The working life of Museum of London

Little Week, Large Sites

As Easter ate its way into the project, still steady progress was made in the three days of week 7.

Registered Finds

The focus this week was mainly on the registered finds project with one site dominating the days. Chaucer House (CH75) on Tabard Street in Southwark produced artefacts from the Roman period to present day and Tuesday’s team got their hands on the copper and lead objects from the site. A couple of pieces caught our eye including a complete thimble and ear scoop from medieval times. However, by far the best object of the day (and one of the two objects of the week) was a copper alloy pilgrim badge. Not only is it unusual to find copper alloy badges (most archaeological examples are lead alloy), this example is something special due to its double imagery. Depicting three characters, it shows a saint in the centre, flanked by two archers ready to shoot. This could be the martydom of Saint Sebastian, however, experts believe it is more likely to be Saint Edmund. This is because Saint Edmund is the patron saint of those distressed at sea and the position of the three creates an anchor shape. We’ll leave it up to you to make your own mind up.

Wednesday’s Graduates had a slight change to their regular work on leather finds in the morning and also worked on the Chaucer House  coin archive (CH75). The graduates repacked and audited over 100 coins found from the site, including roman, medieval and post medieval pieces.

It was back to the leather in the afternoon though as the finds from 1978’s Bankside dig (BS78) was worked through.

Thursday’s team spent the whole day on the registered bone, ceramic and iron artefacts from Chaucer House, whilst Adam continued work on the Bankside leather. The second object of the week was a cool clay tobacco pipe depicting a goat and lion on its bowl. A close contender was another pipe with an unusual twisted stem. The bone archive had some fancy dice and waste fragments that seem to have been used to produce dice, whilst the leather from Bankside was mainly shoe scraps, though it did produce an amazing archery wrist guard.

General Finds

A quiet week in the general finds project with only Tuesday’s team working on material. Nevertheless, another milestone was reached as they completed the final boxes from the Minories (MN74). Nothing much to write about in terms of things found, although pleasingly, two registered finds, hidding amongst the general cropped up. These have now been repacked, audited and returned to the ceramic registered finds boxes worked on during VIP4. Another couple of objects thought to be missing repatriated with its site, showing the importance of our project in sorting out our collections and improving the accessibility of London’s archaeology!

Check out more photos from the project at our Flickr site

Next week, the final round of workshops, a new site in the general finds project and we might even reach our target site in the registered finds project. Also watch this space for news on the best objects from VIP5 and an announcement of the return of something very special…