: Festival of British Archaeology

Festival of British Archaeology 2009

The Festival of British Archaeology kicks off in just three days and staff at St Fagans National History Museum, National Museum Cardiff, and the National Roman Legion Museum are hard at work.

From the 18th of July until the 2nd of August our museums will be hosting an amazing array of activities to celebrate archaeology, from opportunities to join Roman soldiers in the barrack room at Caerleon, to Shadow puppet workshops in Cardiff, and a recreation of a Roman funeral at St Fagans.

For a full list of all the events and activities at our museums visit our Festival of British Archaeology web page.

Over the coming weeks I'll be blogging as the festival progresses, so if you can't stay until the end of the bell casting experiments, or you have to leave before the bone flutes are finished, then read about what happened here.

Most of the time I'll be based around the Celtic Village at St Fagans National History Museum so most of my posts will concentrate on the events held here, but I'll try to include information about things going on at our other sites.

Festival of British Archaeology 2009

Thousands of people visit the Celtic Village each month leaving little spare time for keeping up with the housework. Even worse, with summer in full swing everything is growing very very fast. Something had to be done!

With help from museum volunteers, extreme steps were taken. Everything was taken out of the roundhouses and cleaned. Outside the houses, vegetation was cut back, and the grounds were tidied. The result: two sparkling roundhouses.

Earlier in the year the third roundhouse became unstable and was taken down. Although sad in a way, this provided a great opportunity for a team from Reading University to excavate the ground upon which it had stood. So we learnt a lot from the controlled demolition of this house, but the work was not over. Piles of old thatch and soil still littered the Celtic Village, and these were cleared away by a team of United Nations' Association volunteers.

So the venue is ready, the events organised. Now we keep our fingers crossed for good weather.