Inside the Museum of London

We’re now 3 weeks into our Visitor Inclusion Project (VIP), the series of events that celebrate our Archaeological Archive’s 10th birthday by sharing our work with visitors at the museum.

We’re having an awesome time, having chatted to over 2500 people so far. One of the best bits of the job is sharing our passion for archaeology with visitors who are often pleasantly surprised that we’re letting people handle these real bits of archaeology. It’s also cool hearing about the number of visitors who have dabbled with archaeology in the past, or found things on the foreshore, or have been to various archaeological sites across the world, or those who simply can’t get enough of Time Team!

Our Archaeology Exposed tables are proving really popular. The things that are catching peoples’ eyes seem to be a crazy example of a piece of wood and what happens if it’s not looked after on Monday’s Conservation table, an example of an medieval arthritic hip on Tuesday’s  Osteology table and possibly the world’s most complicated stratigraphic matrix on Friday’s Records table.

And then there’s the numerous amount of people that have come along to a Hands-On Archaeology workshop, many of whom are from overseas and are loving the chance to have a go at sorting London’s pottery. These two chaps from Switzerland joined us earlier this week, whilst the lady in the left picture was stopping off here from the USA before moving on to Egypt.

And we’re starting to see real results in terms of the material we’re working on whilst we interact with you. Over 100 boxes of archaeology have been repacked and in doing so we’re saving a fair amount of space within the boxes simply by this better packing.

So roll on the next 7 weeks. We’ll be keeping you updated with our progress here on the blog where we’ll also be sharing the history of our archive’s first decade, various objects that narrate London’s history and giving you an insight into the thoughts of our volunteers.