2025 Season Bookings are Open!

We have some good news - the bookings for the 2025 season are now open!

Most of our courses and archaeological volunteering opportunities should now be up and ready to go. There are however a few activities that are not quite ready for bookings yet, we are just finalising the last details for these and will let you know when they are open, so keep your eyes pealed for updates!

You will notice that the old familiars are there, such as the excavation volunteers, BERT, and our favourite the dig for the day experience. We will have both trench 24 and trench 25 open in 2025, and there will be future blogs that will discuss the aims of these excavations and what we expect to find. We are also proud to announce we have a few returning activities and courses, such the human remains volunteering, the very successful archiving day school, and back by popular demand on the Sedgeford field is the Introduction to Human Remains course.

Trench 24

Trench 25

In addition to all this we have added a few new courses and activities. There is now a separate area for booking post-excavation experiences at SHAR as we have a huge variety of activities on offer from finds processing, environmental science, and archiving, so you can experience archaeology without having to get on your hands and knees. Better yet, you need no prior experience before booking this type of week and the work can be adapted to suit your requirements, abilities, or interests, depending on available team. We are also this year introducing yet another new volunteering activity for those that have previously done the craeft/experimental archaeology course, where you can put those skills to use on a larger project.

Finds cleaning and archive work are just some of the activities on offer at SHARP.

Finds cleaning and archive work are just some of the activities on offer at SHARP.

You may have also noticed a few changes to the website and bookings pages. Our web manager has been hard at work simplifying the layout of the website to make it easier to find things. More information about each activity and experience is available on the individual course booking pages, with the introductory documents available to download before booking under the 'More Information' section. The travel, accommodation and other information are also available to download directly from the website.

Finally, there have been a few changes to the pricing. The pricing structure introduced last year worked well so we will continue to price the costs for volunteering and on-site camping facilities separately. The major change has been the introduction of an early bird offer, from now until Tuesday 1st April 2025. This is in place to encourage people to book in good time, so that the committee can factor numbers into our arrangements for the season. The other major change is that we are offering a discounted rate for excavation and post-excavation volunteers in week 3. This is to partially compensate for the Festival of Archaeology that takes place on the Sunday, which we know means you don’t necessarily get a full day of pure archaeology, although it is great for those looking to improve their CV with public engagement and other skills.

Our 2024 Festival of Archaeology

You can find more information on all our courses, volunteering opportunities, and experiences on our website. If you are interested in booking for our 2025 season, just visit our Season Bookings page.

We are looking forward to seeing you all on site for a fantastic 2025 season, just hopefully without as many slugs.