This week we ran our two Roman themed family activity days.

I have to say that both days were a resounding success!! 

Our first day at Lawrence Weston Community Farm involved eating Roman food and making Roman coins. We had over 25 children join us and they really enjoyed tasting food that the Romans ate and finding out what foods they brought with them.

We also had real Roman recipes for ‘Baked Apples and Calf’s Brain’, ‘Ostrich Stew’ and ‘Fish Sauce’ for children to look at. Majority vote decided that some Roman food was simply yucky!




There was great fun making replica roman coins – it’s amazing what you can do with cardboard, silver paper and glitter glue!!

The second day - Remarkable Romans - was at Bristol Museum & Art Gallery. Over 3000 people came along!!

We had Romans Soldiers from the Ermine Street Guard, Roman makeovers with Reflections Training Academy, dressing up, Roman spinning and weaving, tales of Roman myths with story teller Wilf Merttens, behind the scenes
store tours, real roman objects to examine and my favourite bit – craft activities!!

With my team of simply wonderful volunteers, we were making roman helmets, laurel wreaths and tiaras. 

For some reason roman helmets were the most popular activity with boys and girls … might have had something to do with the Roman soldiers walking about …

We - the archaeology department – have been getting ready for two Roman themed family activity days next week. 

The first day is at Lawrence Weston Community Farm and we will be eating Roman food and making Roman coins. I have had great fun finding out what people in the Roman Empire ate!! Baked Apples and Calf’s Brain, Ostrich Stew and the most popular sauce in the whole of the Roman Empire – Garum or what we call Fish Sauce. 
 
The making of garum is really disgusting so I won’t describe it in graphic detail. You just take fish parts, soak them in salt for about 3 months in the sun, separate the clear liquid from the remaining fleshy bits and there you have it – Homemade Garum!

I did come across a very interesting fact about Apple Cider - Romans didn’t invent it!! Apple Cider was already being made and drunk in Britain before the Romans arrived. The Romans decided that they liked apple cider so much that
they started to plant orchards to make more.

The second day is called Remarkable Romans and it is at Bristol Museum & Art Gallery. There are going to be activities all over the museum building and you can learn more about what the Romans did for us! The Roman soldiers from the Ermine Street Guard were so popular at the ‘Roman Empire: Power & People ’Exhibition Opening that we asked them to come back for Remarkable Romans!!

I learnt several new facts about the Romans this week!

Did you know…?
The beehive, helmet, hair bouquet and pillbox are all modern names which have been given to Roman hairstyles!
















Fun Fact! 
Julius Caesar loved wearing a laurel wreath because it covered up his bald patch!

I couldn’t believe it!!
Roman soldiers could march 20 miles (30 km) a day wearing their armour and carrying 30kg of equipment!

I was really lucky this week and got to learn more about the work of curators…
 
We all know that curators care for their collections as well as look after galleries and exhibitions. This week I got the opportunity to help in the preparations for a new archaeology exhibition of Roman objects found in Bristol called – you’ve guessed it – ‘Romans and Bristol’. The exhibition ties in with the touring exhibition ‘Roman Empire: Power & People’ which shows 160 Roman objects from the British Museum and opened when I first started working at Bristol Museum & Art Gallery.





















When Kate asked me to give her a hand with the exhibition I jumped at the chance. Over two days I learnt how to handle objects going on display, how to lay out objects in a display case in an interesting way and how to make sure that at the end of the exhibition, the right object goes back in the right box! 
 
The exhibition runs from Saturday 19th October to Late Spring 2014 and mainly focuses on the activities of antiquarian collectors, excavators and local residents who have all contributed towards Bristol’s Roman Collection. What’s very exciting is that most of the objects have never been on display before!

I got to explore more of the wonderful City of Bristol this week!! 

Kate Iles took me out to Lawrence Weston Community Farm to see the animals and woodland. The farm was originally started by local residents in 1986 on - I couldn’t believe it - the site of a former Bristol City Council rubbish tip! Well it definitely doesn't look like a rubbish tip anymore!!

I also got a tour around Blaise Castle House Museum and King’s Weston Roman Villa. The social history collections are kept at Blaise Castle House Museum which was built 1796 and 1798 by John Harford who was a wealthy Bristol merchant and banker. Thankfully some of the beautiful original ornamental decorations are still in the house. There are several casts of Classical and Neo-Classical sculptures and reliefs -including a set cast from the Parthenon marbles!



Not too far from Blaise Castle House Museum is Kings Weston Roman Villa – the only surviving Roman Villa in Bristol. The Villa was used for about 100 years before being abandoned as the Western Roman Empire started to crumble.

At the end of the week I was able to explore Brandon Hill Park and Cabot Tower as the Friends of Brandon Hill were organising a Community  Archaeology Event and invited me to come along. They were doing a Geophysical Survey of the potential Civil War defences in the park just below Cabot Tower. Peter Insole came along and did a walking tour of the area! I learnt a lot about the English Civil War and how Bristol was affected by it.

It's been another interesting week here at Bristol Museum and Art Gallery. The Technical Development Manager - Zak Mensah - organised a Virtual Reality demonstration ... cue equal measures of envy and indifference ... I went and found it really interesting!

Yes, I concede that you do look like a complete idiot when you have the headset on ... but when you start to move about the virtual environment you forget about the headset!! Your attention is solely on admiring your new environment!  There are endless possibilities for the use of this technology both now and in the future especially within museums and archaeology. 

On Wednesday afternoon Kate and I headed to Brislington for a Finds Session with Kurt the Finds Liason Officer and Brislington Community Archaeology Project (BCAP). I really enjoyed meeting BCAP, they run alot of events around Brislington which has an interesting medieval history and a royal connection....

There is a shrine (St. Anne's Well) in St. Anne's Woods which apparently Henry VII visited not long after he won the Wars of the Roses and became King!

So back to the Finds Session ... there were a good number of visitors all interested in finding out more about objects they had found in their gardens or during walks in the woods. BCAP have started to track where the different types of objects have been found to help build up a picture of the archaeology of Brislington.

At the end of the week I went to a Society of Museum Archaeologists Training Day. I learnt about Tackling Bulk Archaeology: Animal Bone at Newport Museum & Art Gallery.

I learnt alot about animal bones and collections. My favourite part of the day was working in teams to correctly set out the skeleton of a sheep or goat - thankfully no one was squeamish! - and we got the bones set out correctly, eventually.