As part of this summer’s efforts to get out of the lab, away from uni and learn new things (my version of going on excavation) I have just returned from an extremely intensive and exhausting three days learning the basic smithing techniques required to make a sword in an Iron Age style.
That’s right people – this week I made my own sword.
I don’t think it gets much cooler than that really. So just to prove it really did happen, I’ve posted some images of the tongs, dagger and sword over at Picassa. Hopefully I should be getting sent some pictures people took of the course itself at some point, which should be pretty cool.
In other news, I resampled the Clatworthy material and it should be back to the lab for me this week. On Friday I’ll be taking part in Day of Archaeology, which is a project to record the activities of as many archaeologists, or people involved with archaeology, as possible during a single day in order to “help to raise public awareness of the relevance and importance of archaeology to the modern world.” It’ll be on the 29th July and there’ll be hundreds of participants so I encourage everyone to head over and take a look on the day!
Ruth Fillery-Travis 