The working life of Museum of London

Each week during our current Visitor/Volunteer Inclusion Project, celebrating 10 years of the London Archaeological Archive & Research Centre, we’re posting volunteer profiles, letting you find out a little more about our excellent volunteers. Today it’s Yulia:

1) When did you join the volunteer programme and why?
VIP 8 (2011), passion for archeology and curiosity about museum work

2) What was your most memorable day whilst volunteering?
Induction day, it was love from the first sight

3) What was your favourite object you discovered whilst volunteering?
Roman ring!

4) What’s your favourite part of the museum?
everything is great

5) Upper galleries of lower?
both

6) Favourite year in London’s history?
2010 – my first year in London

7) Favourite Londoner?
Florence Nightingale, a pioneer of modern nursing

8) Mortimer Wheeler or Indiana Jones
Reality & fiction… I always come along with former – Wheeler

9) If you could dig anywhere in the world where would you excavate?
Historic centers of the modern metropolises

10) What’s next for you after this project
I’m sure there will be something interesting!

Every week as part of our current Volunteer / Visitor Inclusion Project celebrating 10 years of the archaeological archive, we’re posting volunteer profiles allowing you to find out a little more about our excellent teams of volunteers. Today it’s Solange:

1) When did you join the volunteer programme and why?
October 2011 – the VIP9 project

2) What was your most memorable day whilst volunteering?
Day 1

3) What was your favourite object you discovered whilst volunteering?
I didn’t discover them, but I liked the roman sandal rosettes

4) What’s your favourite part of the museum?
Roman galleries

5) Upper galleries of lower?
Upper

6) Favourite year in London’s history?
1666 and the great fire (and 1969 – the year I was born)

7) Favourite Londoner?
Dr Johnson

8) Mortimer Wheeler or Indiana Jones?
Mortimer Wheeler

9) If you could dig anywhere in the world where would you excavate?
Dura Europos

10) What’s next for you after this project?
Vindolanda

Part 2: Expanding our Engagement

By 2005 the London Archaeological Archive & Research Centre had established itself as both the home of London’s Archaeology and a centre of excellence for collections care management. Off the back of 2005’s Conservation Award the next step was to develop our levels of engagement within London’s communities.

2005’s big event was our first Community Archaeology Project based just next to our archive in Shoreditch Park. Involving over 700 school children plus many family groups on weekends, the project brought together the chance to learn about local history (the site was a residential street destroyed during the Blitz), to learn archaeological techniques (sessions involved both excavation and finds washing) and to have fun whilst doing so.

The following year we moved a little further North and investigated the Tudor Tower at Bruce Castle Museum in Tottenham. Another major success, involving hundreds more local children and discovering unknown aspects of the tower and building’s history. Learning through active participation was certainly proving to be the way forward.

In 2007 our community excavation took place in Southwark, inside the grounds of Michael Faraday Primary School. This project enabled children to connect directly with the history of their school whilst still acquiring basic skills in discovery and interpretation.

Whilst these projects were going on, we also began to explore new methods of sharing our projects with the wider online community. Photographs from our community projects were added to sets on Flickr, whilst videos were posted to YouTube during the course of the Michael Faraday project.

Back at the LAARC itself, our community engagement was equally expanding in terms of our range of volunteers. In 2006, the “Archive Volunteer Learning Project” began, running until 2007. This project was managed by a conservator working with volunteers on improving the collections and a learning officer, making sure volunteers were developing new useful basic skills. Links and partnerships were made with organisations providing new sources of recruitment and consequently the project involved a wider range of people including long-term unemployed, those with special learning needs and rehabilitated offenders.

The archive was progressing nicely but there was still room for improvement.  Our next focus would be on ways for everyone to feel included.

Next month, “2008 – 2012: Volunteer Inclusion / Visitor Inclusion”

Click here to catch up on part 1: 2002-2005, a look back at our early years

Each week we’re posting volunteer profiles allowing you to find out a little more about the members of our excellent volunteer team. Today’s volunteer is Carl:

1) When did you join the volunteer programme and why?
Joined for VIP9 – interested in the history of London

2) What was your most memorable day whilst volunteering?
Tour of the museum on the project’s last day when I got to handle Viking weapons.

3) What was your favourite object you discovered whilst volunteering?
The St George belt clasp figurine

4) What’s your favourite part of the museum?
The mention of the Vikings in the Medieval gallery

5) Upper galleries of lower?
Upper

6) Favourite year in London’s history?
1997, the year my daughter was born.

