carenza Lewis in which forty children dug ten test holes over two days at Coxwold.

Another collaboration which has already helped hundreds of people, and will eventually reach many thousands, is the series of initiatives our Conservation Laboratory is undertaking on behalf of the Portable Antiquities Scheme, the organisation that liaises with metal detectorists to identify and record their discoveries. Through a series of seminars for the Scheme’s national network of Finds Liaison Officers, through day schools around the country for metal detectorists, and through the creation of a booklet advising on how to look after detected finds, which has a distribution of 30,000 copies, YAT is helping to safeguard this important source of archaeological information that is transforming our understanding of the nation’s past.

One further long-standing collaboration has continued fruitfully during the year, as English Heritage has supported several YAT projects. The investigation and assessment of the buried and standing data for the later medieval period of York Minster’s development, a task we are sharing with experts from the Centre for Medieval Studies and the Department of Archaeology at the University of York, and from York Minster, has proceeded well; exciting possibilities for reconstructing the innovatory late 12th-century Gothic Minster have been confirmed, and our proposals for the concluding analytical phase of this work are being finalised.

English Heritage is also supporting a synthetic analysis of the results of re-examining the data from several disparate campaigns of investigation at Riccall, North Yorkshire, the site where the Norwegian king Harald Hardraada moored his invading fleet in 1066. Fieldwork at the Ainsbrook site in Yorkshire has also won English Heritage support, and resulted in the discovery of an unusual Mesolithic assemblage dating from perhaps 8000 BC, as well as a substantial Bronze Age monument, Romano-British field systems and early medieval activity. What we hope will crystallize into yet another collaboration has been supported with English Heritage seed-corn as Dr Whyman has prepared a project design for a research programme which should shed light on key periods of transformation in the history of York. And, finally, English Heritage has confirmed that our work on the Vale of York will continue to a new phase, once again supported from the Aggregates Levy Sustainability Fund.

YAT’s curators, conservators and artefact researchers have also had another busy year. There has been much re-ordering, sorting and recording of the huge artefact collection, spurred on by the prospect of relocating substantial elements of their storage; we now have a much clearer understanding and more usable records of our environmental samples and CBM (ceramic building materials; brick and tile in common parlance).

In addition to the conservation projects referred to above, and to the ‘routine’ conservation of material we ourselves excavate, Jim Spriggs and his colleagues in the Conservation Laboratory have been planning for the move that will see them disengage from their long-time premises in Galmanhoe Lane and relocate to a newly equipped laboratory, alongside all the other archaeological staff, in the new YAT offices at 47 Aldwark. This move should be completed in September 2006. It will, however, be master-minded by someone other than Jim, who has announced his forthcoming retirement from the Trust. This is the moment, therefore, to pay tribute to the knowledge, commitment and skill with which Jim, the Trust’s longest serving employee, has built up the reputation of YAT’s Conservation Laboratory and of its accompanying Wet Wood Centre.

Any suggestion that the latter has been ‘all at sea’ this year is, moreover, entirely well-founded; this has been a bumper year for projects dealing with the conservation and display of boats, including the Bronze-Age boat from Shardlow now in Derby Museum, the Iron Age logboat from Poole in Dorset, remains of a ship-wreck on Alderney in the Channel Islands, and other ships’ timbers found in Dublin and in Lincoln.

Artefact researchers have also participated in the collaborative theme that pervades this report, for as well as providing specialist information on the artefacts recovered in our own excavations they have been commissioned by a range of other organisations, working on material from Brandon in Suffolk, Laugharne in Wales, and Quoygrew in Orkney. They have also had a crucial input into the development of our educational and public access programmes at the Jorvik Viking Centre and at DIG (formerly the Archaeological Resource Centre).

The skills of other YAT departments and individual are equally sought after. Our Graphics Officer, Lesley Collett, has drawn finds for several external clients, as well as finalizing the base map for the Historic Towns Atlas of York. She has also found time to design the booklet on Archaeology and Landscapein the Vale of York, produce two issues of Yorkshire Archaeology Today (including the largest and first all-colour issues), prepare many illustrations for the study of Roman extra-mural York that is currently being written, and maintain our website. Archaeological computer programmes that emanate from our Head of Computing, Mike Rains, were in use during the year not only in several commercial and local authority archaeological units throughout Britain but were also deployed in prestigious research projects at three internationally famous Roman/multi-period sites ; Silchester in Hampshire, Butrint in Albania and in the Roman town of Noviodunum in Romania.

Two more important books in the Trust’s continuing series appeared during the year. The City Walls and Castles of York: The Pictorial Evidence, by Barbara Wilson and Frances Mee, is the third part of the Supplementary Series that presents the pictorial evidence from antiquarian prints and drawings for how buildings in the city appeared in bygone days. Probate Inventories of the York Diocese, 1350-1500, translated by Philip Stell, is the third part of Volume 2 of The Archaeology of York, which presents historical sources dated after AD 1100. This is not the dry as dust account that its name might suggest but, rather, a vivid insight into living conditions in medieval York as shown in the lists of everyday objects including tools, furniture and craft equipment, made in the households of named individuals after their death.

In addition, three reports giving information on YAT’s excavations were added to The Archaeology of York Web Series during the year. Hungate: Evidence from an Excavation at the former Henlys Garage, Stonebow by Rhona Finlayson et al, describes the medieval and post-medieval development of a site with buildings that may have been associated with the Carmelite Friary that stood hereabouts. Romans Lose Their Heads: An Unusual Cemetery at The Mount, York, by Kurt Hunter-Mann et al, presents the Roman cemetery, including decapitated individuals, found at 6 Driffield Terrace. Excavations at 62-68 Low Petergate, York, by Ben Reeves et al, is a summary of the medieval and post-medieval sequences uncovered in the heart of the medieval city. Freely available over the internet, these reports are bringing York’s archaeology to an ever-widening audience.

Such reports are one tangible end product of the fieldwork undertaken by our excavations teams. This year they have, as usual, worked on schemes of all sizes, types and locations. Whether it may be an Environmental Impact Statement for a proposed new development, a watching brief while building contractors go about their work, the archaeological recording of features exposed during repair and maintenance to historic buildings (including, this year, Tickhill Castle and Conisbrough Castle) or directing excavations in advance of redevelopment, as we have done at Peterborough and a multiplicity of sites elsewhere, the Trust continues to provide a service to anyone and everyone, in Yorkshire and beyond, who wants or needs to know what is buried on their land or hidden within their buildings.

As the year ended Dr Patrick Ottaway, Head of Fieldwork for the last three years, and before that Senior Field Officer for many years, left the Trust, having made a lasting and significant contribution to several areas of our endeavours. Martin Stockwell, Fieldwork Manager, who has long experience with the Trust, was appointed to lead the fieldwork section, and has been busy in working on the logistical and other details of our proposals for the excavations that will start next year in Hungate, York, and continue until 2011. This promises to be a series of very large excavations that should bring to light evidence from virtually all periods of York’s history. We look forward to having the opportunity of sharing these discoveries with a wide audience over the next five years.