Update from the Society Curator
Spring has brought a busy start to the year for me, filled with talks, workshops, meetings, collections work, and the return of some of our collection volunteers.
Outreach
In January I gave a very well received talk to a capacity crowd at the Faversham Society, on “The Vikings in Kent.” There were around 100 attendees on a very wet and windy January evening, who asked some excellent questions after the talk, which I hope I answered satisfactorily.
In February, the society joined forces with Maidstone Museum to undertake several days of outreach at Jubilee Square, Maidstone and Bluewater Shopping Centre. Over the period of engagement, we interacted and spoke with well over 2000 people, including families enjoying half-term at Bluewater. The enthusiasm those visitors had for archaeology, history and Maidstone Museum was clear. We gave visitors the chance to handle real archaeology from the society’s collections and to learn more about the work we do and how they could get involved. We hope to see many of them at one of our events in the near future.
January and February saw the return of Maidstone Museum’s Cur8 youth group for 12 – 18-year-olds which Craig and I have been running for the last year. There are spaces for young people to join Cur8, which meets on the 1st Saturday of each month. You can find out more here:
www.museum.maidstone.gov.uk/learn/wot/cur8/
[fg]jpg|Promoting the society in the heart of Maidstone.|Image[/fg]
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[fg]jpg|Kent Archaeological Society and Maidstone Museum engaging with the public at Bluewater Shopping Centre.|Image[/fg]
[fg]jpg|Re-boxing collection artefacts for storage.|Image[/fg]
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[fg]jpg|Front Brents temporary exhibition at the Fleur De Lis Museum.|Image[/fg]
Projects
Several projects with a curatorial slant have been in the running over the last few weeks including a potential solution to the county’s archaeological archive storage crisis. This is an issue which many in Kent and beyond have tried addressing over the years, and there is no easy solution to the challenges of space, costs and standards.
As mentioned in the update from our archivist (pg. 12 below), the KAS paper archives have been moved to a new improved space at Maidstone Museum. This allowed the opportunity to put all the archaeological collections held at our offices in Marsham Street, into a single, dedicated room. To do this, I have begun the process of re-boxing some of our larger, bulkier collections into Museum standard archive boxes kindly provided to us by partners or purchased. These boxes are better options for the archaeological artefacts and will make the best use of all available space. This was a key outcome from our conservation audit back in 2024 which was carried out thanks to a grant from The Pilgrim Trust and Association of Independent Museums. I hope in the coming months to recruit a number of volunteers to continue this repacking project, which will also involve photographing key objects within the collection and separating any metalwork into ‘conservation safe’ airtight boxes.
Specialist assessment has also been carried out on the ceramic building material from the society’s Trosley Roman Villa excavations and Lees Court’s pottery assemblage. Both assessments have returned interesting preliminary results which will be shared in due course.
Exhibitions
At the invitation of the Faversham Creek Trust and Faversham Society I installed and launched a temporary exhibition on our Front Brents Summer Excavation, which will be running at the Fleur De Lis Museum until the 18th of April 2026. The museum opens on Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays from 11am – 3pm as well as the 1st Sunday of each month. In addition to the community excavation elements of the project, our partners at Museum of London’s Coasts in Mind Project highlighted a number of ‘community provided’ memories and photographs, which have been extremely well received by visitors to the exhibition. You can learn more about the Coasts in Mind Project here:
Preliminary work has also begun in partnering with The Amelia Scott, Tunbridge Wells to present “Archaeology Adventures” a free to visit temporary exhibition presenting the archaeological process through a series of KAS objects. We are still in the early stages of the project, and I look forward to sharing more with you all as the project progresses.
Social Media
Our social media channels continue to go from strength to strength, with new followers joining across Facebook, Bluesky, LinkedIn, Instagram and TikTok.
Our Facebook page is currently at 4,376 followers, up 4% in the last 60 days; Instagram now has 568 followers, Bluesky 450, LinkedIn 304 and TikTok is at 1096.
We continue to share news of KAS events, behind the scenes in our collections and events from groups across the county. If you want us to share your archaeological or historical events or news, do tag us in your posts.
Volunteers
I was very pleased to welcome back two of our volunteers in January and February. Angela, a long-term volunteer with both the Kent Archaeological Society and Maidstone Museum, returned after the Christmas break to continue work on the Lees Court Estate lithics assemblage. Material from 2025 and 2024 have been fully catalogued with natural material earmarked for discard, and the process is being applied to 2023’s material too. We hope that this preliminary work will make finding appropriate funding for specialist assessment easier.
Our second volunteer, Ruth, has also returned and has begun work on re-boxing and re-bagging elements of the KAS collection. This will also be a long-term project with more volunteers lined up to join her.
If you are interested in volunteering with the KAS collection, please do reach out to me at:
andy.ward@kentarchaeology.org.uk
[fg]png|Promoting the society through social media.|Image[/fg]
[fg]jpg|The amazing KAS Volunteers are driving our work forwards.|Image[/fg]
All images courtesy of the Kent Archaeological Society, 2026.
