September 2009
- I am now officially a student! I've registered for a full-time course leading to an MA in Historical Archaeology at the University of Leicester. The Department of Archaeology and Ancient History includes a Centre for Historical Archaeology. I hope that the course, the contacts I'll make, and the reading I'll do, will give some direction to my interests in industrial archaeology and some depth to the researchI plan to carry out in the future. You'll be able to follow my day-byday progress in more detail at my blog: doing...not doing
July 2009
I spent a happy week on a Waterway Recovery Group Canal Camp, helping to restore the Monmouthshire and Brecon Canal, in Wales.
The weather wasn't as good as last year, indeed we were rained off one day, but we still managed to achieve quite a lot. I spent most of the week attacking a narrow channel that once took excess water past a lock that local volunteers had restored a decade ago but which had since become overgrown with bushes and small trees. The channel was full of soil and debris as well as vegetation, so I had a good time hacking and shovelling.
My fellow volunteers were a small but cheerful group - as several had to leave before the end of the week the joke was that this was the infamous shrinking canal camp! We lived together happily (as long as one had good earplugs to keep out the nightly symphony of snores) in the Methodist church hall in Crosskeys. In the evenings I haunted The Philanthropist Inn, just up the road, which served a fine pint of HB bitter.
When rain stopped play, I drove to visit the Big Pit coal mining museum, at Blaenavon. I spent several hours wandering around the surface exhibitions, in the end deciding to leave a descent to the underground tunnels until next time.
I'm already looking forward to my next canal camp, though it probably won't be until 2011.
fires of prometheus
LATEST NEWS
25th September 2012
- Today I began life as a PhD student at Manchester Metropolitan University, joining some 20 or so fellow postgraduates starting research wih Manchester Institute for Research and Innovation in Art and Design (MIRIAD). You can follow my progress at my blog, Miniature Material Culture.
22nd July 2012
- Uploaded my photographs of this year's adventures on the Monmouthshire and Brecon Canal. There are three sets: Week 1, Week 2 and a side-trip to the Swansea Canal. There is also a Facebook Group.
8th July 2012
- Received a letter from the judges of the Society for Post-Medieval Archaeology Postgraduate Dissertation Prize (see April 22nd).
"The judges were particularly impressed by your skills in the analysis of the available archaeological and documentary evidence and the competence and authority of your treatment of the subject. They agreed that it was a very well written and clearly argued dissertation which makes an independent and significant contribution to the understanding of both the post-medieval archaeological record and to the development of the discipline." "...congratulations on your achievement in writing a stimulating dissertation that makes a valuable contribution to post-medievel archaeology."
3rd July 2012
- Learned that I have been awarded a MPhil/PhD Studentship by Manchester Institute for Research and Innovation in Art and Design (MIRIAD). The next big adventure begins!
30th June 2012
- Canal Camps 2012: This year I am volunteering for two weeks and two camps. For the first I shall be Assistant Leader, as well as driving one of the vans. For the second, I'll be reverting to being a regular volunteer!
22nd April 2012
- Just learned that my MA dissertation has been awarded the Society for Post-Medieval Archaeology Postgraduate Disertation Prize!
8th February 2012
- Launched my Dig Where You Stand section which includes the beginnings of my online museum and a section of found photographs.
21st January 2012
- Old bicycles. My first day at Nottingham Industrial Museum
10th January 2012
- I've signed up to volunteer at the reborn Nottingham Industrial Museum at Wollaton Park, due to reopen in March 2012. Nearly 100 people have enlited as volunteers, which is very encouraging. I believe the collection and displays are potentially a very valuable resource for industrial and historical archaeologists and others interested in the recent past and the role that industry played in creating the world, and Nottingham, as we know it today. After all, as Asa Briggs wrote: "...in large areas of the world, leaving on the side ancient cultures, explored in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries by archeologists and anthropologists, most of the objects associated with pre-twentieth-century cultural history are nineteenth-century objects" (Briggs, Asa, 2003. Victorian Things. Thrupp: Sutton Publishing. p30). I took a set of photographs just before the museum closed in October 2009. I look forward to posting a new set later this year!
17th September 2011
- Two new sections!
Waterways
For someone with my mix of interests, canals offer an ideal mix of industrial heritage, discovery, recreation, the outdoors, the natural environment, rural and urban exploration and photographic opportunities. My involvement with waterways
The Topsoil Project
While digging my allotment every autumn and winter I have discovered scores of tiny bits of colourful nineteenth century pottery. I came to wonder if these fragments could tell me anything about the people who had once owned them, so I have collected and analysed them. Since my allotment acts as a minute sample of all the thousands of similar vegetable gardens across the coutry, I decided to create a little project to share data with other allotment gardeners and increase the size of the sample. About the Topsoil Project
13th June 2011
- Latest finds!
