How much archaeology is too much?
What is supposed to happen to all the stuff that archaeologists dig up? And what do we do when it finds its way to a museum very much like ours? I’m on my hands and knees carefully lifting piece after piece of Roman roof tile from the demolition layer of a Roman villa into trays which will carry each and…
Masks and Monsters: Decoding Anglo-Saxon Metalwork
Do you ever feel like you’re being watched? A pair of eyes amongst the bracken, a shadowy silhouette in the moonlight, the Queen of England on your toast? The phenomenon is called pareidolia: the product of a paranoid brain. Human minds are constantly searching for patterns and meaning in the world around them; sometimes seeing a face in the trees…
Teaching the Trumpington Treasures
I fell in love with the Anglo-Saxons the first time I visited the reconstructed village at West Stow. There was something about the dusty landscape and twisted pines, the mingled smell of woodsmoke and baking sand, the specific sound of green wood splintering around an axe. I was 10 years old and I’d moved with my family from a little…
