LAARC VIP4 – Week 7
November 20, 2009 Archaeology, LAARC, LAARC VIP, Volunteers
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.
