Part 1: A Look Back At Our Early Days
The London Archaeological Archive & Research Centre, better known as LAARC, officially opened on 7th February 2002. Based along the Regents Canal on the Hackney/Islington borders, the museum took a warehouse formerly used by a steel tubing company and made it the home of its archaeological and reserve collections.
There had been archaeological stores prior to this, and indeed in 2002 the collections had been based in this building for a few years already. However, upon opening, this was the first time that our archaeological collections had been easily accessible for research to anyone who so wished to visit.
Yet, it wasn’t all perfect. Archaeology only really turned professional in the early 1970s and even then there were a few good years of experimenting with different methods of recording and archiving. Despite storing the various archived sites in a logically accessible order upon our shelves, we still faced several storage problems such as having random box sizes, items not labeled correctly and more importantly, individual artefacts sitting loosely within their finds bags without any protection, at a potential risk of damage. The improvement of these storage issues was high on our agenda.
LAARC also had community engagement on its agenda and so a project was designed that combined both improvements to the material and opportunities to get involved. With successful funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund and the Getty Grant Foundation, the “Minimum Standards Project” was born.
The Minimum Standards Project (or MSP) began to involve volunteers with artefacts. These volunteers were mainly people who wanted to get involved with archaeology (or in some cases like mine, unemployed archaeologists looking to keep their finger in the archaeological pie). Certain materials were prioritised such as the bone and glass objects and volunteers would add a layer of protective jiffy foam within the object’s bag making the object more secure. They’d also write out a couple of new object labels in line with the the archive’s standards. Finally, they would check the objects off on an excel database to make sure everything was where it should be. In essence, making sure the minimum standards of collections care were met.
And this was great! Hugely successful, hundreds of volunteers were involved in the project and in 2005 it received the Conservation Award for Care of Collections.
But it wasn’t just finds work. Whenever an archaeological unit had completed their post excavation work they now had one central repository to deposit not only their finds but their records too. And this was applicable to any organisation that had dug in London. The LAARC enabled researchers to view the complete archives all in one place – artefacts and records – regardless of who had originally done the investigation.
All good work and clearly a good resource. So what did we do? We added some fun to it all. On top of LAARC being a model of good collections management and a centre for archaeological research, we held regular themed open days where we could share London’s history with members of the public. Allowing the creativity of our staff to run wild, themes ranged from “Animals in Archaeology” to “Arts & Crafts” with open days blending a mix of object handling, family activities and tours of the stores.
All these aspects helped build our reputation as leaders in both archaeological archiving and as ambassadors of archaeology, creating models of good practice which would then be developed and expanded as the years progressed.
Next month, “2005 – 2007:Expanding our engagement”
As part of our 10 year celebrations each week we’ll be posting Volunteer Profiles to let you find out a bit more about some of LAARC’s excellent volunteers that have returned for the current, museum-based project. Today, it’s Braena
