The working life of Museum of London

A Week On The Tiles

The penultimate week of this project saw volunteers tackle a tricky site – Merton Priory, dug over several years and consequently archived under several codes: MPY76, MPY77, MPY83, MPY86 & MPY88. As can be expected with monastic sites, many medieval floor tiles were found during the excavations. Whilst most of the material had been packed to the archive standards, many objects due to one thing or another were kept in different parts of the building. The VIP6 project is the first time we’ve had the chance to amalgamate all the tiles from all the years, finally bringing the archive together.

Nearly 1000 floor tiles have been audited this week! Phew!

In addition, most of the glass was also completed by volunteers which means the vast majority of the non metals from the site have now been sorted. We have almost reached our target for this project and have certainly reduced the number of boxes these archives are occupying. Over the next month, we’ll be finishing off the reboxing and will find out just how many.

Over on General finds, more success. Monday’s volunteers worked through the remainder of the animal bone from 1974’s excavation at the Triangle of Billingsgate Buildings (TR74) and most of that site has now been sorted out. On Friday, Glynn too was busy reboxing some of the previous sites we’ve repacked and things are starting to look ship shape as boxes are relocated onto their shelves.

Wednesday’s teams were back at the Museum of London for their second week in the Clore Learning Centre with E-Learning Officer Paul Clifford. Using software such as photostory for windows and windows movie maker, the Capital A volunteers completed their films about their LAARC VIP6 experience. Some truely excellent stuff was produced. This is even more impressive when you take into consideration that most of the volunteers had rarely used computers in the past, let alone made films.

In the afternoon it was the Young Archaeologist Families’ turn to make their films and comics. Again some of the best work ever seen in the e-learning studio was produced, with our young volunteers using photos, video, voice recordings and music. One volunteer pushed the technology to its limits, creating a comic with one package, animating the comic with another and then using the animated comic as part of her final movie. Absolutely brilliant.

To top the week off, we had a very special workshop as we welcomed our lovely LAARC colleagues based at the Museum – oesteologists, Jelena & Becky. With a human skeleton laid out to examine, volunteers were shown how the body’s bones articulate before viewing signs of pathology which are evident in changes in the bone. A fascinating workshop.

Finally a quick reminder that the object of VIP6 competition has now reached its Grand Final stage and you can vote for your favourite object by visiting the blog below. Voting closes on Wed 25th August at noon.