LOOKING AT FINDS – A PRACTICAL COURSE IN POST-EXCAVATION STUDIES

A course for HADAS to be held at Avenue House, Finchley from 30/09/09 to 24/03/10

Course tutor: Jacqui Pearce BA FSA MIfA 

Artefacts are the primary building blocks with which archaeologists are able to reconstruct the lives of peoples long dead. Evidence for the material culture of past societies has been recovered by excavation since the beginning of antiquarian studies, by professionals and amateurs alike. Yet unlocking the secrets held in the remains of those discarded objects that once formed the framework of everyday life can be hindered by lack of experience and expertise, leaving the question: how can we understand what we have found?

This course aims to introduce students to current procedures for identifying, recording, analyzing, understanding and interpreting archaeological finds through specialist tuition, and practical hands-on experience in a series of group workshops. Common artefact types from the Anglo-Saxon period to Victorian times will include pottery, building materials, glass, clay pipes and small finds. The finds studied will be drawn from unpublished archive excavations in London and the ultimate aim of the course will be to give students a thorough grounding in working methods and the minimum standards required by the profession, in order to understand the significance and meaning of excavated finds.

Major goals of the course will be:

• the preparation of articles for publication by students, based on assemblages and items studied
• the preparation of a comprehensive Handbook of Post-Excavation Procedures for use by local archaeological societies

Syllabus

The course is intended to focus on ways of examining and reconstructing the everyday lives of past societies through the study of their material culture, ie by looking closely at the most common artefact types recovered in the London area from the 5th to 19th centuries. The aim will be to involve students in the production of articles for publication in appropriate archaeological journals, focusing on finds assemblages and individual artefacts of intrinsic interest and importance. These sites will be drawn from the archives of local archaeological societies and from the London Archive And Research Centre (LAARC). Teaching will involve informal talks and presentations, practical training through handling sessions and workshops, group discussion and planning. There is nothing to equal learning through hands-on experience, so this will be a major emphasis of the course.

Topics to be covered will include the following:

·         The limits of understanding – what archaeology can and cannot tell us about pots and the people who used them

·         Recording pottery – why count sherds and peer down microscopes?

·         Understanding the principles of typology

·         The role of the computer – databases for the timorous

·         Crudely made earthenwares – pottery in the early Post-Roman period

·         Pottery in the Saxo-Norman and early medieval period

·         The medieval ceramic revolution – wheelthrown, glazed pottery of the 12th to 13th centuries

·         The later medieval scene and a move towards ceramic mass production

·         How was it made? Looking at ceramic technology and the importance of production sites

·         Pots and potters in Tudor London

·         Seventeenth-century pottery – an explosion of colour

·         A wealth of nations – imported pottery from King Alfred to Queen Victoria

·         Understanding delftware

·         Stoneware – from major import to an essential English industry 

·         The 18th century – the inexorable rise of the Staffordshire Potteries

·         Pottery in Regency and Victorian England

·         Form and function, marketing, supply and demand – a brief survey of the major questions arising from pottery studies

·         The archaeology of clay tobacco pipes from the time of Elizabeth I to World War I

·         Recording clay pipes and how to interpret the evidence

·         From table glass to wine bottles – excavated glass from the Middle Ages to the 19th century

·         Recording glass from excavations

·         Tiles for wall and floor – from the medieval period to 19th century

·         Bricks and building materials – how to identify and record them

·         How to deal with ‘small finds’

·         Tokens, coins, pins and dice – looking at small finds in context 

·         What does it all mean? Bringing together the evidence

·         Understanding past lives through the material goods left behind

When and where do we meet?

The course is organised by Hendon and District Archaeological Society (HADAS) and will be held at Avenue House, 17 East End Road, Finchley N3 3QE.  Meetings will be held on Wednesday evenings from 6.30 to 8.30. The course will run for 22 two-hour sessions over two terms, running from 30 September 2009 to 24 March 2010.

Fees and booking

We welcome anyone who wishes to acquire the relevant archaeological skills. The fee for the two terms is £275, payable to HADAS. To book, please contact the class tutor at jacquipearce126@hotmail.com or ring 020 8203 2506 (evenings only).