Volunteers help sort 8,000 finds from Isle of Man Bronze Age dig

Rachel Crellin said full analysis of the material found would take "a few years"

A group of volunteers have spent two weeks helping to photograph and check about 8,000 bags of material from an archaeological dig near Kirk Michael.

The excavation phase of the Round Mounds of the Isle of Man project came to an end in July last year, after four separate month-long digs.

That work was in preparation of expert analysis of the samples.

Part-funded by Manx National Heritage, it involved the University of Leicester and Newcastle University.

Project co-director Rachel Crellin of the University of Leicester returned to the island to oversee post excavation work by the volunteers, who were based at the Manx Museum.

Material found included pottery, flint and several burials and a rare jet necklace.

About 8,000 individual bags of material have been catalogued

Dr Crellin said: "The goal of the project was to keep everything here that we could and only take things off-island for as short a time as possible when we really needed a different set up for it."

While the project's osteologist and ceramic specialists would do their analysis at the museum, a "very small amount of material that needs a very high tech lab setup" to export temporarily for certain specialist analysis", she said.

The burial mound excavated was one of more than 150 similar sites across the island.

Dr Crellin said the work was about "massively increasing our understanding of death and burial practices in the Neolithic and Bronze Ages", which would be put into a book.

Dot Saunders said she enjoyed the physical and mental challenge of the work

Dot Saunders has volunteered with the project since 2018 and spent part of last week excavating an earn that had been "block-lifted" out of the earth during the dig.

She said, as she had been involved in archaeology in her younger years, getting involved in a dig near here home "just seemed a perfect opportunity to get the trowel and have another go".