The biennial British Archaeological Awards bill themselves as the most prestigious awards in British archaeology. Since their foundation in 1976, they have grown till they now encompass 12 awards covering every aspect of British archaeology. For more details visit their website at http://www.archaeology.co.uk/others/awards/default.htm

This website was entered for the Channel 4 Television Award, ICT (Interactive Computer Technology) category, which had the most entries (fourteen in all) of all the 2004 British Archaeology Awards.

Here are results for that award, as officially published -

ICT CATEGORY:

Joint Runners-Up

• Whitehall Roman Villa and Landscape Project website, designed and authored by Jeremy Cooper and produced by Oliomedia. Accepted by Nick Adams, Chairman of the Project.
  
  
• The Vindolanda Writing Tablets Database website, by John Pearce & Jessica Ratcliff and designed by Paul Groves and Joseph Talbot, made for the Centre for the Study of Ancient Documents in Oxford University. Accepted by Professor Alan Bowman of that Centre.
  http://vindolanda.csad.ox.ac.uk/

Winner

• "The Host of Henllys and the Defeat of Carn Alw", an interactive multimedia CD-ROM by Philip Bennett and Rhonwen Owen, made for the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park Authority and Pembrokeshire County Council. Accepted by Philip Bennett of the Park Authority and Duncan Whitehurst of the County Council.

A small but perfectly-formed Whitehall delegation made their way to Belfast (at their own expense) for the award ceremony on October 8th. It was just like the Oscars, with "the nominations are..." and "And the winner is..."

Due to an administrative error...

Nick gained the glory of receiving the prize (nice certificate - no money) during the ceremony.

Jeremy said he would hold his breath 'til he turned blue if he didn't have his picture taken too shaking hands with the Pro-Vice Chancellor of Queens University, so Steve arranged it...

...then everyone got in on the act...

...and a jolly good time was had by all.

Various other TV celebreties attended - Phil Harding ("Time Team"), Julian Richards ("Meet the Ancestors") Francis Pryor ('Britain AD'... and Flag Fen, of course), and Mark Horton ("Time Flyers"), plus Andrew Selkirk of "Current Archaeology", but they didn't mind being overshadowed by us.

That Friday evening we enjoyed an after-dinner talk (hic!) by Mike Baillie of Queens, along the lines of his book "Exodus to Arthur: Catastrophic Encounters with Comets" which lead us to speculate on the possibility that a small meteorite shower may have left the marks which we think of as the "round houses"...

Serioulsy, though, congratulations and thanks to everyone who made any contribution to the Whitehall website.