The Artefact Research department’s work followed the now well established pattern over the year. Numerous pottery and artefact assessment reports dealing with material from the Trust’s excavations have been completed, and several external research projects have been undertaken.

Amongst the former is the interesting medieval material from Henly’s garage site on the Stonebow where it appears chain mail was being manufactured on a small scale. Initial work on the fascinating discoveries at 6 Driffield Terrace revealed a pair of miniature silver tongs found associated with one of the Roman graves; these may have had amuletic properties. Work on the skeletal remains, including the many decapitated individuals, from this site and from 3 Driffield Terrace continued to attract wide attention both from the media and the academic community. Artefactual evidence of funerary ritual associated with the site is now being examined.

Back into prehistory the excavations at Ainsbrook revealed unsuspected traces of a Mesolithic microlith industry, and the assessment of flint from the quarry site at Melton revealed further prehistoric artefacts including an antler pick and copper awl. The pottery from these sites indicates long sequences of activity.

Research on the Anglo-Saxon pottery from a possible new cemetery just outside the city (excavated by Field Archaeology Specialists) is underway with comparisons being made with the 19th century finds from Heworth and The Mount, while work on the medieval pottery from Low Petergate has enabled us to confirm the dating of forms and styles of decoration in one of York’s major 14th-century pottery types, thus providing a useful chronological benchmark for future sites.

The department was actively involved with teaching on the Trust’s training dig at St Mary’s and with initial assessment of the material recovered there.

Work for external clients includes the completion of work on artefacts from the Anglo-Saxon site of Brandon in Suffolk and on the ironwork from the Orkney site of Quoygrew.

Funding was secured from YMLAC (now MLA Yorkshire) to develop educational Learning Journeys on the theme of Multicultural York. These will be hosted on a new Museum website (www.mylearning.org).

The major house-keeping exercise designed to make better use of the space at our Clifton warehouse completed its mammoth task of recording and discarding ceramic building material and processing soil samples. This has left the collection in much better shape but also provided an invaluable data set for present and future students.

As ever the department is grateful to a number of external specialists who made contributions to many of these projects.

Copyright © 2003–2006 York Archaeological Trust