LAARC VIP

“All good things must come to an end” a wise person once said (I think it may have been Chaucer, but just in case it wasn’t Nelly Fertado definately sang it recently) And so, the first LAARC volunteer inclusion programme finishes. But what great success it has seen!

General finds.

15 sites down. Fully repacked. Pottery. Animal Bone. Building Material. This includes major sites such as Custom House (CUS73) and 106 Borough High Street (106BHS73). Glynn and the volunteer team have steadily worked their way through all the boxes, reorganising them into material, then context number and saving several shelves of extra space in doing so. Hooray!

Metal Store.

Sites from Baynards Castle (BC72) up until  Guildhall (GDH85) have had their registered finds relocated to the new shelves and now sit there in a good logically, much more accessible fashion. Over 50 shelves have now been made available, which are ready for the metalic general finds to find a home on them. In addition, Adam & the volunteer team have repacked any small things along the way, reboxed previously unloved artefacts and generally made what was once LAARC’s unofficial dumping ground a good looking storage space. Hoorah!

University of the 3rd Age – Mansell Street Archive

This year’s U3A have completed a fantastic job on improving the conditions of the Mansell street excavation (MSL87) Important material including cremation urns and burial goods are now stored in good quality boxes, with correct packing & organised logically. Their work has even attracted the interest of oversea journalists eager to find out about projects involving the retired generation. We look forward to their final research presentations next week.

 

Workshops

A different kind of workshop this week, as each day’s volunteers spent the afternoon at the museum itself, first learning about human remains with LAARC’s Osteology area – the centre for Human Bioarchaeology, followed by a visit to the museum’s rotunda, to see where the 17000 skeletons now live. After that it was up to conservation to learn about how the museum preserves its artefacts and finally a special visit to the National Scheduled Monument beneath the NCP carpark – The Wonderful Roman Fort Gate. Big thanks to all who showed us around as well as the Museum of London Archaeology Specialists who have run workshops over the previous weeks.

 

And so that’s almost that for part one of LAARC VIP. Of course with the christmas party still to come the fun’s not finished yet and although a new set of volunteers will be joining us in January, this set of volunteers won’t be forgotten and we hope to keep them informed with any other volunteer opportunities as well as LAARC events.