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#PATC5 1/20 Good afternoon! Thanks @James_Dixon and @Lornarichardson for asking m’colleague @edpev7 and me to speak about our work on the @HeritageUK funded Beacons of the Past project. As Project Manager, I will talk in general about the Public Archaeology face of the project
#PATC5 2/20 Following that, @edpev7 as the project’s Landscape Heritage Officer will talk in detail about the #Citizen Science aspect of our #LiDAR portal, with specific reference to #lockdown adaptations
#PATC5 3/20 The Beacons of the Past (BotP) #Chilforts project was developed by the Chilterns Conservation Board @ChilternsAONB to investigate the hillforts of the Chiltern Hills of Southern Britain, which has the 10th largest concentration in the UK
#PATC5 4/20 Hillforts didn’t exist in isolation; the landscape has a pivotal role in understanding the development of farming on marginal soils,& the growth & display of power & regional tensions in the later prehistoric period. Bringing that to life for the public is a key goal
#PATC5 5/20 BotP has three main ‘Beacons’ – DSICOVERY, LEARNING, & PROTECTION. Each of these heavily relies on engaging many different audiences and involving them in developing new skills, from excavation and recording, to survey and desk based assessment, to GIS
#PATC5 6/20 Engaging communities in understanding the heritage around them and in telling the stories of the landscape is a great way to ensure protection for these sites for future generations. People care for a thing more when they understand it
#PATC5 7/20 Many #Chilforts are relatively unknown, Desborough Castle in the middle of urban High Wycombe has little to indicate its important role in several millennia of history. It's frequently festooned with ‘ritual offerings’. Education &outreach may encourage appreciation
#PATC5 8/20 Others, like Ivinghoe Beacon are regularly visited and are in danger of being loved to death! Again, education and public engagement can help people understand why their beloved footpaths may be changing, and encourage the public to become part of the narrative
#PATC5 9/20 The @ChilternsAONB is heavily treecovered,so The Jewel in the Crown of BotP is the bespoke high-res #LiDAR survey flown for us by @Cyient in 2018/19, largest of its kind in the UK. Generating over 64bn datapoints, it was more than 2 of us could ever hope to study.
#PATC5 10/20 We designed a web-based portal that could achieve in one stroke: baseline training of completely novice volunteers, through a series of tutorial lessons; user-friendly and intuitive access to the dataset through interactive layered mapping;
PATC5 11/20 offer the user visualisation options (SLRM, multi-HS); capacity to draw polygons around features and add metadata to build a database; allow users to discuss discoveries through a Forum; provide quality control via a Review Portal @edpev7 will offer more detail
#PATC5 12/20 This Portal http://chilternsbeacons.org allowed us to engage with the public all over the world. People could do meaningful and exciting archaeological discovery from the comfort of their homes. But we also bring the archaeology out to local communities.
#PATC5 13/20 We are engaged in a number of practical conservation works on many of the sites, from cleaning up flytipping with our partners @chilternrangers, to clearing scrub and invasive vegetation w/ @ChilternSociety @lutoncouncil @ChilternsNT to name a few
#PATC5 14/20 We hold ‘Pop-up Prehistory’ days at various points around the @chilternsAONB and engage ancient craftspeople like @kimbiddulph @ancientcraftUK @SallyPointer @DavidWillis @HommelBee to bring the past to life in the monumental settings for families
#PATC5 15/20 We also have created a programme of teacher training to help KS2 and 3 teachers deliver the National Curriculum on British Prehistory. Sadly, COVID-19 has curtailed this successful programme, but we are exploring online options and hope to be up and running this soon
#PATC5 16/20 Getting hands dirty is a must, so we have been training skils such as good old fashioned plane table topography, as well has the opposite end of the spectrum, with QGIS training
#PATC5 17/20 And the occassional excavation - @CoLBBSC and BotP collaborated on a training excavation that saw over 80 volunteers learn how to dig and record
#PATC5 18/20 I am running out of time, so I'll get ready to hand over to m'colleague, leaving you with this final aspect of BotP; since many of the #Chilforts are under-explained, we are making bespoke panels for them with new reconstruction artwork. A teaser from @wessexarch
PATC5 19/20 That is Danesfield Camp on the Thames. Thanks so much for everyone's attention & likes & comments. I am here for questions!
