Our archives team has been busy preparing archives for deposition, and yesterday saw the delivery of a batch to Hampshire Cultural Trust (formerly Hampshire Museums Service). At the request of David Wilson Homes, the landowners, we took selected finds from our site at Marnel Park, Basingstoke, to the Willis Museum in Basingstoke for a photo opportunity. These included pottery, metalwork and shale objects from Romano-British settlement and cremation graves.
Lorraine Mepham and Catherine Coates from WA, and David Allen (right) from Hampshire Cultural Trust, were on hand to show the finds to Simon Kirk (left) of David Wilson Homes. Many photographs were taken, including some of the group arranged around a life-size model of the occupant of a Roman sarcophagus, rather disconcerting as he relates his life story! Thanks to David Wilson Homes, who as well as funding the excavation of Marnel Park and part-funding the publication, which also includes the adjacent site of Merton Rise (available to download from the WA website), have signed the necessary transfer of title, the archive will now be safely curated at the Hampshire Cultural Trust’s store in Winchester.