Last summer, we put out a call for volunteers to join us for a week of archaeology in Redwick Village. To our delight, over 40 people joined us, helping us to carry out a whole series of excavations and surveys to learn more about the rich history that makes this region so unique.
Since then, we’ve been working with ‘Pushing the Sensors’ to create ‘The Living Levels Historic Map Viewer’ - an interactive online map that brings all of these discoveries together into one place and now, our first historic layer is nearly ready for you to explore!
This layer is the result of our first big project ‘Map the 1830’s Landscape’ and, thanks to the RATS volunteers, you will see who owned each field in the Levels in 1830s.
Our next big goal is to start looking for new archaeological sites that we can add to the map by searching through the local LiDAR data (topographical maps made by laser scanning). We’ll be collecting all this information to complete the first full LiDAR transcription for the Gwent Levels!
The tools we need to do this are all available online and, over the next few months, we’ll be looking for more volunteers to help us do it. Never done anything like it before? No problem! We’ve got all the resources you’ll need for learning how to identify potential archaeological sites among the LiDAR data, and an easy-to-use tool for flagging things up when you think you might have found something. And the good news is, you can do it all from home!
Thanks to our amazing volunteers, the Historic Map is already coming to life. But there’s loads more that we can add to it. With so many of us currently staying at home, this is the perfect opportunity to join the project and help us search for new archaeology from your sofa.
Maggie Eno
Whether you want to find out more about volunteering, or just want to see what we’ve already achieved, just visit livinglevelsgis.org.uk