7) Favourite Londoner?
Henry VIII

8) Mortimer Wheeler or Indiana Jones
Mortimer Wheeler

9) If you could dig anywhere in the world where would you excavate?
Scandinavia looking for Viking finds

10) What’s next for you after this project?
To see what more volunteering I can do for the archives

LAARC VIP10 – Weeks 4 & 5

We’re at the half way stage of our current Volunteer/Visitor Inclusion Project which not only is the 10th project under our Programme but celebrates 10 years of the Museum of London’s Archaeological Archive & Research Centre.

The past two weeks have been excellently manic thanks to the spectacular numbers that have visted pre and during Half-Term. In these two weeks alone we’ve engaged with over 4500 people at our introduction, conservation, osteology, records and finds packing tables.

But it’s not just numbers we’re interested in. Our brilliant team of 18 volunteers have been on tip-top form, having been sharing their knowledge of various archaeological practices with visitors, enhancing their visitor experience.

Over 80 visitors have had a go at being volunteers themselves during our Hands-On Archaeology workshops; identifying, sorting and repacking pottery from 1975’s mighty excavation at Newgate Street. And the result is that over 130 boxes of material from the site are now in a far better packaging condition and far more accessible for research. Thanks everyone!

We’re receiving some great feedback from our visitors and it’s been great fun for us. And the good news is there’s still time to join in if you haven’t already. We’ll be around in Archaeology in Action for the next 5 weeks until 23rd March. Hope to see you soon.

Each week during our our current Visitor Inclusion Project celebrating 10 years of the Archaeological Archive, we’re posting Volunteer Profiles allowing you to find out a little bit more about our superb volunteers. Today’s it’s Jim:

1) When did you join the volunteer programme and why?
It all started in 2010 when VIP7 was taking place at the museum and I came along to a Hands-On Archaeology session and kept on coming back for more. I then joined the VIP8 project and now I’m back at the museum as a volunteer on this project.

2) What was your most memorable day whilst volunteering?
Most days had highlights

3) What was your favourite object you discovered whilst volunteering?
I’m still waiting to strike gold!

4) What’s your favourite part of the museum?
All of it

5) Upper galleries of lower?
Both

6) Favourite year in London’s history?
Live in the moment – 2012

7) Favourite Londoner?
Christopher Wren because of his fine churches & cathedrals. Who else would we have got them from?

8) Mortimer Wheeler or Indiana Jones
Not aware of Mortimer Wheeler’s films…

9) If you could dig anywhere in the world where would you excavate?
Anywhere in Italy

10) What’s next for you after this project?
Wait and see

We might be half way through our Archaeological Archive’s 10th Anniversary Celebrations, it might be Half Term, however, this is not to say we’re doing things in half measures. In fact, it’s quite the opposite.

Lots and lots and lots and lots of you visited us today and we had a blast at our Archaeology Exposed tables, where visitors got to handle 2000 year old pottery, try on a hard-hat and find out how our conservators use x-rays.

It was great to see people really getting into it, finding out new things about the past and discovering how our volunteers at the archive go about preserving the objects.

Loads of them had a go themselves, during our Hands-On Archaeology workshop, where they found out a bit about London’s Archaeology before handling and helping the museum pack, store and organise its pots.

And the good news is if you missed out today, we’re back tomorrow (Tuesday) and Friday for more of the same, alongside all the other brilliant activities going on this week. 

For a full list of half term events visit our website’s events page (links to website)

The Museum of London proudly boasts that we have over 2,000,000 objects in our collections. Yeah, the British Museum might have 8,000,000 and the Victoria & Albert, 4,600,000, but still, 2,000,000 is a big number. In our conservation department, there are 20 members of staff. I’m no mathematician but even so, by my calculations that’s 100,000 objects per conservator. And those kind of numbers impress me.

In terms of archaeology there are 5 conservators whose job is to specifically focus on the “archaeological collections”. Since the archive opened in 2002, they have helped advise and design our basic methods of collections care which our volunteers are now practicing each Monday, Tuesday & Friday in Archaeology in Action (until March 23rd). But there are loads of other aspects of a conservator’s role that could make it the best job in the museum…

Conservators are a little bit like the doctors of the museum. They take things that look terribly unwell and make them better. And they always seem to be looking at x-rays.

They’re also the scientists of the museum. Or at least they look the part. They get to use liquids with warning labels and wear white lab coats.

They might be considered the magicians of the museum. On one hand they magically clean up objects that look like they’re beyond help and on the other hand they deal with objects that have magically transformed from their original state.

