Roman Pottery Curatorial Training Placement / RomanSocietyMuseum Bursary report – Tim Penn
As might be expected, I was very pleased to hear that I had been chosen to take part in a two-week curatorialtraining placement at the National Museum Cardiff. As a native of Cardiff, I have been visiting this museum since I was a child, and I was very excited to have the opportunity to give something back to the Museum, whilst also learning about a subject that I find very interesting. I hope to become a university lecturer in Classical Archaeology, so this placement will prove very helpful in reaching this goal.
I thoroughly enjoyed my two weeks at the National Museum Cardiff, and I think that this placement has been valuable in two ways. Firstly, it has given me an opportunity to better understand the material culture of Roman Wales, and secondly, it has allowed me to further my understanding of the general methodology of how pottery can be classified and analysed by archaeologists. Whilst working at the museum, my main responsibility was the classification of Roman pottery fragments found during the excavations at Loughor (Roman Leucarum), in the Gower peninsula. The training provided by the staff of the Archaeology department, along with the opportunity to handle a significant quantity of Roman pottery meant that by the end of my placement, I was much more able to identify different kinds of Roman pottery, both in terms of forms, e.g. a jar or a dish, and materials e.g. Black Burnished Ware or South Wales Grey Ware. I believe that this set of skills can be transferred to any investigation involving ancient pottery, since the principles remain the same, even if the details, such as the specific forms of jars or the materials used, may change. I therefore feel very lucky to have taken part in this placement as it has given me a chance to gain a much greater understanding of cataloguing work that needs to be carried out after excavations, as well as valuable experience in working with pottery, a skill which I will be able to utilise during archaeological fieldwork.
During my two weeks at the museum I was also able to benefit from a series of talks given by staff members from different departments of the museum. These talks, which had been co-ordinated by Elizabeth Walker, gave me a great overview of how a museum works. For example, I was made much more aware of the role that museums have in promoting and supporting research, as well as how the National Museum of Wales aims to educate and engage the wider public.
In conclusion, this experience was thoroughly enjoyable, and I feel that I learned a lot during my time at the museum. In fact, I liked the experience so much that I hope to continue working behind-the-scenes as a museum volunteer in the future. In addition, given that I want to pursue a career in classical archaeology, I think that this opportunity to get hands-on experience with a large amount of ancient artefacts will prove very useful in my future career. I would like to thank the Roman Society for providing me with the bursary which made this experience possible. I would also like to thank Evan Chapman, Sian Iles and Jodie Deacon for answering my countless questions about archaeology in Wales, as well as Elizabeth Walker, who enabled me to see the work that is carried out by many different museum departments.