Archaeology Award
THE ANDANTE ARCHAEOLOGICAL AWARD - £2000
Applications invited NOW!
Every year we make an award of around £2000 to an archaeological project in order to protect or research the past anywhere in the world.
Past winners have been website and signage at Volubilis in Morocco; geophysical survey equipment at Kerkenes Dag in Turkey, the Stonehenge Riverside Project (2008) and the international Via Consolare Project in Pompeii in 2009.
We have also made minor contributions to Nola Bronze Age site in Italy and to a Roman glass-furnace project near Salisbury.
We now invite applications for Andante’s Archaeological Award 2010. These should be submitted to Daniel Gradwell ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ) on one side of A4 before the end of January 2010.
The winner will be notified by the end of the first week of February and the award will be presented at the British Museum, during the Archaeology Fair run by Current Archaeology. Andante Travels is sponsoring this event.
Past Winners
The Riverside Project at Stonehenge
During the last couple of seasons this project has uncovered the village at Durrington Walls which probably housed the builders (and the subsequent users) of Stonehenge.
Professor Mike Parker Pearson of Sheffield University heads a team from a variety of academic institutions and local helpers. Next year they will be starting work again – this time to excavate some areas of Stonehenge itself, the so-called “Avenue” which is interpreted as the ceremonial approach to the monument, the Stonehenge cursus (a long, narrow banked area, so-called because earlier excavators thought it resembled a Roman cursus, or race track) and the Stonehenge palisade, together with a thorough investigation of one long barrow and one round barrow. They will also be re-examining the enigmatic 10,000 year-old postholes which formed one of the world’s oldest complexes, built many thousand of years before the stones of Stonehenge were erected. Andante will visit the project in late August, as part of our Bare Bones Wessex tour, and hopefully see some of the new discoveries as they come to light.
Was the Avenue originally lined with standing stones?
Mike’s team will also be trying to ascertain through further excavation whether the Avenue was once lined with standing stones, or whether there was a stone alignment preceding it, and whether the line of 10,000 year-old Mesolithic posts extended this far eastwards from what is now the visitors’ car park.
This may have been an area where the Stonehenge sarsens and bluestones were dressed before erection and it may be possible to discover much about the way in which this was carried out, and whether there were workshops or other buildings associated with the work.
Andante’s contribution is earmarked for excavations in this area, and will contribute to a site supervisor, van hire and basic equipment. We may be helping to find out whether the Avenue was once lined with standing stones! A very exciting prospect…
Stonehenge is likely to be visited by over 70,000 people during the excavation season and many of these will take the opportunity to visit the excavations and learn more about one of the most extraordinary and amazing sites in the world. We hope that these excavations may excite journalists and the media, and lead to the public becoming intrigued about the meaning of what is happening here.
We are privileged and feel delighted to be involved and helping such a worthwhile project.
