Beneath our Feet: Everyday discoveries reshaping history Michael Lewis and Ian Richardson
Event details
Britain’s history runs deep – and much of its treasured past lies hidden underfoot. Every day, new discoveries are unearthed not by expert archaeologists but by amateur enthusiasts. Armed with spades and maps, these detectorists, mudlarks and fieldwalkers scour the earth’s surface.
What they find is perhaps at first glance unremarkable: fragments of pottery, metal coins, jewellery. But from the pieces emerge stories of how our ancestors lived, traded, ate, played, fought – and died.
Join Michael Lewis and Ian Richardson, authors of Beneath Our Feet, for a celebration of this growing public involvement in archaeology, and the groundbreaking work of the Portable Antiquities Scheme managed by the British Museum in England and Amgueddfa Cymru in Wales.
From the 3,500-year-old Ringlemere Cup to the Anglo-Saxon Staffordshire Hoard, a heart pendant connected to Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon, and a jar of American gold coins buried by a Jewish refugee fleeing the Nazis, hear stories of astonishing treasures, the people who found them, and how they are reshaping British history.
This event will take place live on Zoom Webinar. You will receive a link to join a couple of days before the event and a reminder an hour before. During the event, you can ask questions via a Q&A function, but audience cameras and microphones will remain muted throughout.
Book sales
You can buy copies of many of our speakers’ books from Fox Lane Books, a local independent bookseller and Festival partner. In some cases, author signed bookplates are available too.
Portrait photo credit: Trustees of the British Museum
About the speakers
Michael Lewis is Head of Portable Antiquities and Treasure at the British Museum and a Visiting Professor at the University of Reading and the University of Helsinki. He is known for his research on medieval finds associated with religion and everyday life and is co-author of The Story of the Bayeux Tapestry (with Dave Musgrove) and Beneath our Feet: Everyday discoveries reshaping history (with Ian Richardson).
Ian Richardson is Senior Treasure Registrar at the British Museum. He and his colleagues in the Treasure Team have facilitated the acquisition of thousands of archaeological finds by more than 250 museums around the country. He has a particular interest in post-medieval archaeology. Ian is the co-author of Beneath our Feet: Everyday discoveries reshaping history (with Michael Lewis).
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