Samantha Fryer Ward on how even the smallest museum artefact can change children's lives
This small piece of broken Roman Samian Ware or Terra Sigillata pot is not the most beautiful and certainly not the most complete in the Corinium’s collection, but I love it because it is an incredibly powerful tool.
The piece of broken pot from the workshop
This potsherd is in our Everyday Life of the Romans workshop for school children aged 7-9. When the children first get to the box of broken pottery, they often shuffle their hands through it, not really taking much notice or real interest. But these bits of pots are a great way to get the children to connect with the past, quite literally getting hands-on with history.
Placing this piece of pot in the child’s hands, we explain that it is part of a pot that would have been used for serving food, probably on important occasions for important guests. We have a complete replica Samian Ware hunting bowl in the workshop to demonstrate how it would have looked.
We emphasise to them that this is a piece of real Roman pottery, not a replica. They are holding in their hands something that someone made, held and used in the Roman period, and now they have it in their hands. They can still see and feel the markings that the Roman potter made.
We ask the children to think about what that bowl held and where it may have been used, perhaps a dinner party or a birthday celebration. We discuss who could have held the bowl? Perhaps it was held by a child of their own age nearly 2,000 years ago. Two pairs of children’s hands are connected through history by the act of holding the same piece of pottery.
A reconstructed Samian Ware bowl from the Corinium’s collection
It is at this point that the children make the connection between a broken bit of an object and its life in the past and the people who used it. The piece of pot suddenly seems very precious and you can see the physical change in how they hold it – almost with reverence.
Although the Corinium has some objects behind glass, it also has lots of opportunities for everyone to get hands-on with history, to make physical and direct connections to the people in the past through the objects that they used and the stories that these tell us. An object is just a thing. It comes to life when we know about the people who owned it. This little piece of broken pot is a reminder to me that we share not just physical things in our museum, but also intangible things – the stories and the lives of our ancestors.
Helping children to connect to the past helps them to understand and empathise with the people living then, making comparisons to their own lives today. Much has changed since Roman period, but some universal things have stayed the same – people’s hopes and dreams for a life well lived, for happiness and perhaps to be loved and have family and friends to share a meal and their lives with.
Museums are a great place for children to learn empathy and understanding – qualities that they can apply to their lives today. This little piece of broken pot really can achieve big things.
