DigVentures is a social enterprise organising crowdfunded archaeological excavation experiences. It is registered with the

Chartered Institute for Archaeologists Chartered may refer to: * Charter A charter is the grant of authority or rights, stating that the granter formally recognizes the prerogative of the recipient to exercise the rights specified. It is implicit that the granter retains superiorit ...

(CIfA), and is a CIfA Accredited Field School.

Background

Headquartered in

Barnard Castle Barnard Castle (, ) is a market town on the north bank of the River Tees, in County Durham, England. The town is named after and built around a medieval castle ruin. The town's Bowes Museum has an 18th-century Silver Swan automaton exhibit ...

with offices across the UK, DigVentures is a platform that enables civic participation in archaeology and heritage projects. They have pioneered the use of crowdfunding, crowdsourcing and digital methods to increase access and opportunities for real people to purposefully participate in real research. The organisation was formed in 2011, responding to the challenge of austerity and lack of opportunity in the heritage sector. By adopting a

crowdfunding Crowdfunding is the practice of funding a project or venture by raising money from a large number of people, typically via the internet. Crowdfunding is a form of crowdsourcing and Alternative Finance, alternative finance, to fund projects "withou ...

and

crowdsourcing Crowdsourcing involves a large group of dispersed participants contributing or producing goods or services—including ideas, votes, micro-tasks, and finances—for payment or as volunteers. Contemporary crowdsourcing often involves digit ...

approach, DigVentures have sought to address this by using digital and social media to build audiences, increase revenue and find new ways for the public to participate in archaeological fieldwork.

Crowdfunding model

DigVentures projects are coordinated through their proprietary online multicurrency crowdfunding platform designed to connect heritage sector managers and archaeologists (project owners) with a worldwide crowd of interested and actively engaged participants. To date, the team has raised approximately £2m in crowdfunding and matched grant finance. The archive of funded projects is available on the DV website.

Digital Dig Team

In 2014 DigVentures received a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund to develop its Digital Dig Team. This was described as a ‘Community Management System’ for archaeology projects. It was built onto a cloud-based, open-source software platform enabling researchers to publish data directly from the field using any web-enabled device (such as a smartphone or tablet) into a live relational database. Once recorded the born-digital archive was accessible via open-access on a dedicated website, and published to social profiles of all project participants. Beta tested in the field at Leiston Abbey in 2014, early results demonstrated that the Digital Dig Team system enabled archaeologists to build audiences (through immersive storytelling), generate revenue (through crowdfunding), enable public participation (through crowdsourcing) and improve research by making results available to a networked specialist team in 'real time'. A children's version of this system was also developed, based on a ‘Cyber Dig’ simulated excavation for use in schools or family events. Records created using Digital Dig Team remain accessible on the company website and hyperlinked in most Post-Excavation Reports produced between 2014 and 2023. During the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...

, DigVentures's digs, talks and workshops were postponed, and the online "How to Do Archaeology" course was made freely available.

Fieldwork

Flag Fen Lives

In 2012 DigVentures ran the world's first crowdfunded excavation, raising £30,000 to enable a three-week excavation at the internationally significant Bronze Age site of Flag Fen, near

Peterborough Peterborough ( ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, cathedral city in the City of Peterborough district in the Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county of Cambridgeshire, England. The city is north of London, on the River Nene. A ...

. The site had experienced a 50% decline in visitors since the large-scale English Heritage-funded excavations finished in 1995; the project's remit was to help revitalise the heritage attraction, whilst providing detailed scientific information on the preservation of the waterlogged timbers. The project involved around 250 members of the public from 11 countries, supported by a specialist team including partners from the

British Museum The British Museum is a Museum, public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is the largest in the world. It documents the story of human cu ...

Durham University Durham University (legally the University of Durham) is a collegiate university, collegiate public university, public research university in Durham, England, founded by an Act of Parliament (UK), Act of Parliament in 1832 and incorporated by r ...

