new store room: more exciting than it looks

Today (2nd August), work began on the building of our new external store room at Roman Circus House. Trust director Philip Crummy designed the building to fit in with the cluster of former garrison buildings here, of which Roman Circus House is one. It doesn’t look it, but this is quite an exciting development for the Roman circus interpretation centre!

It should take about three months to complete the store room. Then we will be able to move our stores in, and the Trust’s archaeology volunteers can move into the large rear ground-floor room in our building (the former NAAFI kitchen). Here they will process finds, and visitors to our interpretation centre will be able to go in and watch some live archaeology and also talk to the volunteers and the occasional archaeologist.

Finds processing or ‘pot washing’ is an invaluable part of the post-excavation process. All bulk finds from a site arrive back at Roman Circus House in bags. Each bag is labelled with the site code and the context number. Our archaeology volunteers sort through each bag and sort the items into two groups, ie those which can be washed and those which can’t. Bulk finds can be of pottery, human or animal bone, metals, glass, slag, flints, shells, wood, and building materials such as tile, brick, tesserae and stone. Items which can’t be washed but have to be dry brushed include painted wall-plaster and oyster shells. Charcoal is neither washed nor brushed but placed in separate bags, as is corroded iron. Washed finds are placed to dry on clean newspaper in stacking crates. Then the volunteers mark some of the bulk finds, very carefully, using black ink, with the relevant code and number. Then the finds will be studied by an archaeologist and the results included in the site report. Pottery, for example, is very important for the dating of archaeological contexts. So visitors will be able to come to the circus interpretation centre and also see some of the post-excavation work of archaeology, as it happens – and all because of our new store room!

The building materials for the store room were generously supplied to the Trust by local builders’ merchant Collier & Catchpole at a discount or free of charge.

The image shows the beginning of the store room today, with the bricklayers hard at work (the Army vehicles in the background are on the premises of the Trust’s neighbours, DSG).

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