The transfer-printed sherd on the right with the design of a rooftop (see below) is tantalysing! At first I thought it might be a corner of Buckingham Palace, but it doesn't bear the characteristic detailing of that building. There seems to be a small tower, perhaps with a slit window, projecting from the roof, which has a balustrade (I think...I'm not an expert on architecture). I had a quick look online and didn't come across anything, so I'm going to have to do some museum peering...
13th June 2011
- A pilot project: I'm still collecting sherds of decorated pottery from my allotment (see here for more information), though during the non-digging season most fragments come from the surface when I'm weeding. However I'm going to set up a small stand at two events later this summer - the Whitemoor Open Day on 21st August and Nottingham City Council's "Grow Your Own" event in September. I hope to interest some more allotment gardeners in recording the pottery they find in their topsoil, with the aim of identifying any significant differences (or similiarities) between different locations that presumably collected night soil from different communities. Archaeologists usually, and understandably, don't record much from topsoil, assuming that it is too disturbed (and unstratified) to be of much use. I'm interested in testing whether we can in fact learn anything.
13th June 2011
- In limbo...So far I haven't been successful in obtaining funding for my PhD proposal, which is disappointing and frustrating, but I am far from giving up. I remain convinced that I am investigating a little-examined and poorly-understood area of historical archaeology and that the results of my research will have implications that go far beyond the C19th potteries. I'm still actively researching as far as I am able, and my notebooks grow ever-fatter (virtually, they're all digital). So, to use a cliché, watch this space...
29th March 2011
- Stuff still coming up from the bean bed!
20th February 2011
- Not much more digging to do this winter, so my supply of potsherds is going to dry up until next year!
15th February 2011
- Sherds from an area of the allotment that had once been occupied by a brick-walled greenhouse, long-gone.
7th February 2011
- This is becoming a bit of an obsession (for bits)! Here a few more tiny sherds, with some interesting designs.
I must attempt an analysis to see if I can work out how many different vessels are represented by this assemblage!
6th February 2011
- A few fragments: today's digging produced this haul of sherds.
It is interesting that although blue is still the majority colour, the sherds I find are predominantly not dark blues
17th January 2011
- Found in an abandoned allotment shed:
I especially like the little lion (I am a Leo)! Not sure about the identity of some of these, but that's part of the fun of archaeology! Spiderman, a white Power Ranger (minus his cloak), GI Joe in Y-fronts (dated 1996)...
9th January 2011
- Digging in the allotment: the latest haul of tiny fragments of pottery...
December 3rd 2010
- Awarded an MA (with distinction) by the University of Leicester. My dissertation topic was Miniatures in historical archaeology.
November 21st 2010
- Created a Canada 2010 page, and added more albums of photographs taken in Canada this summer. One is of Fort Steele in British Columbia, and the others are of the Atlas Mine, Alberta, which preserves the only wooden coal tipple left in Canada, and the Midland Mine, a coal mine near Drumheller, Alberta.
October 26th 2010
- I've added a gallery of photographs taken this summer in Midway museum, British Columbia.
October 13th 2010
- I'm back in Nottingham, having completed my dissertation and enjoyed my summer in British Columbia. Now I have some time to work on this web site!
May 10th 2010
- I'm in Vancouver, beginning work on my MA dissertation.
I've just uploaded my snapshots from our recent field course: "The Historical Archaeology of England". Haven't had time to add the captions yet, but will do over the next few days.
March 2010
(Above) Dug the bed ready for planting this season's potatoes, and here's the resulting haul. As before, more sherds of light blue patterns than 'Willow Pattern,' and only one sherd of 'expensive' decoration.
(Above) More small treasures from my allotment. The clay pipe stem fragment is stamped J. Daft Nottingham. Daft was manufacturing clay pipes in Burton Street, Nottingham, in the 1880s.
February 2010
(Above) The latest finds picked up as I dug on my allotment.
- Material culture on a small scale: Just for fun, here's a chapter from the portfolio I had to create last term for the "Doing Historical Archaeology" module of my MA course. We had to examine and write about an assemblage of pottery, and I chose the tiny fragments of pottery I've been picking up and putting in a pocket as I dug and weeded my allotment in Nottingham.
Links
- Waterway Recovery Group
- Getting dirty for a good cause
- Monmouthshire and Brecon Canal
- The background
- My canal camp album
- Photographs of a worthwhile week
- Canal Camp 2008
- My record of a week spent repairing an aqueduct next to the M4
- The Big Pit
- A fascinating coal mining museum