Archaeologists from University College London and Cardiff University have been excavating remains of Isca, the Second Augustan Legion’s permanent fortress, since 2007. The area excavated has centrered on a building in Priory Field, located in modern day Caerleon, South Wales.   

Excavations in summer 2010 focused on an area of a courtyard building, with evidence to suggest it was a warehouse. A room in this building revealed some very exciting finds: the apparent remains of Roman body armour, ‘lorica segmentata’.

Archaeologists spent days carefully exposing these rare finds, which seem to have been thrown haphazardly on the floor of the warehouse.

These fragile artefacts were then carefully removed by conservators from the National Museum of Wales. The exposed objects were wrapped in Clingfilm, to prevent them from being contaminated by the materials used to support them.

Plaster of Paris bandages, similar to those used in hospitals, were very useful for holding these soil blocks together, and preventing damage to the artefacts whilst in transit.

Once the plaster had set, the team undercut the plaster blocks: this was a tense moment, as the archaeologists did not want to cut through any material that they could not see.

Supporting the artefacts with robust materials meant that they could be driven back to the National Museum at Cathay’s park safely. There they will be re-opened and carefully micro-excavated in the conservation laboratory.

The largest of the blocks removed measures about a metre squared, and had to be carried into the museum by 6 men, given its weight.

Progress of the investigation of this block will be recorded here.

On 2 April we will be launching the Explore Nature project

There will be loads of different things going on so look out for more information on the blog and on twitter.

As part of the launch I will be running an art and craft session about all things birds! If you fancy doing a bit of sewing we will be making badges or fingerpuppets and for little ones we can make spinning thaumatropes.

Oh, in case you don't know what thaumatropes are (I didn't!) they are thoses circles of paper that usually have a picture of a bird on one side and a cage on the other and then when you twizzle them it looks like the bird is in the cage. As we are celebrating nature we won't be putting any drawings of birds in cages! but will be giving them the appearance of flight instead.

The sessions are suitable for families, but adults are also welcome to come and sew some badges or fingerpuppets with me!

On Saturday, April 2, we will be officially launching the Explore Nature at St Fagans project, here at the museum. The launch will be at 11am in Oriel 1. Then, throughout the day, there will be a variety of different nature based activities. 

We will have visits to our new bird hide, where a member of staff will be on hand to help with identifying the birds that can be seen visiting the bird feeders. Find out also how to attract different birds to your own garden so that you can watch them from the comfort of your own home! 

We will also have a number of activities at the Tannery. The Tannery has become home to a great variety of wildlife, from protected Great Crested Newts to rare Lesser Horseshoe bats. Come and find out more about these fascinating creatures. We will also be doing a spot of pond dipping and minibeast hunting, come along and see what we find! 

As part of the Explore Nature project we have commissioned a couple of films. The first is a general nature film shot at the museum, it shows the wealth of wildlife that we are lucky to have here. The second film concentrates on the Lesser Horseshoe bats that roost here. Enjoy! 

May 2010.  I’m standing next to the largest head I’ve ever seen.  Carved in sandstone and painted, it belongs to the vast reclining Buddha at the heart of the Baodingshan cave temple.  Baodingshan, ‘Summit of Treasures’, is the most impressive of the seventy-five rock-carved temple sites that make up the Dazu World Heritage Site in south-west China.  10,000 individual figures populate its 500m-long tree-shaded sandstone cliff, all carved between AD1177 and 1249.

The experience is overwhelming.  I’m astonished by the sheer ambition of this Buddhist complex, by the sophisticated imagination that planned it, by the skills of the artists that fashioned it.  I’m here with colleague Steve Howe to plan an exhibition of Dazu carvings at the National Museum in Cardiff early in 2011, and I’m wondering how we are going to convey the magic of these places to our visitors.

This visit to Dazu was my first time back in China since working there in the mid 1980s.  China had changed hugely, of course, and the pace of change is as breathtaking as the ferociously spiced Sichuanese food (the best in China, in my view) which our generous hosts pressed on us at every opportunity.  The most important things, however – the sociability of the people, their rightful pride in a distinguished cultural heritage – remain undimmed.

Our week’s work with colleagues at the Dazu Rock Carvings Museum developed a warm and trusting friendship, along with the realisation that we had an opportunity to create something really special back in Cardiff.  Dazu, after all, represents the last great flourishing of the cave-temple art form and its treasures of Song-dynasty (AD960-1279) sculpture had never been seen outside China before.

Back in Wales, the whole exhibition team rose enthusiastically to the challenge and, under serious time pressure, captured the serene drama of visiting a rock-carved cave temple.  The exquisite beauty of the carvings, something both spiritual and deeply human, shines out.  From a number of favourite pieces, I would highlight the meditating figure of Zhao Zhifeng, the designer of the Baodingshan complex, and, in complete contrast, the charmingly characterised family group from a tomb complete with serious father, delighted mother and two naughty children.  Pride of place, though, goes to the central Sakyamuni Buddha, whose authoritative dignity greets visitors to the exhibition and provides a profoundly spiritual focus for the whole experience. 

I was particularly pleased to see the delight of our Chinese colleagues at the results, but equally so to see the enthusiasm of so many visitors of all kinds, whether people from Cardiff or China, specialists or local school children.  If the multitude of Buddhist figures and schools of thought, and their interweaving with Confucian and Daoist ideas, all seem like too much to grasp, not to worry.  Just enjoy the spectacle and take heart from another Dazu inscription that expresses the essential simplicity of Buddhist thinking:  ‘to know clearly means that there is nothing to know’.

Andrew Renton, Head of Applied Art, National Museum Cardiff