Hello, I'm Rachel and
I'm a third yea archaeology student here at
The University of Nottingham. Today I'm at the Humanities Building,
which is home to the Department of Classics and Archaeology.
One of my favourite parts about the course was the
the chance to do practical activities in the labs.
So today
I'm here to talk to some of the lecturers who
teach in these facilities to learn more about them.
As you can see from the skeleton we have laid out before us,
we are in the Bones Lab.
And in first year, I remember coming in here, being
given bags of bones and we had to lay out the whole skeleton.
So this is the kind of thing that happens in
this room, isn't it? Yes.
So in the first year we give you a general sort of
idea of the human skeleton.
And then second or
third year you can take a module with me,
which is 'Human Osteology',
where we go into the human skeleton in much more detail.
And I think you did some of that detail?
Yes.
So we had to sex and age
a skeleton by looking at different bones and the shapes of them.
So what skeletons you have available in this lab?
So we mainly work on Roman skeletons,
which are from the on-campus Archaeology Museum.
And we also have a paleopathology collection,
which is a collection of individuals
with diseases, or with broken bones or trauma,
which allows us to give
a much more rounded picture of an individual.
So yes, we can look at age,
we can look at sex, we can look at stature,
we can look at diseases,
and give a much fuller picture of life in the past.
Brilliant, Thank you very much.
I really enjoyed this part of my course.
It's been great to come back and talk to you about it.
We're here in the Materials Lab.
Now, one of my favourite bits about archaeology is the fieldwork.
And in first year I was very excited when
I found a piece of Roman glass.
Right? Well, that's fantastic.
It's amazing stuff. Glass, isn't it?
And it just so happens,
we've got some bits and pieces behind me.
And here is, for example,
a beautiful aqua coloured jug, Roman jug.
It's a probably first, second century AD.
It's got these lovely little dark streak through it.
So what students can do if they come here is to
examine a whole wide range of vessel forms.
Roman and other periods, of course,
reconstruct their functions.
Tell us what kind of social value they
had and how they compare with
other material found in the same contexts like
ceramics and metal for example.
And what's more,
if they did a dissertation on glass for example,
they might use the cutting edge
scientific techniques that we have available,
such as at the British Geological Survey
or on campus in the Nanocentre.
So what are the other practical activities
that students can do in this lab?
So in addition to laying out the stuff and examining it,
which forms part of the practicals.
They also recreate dies and perfumes.
In another module, which I know you've
done yourself and you rather enjoyed.
Yes, that was one of my favourite modules in second year.
Well, thanks very much for talking
to us about the Materials Lab.
Out of all the labs,
this is the one that I spent
the most time and because this is the Teaching Lab.
So please can you tell me a bit more
about this room and what happens here?
Sure. Yes, you will have spent the most time in here,
because this is where we like to
do a lot of our small group teaching.
And we try and do quite a lot of that.
So we do seminars in here.
We get you involved with lots of the materials,
that are housed in this room.
And anytime we kind of really
want to bring you in on the conversation
and get you talking about
the archaeology that pretty much happens in here.
I remember learning about the basics of zooarchaeology in here,
and also the 'Humans-Animals- Landscape' module as well.
So could you tell me a bit about that
and the sorts of things that you do in here.
Yes. So those will be our kind of core zooarchaeology modules,
getting you in here looking at the animal bones,
doing some comparative anatomy.
Because all of the animals that we find archaeologically,
they tend to have the same bones,
but they're just a slightly different size
or shape or configuration.
So we learn all of that through comparative anatomy
so that when you are looking at something in the archaeology,
you know what it is.
Yes. But of course,
by the time it's in the archaeology, it's dead.
And the other thing we want to look at is actually
moving beyond that core zooarchaeology.
So that training in the core skills and actually
talking about the relationships that people
have with their animals and with
their environments when people were
living and kind of working with them in the past.
That's great. Thank you for talking to me
about what happens in the Teaching Lab.