Category Archives: Art Inspired by the Past

Trinity Holiday Club

Art Inspired by the Past, Education, Uncategorised, What's going on?

The Holiday Club at the Trinity Resource Centre in Margate was the scene of another day of archaeological activities on Friday 1st of November.

Keystone mosaic pattern
Keystone mosaic

The Dig and Discover boxes were popular as usual, as was the chance to learn about the people of the past, with our skeleton and an impressive re-enactment of the burial of an important Anglo-Saxon warrior, with a discussion of just what might be found of the remains of the impressive costume and weapons the warrior carried.

We had some fine mosaics made with great patience and care, following the keystone pattern examples from Greek and Roman mosaics.

Once again we had a really interesting day with our friends at the Trinity Holiday club and we were pleased to be given a fine hand-made Thank You card from all the participants.

Our pottery making activity saw some ambitious creations, with a two piece set of a cup and tea pot as well as some excellent pots based on the forms and decorations of ancient pottery.

Making a thumb pot
Thumb pot under way
Finished prehistoric style thumb pot
The finished thumb pot – in the prehistoric style
A pot decorated in prehistoric style
A pot decorated in prehistoric style

Archaeology for You 2013

Art Inspired by the Past, Education, Thanet archaeology, Uncategorised, What's going on?
De_Bello_Canzio
De Bello Canzio stand at A4U 2013

After a very successful event here are some images from the day and we have also uploaded a short video of the Archaeology of You event held on the 13th of July to our Facebook page

Archaeology for You – 2013

Art Inspired by the Past, Education, Thanet archaeology, Uncategorised, What's going on?

 

Our Archaeology for You event will be on from 10.00am to 4.30pm on the 13th of July this year, in the gardens of the Powell-Cotton Museum, Quex Park during the National Festival of British Archaeology

Download the flyer for Archaeology for You here

What is archaeology for you?

Archaeology for You is a day of hands-on activities and workshops exploring the methods used by archaeologists to discover, record and analyse the remains left by the people of the past. We aim to give you a taste of the skills archaeologists use to preserve the past be recording sites and examining the finds that come from them.

WORDS AND PENCILS

Try your hand at recording the evidence of the past with section drawing, planning and stratification. There will be a mini-site to demonstrate all you need to know about archaeological recording methods.

GIVE IT A SWIRL

See what hidden evidence for past diets and environment are revealed by processing soil samples by washing them through with water.

SEEING BENEATH THE SOIL

Geophysical prospection methods can reveal archaeology beneath the ground without digging. Take part in a survey using ground resistance and magnetometry.

We have workshops on magnetometry and resistivity going on over the day. If you are interested in how geophys works, this is for you!

FINDS AND FACTS

Looking closely at pottery sherds can tell us about the industries art and society of past people. Take part in processing pottery from the archaeologists finds tray to expert analysis. Learn to tell your prehistoric from your post medieval and your urns and amphorae from platters and pipkins.

INSPIRED BY THE PAST

Try making your own pottery using examples from the archaeological record. Create your own mosaics showing your stories from the past, present and future.Historic costumes and more…

New Iron Age and Roman reenactment group De Bello Canzio

Iron Age and Roman reenactors De Bello Canzio will be with us over the day at Archaeology for You. With authentic costumes, armour and artefacts this will a be a fascinating glimpse into the past.

How do you make Roman Armour from household items?

Art Inspired by the Past, Education, Uncategorised
Our Roman armour and shield

As you can see from a previous post we have been dressing people up as Roman Legionaries. Just how did we make a full suit of Roman armour from everyday items?

Roman Legionaries wore a standard set of upper body armour called Lorica Segmentata, made in sections built from strips of steel, riveted and laced together.

A trawl of the internet revealed some good ideas about making a Roman soldiers costume for children, but nothing as ambitious as recreating a set of junior Lorica Segmentata from easily obtained items.

The armour under construction

We used a number of good published diagrams of the components of Lorica to create a parts list and templates for the strips of armour and cut the sections from stiff corrugated card. The sizes and number of strips in body armour and the shoulder plates were reduced to fit a younger recruit.  The whole set of body and shoulder armour was built up in one piece using paper fasteners as rivets. The whole assembly was coated with PVA and then given a burnished steel paint effect.

The completed armour painted with a burnished metal effect

Now for the shields. Not satisfied with the usual suggestion that a plastic cup could be used as a central boss, we managed to make ours from a section of a plastic bottle mounted on a rectangular sheet of card which gave a more authentic look. A bit of research on historic paint colours and a search of the local DIY ‘match pots’ and our shields were ready for battle.

Some of the finished shields

Following a suggestion from one website we made a helmet from a cut down hard hat, which worked very well after a coat of PVA and the metallic paint effect.

We were so pleased with the end result that we are making a detailed instruction sheet with a pattern, instructions to follow and details of the paints and effects that we used to create our Roman armour which will be available soon.