Blog: Archaeology: Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS Cymru)

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.

We had a fabulous event at St Fagans yesterday. The weather wasn't quite with us - damp and overcast - but luckily lots of people were, and very many of them bought copies of the book!

I didn't catch the whole service as I was flitting around with boxes of books, but what I saw was very moving, and it felt intimate and totally natural.

Then a whole load more people arrived for the actual launch. People crowded into the Church and the two main speakers, Garry Owen and Eurwyn Wiliam, both did excellent jobs. Eurwyn spoke about the project from its beginnings, and as he's been involved with the project since its beginning 25 years ago it was a great overview. But, as always, humorous too! Then Garry Owen brought a lovely personal note, as he's a local boy who remembers the Church when it was still by the river Loughour at Pontarddulais. He really emphasised just how iconic the Church was  - and still is - to the local community.

Finally everyone came over to Oakdale, the Workmen's Instititute, for refreshments and we were flooded with people queuing up to buy the book. It was like when you first arrive at a car boot sale! It was also great for me to finally meet some of the book's contributors, people I've only emailed up til now. I guess everybody was enjoying themselves as by 5.30pm some people didn't seem to want to leave!

The rest of the work for me is now to make sure all the relevant bookshops and retail outlets know about it. And making sure it's on the relevant websites. And sending out review copies... In a way, producing the book is only half the job: now we've got to sell it!

No blogs for a while now - but mostly because we've been working full tilt on the book (also because I've been off for a week...).

So, it's now at the printers, and there's nothing - well, hardly anything - more we can do now. If all is well the books will be in Cardiff this Friday, and we'll all be at St Fagans launching it on Sunday. If the weather is anywhere as good as it has been this last week or so then it'll be a truly lovely afternoon.

As exciting as it is to look forward to seeing the actual book (no matter how many proofs, dummies etc you've seen - the real thing always looks different!) this bit always makes me a bit nervous too. After it arrives, and I spot the inevitable typo that got away, or something I wish we'd changed when we had the chance, or... and after the launch event, I'll be able to reflect on what a pleasure it was to work on and how lovely everybody was to work with. It's a real privilege to have been able to learn so much about the whole project - one of the very best bits of my job is being able to get involved with such a variety of different projects that might otherwise have passed me by. But with this one in particular, I think, the depth of people's knowledge and skills, and their committment, is inspiring.

Anyway, look out for it, available in all good bookshops - soon!