The working life of Museum of London

The start of the Registered Finds Project!

For week 2, the volunteers got their hands on some Registered Finds – objects that have been issued their own finds number as they have an individual importance.

Monday’s team got off to a flying start working through all the finds from the St Thomas St excavation in 1974 (1STS74). The 6 volunteers saw the full range of artefacts from Roman samian stamps, to bone counters, to wooden writing tablets to leather hobnail shoes. Altogether 541 objects were checked and by effective packaging and reboxing, the site reduced from 19 boxes to 15!

Tuesday’s team began VIP5’s first mammoth site – Trig Lane (TL74). One of the first huge waterfront sites dug by the Department of Urban Archaeology (DUA), this archive has 215 boxes to get through. However, Tuesday’s 6 managed to audit all the site’s bone artefacts and all its wooden objects too. One object that stood out was this curious wooden piece (see below). Possibly a joint or some kind of fitting, we weren’t too sure. Any suggestions let us know in the comments field.

Wednesday’s VIP Graduates mixed their day up a little, starting off with some of the pottery from London Docks (LD76). But it was back to the leather finds from Trig Lane in the afternoon, processing a few more boxes and coming across some awesome bits such as the leather at the top of the page and this spectacular decorated strap.

And Thursday’s team picked up where the Graduates left off, continuing all day with the leather and managing to get through the whole lot! The final thing they got to see was this amazing 15th Century boot.

Week 2 saw the first of our specialist workshops with Monday and Tuesday’s lot examining a human skeleton and discovering how disease and trauma can be identified in bones. Wednesday and Thursday’s teams learnt more about archaeological leather and saw some sweet examples of roman, medieval and later shoes found on waterlogged sites.

Saturday’s team are due to start today and then next week we’ll be splitting the days up working on both strands of the project. Who knows what will turn up ? To see more photos visit our Flickr account

The return of LAARC’s Volunteer Inclusion Project!

We’re back! This week saw the start of LAARC’s 5th VIP project, which we’ve quite cunningly named… VIP5! 30 volunteers working their way through the neglected archives of the 70’s. So what have they been up to?

As per every VIP project, each day started with an hour’s induction into the LAARC. Volunteer’s are issued with  a shiny new volunteer handbook, their photos are taken for their ID cards and we take them on a health and safety focused tour of LAARC, highlighting the under appreciated dangers of staples and how to avoid squashing people in roller-racking.

VIP5 has seen the best start so far over all our VIP projects with almost a full complement of volunteers making week one. This time round, each day has six volunteers witha nice mix of ages, sexes, backgrounds and social situations. Monday, Tuesday and Thursday’s volunteers are all new (Saturday’s new volunteers are starting soon) and each day followed the same structure this week. After the induction, they all were introduced to repacking general finds, with some boxes of animal bones to get their mits on. Over the three days, all the animal bone from 1976’s London Docks excavation (LD76) was processed and transformed from disintegrating brown paper bags to brand spanking new plastic ones.

Included amongst the bone were some fabulous examples including a complete dog skeleton (see above), a deformed chicken leg and a cow bone with additional bone growth and the “cloaca” – the hole where the pus would have drained out from. We were very lucky to have MOLA zooarchaeologist Jim, come and identify some bits and pieces and MOLA osteologist show us the difference between human and animal bone during their tea breaks.

Each afternoon, volunteers moved from animal bone to pottery from The Highway (LD74). In doing so they encountered various sherds of Roman and Post Medieval ceramics, from mortarium to delftware. To complete their day, we thought we’d treat them to their first visit to the Ceramic and Glass store to handle some complete versions of the fragments they’d earlier been repacking.

So that was Mon, Tues and Thurs but what about Wednesday? Well, Wednesday welcomed our “VIP Graduates” back to the project. With experience from VIP1, 2, 3 & 4, the grads are focusing on leather finds with the view to reducing the space they take up so eventually they can be reintegrated into the rest of the registered finds. The first site they got to update was the awesome Trig Lane excavation from 1974  (TL74), one of the first and largest sites excavated  by the old Department of Urban Archaeology (DUA). Some spectacular medieval shoes, straps and scabbards were amongst the beauties they audited this week.

