It has been a very frustrating year for the Committee and members of Liss Archaeology. Despite this we were able to continue a limited amount of archaeology working with the National Trust at Ludshott and doing some geophysics at Stroud - which fortunately by its nature requires social distancing. I am also very grateful to those members - especially Juliet and Peter - who have maintained a steady flow of articles in our Newsletter and on Facebook.
Now that it appears the end of restrictions are nigh we are starting to plan with the various landowners the activities we hope to restart this year. Keith Baker as project manager has arranged meetings with Alton Town Council in April with a view to doing another Alton Big Dig this July and it looks as though we will also be allowed to do geophysics there in the St Lawrence churchyard soon (where there are believed to be Iron Age ditches) and perhaps on the Butts Green which adjoins the suspected route of the Roman road to Alresford and Winchester and which has a documented history spanning several centuries.
At Stroud we aim to continue our excavations on New Buildings Farm, hopefully in August/September and lasting about 3 weeks. In addition to the early Romano-British structure we partially uncovered in 2019 there is another RB structure about 1km away which we located last September by resistivity and magnetometry. This site looks very promising.
Finally for now, we are too late for a Colemore Spring Dig but we may be able to do a short exploration there in the autumn. If so, it will probably focus on extending the geophys survey and digging some test pits rather than a full-scale excavation, depending on landowner's permission and the availability of trench supervisors.