Lessons in the landscape as amateur archeologists unearth secrets of past

IF you’re out walking on Rombalds Moor over the coming months you might just stumble across members of the CSI team. No, not the stars of the popular American TV crime drama (though you never know), but volunteers working on the Carved Stones Investigation project.

This stark and beautiful moorland lies between Keighley and Ilkley in West Yorkshire and forms part of the Pennine ridge of hills, lying between the Peak District and Yorkshire Dales national parks. The South Pennines contain some of the most stunning scenery in the country, with sweeping moorlands, pastures enclosed by dry stone walls and gritstone settlements housed in narrow valleys.

The moorlands are home to rare species of birds including merlin, short-eared owl and twite and this dramatic landscape has inspired countless artists and writers such as Ted Hughes, Turner and the Brontes.

But there is more to this area than just natural beauty and the CSI project, along with the Riches of the Earth project taking place on Todmorden Moor and Baildon Moor, aims to unearth and record its history going back almost 5,000 years to the bronze age.

They are both part of the Watershed Landscape scheme which is run by Pennine Prospects, a rural regeneration company set up in 2005 to promote and protect the natural and cultural heritage of the South Pennines. Louise Brown was recently appointed as community archaeologist to oversee work on the project, which is funded by Heritage Lottery Fund cash. Her role is to help train people so they can do archaeology themselves.

“It’s not about bringing in the professionals, it’s about giving the training and knowledge to members of the public,” she explains. “It’s important for people to have a sense of ownership of the history and heritage of their local area, so why not help people who are passionate about where they lives because they are best placed to spread the word?”

The CSI project has a core of around 15 volunteers who regularly head out on to the moors above Ilkley looking for man-made stone carvings, the origins of which still remain a mystery.

“Some of the carvings are very elaborate while others are quite simple so people could walk passed them and not know they were there.

“Some experts think they’re boundary markers but they’re also associated with burial cairns in which case you’re looking at a ritual landscape, but no one’s sure for certain what they are,” says Louise.

“Most of the stones we know about so what the volunteers are doing is going out and checking the location to make sure they’re correct and they then photograph the stone and note its condition which allows us to see how long they will last and what further protection they might need.”

The teams are trained by professional archaeologists but then go out on their own. “Since October they have recorded over 200 stones and among those are a number that we haven’t known about which is really interesting because they’re adding to the record we have.”

These findings, along with a written report for each stone, are passed on to a national database.

“All this information isn’t just going to be put away in a dusty cupboard – the whole of the UK has a historic environments record and all the information gathered by the volunteers in Yorkshire will feed into that.”

Peter Butler, a retired science teacher, is one of those who’s been out recording the ancient carvings.

“When I retired two years ago I was looking for something meaningful to do and this project started at the right time for me. I’m new to archaeology but there are people on the team who are very knowledgeable so I’m learning a lot. However, I’m not new to science or academic work so I’ve enjoyed being involved in this detailed scientific study, especially with its important conservation element.”

As well as being a valuable part of the area’s heritage, these prehistoric carvings provide a link with people who lived here more than 4,000 years ago and those involved hope to continue their work beyond March next year when the project is due to finish.

While the CSI project looks at the ancient history of the moorlands, the Riches of the Earth project focuses more on our industrial heritage and the reasons why towns like Hebden Bridge and Todmorden were built in the first place.

“The reason Todmorden is there is because of the coal and minerals that came from the moor and it’s about linking this history together,” says Louise. “There will have been agricultural settlements but if you have stone nearby you’re not going to cart it off for miles and miles if you can build your settlement close by.

“It’s a similar story with Hebden Bridge, the town was built with local stone and that’s because people worked and quarried not far away, these are the kind of links we’re trying to make.”

At Oxenhope Moor, near Haworth, they are trying to record a stone quarry that has remained untouched since the 19th-century.

“We want to understand more about the methods and marks that the tools left behind, because this stone was quarried by hand which must have involved a staggering amount of work.”

She says the moor would have been a completely different place 150 years ago.

“Today, if you drive across Oxenhope Moor it’s incredibly quiet, you might hear a couple of skylarks and that’s it. But in the middle of the 19th-century there would have been a navvy workforce building the reservoir and men working in the quarry. There would have been horses going up and down the track because this was a pack horse route to The Piece Hall in Halifax. So a place that we think of as being very remote was once a hive of activity.”

Many of us perhaps assume we know everything there is to know about our industrial past, but Louise says we are still discovering new information.

“When does it become archaeology, when do we stop knocking it down and start trying to preserve it? Coal mines and quarries aren’t very glamorous by any stretch of the imagination so they tend to get overlooked.

“Water mills and old factories get more attention because they might end up being turned into lovely apartments overlooking the river, but you can’t do that with a quarry or a mine. Yet somewhere like Bradford, which was at the heart of the great textile industry, was important because of all the mineral wealth in the area.”

The aim of these projects is to connect local people with the history of where they live. In recent years archaeology has moved away from its somewhat stuff academic image and been brought to life, which is reflected in the growing number of people who are happy to go out and get their hands dirty.

And although most of the volunteers are people who’ve retired, anyone can get involved. “In the last 20 years or so TV programmes like Time Team have helped make archaeology something that people know a bit more about, that’s where this community archaeology has come from.

“Now we get people who might work on a supermarket checkout asking if they can come and dig at weekends because they’re passionate about it and these people have a wealth of information. It’s about getting people out in the landscape and appreciating all these things that are on their doorstep,” she says.

But why is this work important? “It’s what gives each place it’s identity and as well as giving people a sense of ownership it’s about knowing why a place is there and what was happening at various points in history.

“So it’s about identity and we all hang on to that. It’s important to for us to know where we come from, and it’s also important to know why are towns have grown and where they have come from.”

For more information visit www.watershedlandscape.co.uk