Each week we’re posting Volunteer Profiles as part of our 10th Anniversary celebrations, letting you find out a bit more about our fantastic volunteers. Today it’s Katerina:  

 1) When did you join the volunteer programme and why?
I first joined the VIP9 project because I was interested in learning about London archaeology    

2) What was your most memorable day whilst volunteering?
No particular day, I enjoyed them all. 

3) What was your favourite object you discovered whilst volunteering?
Part of a decorated glass fragment   

4) What’s your favourite part of the museum?
The modern galleries   

5) Upper galleries of lower?
Lower galleries   

6) Favourite year in London’s history?
1666 – London’s Great Fire  

 7) Favourite Londoner?
Munira Mirza, the Mayor’s director of arts and culture policy. I read about her at an article and I was impressed by the exciting events programme she’s planning about London’s history.  

8) Mortimer Wheeler or Indiana Jones
Indiana Jones   

9) If you could dig anywhere in the world where would you excavate?
The Ancient Agora, Athens    

10) What’s next for you after this project?
Hopefully I will find a job in an education department of a London museum

How YOU can get involved in our archive’s 10th year celebrations

Since you woke up this morning, how many different pieces of crockery do you reckon you’ve used today? Maybe a cup for your morning coffee? Perhaps a plate for your lunch? Most of us use these items everyday without thinking about it.

I’m pretty sure the people of Roman Londinium, or those Medieval, Tudor, Georgian and Victorian Londoners didn’t think twice about all those plates, jugs, bowls, cups and bottles they used day in day out either. And I’m pretty certain they didn’t think that 100, 500 or 2000 years down the line, we’d be using their pottery to find out about their lives. But that’s exactly what we do as archaeologists. And now you too as museum visitors can do so as well.

As part of the Museum of London’s Archaeological Archive & Research Centre’s 10th anniversary celebrations we’re running special HANDS-ON ARCHAEOLOGY workshops where you can get your “hands on” some of these pieces of pot that past Londoners used.

Every Monday, Tuesday & Friday in the Museum’s Clore Learning Centre, you can join me or my colleague Glynn along with our excellent team of volunteers and help us sort out some of our pottery collections that need a bit of care and attention. So far during these hour long sessions, visitors have got to handle real Roman pottery including serving jugs (flagons), large storage vessels (amphorae) and decorated drinking vessels (highgate ware). There’s also been some lovely London “delftware” and “German stoneware“  that we’ve been going through too.

Each session starts at 3.15pm and begins with a brief history of London’s Archaeology (which is also a chance to spot how museum staff have changed over the past 250 years) before we give you a box of pottery to look at and explain how to go about sorting the pieces and improving the way they’re stored.

The workshops are open to everyone of any age and best of all, they’re completely FREE! So if you fancy coming along to learn a bit more about pots and get your hands on some, please do – it will be great to meet you! For more info visit our events page: HANDS-ON ARCHAEOLOGY

Each week we’re posting volunteer profiles letting you find out a little bit about our excellent team that are based in the museum as part of our 10th anniversary events. Today’s volunteer is Pam:

1) When did you join the volunteer programme and why?
2006 due to an interest in history and archaeology

2) What was your most memorable day whilst volunteering?
They are all great

3) What was your favourite object you discovered whilst volunteering?
So many, I can’t possibly choose just one!

4) What’s your favourite part of the museum?
LAARC

5) Upper galleries of lower?
Both but I really like both the prehistory and roman ones

6) Favourite year in London’s history?
44AD

7) Favourite Londoner?
Robert Hooke

8) Mortimer Wheeler or Indiana Jones
Mortimer Wheeler!

9) If you could dig anywhere in the world where would you excavate?
Catal Huyuk, a Neolithic site in Turkey

10) What’s next for you after this project?
Back to the archive!

The First Week of Our Archive’s 10 Year Celebrations

Followers of Rock & Pop music will be well aware that every few years a legendary group reforms. Over the past decade Pink Floyd, Cream, Blur, The Stone Roses & Take That all made impressive comebacks. Well today my blog friends, at 10.00 GMT, the Museum of London’s Archaeological Archive & Research Centre had not one but TWO of their very own legends reunite.

Today, Alan Thompson, LAARC’s Archaeological Records Officer when it opened in 2002, worked alongside his then colleague (and current LAARC archivist) Cath Maloney for the first time since retiring 9 years ago. And their reunion was all due to the second and perhaps even cooler reunion.

Today, also at 10.00 GMT, Alan was reunited with the excavation GPO75 – 1975’s General Post Office excavations at Newgate Street – of which he was the site director. From 10am – 4pm, he and Cath were sharing their knowledge, experiences and indeed memeories of the site with museum visitors at our Archaeological Records table in Archaeology in Action. And our visitors (were you one?) loved it as they showed people the original documents that the team of archaeologists wrote on site, photos from the excavation, the various elements that go towards a publication, xrays of mysterious objects that were dug up and of course… the matrix…

And this was just one example of the awesome time we’ve been having this week as we continue to celebrate 10 years of our archaeological archive. On Tuesday, our volunteers from our Osteology section spoke to over 150 people about skeletons dug up from the site (for more follow this link – GPO75 SKELETONS ), whilst on Monday, archaeological conservators from both our museum and those studying at UCL shared their knowledge and expertise about how we preserve our archaeological material.

