AN EARTHY PARADISE

A growing number of budding archaeologists are taking part in community digs across Britain. Ben Eley visits the island of Lindisfarne and finds himself getting mindful in the mud

-  Ben Eley

Four-year-old Calla's eyes light up.

“Is it a dinosaur?”

“A triceratops,” quips Hamish with a wry smile. Our trench supervisor leans in, countering “It’s probably bovine,” tracing butchery marks in the jawline. Huddling round, we're enthralled by a thousand-year-old sign of human life. Across the bay, the castle is perched atop its volcanic rock, the Farne Islands hazy on the horizon. “There is a kind of magic here,” says Liz, 73, her weathered face softening as she speaks - the matron of this crowdfunded archaeological castaway.

I'm joining DigVentures for its 10th and final year on the Holy Island of Lindisfarne.

This intertidal island off the wild Northumberland coast was a spiritual cradle of early English Christianity. St Aidan's seventh-century monastery became the hermitage of the North's patron saint, Cuthbert, to whom the monks dedicated the resplendent Lindisfarne Gospels. Their community succumbed to Britain's first Viking raid in AD793 or so we thought.

Shows like Time Team and Digging for Britain testify to the UK's strong tradition of citizen archaeology. “People don't realise the groundswell,” says Lisa Westcott Wilkins, who co-founded DigVentures with her husband Brendon in 2011. A nonprofit social enterprise, it's dedicated to greater transparency and public inclusion in archaeology. DigVentures offers a choice: either dip your toe into online learning or a digital project, take on a steppingstone weekend dig, or deep-dive into a fortnight in the trench. Its crowdfunding model makes impossible digs possible.