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