And so week one ends. Next week volunteers are introduced to Registered Finds and we have the first round of specialist workshops to look forward to. All good stuff.

For more photos from the project visit our Flickr Account

LAARC VIP5

We’re back! And refreshed after the coldness of January, we’re revitalised and ready for the fifth LAARC Volunteer Inclusion Project (VIP5)

Over the next few weeks we shall be recruiting 20 new VIP volunteers for 10 weeks of finds handling, archive improving and skill acquiring work. Sites that we intend to improve this time around include the huge Trig Lane site from 1974 (TL74), the London Docks site, also from 1974 (LH74) and the excellent Chaucer House site from 1975 (CH75)

In addition to the new 20, we welcome back 6 VIP Graduates, who have all volunteered in previous VIP programmes. Their work will also include a focus on leather finds, in an attempt to improve a large quantity of our leather collection.

The VIP project is slowly transforming the Museum’s archaeological collections, taking neglected finds from the 1970’s, objects that never had the funds to be housed properly, and giving them a new home, in a clear plastic bag with two legible labels and numerically organised neighbouring objects in new sturdy, standard sized boxes.

The previous projects have seen volunteers improve 1245 boxes of general finds, audit over 10,000 individually registered finds, move archives from 353 sites excavated between 1972 – 1987 on to new shelves in our metal store and complete work on the whole finds archive from 2005’s community excavation in Shoreditch Park.

As per previous projects, we have organised four specialist workshops which aim to provide volunteers, both VIP and throughout the Museum of London, with basic background knowledge of the material they will get to handle

Find out how we progress by viewing these blog pages which are kept updated each week as well as our project photos on Flickr.

I started volunteering at LAARC back in 2003, was employed here in 2004 and have been here ever since. On a day to day basis I get to handle some of the world’s best objects. But forget all them at this time of year, as there’s one annual object that get’s me more excited than any other – the LAARC Gingerbread house!

The history of Gingerbread seems to go back over 500 years with Germanic/Swedish origins, arriving in Britain in the 1500’s and being widespread by the 1700’s. But I’m not here to write about the history of Gingerbread, but instead the Archaeological Archive’s tradition of making a Gingerbread House each Christmas.

Back in 2003, LAARC had a full time conservator, Jannicke who came from Norway. It was she who first introduced the Gingerbread house to the archive. Keeping with Scandinavian tradition, the house was decorated for Christmas and sat proudly as the centre piece at our Christmas party. Decorated with an abundance of sugary sweets, bonded together with icing sugar, it’s a dentist’s worst nightmare, but looks a dream. Its true moment of glory however, is when it gets smashed, revealing even more sweets and chocolates inside.

Ever since then, despite Jannicke leaving in 2005, we’ve kept up the tradition of decorating a house each year and along the way have watched it evolve into one of the highlights of each Christmas party.

The smashing of the house is now preceded by two events; the decorating and the competition to determine who gets to smash it. The decorating gets done by LAARC staff in a creative morning session, where we let our artistic skills flow. The competition’s vary and have previously included a Christmas caption competition, a Christmas catapult competition and a Christmas song quiz. This year, we were very lucky to have Jannicke join us at our party and as our guest of honour, she along with her 1 year old daughter and volunteer Chris (he volunteered the most this year)  got to be the smashers.

We may not be as grand as the recent Obama Gingerbread WhiteHouse, but it’s a nice little tradition we have and long may it continue!

The End of Project Four.

Time has seemed to speed by during this project as we packed and checked off our final objects until February next year. Saturday’s volunteer helped check off the final objects from Seal House (SH74), viewing along the way some fine iron artefacts (see below photos) By the end of the day, there was only three more boxes left from the site.

Monday’s final morning saw them work on a dreaded box from London Docks, labelled “Misc finds”. Always an excitement to open, sadly it quickly became apparent why these had been left in this box as a mixture of materials, some nice, some rusty nails, finally got placed into the standard bags we require.

