Test pit excavation within currently occupied rural settlements in the Czech Republic, Netherlands, Poland and UK- results of the CARE project 2019

This paper presents the archaeological aims and preliminary outcomes of the CARE-MSoC project ‘Community Archaeological in Rural Environments Meeting Societal Challenges’. This project introduces participative community test pit excavation as a method for investigating CORS (Currently Occupied Rural Settlements) in the Czech Republic, Netherlands and Poland, where CORS have not previously been extensively investigated by archaeological excavation and public participation in archaeological excavation is almost unknown. Running over three years, the CARE project involves archaeologists from the Universities of Amsterdam (Netherlands), Lincoln (UK), Poznań (Poland) and West Bohemia (Czech Republic) in training, supervising and supporting rural residents carrying out test pit excavations in the greens and gardens of medieval villages in the Czech Republic, Netherlands and Poland, and in analysing and reporting on the results. This article introduces the sites under investigation in 2019 and presents the key archaeological findings from this first year of excavation.