Excavations at Sackville Gardens – running an explicitly trans inclusive community dig in the heart of Manchester’s Gay Village

As the UK Government and national press continue their assault on the ability of trans people to live openly in public life, the need for a resolutely activist pro-trans archaeology has never been greater. Continuing the ground-breaking work of queer and trans archaeologists, whose impressive corpus demonstrates the saliency of archaeology as a tool of use for trans activists, this paper directs its attention to inclusion within the discipline itself. In this paper I describe the explicitly tans inclusive Sackville Gardens 2025 community excavation organized as part of my PhD research. I chronicle the process of planning and running this excavation in the middle of the UK’s growing anti-trans moral panic. Further, I showcase that, despite the challenges encountered due to organized transphobia in the UK, making field archaeology explicitly pro-trans requires little more than a willingness to stand against bigotry.