St Peter’s, Titchfield, Hampshire. Churches are just one of our ritual sites. To paraphrase that Fast Show character “Aren’t churches great?” As sites of the social history of any given parish they are probably second to none. They hold registers of the key changes in most of our lives – births, deaths and marriages. Each of these is accompanied by a ritual, so when archaeologists refer to a site being ‘ritual’ they are thinking about this sort of activity.  So, through these

I took my new found beaker-making skills with me when I last visited FitzHerbert Primary School in Fenny Bentley.  Focussing the children on a particular task – in this case making Bronze Age beakers by making two thumb pots – really worked.  The results were very rewarding, both for me as the facilitator of the session and for the children.  If we’d had more time it may have proved useful to try two different techniques, coil-potting and thumb-potting (is there such a phrase

Well, those of you who tweet, may have caught on to the fact that yesterday I began my first attempt at making replica Bronze Age beakers. I once had an email conversation with Graham Taylor of ‘potted history’ fame (http://www.pottedhistory.co.uk/Prehistoric_Pottery.html) about how Bronze Age potters created their beakers. He thought that they may have made two thumb pots – one with a hole in the bottom and one without – and then attached the two together, one on top of the

One of the enjoyable aspects of my work is the preparation I do for workshops and projects in terms of finding and making resources. Lately, this has involved sourcing artefacts from places such as the University of Manchester, the University of Birmingham, and the Derbyshire School Library Service and liaising with the wonderfully helpful staff there – Hannah Cobb, Jo Wright, Ken Wardle, Clare Mullett, Emily Millward and Marilyn, to name but a few.  I have also increased my