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Interpreting Europe's First Towns

Bill has participated in a workshop and site visit for the REFIT project. The project will explore how communities (including farmers, small-medium enterprises (SMEs), wildlife organisations and residents) understand and experience cultural landscapes. To do this, the project is working on four case studies, all of which are oppida, Iron Age towns dating from the 3rd century BC to the 1st century AD. The case studies are in France, Spain and the UK.
Bill is the project’s consultant heritage interpreter. He given a presentation about interpretive planning at the workshop to an audience comprising project partners and representatives of heritage agencies and cultural landscape managers. He will develop the creation of online guides for each of the oppida sites. Through this work, the role of guides as interpretive tools designed to raise awareness will be evaluated, knowledge about interpretation will be transferred to project partners and good-practice will be made available for wider use when the project ends.
Following the workshop, Bill visited Bibracte to get a feel for the landscape and the archaeological remains of the oppida to begin planning the guide for this special site.