The St Mary's field museum is an incredible pop-up museum which we have developed here inside the
tent absolutely the remains of Saint Mary's church in Stoke Mandeville. The archaeological
excavation is going on in one part of the tent and the other part of the tent is
devoted to our public engagement activities a part of which quite a large part which
is our field museum. We can invite the public in from the local community to
come and explore the excavation works that have been going on here and it's part of our
public engagement programme where we're hoping to get everybody from the local community as
much as possible involved seeing the incredible stuff that's being discovered and excavated here.
In terms of heritage conservation we're able to take things from all around the archaeological
excavations that maybe would not have been found and would have been lost to the ravages of time
and can conserve them so for example we had a pair of tweezers from the Roman site that we think maybe
were once gilded in gold. They're now quite dull but without the excavation we would never have been
able to discover that sort of very personable sort of tangible connection to the past. There's some
really nice little tools and techniques they've been using there's a brilliant display about
looking at um skeletons and actually how when you when you study skeletons uh you know in in
a really sensitive way you can you can find a lot out about the lives of the people. I think that's
what the archaeologists are really interested in is how did these people live their lives um
what were their lives like and and skeletons can tell us a lot of that information but what the
way it's set out here is in a way that's really dignified because of course this is a place of
commemoration. This is a place of um burial it's a place of memory and so there's lots
of values and meaning that are actually put in there and i think the displays here
actually address that issue really well. I think what's really lovely about the pop-up museum
here and the techniques they're actually using is they're not there necessarily just to tell people
about what's on the site but they're there to actually help people think about this place and
also add their own ideas and actually get start start that conversation. Archaeology is a is a
dynamic process the really important thing to get across about archaeology is we don't do it
in the past we do it in the present we actually we are the archaeologists so actually bringing
in having a live conversation with members of the public is really important and and
what you actually get from that is you actually create conversations and you create new meaning.
I think it's amazing that the length of time the artifacts that they found you know going
back to neolithic times up to modern times. It's just you don't think it's all there underground
do you? Yes and people living here for all that amount of time I suppose we knew it but when you
see the actual artifact you you know there you can believe it can't you. But i think when you
walk up over the ramp and you see the dig in front of you it really starts to bring it all
to life and as my sudden said it was just knowing that you were walking in places where people had
walked hundreds of years ago and to see all of that see all the work that's been done at the
moment it was just absolutely breathtaking it was really enjoyable. When the tent went up we said oh
what's that and also one of our friends relatives is also buried here as well. Well it's interesting
knowing that well you're digging up history that might have been forgotten hundreds of years ago.
Give it a try give it a go it has been absolutely brilliant in there. Just learn about your local community.