By Gareth Davies
We are delighted that York Archaeology has been able to secure a prestigious Archaeology Mentoring Partnership grant from Historic England.
The mentoring awards are designed to build capacity and resilience in the professional sector. Despite pottery being one of the most ubiquitous finds from archaeological sites – and one of the key tools used to date them- there is a pressing need for a new generation of specialists, due to the retirement of a number of senior archaeological ceramics specialists.
This award will allow our Post Excavation supervisor and later medieval ceramics specialist, Katherine Bradshaw, to work with Alisa Mainman on the pre-conquest Anglian and Anglo-Scandinavian (5th to 11th century AD) pottery from York. Alisa is an Honorary Research fellow at York Archaeology, and has 30 years of working with archaeological ceramics, publishing widely, including seminal volumes such as Medieval Pottery in York (with Anne Jenner) . We are delighted that she has agreed to be a mentor.
Katherine’s mentoring will allow her to gain the skills needed to identify and research the early medieval ceramics that we find in York. We are very excited that this will also involve working with Alisa on some important early medieval ceramic assemblages from key sites such as Fishergate (excavated in 2023), Wellington Row (1989) and Hungate (2008) leading to some much anticipated publications. During the programme, Katherine will also have contact with other noted ceramic specialists to help with identifications from further afield, and to grow a network.
This mentoring scheme will be incredibly important for future developer-funded archaeological investigations in York and beyond, allowing for insight and expertise in archaeological ceramics to be embedded within the next generation of specialists. York Archaeology would like to extend thanks to Historic England for this opportunity.