Tuesday’s team culminated their experience at LAARC with 15 minutes of fame as a reporter and photographer spent time with them during their last morning. A piece is soon to be written via the Museum’s Hub and Renaissance, highlighting the spectacular effort LAARC volunteers put in. Whilst snaps were being taken, the fantastic four also completed Seal House (SH74) material, finishing the final three boxes and even working on some remaining pottery sherds from London Docks (LD74)

Wednesday morning was a chance to sit back and relax as the U3A volunteers presented some of the finest PowerPoints we’ve seen in the archive. All topics were inspired by the Shoreditch Park archive and ranged from V1 & V2 bombs, to The Lives of The Family of 32 Dorchester Street, to War Time Rations, to Crime in Wartime Shoreditch. These excellent presentations included personal photographs, original rations books, sound recordings and Powerpoints with animation.

To celebrate the achievements of VIP4, each afternoon was spent at the Museum of London itself, with special behind the scene tours, starting with the recently opened Clore Learning Centre, followed by the fascinating Centre for Human Bioarchaeology and ended with a visit to the Roman Fort Gate, beneath London Wall.

Overall, the project has seen many successes and continued to develop Inclusive Volunteering Opportunities with archaeological collections. 11 site archives have been fully audited on the Registered Finds side of the project and another length of 20+ shelves full of boxes processed on the General Finds side. The next project starts in February 2010. See you then.

A History Of LAARC’s Object Of The Month Competition

For the past four years, the London Archaeological Archive & Research Centre (LAARC) has run an object of the month competition. Since its conception and humble beginnings, it has developed and evolved into a popular monthly event, enjoyed by LAARC visitors, volunteers and Museum staff alike.

Back in late 2005, the idea of an object of the month was not a new one. If you visited the websites of several museums across the country, you could find a monthly updated page dedicated to an object within their collections. The Museum of London however, wasn’t one of these and with over 6 million archaeological artefacts to choose from, it seemed a pity not to highlight our goodies.

LAARC volunteers regular get to rediscover incredible objects when working on site archives and it was a common for us to joke that certain objects were so good that they were definitely the best object of the day, if not the week, if not the year. So around Nov 2005 I thought we should do something about it. As luck would have it, the next month we inherited a suitable display case and come January 2005, our first outstanding object that caught our eye.

The first object was a Samian bowl from Borough High Street, which had been repaired in antiquity with lead rivets. (It later proved so good the V&A borrowed it for one of their exhibitions) And so the LAARC joined the many other museums and had an object of the month!

However, being the innovators that we strive to be, I wanted our Object of the Month to go beyond us simply picking an artefact and with the number of cool stuff volunteers were coming across each week, I thought about making it a competition, with several objects competing against each other to win votes; the one with the most became that month’s object.

And so it continued through January to December for the whole of 2006, yet the focus was still pretty much a competition directed at our volunteers and visitors to the archive. In 2007, we took it to the next step and hosted the competition on the LAARC website. This then progressed in April 2008 to the museum’s archaeology blog page, which gave voters the option to leave comments.

In 2009, the competition was due to continue on the blog site with the format the same as it always had been; three objects chosen by volunteers from the material they had recently been working on. However, around the start of the year, the blog’s server went down and forced to find an alternative host, I also thought it time to refresh the format.

For the past year, each month there has been one object selected by a LAARC volunteer, one by a LAARC member of staff and the final by a Museum of London curator. Unlike before, the objects were no longer necessarily from recently worked on archives, but could also include people’s favourite objects. Yet, the basic concept remained: Three objects, one vote, one winner selected by the public.

As the months passed the audience grew and each month saw more votes, a few comments about the objects from voters and even people requesting to nominate objects. Halfway through the year, special competitions were held, including former staff nominating, a special retirement competition and a “lucky loser” second chance month. Almost 1000 votes were received this year in total.

The final monthly competition took place in November, when for the first time seven objects were nominated, these by seven members of staff from seven different museum departments. As with previous years, all the monthly winners go through to December’s Object of the Year, which you can vote for by clicking here.

