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Welcome to Oxford Archaeology East

 

Square Headed Brooch


 

 

 

OA have acquired a new team in the East of England by taking over Cambridgeshire County Council’s Archaeology Unit ‘CAM ARC’ who have now become OA East. Based at Bar Hill, just outside Cambridge, OA East is headed up by Paul Spoerry, supported by a highly experienced group of managers, field staff and specialists.  The team numbers around fifty permanent staff, plus others on fixed term contracts.

OA East has an excellent pedigree stretching back to the early 1990s, and the business arrives with its own specialist expertise, experienced staff, portfolio of work and publication programmes.  CAM ARC worked principally in Cambridgeshire for many years, but over the last ten years their work branched out across many of the eastern counties, so that the business now delivers successfully at regional level.

Not surprisingly OA East’s staff offer expertise across a wide span of landscape types and time periods.  Within this breadth of capability there are particular skills and knowledge bases in the rural archaeology of arable landscapes and in Fenland research.  In addition many years of fieldwork and research into medieval towns has resulted in a substantial skills base in urban archaeology that is now bearing fruit a major analysis and publication programmes supported by in-house specialists.

OA East brings with it a highly regarded Archaeology Outreach provision. Managed and delivered by Stephen Macaulay and David Crawford-White, this specialism attracts funding from a variety of sources to deliver public archaeology to a wide spectrum of interested groups and communities.  From guided walks around historic sites, through schools and public events to the production of resource packs, CD ROMS, posters and interpretative display for monuments, plus public participation fieldwork programmes funded through the National Lottery, all potential avenues for public interaction with their past are developed and provided for.

During the next few years OA East will continue to deliver both archaeological contracting and outreach services to its former parent Cambridgeshire County Council.  This partnership offers Cambridgeshire and its people best value through continuity in delivery, and the maintenance of an excellent, stable and informed archaeological service provider.

OA East is committed to high quality publication of its fieldwork programmes, through appropriate local and national journals and monograph series.  Liz Popescu is responsible for developing and delivering a publication programme that includes around twenty forthcoming monographs, most of these being through the highly regarded series East Anglian Archaeology.

The acquisition of OA East offers Oxford Archaeology a ready-made platform to develop the regional model into the East of England, a region that has been densely settled in all periods and now that is subject to the greatest development pressure.  This coming together also benefits OA East as the business can now truly spread its wings in a way that was less easy whilst still attached to a local authority.