Advanced Pottery Analysis - Supervisor/Researcher Wanted

The Sedgeford Historical and Archaeological Research Project holds an assemblage of about 20,000 potsherds, the great majority Mid to Late Anglo-Saxon, including about 5,000 sherds of Ipswich Ware, one of the largest collections in the country.

The Sedgeford Project now has a central place in research into the Mid Anglo-Saxon ‘agricultural revolution’. We have a large cemetery, a grid-planned village, a malting complex, and compelling evidence for watermills and canal transport. As part of our evolving research programme, we are planning a detailed investigation of our Mid Anglo-Saxon Ipswich Ware assemblage.

This will involve revisiting the entire assemblage to check IDs, doing a more high-precision rim analysis, designing a database and inputting all pot data, and doing some serious number-crunching to identify patterns, both across the assemblage as a whole and in relation to spatial and temporal distributions. We also hope to look at food residues and perhaps lipids. We may then expand our work to look at both (earlier) grass-tempered pottery and the (later) Thetford Ware assemblage.

We are seeking a supervisor/researcher for our six-week summer season in 2021 (27 June-6 August) who is also prepared to make an ongoing commitment. As well as leading the ceramic research project, this will include supervising a planned two-week ‘Advanced Pottery Workshop’ involving volunteers. The project is expected to evolve, and the assumption is that the person appointed will take full responsibility for the direction of the research once underway, potentially up to and including final publication.

This would be ideal for a student who wants to specialise in pottery in archaeology. The project could form the basis of a BA dissertation, an MA dissertation, or even a DPhil/PhD thesis. Alternatively, it might suit a keen amateur archaeologist who wants to develop specialist skill and knowledge. Either way, it would provide an opportunity to become part of the team on one of longest running and most important field research projects in Britain.

The SHARP summer season is entirely volunteer-based. No-one is paid. However, all team members have their on-site costs fully covered (campsite, food, use of toilets, showers, washing facilities, etc), and SHARP is committed to giving all volunteers full ownership over their own research contributions, up to and including final publication.

If you would like to be considered for this position, please email a short letter and CV to Neil Faulkner at neilfaulkner2000@yahoo.co.uk