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Cooking up an ancient feast at Bristol’s annual archaeology festival

Children enjoying the fun at a previous year's festival Bristol Museums

The replica saddle quern that will be in use at the festival on Saturday Dr Lucy Cramp, University of Bristol

Press release issued: 25 July 2018

The University of Bristol’s Department of Anthropology and Archaeology will, once again, be taking part in the Bristol’s Brilliant Archaeology festival on Saturday 28 July at Blaise Castle House Museum and Estate from 11am-4pm.

Organised by Bristol Museums, visitors will be able to join museum archaeologists and a whole host of local societies, re-enactors, field archaeologists and heritage organisations for a free fun-packed day full of tours, demonstrations, displays and archaeological activities.

Staff and students from the University of Bristol will be demonstrating how bread and butter were made in ancient times, using replica Neolithic and Iron Age querns (hand mills for grinding corn) and an Anglo-Saxon butter churn.

Dr Lucy Cramp from the University’s Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, said: “We will also be displaying Roman recipes, from the everyday to more exotic, with some prepared dishes for people to see and smell, a display of ingredients introduced by the Romans, and a guessing game to test your knowledge of real Roman recipes.”

Dr Tamar Hodos, also from the University’s Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, added: “We are delighted to be involved in this fantastic event, which brings together archaeological expertise from across the region to create a fun day out for all the family. We look forward to seeing you on Saturday.”

At previous events, the University of Bristol has organised handling sessions from its collections, brought virtual reality kit so people could ‘experience’ excavations at Berkeley Castle, and showed off Viking finds from on-going fieldwork at Repton.

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