AN archaeological team whose excavation ended up with a trip to A&E returned to find that essential equipment worth £13,000 had been stolen from their van.

Members of the Worcestershire Archive and Archaeology Service (WAAS) – based at the Hive – were surveying a site in Barford in Warwickshire when a member of staff sprained her ankle, an injury that required a trip to Warwick Hospital.

The team helped the woman to the A&E department at around 4.15pm last Friday (January 5), leaving the white Toyota Hilux in the hospital car park.

When staff returned at 6pm, they found that equipment worth nearly £13,000 had been stolen from the van.

Items stolen included a Leica GS08 SmartAntenna, a Leica Field Controller, a carbon fibre GPS system and a Nikon D50 camera.

Tom Rogers, senior project manager at WAAS, said: “Luckily, it is not stuff we cannot replicate.

“We lost a lot of survey data but where we were excavating was an open area and all the features we have recorded are still there so we’ve been very lucky.

“But obviously the theft is now delaying the excavation and it is pretty essential equipment that we will need to replace straight away.

“We’re a self-funded organisation and we work for developers who require archaeological work.

“It’s very frustrating to lose some equipment like that.

“It’s not the type of equipment that anybody can use, it’s specialist equipment and you can only really use it if you know what you’re doing with it.

“It’s going to be a blow to our budget and it shoves other things to the bottom of the list.

“Some of the equipment comes in a red plastic case which I suppose makes it look like a set of tools.

“It’s not going to be of any use to the public.

“We were hoping that it would be on the hospital CCTV cameras but it turned out that we were parked in an area not covered by the cameras.

“It’s very unlucky because we are always careful.

“Our equipment is not insured in our vehicles and 99.9% of the time we are very, very careful.

Warwickshire Police are asking anybody with information or anybody who saw anything suspicious in the area to contact them quoting the incident reference number 23/689/18.