And one thing they most certainly are are the most photographed members of staff, always popping up with any press releases and in publications.

So, all in all, a pretty cool job (and secretly what I wanted to be when I first volunteered with the museum many moons ago) and with this in mind, I definitely wanted Conservation as part of our archive’s 10th Anniversary Celebrations. Every Monday for the next 6 weeks, you can find out why they’re like doctors (there’s some amazing x-rays on display revealing hidden objects), like scientists (find out the different techniques they use to preserve leather), like magicians (wait to you see their incredible piece of shrinking wood) and if you ask really nicely, they might even let you take a picture of them.

For more about our Archaeology Exposed events visit our website.

Archaeology. What’s the first thing that comes to mind when someone says this word? Digging? Trenches? Objects? Well yes, all three of those are certainly an important part of archaeology. However, they’re not the most important bits by any means. So what is more important?

Paper.

In particular the hundreds of pieces of paper that are used before, during and after an archaeological investigation. These pieces of paper could be the research that takes place before there’s even any sign of a trowel, or the sketch of the posthole that’s just been uncovered or the detailed analysis of the thousands of fragments of pottery that make up a section of the final publication. Without these pieces of paper, without these archaeological records, everything else becomes a bit redundant.

With this in mind, Archaeological Records was another fundamental aspect of our 10th Anniversary Celebrations that we definitely wanted to include in our 10th anniversary celebrations. Every Friday, you can see the original documents from 1975’s incredible excavations at Newgate Street. These include the original correspondence between the site directors and the Corporation of London; the original context sheets detailing aspects of particular features that were dug; original photographs from the site including some of the skeletal remains; x-rays showing hidden objects; the phenomenal  stratigraphic matrix which shows how each part of the site relates to each other; the finds reports written by the specialists once the site was completed; and the final publications sharing the results with the world.

There’s also one other thing that was crucial to all of the above. The site director.

Like a conductor of an orchestra, the site director makes sure things run smoothly and gathers everything together to produce the final results. And the site director for the excavation we’re working on during our 10th birthday celebrations is none other than Alan Thompson. And as we’ve got the records for the site out on display every Friday, we’d thought we’d ask him to join us too. Back as a volunteer having retired 9 years ago, you can meet Alan and the records he helped create every Friday for the next 6 weeks in Archaeology in Action from 10.00 – 16.00.

Let me start by saying I find skeletons fascinating. When I was putting together the series of events that celebrate our archaeological archive’s 10th anniversary, without a doubt I wanted to make sure human remains featured. When we ran our last Visitor Inclusion Project (LAARC VIP7 – Nov-Dec 2010) we had a table with skeletal remains from the amazing excavation at Newgate Street of St Nicholas Shambles (see here for more information about the skeletons from this site). This proved so popular, attracting almost 2000 visitors over 10 days, that it was the first of our “Archaeology Exposed” events to be confirmed this time around. 

Over the last 3 Tuesdays, our table has already attracted over 500 visitors, all of whom have been fascinated by what skeletal remains can tell you. Again I recommend you take a look at this previous blog to find out how much was discovered from the skeletons at Newgate Street (Previous Skeleton Blog)

However, what I didn’t realise until fairly recently is that we were very close to not having any of this information at all. The site at Newgate Street was amongst the first to uncover skeletons using standard archaeological recording techniques, only, before this dig, they hadn’t really ever excavated skeletons on the scale of which they had on this site. This excavation with 234 articulated bodies demanded a new technique for recording beyond the standard context sheet.

And so a simple but effective addition to the sheet was created. A splayed out image of a skeleton of which any remaining bones could be shaded in. Beneath a series of simple descriptive pointers which would provide more information about the skeleton such as the conditions of the limbs and the state of the bones themselves. Finally the relationship of the skeleton to its surrounding contexts and any plan, photo and extra associated numbers and finds were to be recorded too.

Using this type of recording, our late Senior curator of Osteology, Bill White, was able to right his report and consequently anyone who so wished was able to discover a bit more about these particular Londoners. The skeleton records sheet became a standard method of recording which is still in use today.

So to finish, if you want to see some of these incredible remains yourself, they’ll be on display in Archaeology in Action every Tuesday for the next 6 weeks. And if you want to find out about who created this concept of skeletal recording, you can meet him every Friday for the next 6 weeks as it’s the former site director Alan Thompson, who has returned to the museum to volunteer for our anniversary celebrations. But more about him tomorrow…