An introduction to our new President
Thu, 25 Apr 2013
Miss Kate Chapman, BSc MA
Archaeology Field Technician, Centre for Manx Studies
It is a great honour to have been asked to stand as President for the Society and I am looking forward to the challenges of the year ahead. There are many of you who I have not had the pleasure of meeting yet, but I hope that I will meet and hear from you during the coming year. I thought I would take this opportunity to introduce myself.
I graduated from the University of York with a BSc in Archaeology and an MA in the Archaeology of Buildings. I can currently be found working for the University of Liverpool’s Centre for Manx Studies based in the beautiful grounds of the Nunnery estate. My formal title is ‘Archaeology Technician’. My job is very varied and allows me to get out and about across the island.
For over a decade I have worked on commercial and research excavations in England, Wales and of course latterly here on the Isle of Man. I have been involved in excavating, surveying and geophysics. Throughout that time I have supervised on and been involved in the setting up and running of training excavations.
This summer the Centre will once again be running a training excavation at the Iron Age site of Ballacagen. This site was first excavated during the Second World War by the famous archaeologist Gerhard Bersu, who was interned here. The IoMNHAS helped to fund some of his excavations. You will see on your summer excursion cards that we have set aside an afternoon for a site visit so that you can come and see what we have uncovered. If you would like to actually get involved at some level with the excavations then please do feel free to contact me about doing so.
http://www.liv.ac.uk/manxstudies/fieldschool/training_excavation/
My buildings research has largely focused on rural buildings, particularly farms, but has also included some church studies and one project further afield in Costa Rica looking at an abandoned prison site. This occurred whilst I was working for Raleigh International, a youth development charity.
It is perhaps no surprise then that I have become involved in the ‘Traditional Buildings of Man’ initiative that the Society has set up. The project has been going from strength to strength, but we need to keep the momentum going. I’m really looking forward to getting out and doing some more recording now that the days are getting longer and hopefully warmer. We have a fantastic new website for this project in no small part down to the hard work and dedication of Dave Martin, to whom we are hugely indebted. http://www.tbm.im/
Added to digging and looking at buildings I have spent almost as many years studying and recording graveyard monuments in England, Wales, Ireland and now the Isle of Man. Here on the island we are adding to and expanding on the recording undertaken initially by the Family History Society.
http://www.liv.ac.uk/manxstudies/manxgraveyardsurvey/
I have also become involved in teaching on two of the modules for the BA provided by the Isle of Man College in ‘History and Heritage Management with Manx Studies’. I have always had an interest in youth development projects and engaging with young people in a variety of different ways. The Society has now had a Facebook page for a couple of years and the group that seems to be engaging with it the most is the 25-34 age group. The numbers visiting and actively engaging with our page still seems to be steadily growing which is encouraging to see. The Facebook page enables us to post news about what the Society is up to including photographs from excursions. However, it also enables us to post items of news from other societies, and newspaper articles which we think that our members might be interested in.
I know that there are many people who do not wish to sign up to Facebook. Well the good thing is that our page has been set up in such a way that you can look at it as if it is a normal webpage, on the internet, without signing up for anything.
https://www.facebook.com/IsleOfManNaturalHistoryandAntiquarianSociety
Please feel free to contact me if you have any comments or suggestions.