Wessex Archaeology was thrilled to be able to offer a specialist finds-based work experience placement to two lucky A-level students this summer.
Working under the supervision of our Post-Excavation Project Manager, Lorraine Mepham, Finds Supervisor, Sue Nelson and Community & Education Officer, Laura Joyner, Daisy and Izzy sorted, identified and catalogued the many boxes of various unstratified artefacts that have been collected over the years. They did a fantastic job of organising these materials into a new teaching collection, and identifying a selection of finds to go into loan boxes that will be made available to local schools.
This unique placement gave Daisy and Izzy the opportunity to work with a wide range of materials alongside specialists. They even received a personal flint tutorial from Time Team’s Phil Harding. Read about their experiences in this blog:
“At the beginning of our work experience when Laura showed us the masses of material for the teaching content, much of which seemed to be unlabelled and have no real order to it, and then asked us to place it in some sort of ordered catalogue, we were slightly overwhelmed. However when we started actually unpacking the boxes and came across a number of interesting, and in the case of a massive auroch’s horn, surprising finds we found we could really start to get involved.
By the third day when we started on the clay pipes and found that we could actually trace the maker and find out their names and where they lived and worked we found that all of a sudden we were dealing with the livelihood of real people who had lived and worked just like we do today, and so changed our outlook on archaeology from dealing with the material remnants, to using these to aid us in understanding the lives of the people at that time.
During our week we have been able to work with artefacts ranging from prehistoric pottery and flint, to post-medieval and modern pottery and metal work. Seeing and working with such an immense time span has shown us just how wide and varied the field of archaeology is and so has heightened our interest in the field.”