Here are the bowls of two wooden spoons that I made a while back.   They are carved from sweet chestnut.   You can see the front of the bowl of the smaller, heart-shaped spoon and the back of the larger, shield-shaped spoon.

This blog is mostly about objects that I have made.

There are some really interesting blogs written by amazing craftspeople about their products, specialist skills and experiences.   If you want to learn about one specific craft or technology, you will need to find one of those blogs.

This blog is all about a range of objects, material, tools, technology and processes.   You will find that these usually have something to do with the archaeological record, archaeological theory or archaeological interpretation.

If you look carefully at the blog header image, you will recognise that it is a photo of the heart of an open fire that is being used to turn clay pots into ceramic – the firing process which in Britain has helped people from the Neolithic period onwards to live their lives.   The photo is one of a sequence that documents a whole firing process.

Objects are made by people in places, and often this too will be reflected in my blog posts.

The sweet chestnut logs from which I cleft the billets that I carved into the spoons came from the grounds of a primary school.   The elderly tree was causing problems to the school buildings and was also unwell, so it had to be taken down.   Having selected a few lengths, I brought the logs home with some help and put them into storage.  Later on, I started to reduce the large logs into sections for carving different objects in my workshop.

I might have done things differently if I had been carving spoons in the Bronze Age, say.   Interpreting the past is a knotty and contentious practice, as some of my objects will show you.