The working life of Museum of London

After a day’s break from blogging, find out what happened on Day 9 of the dig below!

We began the day doing section drawings of trench two. This involved drawing the stratigraphic layers of a 2.5 metre section, and then the difficult task of creating a Harris Matrix of the section. This went well until it began to rain! Later in the day, we learned about environmental sampling, and how it can reveal even the tiniest of archaeological clues about diet and status. We then carried on digging in trench one, with an aim to reveal the boundaries of the construction cut and the walls of a Victorian coal basement. This continued until lunch time, at which point we travelled to the London Archaeological Archive and Research Centre (LAARC) which involved eating our lunch on the bus! We were given a very in-depth tour of the LAARC, viewing archaeological remains ranging from medieval human hair to Roman footwear. Afterwards, we viewed the Museum’s incredibly large and amazing Ceramics and Glass collection, including Samian ware and large marble busts.  We then headed back into the archive where we viewed the rather outdated packaging materials used to store finds in the 1970s, and the questionable labelling of some of these finds. We finished the day repackaging finds in order to create a more up-to date and effective archive.

Wendy and Russell