Why not kit your self out with some amazingly priced kit in our outdoor clothing sale, get some fresh air and exercise and get involved in a new national archaeological project all at the same time. The four year project is being funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council to draft a volunteer army to help to map every ancient hill fort across Britain and Ireland. This map will help to create an online atlas to these Iron Age monuments, of which there are an estimated 5,000.

All enthusiasts are being asked to identify and record features of each site to include ramparts, ditches and entrances. The project is an attempt to find out more about the sites, as despite their large numbers little academic work has been done on them. They want to ascertain more about them, why they were built and how they were used throughout their period of activity.

Despite their name the research that has been done suggests that that primary use wasn’t as a military installation. Finds on those that have been excavated have included pottery, metalwork and domestic activities such as spinning and weaving, and evidence of keeping various animals. This has led to suggestions that they may have been meeting places for religious festivals or markets.

The project’s co-director, Prof Ian Ralston (Edinburgh University), is “keen to see what the citizen scientist approach might reveal” as it should lead to the discovery of new sites and provide new information about sites that are considered to be well known. The project hopes to receive information on all types of sites from the well preserved to those where crop marks are the only remaining evidence. The information supplied can be entered on an online form on the “Atlas of Hillforts” project website.

So see what we can offer in reliable kit from our outdoor clothing sale and get yourself out there recording information that could change our outlook on our ancestors. Who knows what you might find?