(Astigan.com) — The Council for British Archaeology (CBA) is delighted to announce that the Community Archaeology Forum (CAF) won a British Archaeological Award at yesterday’s ceremony in the British Museum.

CAF was set up two years ago as a resource for anyone working in community archaeology: community groups themselves, local government-based community archaeologists, or students, academics and funding bodies with a particular interest in the sector. The site contains advice and guidance covering such subjects as where to get funding from, how to record and archive archaeological information, and how to identify finds. There’s also a set of useful web links to other archaeological resources.

CAF is designed to be community-led. It is constructed as a wiki, using technology similar to that employed by the now ubiquitous Wikipedia, so it allows anybody to help build the resource. Users can create new pages describing their project, initiative or research, comment on other people’s pages or add to the advice and guidance section. Webpages, reports, pictures or anything else can be inserted for others to look at and comment on. 

Many groups and individuals have created a page for themselves on the site, even though they have their own website elsewhere: these can be linked to so that interested users can head off and get more in-depth information if they need to.

There are today almost 40 projects involved in CAF from all over the UK, and this number is rising all the time. Some, like the Cawood Castle Garth project in North Yorkshire and the Fortress Scotland group, have created a series of pages announcing their work and giving details of forthcoming research. Others, like the Kingsbury High School in London have posted a podcast, while the Caerleon Legionary Fortress group maintain a blog on CAF – keeping us all informed of their work as it unfolds with amusing anecdotes and classical quotations.

Dr Dan Hull, Head of Information and Communications at the CBA, said:

‘This award is really for all the community projects who have helped to build CAF: their contributions to the site are what CAF is all about – it’s driven by the community groups themselves and their contributions showcase the incredible quantity and variety of archaeological research undertaken by local communities all over the country’.

The Community Archaeology Forum will soon enter its second phase thanks to some funding from the Headley Trust and the appointment of a new Community Archaeology Support Officer within the CBA.

Material provided by the Council For British Archaeology