Crafts and community in the past and present: engaging local communities with their Roman past using ceramic radiography

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The Crafts and Community project endeavours to provide community groups with practical, experiential insights into Northamptonshire's underappreciated Roman-period industrial heritage based on cutting-edge analysis of ancient artefacts. Working with the Northamptonshire Archaeological Resource Centre (ARC), Cranfield University, and local master potter Rob Bibby, the project will conduct a short programme of academic research utilising MOLA's AHRC-funded digital x-ray system to investigate the production methods used in making Roman pottery associated with the Upper Nene Valley potteries in the modern county of Northamptonshire. Radiographic analysis of Roman ceramic vessels from this industry - currently held by the ARC - will be analysed to reveal traces of the methods used to make these objects, which represent an important and ill-understood innovation characteristic of the first generations of the Roman occupation of the area. In so doing, this part of the project will form its own academic output in the form of peer-reviewed, published research contributing to ongoing discussions of the changing early Roman rural economy. The results of the analysis will also be the basis for a series of four half-day workshops - facilitated by master potters, archaeological ceramics experts, and cutting-edge 3D printing technology - on Roman pottery-making, giving participants from the local area a feel for what daily working life was like in this period of the distant past. Participants will have the opportunity to design their own experiences within these workshops, and to have their own workshop-made pottery x-rayed like the archaeological finds. The results of the research and engagement activities will be presented in a pop-up exhibition at the ARC at Chester Farm Estate, Wellingborough, which participants will help to design along with MOLA and ARC staff.