cheers to the charioteer!

Today (8th January), the Trust’s intern Stefania – who is our education and schools officer – completed three days of workshops in two local schools. Stefania had been invited to give the workshops to pupils at Millfields Primary School in Wivenhoe and at Alresford Primary School. These were Stefania’s first school sessions in English. She presented slightly different workshops to the different age-ranges of pupils, from ages 4 to 11. The workshops were held in the main hall of both schools and involved whole ‘years’ of pupils.

Stefania used a box of finds (Roman pottery, animal bones) and archaeological tools which the pupils were able to handle and a Trust scrapbook of photo.s and drawings of excavations, Roman pottery, etc. Stefania talked about archaeology, the study of Roman pottery and of animal bones, Roman Colchester and, most importantly, Colchester’s Roman circus. The circus was where chariot races were held on religious festivals, with four competing teams of charioteers. Each workshop culminated in a Roman circus game, with chairs set out to define the circus arena, a stack of chairs for the magistrate’s box, four squares of coloured carpet to represent the starting-gates, a bench for the spina (central barrier) which even included two lap-counters (chairs), and a chair for a chariot – and the children became spectators at the circus, with some being selected to be one of the four horses, a magistrate, or even the charioteer. The charioteer got to wear the Trust’s costume or, if the children were too young, then Stefania wore the costume and stood in as charioteer. In one workshop, the children ran around the arena themselves, but mostly they ran on the spot to try to experience a race as a chariot-racing horse.

Stefania says that she enjoyed the workshops a lot, and that it was very nice to connect with the children. She thought that the children liked the circus game best, but they were also very interested in the animal bones, which included the tooth of a horse.

Stefania is a post-graduate student at the University of Sassari in Sardinia, and the university is funding her to work with the Trust for three months, at the site of the Roman circus.

The images show Stefania in the charioteer’s costume with our charioteer and horses in the circus centre today, and some of the Roman pottery fragments which were handled by pupils in her school workshops.

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