We managed to organise another successful volunteer day despite the pandemic. This year we met in Leiden.

Prof. Dr Annelou van Gijn (Leiden University) gave a wonderful talk and introduction to the “Putting Life into Late Neolithic Houses” project. EXARC is one of the ten partners involved and we wanted to show our members and volunteers what we were up to lately. Leo Wolterbeek, one of our members involved in the project, brought one of the tools used for digging out the canoe.

After coffee and cake, we had a short but fruitful discussion about how to improve the EXARC network, especially on how to attract younger members. Many good suggestions were made and we will see how best to implement this in the future.

The evening programme involved a short trip across Leiden to enjoy the Dwaallicht Festival at Park Matilo. We were able to get enchanted by Roman music, listened to a Roman storyteller while she shared her “hot drink” with us, joined the Roman army for their night watch, learned to make fire with flints and tasted Roman wine.

Thank you to everyone who made the journey to Leiden on Saturday. It was good to see so many in person, have a chat and join us on a day out.