Colchester Young Archaeologists' Club just before the pandemic

 




Mike Mount talked about the Roman Army and brought his collection of Roman amour for us to try on at our meeting place, Roman Circus House (winter 2020)
It is nearly two years since we had to change the plans we made with Colchester archaeologist Adam Wightman to visit the Essex County Hospital excavation. We had made all the plans. It was to be our third meeting in 2020. Who could have predicted what would happen next?
Time line created for Colchester YAC by Wayne Dutnell of the town's Natural History Museum. The artwork created by a YAC member

       We'd had two meetings in 2020. Mike Mount came to talk about Roman armour and the Roman army and we had a session to follow up our visit to the Natural History Museum the previous year, painting plaster ammonites and making Roman/Saxon-style jewellery with YAC volunteer Gillian, who also instructs our young people in find identification and washing.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Work experience student drew plans for city

Image
 Above is a picture of the model of the walled city of Roman Colchester. Today at the Young Archaeologists' Club we had a surprise visitor. Niles was a member of the club when it met in Colchester Castle and was one of the members who helped restart the club in October 2012. He was delighted to see the model had been completed. 'Do you know drew the plans for this?' he asked. 'Philip, I should think,' I replied. Niles admitted to drawing the plans as part of his work experience at Colchester Archaeological Trust.  
Read more

Caught and destroyed in the "Tudor Web"

Image
 Upheavals and reform in the Tudor period transformed the built environment in Essex. All that is left of a once great Benedictine Abbey, south of Colchester's town walls is its magnificent gatehouse. YAC Adam writes:- "St John's Abbey was founded in 1096 by Eudo Dapifer with the order of St Benedict (Benedictines). The Abbey was the largest abbey in Colchester and the fourth largest abbey in England. It was built where "miraculous voices" could be heard. Eudo even claimed to have witnessed a miracle at that site. Eudo is also known to have laid the first stone of the Abbey and the Abbey was burned partially in a large fire that affected the town in 1133. The Abbey also received a vial of St Thomas a Becket's blood from a monk named Ralph. This vial was the Abbey's most important relic. The Abbey was the victim of a mob attack during the peasant's revolt. The Abbey was also believed to have supported the Plantagenets leading to Richard lll's mothe
Read more

Why the Essex coast is a treasure-trove of paleontology

Image
On a warm June day, Colchester young archaeologists' club gathered on the Essex coast to comb the beach for fossils. One of our volunteers had prepared a check sheet for finds of such things as fossil shells from the red crag, fossil wood and sharks teeth. Everything was carefully checked by an expert on hand, who explained the geology of the coast and how and why there were so many interesting things we could discover, from thousands to millions of years ago. The tide came in earlier than anticipated, but that gave us an opportunity to examine the fossilised wood from monkey puzzle trees. sharks teeth, a fresh water snail shell fossil and a tiny fossil fish tail discovered in the shingle on the beach, among many other things. Below is a picture of these extraordinary cliffs with a key to the features.   A Glacial sand and gravel on which you can see ice wedges. During the devensian period, 100,000 years ago. B Grey/green clay sediment from a large river the Medway/Thames ran to co
Read more