Coastal and Intertidal Zone Archaeological Network, known by its abbreviation CITiZAN, is a community archaeology project working in areas of England's coastline documenting coastal and intertidal history before it is washed away by tidal forces.
History
Coastal and Intertidal Zone Archaeological Network was launched in 2015 and is a community archaeology project working the north, south east, and south west of England. The project's main host is the
Museum of London Archaeology with project partners the
Council for British Archaeology
The Council for British Archaeology (CBA) is an educational charity established in 1944 in the UK. It works to involve people in archaeology and to promote the appreciation and care of the historic environment for the benefit of present and fut ...
and the
. The project is sponsored by the
Heritage Lottery Fund
The National Lottery Heritage Fund, formerly the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF), distributes a share of National Lottery funding, supporting a wide range of heritage projects across the United Kingdom.
History
The fund's predecessor bodies were ...
,
The National Trust
The National Trust () is a heritage and nature conservation charity and membership organisation in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
The Trust was founded in 1895 by Octavia Hill, Sir Robert Hunter and Hardwicke Rawnsley to "promote the ...
,
The Crown Estate, and
Historic England
Historic England (officially the Historic Buildings and Monuments Commission for England) is an executive non-departmental public body of the British Government sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. It is tasked with prot ...
.
The project is currently led by
Gustav Milne Gustav Milne is a British Archaeologist, writer and TV contributor who is the current project lead for Coastal and Intertidal Zone Archaeological Network (CITiZAN) and Honorary Senior Lecturer at the UCL Institute of Archaeology.
History
Gustav Mi ...
,
an Honorary Senior Lecturer at the
UCL Institute of Archaeology
UCL's Institute of Archaeology is an academic department of the Social & Historical Sciences Faculty of University College London (UCL) which it joined in 1986 having previously been a school of the University of London. It is currently one of ...
. The team, as of October 2018, consisted of nine with all additional support to archaeology projects being provided by volunteers.
In 2018 they won the Arts, Culture, and Heritage prize at the Charity Awards 2018 – the Civil Society Media's annual awards programme to recognise organisations for their commendable charitable work
and were granted further backing by the Heritage Lottery Fund beyond their initial three year funding cycle.
In addition to archaeological digs arranged by CITiZAN, the organisation arranges open days at historical locations to inform people of their work and methods in archaeology.
In 2018 CITiZAN team members joined the
Channel 4
Channel 4 is a British free-to-air public broadcast television channel owned and operated by Channel Four Television Corporation. It is state-owned enterprise, publicly owned but, unlike the BBC, it receives no public funding and is funded en ...
program
Britain at Low Tide for its second series.
In 2022, CITiZAN ran a project at
Mersea Island to record 60 years of peoples memories and documenting past industries damage that had led to the island's erosion.
In 2024, the
Archaeology Data Service
The Archaeology Data Service (ADS) is an open access digital archive for archaeological research outputs. It is located in The King's Manor, at the University of York. Originally intended to curate digital outputs from archaeological researche ...
published the CITiZAN archives, a record of over 6,000 images, plus archaeology Datasets collated by CITIZAN since its inception. The archive had been collected via the coastal archaeology smartphone app and interactive website that it had developed.
References
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Archaeological organizations
Archaeology of England
Museum of London Group