Blog: Archeoleg: PAS Cymru

Ysgol Pwll Coch visited the National Museum in Cathays last spring. The pupils looked at the new Origins gallery and in particular the Bronze Age and Iron Age displays. The cauldron was the centre piece and they created music and poetry in response to ideas about cauldron festivals.

This was followed up by a visit to Llanmaes and the archaeological dig where cauldron festivals may have taken place thousands of years ago. The same pupils used drama, dance and music to create their very own cauldron ceremony. The teachers and pupils were thrilled with the exciting learning opportunities this project presented to them. They also had lots and lots of fun doing it as you can tell from their two films and the Spooky Cauldron music they composed!

The first film shows their spooky cauldron dancing to their spooky cauldron music. In the second film they composed a march of the mochyn (pig). This was in response to the fact that the archaeologists had found lots of pig bones on the site at Llanmaes. Who knows perhaps the march of the mochyn was also being performed thousands of years ago! 

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Machen Primary school also visited the National museum in spring last year and followed up this visit with a trip to the archaeological dig at Llanmaes. The children focussed on the importance of cauldrons in the Bronze and Iron Ages. They learnt about the possible ceremony that may have taken place at Llanmaes involving the ceremonial tearing of cauldrons. This inspired them to re-create their own cauldron tearing ceremony. Poetry, music and the actions/movements of the ceremony itself were designed by the children. Then a sacred cauldron tearing ceremony took place on the very same spot where it may have taken place thousands of years ago.  One word kept being spoken by the children to describe their experiences: "Awesome!".

The archaeological dig at Llanmaes was visited by two local schools from Llantwit Major. Pupils from both schools went in search of evidence of perhaps their ancestors from the Bronze Age and Iron Age.

Llanilltud Fawr primary school composed music inspired by the idea that feasting festivals may have once taken place on the site. The unusually large size of the midden found on site seems to indicate that feasting and partying may have take place in Llanmaes during the Bronze Age and Iron Age. The children used this idea to inspire them to compose their own special feasting music. The pupils decided that the feats may have been full of ceremony and magic and so their magical music reflects these ideas.

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Sant Illtud Primary school composed their music inspired by the idea that acts of worship and celebration may have taken place in Llanmaes during the Bronze Age and Iron Age. Objects found in the midden may hint at some kind of ritualistic placing of them perhaps part of some sacred ceremony. The children certainly thought that this may have been why such a large midden had been unearthed containing so man valuable objects. Therefore their music is celebratory, spiritual, uplifting, and full of awe and wonder!

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In 2002, during building work at the Cathedral School, Llandaff, archaeologist Dr Tim Young discovered thousands of pieces of 14^th century pottery in a deep ditch near the Bishop's Castle www.geoarch.co.uk/llandaff/index.html.  The pottery is what's known as "wasters", pots that for various reasons have failed to make the grade and been thrown away after emerging from the kiln, which would have been nearby.

The result is one of the biggest medieval jigsaws in Wales, fragments of green-glazed jugs, earthenware cooking pots and ridge tiles with crests like coxcombs, all mixed up and waiting to be sorted so that they can tell their tale.  And sort them we did, for two days during NAtional Archaeology Week, on big tables in the main hall at National Museum, Cardiff: boxes of pottery, rows of foam-lined red plastic trays, staff from the Department of Archaeology & Numismatics and a constant stream of willing volunteers of all ages, patiently sorting the sherds; first separating the glazed and unglazed pieces, then hunting through the trays to find the bits of decoration, the fragments of rims and bases and handles which might just join together and allow us to learn something more about this extraordinary collection of pottery. Looking for pieces that fitted together was the best bit, a reward after some serious sorting!

The workforce was wonderfully varied - students from the School of Modern Teaching in Kostalin, Poland, a British family from Sweden, another family from Ireland, a very young Norwegian boy who sorted a whole tray with the most astonishing concentration, local people pleased to have the opportunity to contribute to a local project, foreign visitors pleased to be handling a bit of Welsh history, parents, children, grandparents, grandchildren and even the occasional passing member of staff (no-one can resist a puzzle!).

Some of the jug bases have an edging made with a thumb or finger, and sisters Vi Watts and Joan Coslett thought that it looked just like a pie-crust; they tried their thumbs for size (a perfect fit!), and liked the thought that theirs were the first thumbs that had rested there since the thumb of a potter in the 1300s.

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Three school students on work experience deserve special mention - Charlie John from Cathays High, Sian Davies from Llanishen High and Emily Durbin from Stanwell. They were a great help, many thanks to you all!

And at the end of two days, was there a proud row of complete pots, testament to all this hard work? Sadly, no. What would be a perfectly feasible task with the fragments of two or three pots mixed together becomes a very different prospect with the fragments of two or three hundred, all very similar. Although some joins were found, there will need to be further meticulous work behind the scenes before jugs, cooking pots and tiles rise again . If you can't wait for that, you can see two complete Vale Ware jugs in the Medieval section of the Origins Gallery!

But at the end of two days, six huge boxes, all full to the top with neatly labelled bags - a fantastic effort. Many thanks to everyone who helped!

Over at St Fagans National History Museum, blacksmith Andrew Murphy and Celtic Village interpreter Ian Daniel, helped by Heulwen Thomas, set out to produce an iron object from ore. Can they really get the sword from the stone (or even a small pocket knife?)

Ian takes up the story:

Saturday: With the threat of rain looming, we started early to make the most of a dry spell; hoping the weather would remain kind we started on the base of the blomery. The day before, we had moved all of the tools and the great bellows to the village so we could concentrate on the construction.

 The building took most of the day, using a mud, hay and sand mix over a lightly-woven greenwood frame. By four o'clock, we had completed the structure, and lit a fire inside to speed the drying process; for the rest of the day, we fed the fire and hoped that it wouldn't rain too heavily in the night

Sunday: The day of the smelt, and today we had some extra help from Hywel, Phillip and Craig, all of them museum assistants. The weather promised to be much better, which helped the outer wall of the bloomery to dry naturally. After lighting the fire, we got to work breaking up the heamatite ore into smaller pieces; all of us shared the job, with one person always working the bellows.

Soon it was time to add the charcoal, then we built up the iron ore and charcoal in layers until it was full. Then it was mainly bellows work, and patching up the bloomery walls as they began to crack, which funnily enough, is a good sign!

After four hours of bellows work, Andy checked the base of the bloomery by opening up the entrance of the tapping arch to see if any slag had formed, and tapped it to see if it had become molten. Soon, we extracted some of the slag and a large bloom of glowing iron, which we cooled in water

After it cooled down, we examined it, and there seemed to be a strong possibility that we had produced Iron - I must admit, it was a very proud moment for me to have taken part in this, and everyone seemed pleased at the result.

 When it had cooled enough, we were able to show it to the visitors, whose interest had been growing throughout the day. Many of them came back more than once to see our progress, which was nice.

So all in all, a very successful day!