Birmingham University The University of Birmingham (informally Birmingham University) is a Public university, public research university in Birmingham, England. It received its royal charter in 1900 as a successor to Queen's College, Birmingham (founded in 1825 as ...

York Archaeological Trust The York Archaeological Trust for Excavation and Research Limited (YAT) is an educational charity, established in 1972 in the city of York, England, and trading under the York Archaeology brand since 2023. The charity presents archaeology to ...

University College London University College London (Trade name, branded as UCL) is a Public university, public research university in London, England. It is a Member institutions of the University of London, member institution of the Federal university, federal Uni ...

and

English Heritage English Heritage (officially the English Heritage Trust) is a charity that manages over 400 historic monuments, buildings and places. These include prehistoric sites, a battlefield, medieval castles, Roman forts, historic industrial sites, Lis ...

to assist in the scientific investigations. Of the members of public, 130 individuals received hands-on training in archaeological techniques on site and visitor numbers increased by 29% from the previous year.

Francis Pryor Francis Manning Marlborough Pryor (born 13 January 1945) is an English archaeologist specialising in the study of the Bronze and Iron Ages in Britain. He is best known for his discovery and excavation of Flag Fen, a Bronze Age archaeological ...

, who discovered the site in the 1970s, was supportive of the initiative and wrote afterwards: "happily, it was an experiment that worked: the participants had a good time, and the archaeology was professionally excavated, to a very high standard".

Leiston Abbey

Leiston Abbey Leiston Abbey outside the town of Leiston, Suffolk, England, was a religious house of Canons Regular following the Premonstratensian rule (White canons), dedicated to Mary, mother of Jesus, St Mary. Founded in c. 1183 by Ranulf de Glanville (c. 1 ...

was the first crowdfunding campaign to run on the DigStarter platform in 2013, and raised more than £36,000 over the first two seasons. The project ran for four digging seasons, from 2013 to 2016. Its wider rationale was to breathe new life into Leiston Abbey, providing opportunities for visitors to join in with the excavation, and to integrate the heritage attraction with the artistic and musical life of the onsite music school, Pro Corda, who manage the site for English Heritage. Fieldwork focused on characterising undefined earthworks and settlement evidence in multiple areas of the site, with a programme of remote sensing used to target over twenty small-scale excavation trenches aiming to identify settlement evidence indicated by geophysical anomalies or extant earthworks. Additional work included a photogrammetry survey to produce a metrically accurate 3D digital elevation model of the Abbey Church and a low-level aerial photography survey using kite mounted cameras and UAVs (drones) to assess structural evidence for absent buildings associated with the eastern range.

Lindisfarne

In 2016, DigVentures and

began a joint programme of community supported and delivered excavations on

Lindisfarne Lindisfarne, also known as Holy Island, is a tidal island off the northeast coast of England, which constitutes the civil parishes in England, civil parish of Holy Island in Northumberland. Holy Island has a recorded history from the 6th centu ...

. A total of nine consecutive field seasons (including those planned for 2024) have unearth numerous insights for the site. Artefacts of note recovered included a rare board game piece, copper-alloy rings and Anglo-Saxon coins from both Northumbria and Wessex. The discovery of a cemetery led to finding commemorative markers "unique to the 8th and 9th centuries". The group also found evidence of an early medieval building, "which seems to have been constructed on top of an even earlier industrial oven" which was used to make copper or glass.

Sudeley Castle

Yearly excavations by archaeologists DigVentures began at

Sudeley Castle Sudeley Castle is a Grade I listed castle in the parish of Sudeley, in the Cotswolds, near to the medieval market town of Winchcombe, Gloucestershire, England. The castle has 10 notable gardens covering some within a estate nestled within th ...

in 2018 and set out to discover more about this party, uncovering extensive Tudor Gardens to the east of the Victorian reconstructed gardens currently on the site. Through these investigations, evidence of multiple phases of landscaping have been revealed, the earliest of which dated to the middle of the 16th century. This is significant as previously these gardens had been attributed to

Giles Brydges, 3rd Baron Chandos Giles Brydges, 3rd Baron Chandos of Sudeley (c. 1548 – 21 February 1594) was an English courtier in the reign of Elizabeth I. Life He was born at Sudeley Manor, Gloucestershire, the son of Edmund Brydges, 2nd Baron Chandos and his wife Hon ...

and the landscaping efforts in advance of Elizabeth's visit.