Having reached its peak, the LAARC competition now retires on a high, with its legacy continuing on these blog pages as the Museum of London now has its own Object of the Month, with contributions from all over our museum staff and volunteers. Thoughout 2010 you can discover a whole range of spectacular objects held within the museum’s collections.

Thanks for voting in the past and enjoy the objects in the future!

The penultimate week of our  4th volunteer project.

Keeping on track of things, we made steady progress this week, with a bit of work on pottery on Monday as our attempt to finish the boxes of pot from London Docks (LD74) continues. Interesting ceramics such as fancy decorated Tin Glazed ware and Angry faced Bartmann Jars were amongst the hundreds of sherds our hard working volunteers repacked.

Our second current aim – to finish the registered finds from Seal House (SH74) also progressed nicely on Tuesday, when volunteers checked all the ceramic accessioned finds from the site, including over a hundred tiles that made up a Medieval floor. This was followed in the afternoon by checking through the site’s general leather finds, namely post medieval shoe fragments, waste fragments and offcuts. Despite the sound of this, some spectacular bits cropped up including an extremly rare example of a piece of waste leather that was never properly cleaned when first used around 500 years ago. Tuffs of animal hair still remain on the piece of leather.(see above photo) Incredible!

Wednesday’s U3A team finished off their powerpoints for next week’s presentations and the effort they have put in is second to none. Next Wednesday looks set to be a fab morning as they present topics including War time gardens, the impact of bombs and the crows in Shoreditch Park!

Thursday’s lack of volunteers gave Adam & Glynn an opportunity to catch up on some reboxing and get closer to finding out just how much extra space VIP4 has produced.

In next week’s final week we shall be seeing if we can achieve those targets and finish the London Docks pottery and Seal House finds, before spending the afternoons seeing behind the scenes at the Museum of London itself.

The end is fast approaching!

Already week 8 and the pace picked up from previous weeks as a team of 4 worked on Registered Finds for the whole of Monday. Returning to glass items from The Highway (LD74) from a few weeks back, these objects were waiting for new finds numbers and updated identifications from specialists. Last week this took place which meant that this week, they were sketched on the back of their finds card, packed with foam and stored in a systematic fashion according to our LAARC standards. Whilst volunteers completed the glass, Adam completed some recently rediscovered pieces of quernstone from Ludgate Hill (LH74), which had been hiding amongst the general finds for several years. The day ended with the final Conservation Practices workshop with archaeological conservator, Liz Goodman.

Tuesday’s team switched to general finds and continued to make progress with the pottery from the huge London Docks site (LD76). A mixture of mainly post medieval ceramics this week, but several more boxes of material packed to a far better condition. Glynn’s next task is to start reboxing this material into context number order. Fingers crossed, the pottery will get finished by the end of VIP4 and we can find out how much shelving space this reboxed site will take up. Tuesday’s volunteers ended the day with their final workshop – Jacqui Pearce’s Tobacco Pipe talk.

Wednesday’s U3A/Mossbourne academy team of volunteers have now ended their sessions working on finds. The students now set about working on the digital documentation for the Shoreditch Park site (NNR05) creating a basic spreadsheet listing its artefacts. Certain members of the U3A worked at home, focusing on their research topics, whilst others came in to LAARC to learn how to put together basic powerpoint presentations and slide shows. Jackie Keily’s leather finds workshop completed the day.

Thursday’s team was reduced to one, who boldly continued with the London Docks (LD76) pottery.

Despite several volunteers unable to complete the whole of the project, we’ve still achieved an incredible amount this fourth time around, with 11 sites updated in the registered finds, almost 150boxes improved in the general and the whole archive for Shoreditch Park sorted.

 Shoes & Pot, week 7’s focus!

The 7th week of our project continued with the excellent leather collections excavated at Seal House in 1974 (SH74). Amongst the finds this week, were incredible Roman shoes, some with beautiful hobnail patterns, as well as later Medieval shoes and scabbards. One scabbard in particular had embossed decoration depicting a hunting scene, which is something spectacular. These finds really highlight the high quality of London’s archaeology and bring a real sense of history into volunteer’s hands. The fact someone 1900 years ago was wearing these shoes and we’re able to handle them all these years later is a magnificently powerful connection with the past. Who would have worn these shoes? Who owned and carried these scabbards?

