The Essay: EarthWorks

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The Essay: EarthWorks: Town

EarthWorks

Town

BBC Radio 3 - The Essay, EarthWorks, Town

Archaeologist Rose Ferraby unearths a Roman town in Yorkshire, and considers communities.

Archaeologist Rose Ferraby unearths a Roman town in North Yorkshire, prompting thoughts about past and present communities. Time and narratives unfold during the annual excavation.

Archaeologist and artist Rose Ferraby explores traces of human history around the British Isles in this second series of EarthWorks. Through her essays she considers how cultural spaces such as towns, graves, fields and monuments reflect so much about the way we live and die. These are places that have changed over time but which still feature large today, establishing a dialogue between past lives and ourselves. 

The first essay of this new series takes us to a Roman town close to Rose's heart, found beneath Aldborough, in North Yorkshire. What do towns show us about individuals and society? What connections develop between the inhabitants of this place and the excavators across two thousand years? The archaeological discoveries tell stories of continental connections, the come and go of people and the everyday stuff of life. And as the team digs down each summer, a new community is forged in the remains of the town. Such encounters are illuminating, showing how our worlds change, buried below pasture, lost to time.

Rose Ferraby is an archaeologist and artist whose work explores our changing relationship with landscape and materials. As a researcher with the University of Cambridge, she co-directs the Aldborough Roman Town Project, and her artwork seeks to inspire new ways of seeing archaeological landscapes and animating objects in museum settings. She contributed to the British Museum’s World of Stonehenge exhibition in 2022.

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Archaeologist Rose Ferraby explores traces of human history around the British Isles.

Archaeologist and artist Rose Ferraby explores traces of human history in different landscapes around the British Isles to help us see ourselves in previous patterns of change.

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