LiDAR Lidar (, also LIDAR, an acronym of "light detection and ranging" or "laser imaging, detection, and ranging") is a method for determining ranging, ranges by targeting an object or a surface with a laser and measuring the time for the reflected li ...

shows extensive areas surrounding the castle grounds which still may contain the evidence of these works, but there appears to have been another phase of work, likely associated with the works done by Thomas Seymour in advance of the arrival of Catherine Parr.

Pontefract Castle

Recent excavations led by DigVentures in 2019–20 in the castle's

drawbridge A drawbridge or draw-bridge is a type of moveable bridge typically at the entrance to a castle or tower surrounded by a moat. In some forms of English, including American English, the word ''drawbridge'' commonly refers to all types of moveable b ...

pit uncovered numerous mason's marks on the structure, as well as lead shot dating to the Civil War.

Soulton Hall

Mentioned in the

Norman Norman or Normans may refer to: Ethnic and cultural identity * The Normans, a people partly descended from Norse Vikings who settled in the territory of Normandy in France in the 9th and 10th centuries ** People or things connected with the Norma ...

Domesday Book Domesday Book ( ; the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book") is a manuscript record of the Great Survey of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 at the behest of William the Conqueror. The manuscript was originally known by ...

, Soulton has housed a manor since late

Anglo Saxon The Anglo-Saxons, in some contexts simply called Saxons or the English, were a cultural group who spoke Old English and inhabited much of what is now England and south-eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. They traced their origins to Ge ...

times, and a "lost

castle A castle is a type of fortification, fortified structure built during the Middle Ages predominantly by the nobility or royalty and by Military order (monastic society), military orders. Scholars usually consider a ''castle'' to be the private ...

" rediscovered in 2021 undergoing a multi-season archaeological investigation by DigVentures. The five year long programme of fieldwork will concluded in June 2024.

Caerfai Hillfort (Castell Penpleidiau)

Caerfai hillfort is from centre of the cathedral city of

St Davids St Davids or St David's (, , "David's house”) is a cathedral city in Pembrokeshire, Wales. It lies on the River Alun and is part of the community of St Davids and the Cathedral Close. It is the resting place of Saint David, Wales's ...

. On the headland are ramparts of the

Iron Age The Iron Age () is the final epoch of the three historical Metal Ages, after the Chalcolithic and Bronze Age. It has also been considered as the final age of the three-age division starting with prehistory (before recorded history) and progre ...

fort of Castell Penpleidiau. Excavations by DigVentures in partnership with the CHERISH (Climate, Heritage and Environments of Reefs, Islands, and Headlands) project began in 2021 and were the first ever recorded excavations on the site. Two additional crowdfunded field seasons were led by DigVentures to salvage as much archaeological evidence as possible from the narrowing isthmus under active threat of collapse from coastal erosion.

Dirty Weekends

DigVentures also runs short taster sessions and masterclasses by experts in their respective subjects. *2013: River Thames Foreshore, working with the Thames Discovery Programme (2 weekends)Cohen, Natalie
"Dirty Weekends: Good Clean Fun!"
Thames Discovery Programme website, 12 November 2012. Retrieved 19 March 2015. *2013: As part of the two-week summer dig at Leiston Abbey; classes in geophysics and archaeological photography. *2014: As part of the two-week summer dig at Leiston Abbey; classes in post-medieval pottery and archaeological photography. *2015: Poulton, near Chester, opportunity to work with The Poulton Research Project on their large multi-period site. *2015: As part of the two-week summer dig at Leiston Abbey; classes in post-medieval pottery and archaeological photography.

External links

* https://digventures.com

References

{{Crowdfunding platforms Crowdfunding platforms of the United Kingdom Archaeological organizations