Monday’s volunteers joined Glynn in the afternoon to work a little on general finds from London Docks, The Highway (LD76) and improved the packing and storage of some marvelous post medieval ceramics. Tuesday’s team continued with these ceramics in the morning, which included chamber pots and a particularly cute basaltware teapot, before continuing with the registered finds from Seal House (SH74), including wood, bone and stone artefacts. Objects checked included bone bodkins & hairpins, wooden pegs and stone mortars and architectural fragments.

Monday’s volunteers ended their day with a visit to our ceramic and glass store whilst Tuesday’s paid a visit to our oversize stone store in Bay 4 of Mortimer Wheeler House.

Wednesday’s afternoon team of 13 spent their final week of working on finds tying up the loose ends of the material from Shoreditch Park (NNR05). Two teams completed the remaining registered finds, which were clay tobacco pipes and plastic artefacts, whilst the other 9 volunteers completed the sorting out of the pottery collections. Amongst the pottery the odd misplaced registered find cropped up and a number was issued to a wonderful ceramic leg from what would have been a pretty little figurine.

Volunteers also played pottery jigsaws as they pieced together blue and white “willow pattern” plates, bagging individual vessels up separately. Having started some of their research for their forthcoming presentations, we tentatively figured out who these plates may have belonged to; the plates were from context 126, which was excavated from house number 33 on Dorchester Street and as they date to the turn of the century, it’s most likely that the family living there according to the census from 1891, were the “Days” and could well have been the owners of these plates and eaten many a supper off them. This is just a glimpse of the extensive research possibilities that archaeological sites can offer.

Their day was complete with a talk from LAARC’s very own archivist, Cath Maloney, who explained the whole process of an archaeological investigation in London from start to finish.

Into the 2nd half of the project…

Things really started off this week with our Saturday duo of volunteers who focused on material from New Fresh Wharf (NFW74) Amongst their finds were leather shoes and  stamped samian pieces. The remaining bits of worked stone from Harp Lane (HL74), recently rediscovered with the general finds were also repacked and given registered finds numbers, completing the finds from that site.

This week continued with Monday’s team all on general finds in the morning. Working on building material from Harp Lane (HL74), they persisted with repacking the bricks, tiles and stone, improving the packing of them to our standards. Building material does have lots of potential for research, however, there’s only so many bricks and tiles you can ask volunteers to pack before it starts getting mean, so in the afternoon, the team returned to registered finds and updated the packaging and location for the remaining objects from New Fresh Wharf (NFW74). Their day ended with an excellent workshop from Jacqui Pearce on clay tobacco pipes.

Tuesday’s team were split into two groups in the morning with the first starting work on some fine roman & post medieval pottery from London Docks, The Highway (LD74). Some smashing bits of delftware came up after they had repacked some marvelous decorated samian. The other half completed a whole site in one morning as they tackled the finds from Northumberland Wharf (NW74). These finds were in a right old mess with everything in brown paper bags. By lunch time, they had been nicely reorganised into plastic bags with good labels and a logical sequence. After lunch all volunteers were on hand as we took a look at some incredible leather artefacts from Seal House (SH74). Their day ended with the leather finds workshop from Jackie Keily, which included some of the best examples of leather excavated in London.

Wednesday’s mighty force of 12 volunteers tackled the building material from Shoreditch Park. Over 20 boxes of building material were sorted out. Before the session, the finds were stuffed to overflowing in bags, the labels needed updating and the range of contexts within each box was all over the place. With the volunteers woking on the finds and Adam reboxing and organising them in to context order as the session went on, by the end of the day they were all in order. And we even managed to reduce things by a box! Their day ended with a quick visit to our ceramics and glass store followed by Geoff Egan’s medieval/post med metal finds workshop.

No volunteering this Thursday, but back to normal next week as we hope to continue with the last site in our targets for the general finds (London Docks, LD76) and the next big site in the registered finds (Seal House, SH74)

For more photos visit our flickr site.