AN Iron Age mirror discovered in Portesham is to feature in a national project.

Dorset County Museum was approached by the University of Manchester which requested the use one of the museum’s most iconic Iron Age artefacts.

Dr Melanie Giles, who grew up in Dorset and volunteered in the museum’s own archives at the age of 14, initiated the request for the finely decorated Iron Age mirror.

It was requested for The Grave Goods Project, a research collaboration between the University of Reading, University of Manchester and the British Museum.

The project focuses on material culture in graves and other formal mortuary contexts in Neolithic, Bronze Age and Iron Age Britain, c. 4000 BC to AD 43.

The mirror, and other grave material that were buried around the time of the Roman Conquest, were found accidentally by a metal detectorist in the burial site of an elderly woman.

The goods were reported to Weymouth Museum, which called in Wessex archaeology to evaluate the items.

The Dorset County Museum acquired the finds for public display in 1996.

The Grave Goods Project team worked with Manga artist, Chie Kutsuwada, and one of the original diggers, Dave Murdie, to produce a funny yet moving account of the burial. The aim of the account is to help school children understand how archaeologists excavate and analyse burials, and how important and exciting they can be.

Former Children’s Laureate, Michael Rosen was invited to write three poems inspired by a selection of grave goods, one of which was the Portesham Mirror. Rosen said the project reminded him of certain items placed in the casket of his son, who died aged 18 of meningitis The Grave Goods team is now working with the museum’s curators to make sure that the Portesham woman achieves her place in Dorset’s hall of prehistoric fame, once the Heritage Lottery Funded redevelopment of Dorset County Museum reopens in 2020.