Hi all!

Here is a day in the life of me – an aspiring archaeologist!

Born and raised in California, it was a long journey to University of St Andrews in Scotland to pursue my undergraduate degree in Medieval History and Archaeology. It was here in the UK where my passion for archaeology was fostered; the setting of the medieval town of St Andrews was undoubtably invaluable to this, allowing me to explore locally the remains of a significant historic site and experience first-hand the interaction of the past with the present. At university and through my own fieldwork during those four years, I have gained a profound appreciation for the value of archaeology and its ability to provide us today with tangible links to history.

It was this passion for archaeology that led me to the University of Oxford to study the discipline further at a postgraduate level. Starting in Autumn of 2021, I began my MSc in Archaeology specifically specialising in the medieval period. In my tutorials in the Ashmolean Museum, I was able to interact with some of the museum’s mediaeval and early modern collections while practicing proper object handling techniques and advancing my knowledge of object interpretations.

I have been involved with the Bamburgh Research Project (BRP) for the past two years as a staff member, and a further year as a student in 2019. The BRP is an independent, non-profit archaeological project investigating Bamburgh Castle and the surrounding area in Northumberland. As assistant supervisor for this project, I teach students and volunteers from various ages and backgrounds. I work primarily in the trench – the first point of contact with the archaeology itself.

My master’s dissertation was inspired by my own work as both a student and staff member at the BRP. In this project, I am analysing the small finds from the medieval site of Bamburgh using an object biography approach to explore the social meanings of objects (a comb, a mount, and a buckle) recovered from the elite site. I aim to investigate the status of Bamburgh through evaluating how the finds from Bamburgh compared to other early medieval elite sites and conceptions about other material culture in the period. BRP Co-Director Graeme Young has kindly provided unpublished archaeological reports and records from throughout the project’s history to assist me in my research.

The finds which form the focus of my research ranges in date from the 7th to the 12th century, underlining the castle’s continued prominence through the medieval period as the capital of the early medieval kingdom of Northumbria as well as a royal castle under the control of the king. The spread of objects, found in the Bowl Hole, then Trenches 1 and 3 in the West Ward, reflect the different areas of use by the peoples of Bamburgh. In terms of their relevance to the project as well, I thought it was interesting to focus on objects from the last twenty years of excavation so we have finds from 2002, 2008, and 2016. This dissertation will be complete by the end of August.