Neville Shute was stationed there for a while, as was Barnes Wallis. My Grandfather could remember the airships over Hull when he was a boy, but there's pretty much nothing at the site now. For an archaeologist, it's a sobering reminder of how quickly things can bloom and vanish: it lasted 16 years!

I was part of an archaeological survey of the Howden Airship Station, 10+ years ago - found myself becoming utterly fascinated with the site, and the (abandoned) technology it represented. There were 80 airships there at one point, supported by over 1000 staff and crew! It must have been incredible.

Sounds very similar to @judithjesch.bsky.social's 'long broad Viking Age' - it's an idea I'd wholeheartedly agree with!

Looking forward to heading the episode :)

Metal detecting has completely transformed what we know about it Viking Age England in the past few decades BUT only because the information is accessible! Objects’ significance/value can’t even be determined without that collaborative project of figuring out what it all means in the big picture

...oh, that sounds like it'd be fun! The yearly Viking Festival would be the perfect setting for lots of confusion and the shouting of "foolish mortals!"

Absolutely! A combination of best-practice detecting and a chance for North Yorks Portable Antiquity Scheme and Historic Environment Records to pitch in together, too. Also felt like a good time to show how much work the PAS goes to in producing these brilliant reports for all our #FindsFirdays...

Thanks again to Rebecca for taking on the finds - and for doing the real legwork in cleaning and recording them all while I got to swan around digging holes. The effort and dedication of overworked FLOs and FLAs is terribly unappreciated.

Her full PAS report is linked here, and well worth the read:

So a fantastic day on site, and a textbook example of good-practice detecting in a location where we can say that the finds were definitely in danger - although I'm sorry for my volunteer, spoiled forever by this being their first day in archaeology! Future watching briefs will pale by comparison...

We also had cruciform brooches in place, as well as the second annular brooch to pair with the plough furrow find. You can just see this brooch standing on edge in one of the photos below, showing how the burial must've 'slipped' sideways - which preserved the finds, just out of reach of the plough.

Again, the burial and cut were pretty much gone - but the remainder of the grave-goods were millimetres under the plough line. The tractor was due back at the weekend, so it felt like my old days in rescue archaeology 😅 This was our real beads findspot - 49 glass ones and at least 21 amber.

Further down the slope, another detector response had produced a broken annular brooch and a still-articulated wrist clasp: the brooch was in a furrow base, but the clasp right at the bottom of the ploughing. Here, the detectorist hadn't dug at all, but had marked the spot for us. Perfect!

There were precious few traces of the burial this belonged to: no osseous material to speak of, and only the faintest shadow of a grave cut. Caught in the nick of time! We found 3 glass beads and a probable amber bead next to the brooch, but that was all. In some ways, quite an understated burial...

...the detectorist quickly realised that one response wasn't scattered, but was from a single undisturbed object. They stopped exposing the target and called it in to PAS that day - which meant that we were able to expose and lift this Great Square-Headed Brooch practically intact, pin and all.

The location is on a hilltop, and was only recently taken back under the plough - so the artefacts were entering the ploughzone, with some already affected. Several brooches were found along furrows, where they'd clearly been struck and scattered: the damage on these is obvious. However...

You can find Rebecca's post through the link below. As she says, these were all found through detecting, with my involvement coming through the North Yorks HER. The detectorist left finds in situ, so myself and a volunteer had a day on site lifting them and investigating the area. A GOOD day 😊

...and archaeologist and members of NMA too, let's be honest.

I think the two things definitely spoke to a similar generation.

<raises a glass to good boots and even better cobblers>

Looks to me like the blade's soldered to the tang - so that trowel's maybe not going to last that long anyway...

As it is, the old hands of the YAT showed me how to open a beer bottle with the *back* of a WHS trowel in my first week of professional digging. Considered an essential skill back then 😅

You know, I can remember you buying those and afterwards finding a flaw in the leather - and commenting sadly that they weren't going to last...

...in '95. In this instance, I'm glad to see you were wrong :)