IoA Placement 2019-20: Welcome Neehaarika!

6 September 2019

Our new placement student Neehaarika started with Archaeology South-East this week! As part of her exciting Archaeology with a Placement Year BA at UCL’s Institute for Archaeology she’ll spend the next year getting the chance to experience all aspects of commercial archaeology.

Neehaarika horsing about with a horse jaw

This week Neehaarika’s in the office getting prepared to go out on site. She’ll be taking her Construction Industry Training Board health, safety and environment test (update, she got 98%!!!). We’ll kit her out with some sweet ASE PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) so she’s site-ready, and a BAJR skills passport so she can keep track of her skill development. She’ll also get a quick look at some archiving, to give her an idea of the end-product before she goes out in the field.

This year we’re hoping that her regular meetings with mentors and managers will result in a nice blog series so that people can keep up with her commercial journey. So for now let’s get to know our new team member!

Neehaarika getting stuck into some archiving!

Neehaarika has been lucky enough to participate in a number of excavations already as part of the Institue of Archaeology (UCL). Like all first year undergraduate students she had been on the Institute’s Field Course at Downley Park in West Sussex, and had also had the opportunity to excavate on an Iron Age site in Portugal and an Early Neolithic site in Romania. Through these digs she already has some excavation experience, although none of it commercial, as well as some post-excavation experience in finds washing, marking and quantification, and flotation.

So, what is she looking forward to about her placement with us? She’d really like to work on medieval material, so hopefully we can arrange to send her out to some medieval sites! And as to artefacts – she’s excited for them all! Once she’s finished on site she’ll get the chance to work with all of our finds specialists, but also with our drawing office and historic buildings team. We’re looking forward to working with her through her journey with us!