Ancient Craft Courses
Ancient Craft Courses at Stanwick Lakes
We’re excited to welcome AncientCraft to Stanwick Lakes this autumn for two unique ancient craft workshops.
AncientCraft specialises in creating replica prehistoric artifacts, offering living history demonstrations, conducting educational workshops, and providing consultancy for museums and media. These sessions are designed to enhance your understanding of prehistoric craftsmanship. Not only will you create a take-home object but also gain valuable insights into the historical context and significance of these ancient techniques and tools.
Ancient Craft are joining us on 5th & 6th October 2024 for two exclusive workshops!
Dr James Dilley has been teaching and supporting Stanwick Lakes volunteers on our Big Bronze Age Boat Build project, an experimental archaeologist and craftsman, specialising in prehistoric technologies. Since AncientCraft was founded, James has gained a PhD in Archaeology at the University of Southampton and has worked with numerous museums, schools and heritage sites.
Emma Jones specialises in creating replica prehistoric jewellery from the Stone Age through to the Bronze Age. Having recently completed a replica of the Poltalloch Jet Necklace, Emma is fascinated by the tools and techniques our prehistoric makers would have used to create the artefacts of the time.
Emma also creates educational videos for museums and heritage sites around the UK.
Choose Your Ancient Craft Course
There are two craft courses on offer this Autumn: Bronze Axe Casting and Bronze Age Jewellery
These exceptional and popular workshops are designed to enhance your understanding of prehistoric craftsmanship. Not only will you create a take home object but you will also explore the amazing archaeology behind the craft, where and how the raw materials were formed and how to continue your journey after the workshop.
Bronze Age Axe Casting
Saturday 5th October 2024
A truly unique opportunity to experience Bronze Age metalworking in one of the most significant locations to the Bronze Age in the UK! Join experimental archaeologist, Dr James Dilley as he guides you through the process our ancestors perfected over 4000 years ago.
Participants will get the hands-on chance to prepare a mould, working the leather bellows and cast liquid bronze to produce a replica axehead to take home!
Following a safety briefing, workshop attendees will prepare their own mould, before working the leather bellows on the charcoal fuelled furnace to melt copper and tin. They will then cast the liquid metal into their prepared moulds to produce a replica early bronze age axe head to take home at the end of the day. Students can then begin decorating the axe, filing off the casting flash and start cleaning the surfaces of the axe.
There will be short talk over lunch about the life and times of Bronze Age people in Europe. It will cover our current understanding of technology in the Bronze Age and how it is reflected in archaeology. It will be an informal talk with lots of scope for open discussion.
Saturday 5th October 2024
Bronze Age Jewellery
Sunday 6th October 2024
Find out how people in the Bronze Age used jet and jet-like materials to create a range of personal ornamentation, from bangles, buttons, belt rings, beads and pendants! Which artefact will you choose to replicate?
Our day will begin with an introductory talk into personal ornamentation in the Bronze Age, focusing on jet and jet-like materials. We’ll take a closer look at what artefacts have been found in Britain, what they’re made from and how experimental archaeology can help to better understand how these objects were made.
The rest of the morning will be spent working with a piece of jet to shape and drill a bead before moving onto creating a shale button, belt ring or pendant.
Despite its fame in the Victorian period, jet and jet-like materials have been collected and shaped by people for thousands of years. Using far simpler tools than Victorian crafts people, they achieved stunning pieces that still dazzle people in museum displays today. What was so special about this mysterious black material? Why do we refer to jet-like materials? Find out on this workshop!
Sunday 6th October 2024