The working life of Museum of London

Cooking Pots, Bones, Milk (Street) & Eggs?

A culinary delight of ingredients provided the setting for week 7’s recipe of fun.

On the general finds side of the project, two sites were improved this week; Monday & Friday’s teams ploughed on through the material from St John Cass School, (CASS72), admiring the numerous amounts of pottery and steadily reducing the number of boxes these pots are stored in, by effective repacking and ordering. Wednesday’s groups tackled animal bone from the Triangle site (TR74), the final type of material they’ll be getting their hands on as next week it’s over to the Museum of London for them as they start to put together the photos they’ve been taking throughout to produce their video diaries.

Over with Registered finds, we started a new site, Milk Street (MLk76) which produced our first object of the week – a saxon bone comb which used to be on display in the old medieval gallery. A few bits of leather remaining from last week was also completed and Friday’s team completed all the glass, wood and started a box of pigment samples which produced our second object of the week – an oyster shell paint palette.

This week’s workshop was something quite different to the usual ones as we welcomed archaeological conservator, Luisa Duarte to LAARC to guide us through “Eggscavation”. Quite possibly my favourite workshop so far, Eggscavation, is all about how conservators lift delicate artefacts on site and a great practical way of learning the techniques behind it.

On entering our common room, volunteers were confronted with a seed tray full of compost, with an egg buried in the centre. Not knowing whether the egg was whole, hard boiled or indeed covering something else, the task was to careful lift the object, before carefully excavating it further.

Wrapping the visible shell with wet tissue first, then ten created a barrier to surround the egg, using laminated card. Once fenced in, volunteers mixed some plaster of paris and poured this into the fenced off space, covering the tissued egg.

Whilst waiting for the plaster to set, Luisa showed us some brilliant pieces of leather and wood and explained the process of freeze drying in relation to these organic finds.

Then it was back to the egg, the next stage being to put a fish slice beneath the barrier of card and flipping the whole thing over, plaster side down. Finally, with a small stick and brushes, they removed the remaining soil, until the egg and the contents inside were exposed.

I’m pleased to report that not one egg cracked!

To view more photos from the week, visit our Flickr site by clicking here: Flickr

To find out more about the excavations we’re currently working on or any other associated information click on the highlighted links in the text.