Colchester Young Archaeologists’ Club: a Christmassy meeting in December ’17

On Saturday (9th December), the Colchester Young Archaeologists’ Club (YAC) held their final meeting of 2017 here at the Colchester Roman circus centre.

Colchester YAC organiser Barbara Butler writes: ‘… On Saturday, the YAC members took the  opportunity to make Christmas cards for their friends and families and also made snowflake Christmas decorations.

We had a break half-way through the session for drinks and nibbles, and we all tried to imagine what we might be doing at this time of year in our favourite periods of history. Ideas ranged from preparing a feast in a Tudor kitchen, flint-knapping by the fire in a cave, and reading a Charles Dickens’ novel by the fireside.

After this, we enjoyed a Christmas-themed quiz prepared by Jill Hamblyn, a YAC volunteer and Colchester Archaeological Group (CAG) member. Before we went home, Gillian Brown – CAG member, Colchester Archaeological Trust volunteer and YAC volunteer – brought a Roman cremation urn out from the Trust’s processing room. Gillian and other Trust volunteers had, recently, carefully cleaned the urn, its lid and the bone fragments which the urn contained. The urn had been excavated by a contractor working on a site in mid-Essex, who then brought it in to the Trust (the Trust had no previous connection with the site).

Then we all parted, YAC members and volunteers, until our next meeting, in January 2018 …’.