The working life of Museum of London

Eyes & Keys

Week 4 of LAARC’s volunteer project saw us play around with the teams a little as we split them into two for the first time. One half worked with Glynn on pottery from St. Thomas Street (1STS74), whilst the others worked with Adam on metal objects from the General Post Office site, (GPO75), swapping around in the afternoon, so everyone got a turn with both.

The two sites generated loads of material when archaeologists dug them back in the 70’s and we’ve already worked our way through over 200 boxes. The end is in site though as all the GPO75 metal was finished by the teams this week, leaving only the general glass finds for Saturday’s volunteers. We even managed to work through the metal from a few more sites on Friday; St Magnus (SM75), Artillery Lane (ART76),  175 Borough High Street (175BHS76), London Docks (LD76) & Christchurch, Greyfriars, (CHR76). Only a few more boxes of pottery before building material will be the next hurdle for the 1STS74 site before we can tick that off our list.

However, the good news is the finds are still coming with some fine reconstructed pots, stoneware and sweet little  highgate ware pottery being packed this week. The metal finds were more of a grind, but every now and then, amongst the many rusty bits of iron and fragmentary copper, a truely awesome artefact would crop up. Coffin plates from Greyfriars were superb (one had the possibly masonic emblem of the eye over the pyramid – see above &  top picture above for close up) and we also seemed to get a fair amount of Roman keys.  The two highlights this week are a roman copper hanging lamp and a fancy roman finger ring key.

Both Monday’s and Friday’s sessions ended with a workshop on Medieval Religion led by Curator Emiratus, John Clark, who retired from his post of senior curator of medieval collections last summer.

With no Wednesday sessions this week, it was a chance for Adam & Glynn to catch up on some reboxing as Tuesday and Thursday saw them down on site at the Burgess Park Public Archaeology Excavation. And next week, that’s where the volunteers will be too. To find out more click here: big dig

Don’t forget, to see more pictures from the project, you can always check out our flickr site by clicking here: flickr