Friday 16th February 2018: The BARG Winter Visit saw members travel to Oxford to visit the University of Oxford’s Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit. Later in the day members took lunch at the Ashmolean followed by a tour of this Museum.
Sunday 4th March 2018: The Boxford Lecture Series continued at 7.00pm in Boxford Village Hall. Anthony Beeson spoke about the newly discovered Boxford mosaic. His talk was entitled The Triumph of Bellerophon: the Boxford Mosaic, a unique survival from Roman Britain. For further details see http://boxford.org.uk/the-triumph-of-bellerophon-the-boxford-mosaic-a-unique-survival-from-roman-britain/
Thursday 15th March 2018: The BARG Spring Quarterly Open Meeting took place at 7.30pm in the De Vitre Room, The Cornerstone, Norreys Ave, Wokingham. Our speaker was Sheila Miles Viner, who discussed her research on the Watermills of old Berkshire.
Saturday 28th April 2018: A Geophysics Training Day was held in Barkham under the expert guidance of Andy Payne from Historic England.
Saturday 9th June 2018: BARG members past and present gathered in Newbury for a reception at the West Berkshire Museum, followed by a dinner, to mark the 60th anniversary of the Group’s foundation.
Thursday 21st June 2018: The BARG Summer Quarterly Open Meeting and AGM took place at 7.30pm in the De Vitre Room, The Cornerstone, Norreys Ave, Wokingham. Dr Katie Tucker made a return visit by popular demand to discuss her research on The Magdalen Hill Archaeological Research Project. The talk was followed by refreshments and then the Group’s formal AGM.
Sunday 8th July 2018: BARG members visited the latest excavations of a bath-house at Silchester, led by Prof. Mike Fulford.
Wednesday 18th July 2018: As part of the Festival of Archaeology Fringe 2018, BARG member Bob Brewer gave a lunchtime talk at 1pm at West Berkshire Museum on The Archaeology of Lambourn and its Downs. The talk gave an overview of the archaeology of the six millennia of settlement on the Lambourn Downs (4000BC-400AD) and in the village (400AD to present).
Saturday 21st July 2018: The BARG Summer Visit involved a guided tour of historical and arcaheological features of Wallingford, led by Judy Dewey, the Curator of Wallingford Museum.
Wednesday 25th July 2018: As part of the Festival of Archaeology Fringe 2018, BARG chairman Janet Firth gave a lunctime talk at 1pm at West Berkshire Museum on The Berkshire Downs. The talk focussed on three sites where the Research Group made a major contribution. These were the 1964 excavation of the Neolithic Lambourn long barrow, the late Bronze Age site of Weathercock Hill in 1983 and the survey of ancient field boundaries from 1984 onwards.
Wednesday 19th September 2018: To tie in with BARG’s 60th anniversary exhibition at West Berkshire Museum, Steve Clark gave an evening talk entitled From Villa to VIllage: The role of voluntary archaeology in uncovering Roman, Saxon and Medieval Berkshire.
Thursday 4th October 2018: The BARG Autumn Quarterly Open Meeting took place at 7.30pm in the De Vitre Room, The Cornerstone, Norreys Ave, Wokingham. Our speaker was Krystyna Truscoe (University of Reading) who discussed New Iron Age sites discovered by aerial photography and lidar around Silchester.
Tuesday 30th October 2018: The BARG Autumn Visit was an evening event held at the Berkshire Record Office, examining the archaeology and history of a selected village through the information held at the BRO and local HER. It was led by Ivone Turnbull (Senior Archivist, BRO) and Teresa Hocking (HER Officer, Berkshire Archaeology).
Thursday 6th December 2018: The BARG Winter Quarterly Meeting took place at 7pm in the De Vitre Room, The Cornerstone, Norreys Ave, Wokingham. BARG members gave a series of short talks as part of the Members’ Miscellany, and this was followed by the Christmas Social.