Pottery sorting workshops

Festival of British Archaeology 2009

Sian, who ran yesterday's pottery sorting workshop at National Museum Cardiff, sent me a photograph of some of the joining sherds they found among the mass of material from the Llandaff Cathedral School excavations (see earlier post for background).

They may not look like much, but by reconstructing these broken pots it's possible to work out what type of vessel they were once part of, what that vessel might have been used for, and sometimes when the pot was made. So, important stuff.

And how did we find these joining pieces from among the many hundred sherd jigsaw puzzle that came from the excavation?  We enlisted the help of dozens of sharp-eyed museum visitors who were willing to spend some time, sorting, grouping, and fitting pieces together.

For visitors it was an interesting way to pass some time, for us it was an opportunity to make sense of the finds from an important site.