Test pit excavation within currently occupied settlements in East Anglia: results of the HEFA CORS project in 2006

This paper reports on the second year of the University of Cambridge Higher Education Field Academy (HEFA) project which combines education and oulrcach with the archaeological investigation of currently occupied rural selllemcnts (CORS). As reported in the last MSRG Annual Report (Lewis 2006a). this project commenced in 2005 with the aim of (a) raising the educationAl aspirations of teenagers (mostly from non-universityeducated backgrounds) by enabling them to excavate, record and write up Iheirown test pit (under professional archaeological supervision), thereby developing a range of new transferable organisational, interpersonal and academic skills and bu ild their academic selfconfidence; and (b) increasing the number of occupied villages and hamlets to have scen proactive rescarchoriented archaeological investigation. After a successful pilot year in 2005 whcn test pits were dug in fou r different settlements (ibid.) fundi ng was secured for the continuation and expansion of the HEFA programme in 2006-8. In 2006 a total of 12 Field Academies were carried out across four counties in eastern England (fig I), plus onc in Yorkshire. These involved more than 350 young people digging scores of test pits and in the process raising the numbers interested in going to university by more than 60% (Lcwis 2006b). This repon will provide a preliminary summary of the HEFA archaeological interventions in 2006. Archive repons have been prepared for each scttlement investigated in 2006, while those investigated in both 2005 and 2006, from which enough evidence has been recovered to a llow some preliminary consideration of the implications of the results, are discussed in more detai l elsewhere (Lewis 2007). Fuller formal publication will take place at a later stage in the project