All three will be returning over the next 9 weeks; Conservation every Monday, Skeletons every Tuesday and the Archaeological Records every Friday – all from 10am – 4pm in Archaeology In Action. Find out more by visiting our website – EVENTS

As well as that our volunteers have been interacting with hundreds of visitors at our two other tables too. Also in Archaeology In Action, Volunteers have been working their way through boxes of pottery, animal bone and building material, improving the way they’re stored and their packaging whilst chatting to visitors. Best of all visitors can handle the material, literally coming into contact with the past.

Outside our London Before London gallery, you can also meet LAARC staff and volunteers and find out what it is that we actually do in an archaeological archive and why this needs to be done. You can handle some amazing artefacts, search for archaeology in any part of London, find out about some of our award winning projects and, should you get the urge, dress up as an archaeologist.

And the number one question that was being asked this week? How can we get involved? The answer is simple. Come along to a free Hands-On Archaeology workshop which takes place in our Clore Learning Centre each Monday, Tuesday & Friday from 3.15 – 4.15. If you’ve ever wanted to get your hands on real archaeology, this is your chance. The workshops allow you to learn about London’s archaeology by getting your hands on it and in the process you get to help us improve the way we store our collections! Check out these pictures from some of the sessions that have already taken place.

For more information about the Hands-On Archaeology sessions visit our events page – EVENTS.

We’ll be around every Monday, Tuesday & Friday for the next few weeks. Hope to see you soon!

As part of our collections online programme bringing greater online access to our collections over the next three years, including the addition of over 90,000 objects. Project Assistant, Ed, talks us through his work with the Museum’s Roman coin collection:

The Museum’s Roman collection boasts some very fine examples of bronze, silver and gold coinage, and traces the history of Rome from the Republic, through the rise and eventual decline of the Empire, and culminates in the ascendancy of Byzantium.

The collection spans a period of no-less than seven centuries and represents over 100 different emperors, empresses, princes, rebels and usurpers.

The biggest challenge in working with this collection stems from the sheer volume of coin designs that the emperors could produce.

Recently I have been working with the coins of Emperor Domitian (81-96AD). Domitian alone was responsible for producing over 400 different coin designs during his 15 year reign. This is obviously a huge amount, but such numbers are not uncommon, and indeed such an output is dwarfed by that of others, such as Hadrian, who introduced nearly 1100 different coin designs during his rule, 117-138AD.

It may initially seem surprising that the emperors put so much thought into their coinage.

However, in a period before mass media, coins offered the perfect opportunity for the emperors to ‘meet’ their public. The minting of coins was the greatest source of propaganda available to the emperors.

They range of designs is astonishing. Coins were issued to commemorate great military victories, grand building projects, the quelling of rebellions and to celebrate the might and history of Rome.

They also gave ample opportunity for the emperors to associate themselves and their rule with a particular god, goddess or virtue by depicting them on the reverse.

In this respect the coins offer a real window into the ideology, principles and concerns of the emperors themselves. They could choose to depict themselves as philosophers, facilitators of peace and prosperity, or conversely, they could adopt a very different stance and associate themselves with Mars, the god of war, showing that they were prepared to hold onto their power with an iron fist if circumstances required it.

With such a vast array of coins being minted, correct identification offers a significant challenge.

Fortunately much of the collection is very well preserved. Some of the coins appear as if struck yesterday, and are identified and read as easily as they would have been millennia ago. However, time has taken its toll on many others.

The portraits are worn and reverses corroded, inscriptions are obliterated and details reduced to little more than a few lumps and bumps. In a few cases, identification is simply impossible. However, more often than not, identification can be made from the slightest of details. Until the fourth century the portraits of the emperors are very distinctive; subsequently, little more than the curve of the nose or the curl of a beard can give away their identity. Similarly the flick of a wing or the angle of an arm can all help identify the figure on the reverse.

I feel incredibly lucky to be able to handle these objects on a daily basis, and think of the many hands they may have passed between in their long history and the day to day transaction they may have been involved in. Yet, they are not simply discs of metal used to buy bread, wine, clothing or even be exchanged for possible brothel tokens! They can give us a real insight into the minds of the emperors themselves and the state and character of the empire.

I hope that when these coins are made available online to the public  in the summer of 2012 you will find them as interesting as I do.

It is hoped that by opening up of this collection online it will not only help the Museum engage with a wider public audience, but also offer a considerable contribution to the understanding of Roman numismatics in London, and provide increased opportunity for further enquiry, study and fresh analysis.

All images copyright Museum of London.

Each Week we’ll be posting Volunteer Profiles to let you know a bit more about our excellent volunteers. First up for this project is Jon:

1) When did you join the volunteer programme and why?
Joined for VIP9 because I’m interested in archaeology and future museum work

2) What was your most memorable day whilst volunteering?
I particularly remember the leather workshop – great winklepickers

3) What was your favourite object you discovered whilst volunteering?
A horse leg bone. It was massive. Noone was nearly as impressed as I was.

4) What’s your favourite part of the museum?
London before London. I find flint tools fascinating

5) Upper galleries of lower?
Upper

6) Favourite year in London’s history?
1381 – the peasant’s revolt

7) Favourite Londoner?
Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins

8) Mortimer Wheeler or Indiana Jones
Wheeler for the ‘tache

9) If you could dig anywhere in the world where would you excavate?
Marine Archaeology in the Mediterranean, I love diving

10) What’s next for you after this project?
MA in Museum Studies. Hopefully.

Day 1 of the Archaeological Archive’s 10th Anniversary Celebrations

If you happened to visit the Museum of London today, did you spot us? The staff and volunteers at the London Archaeological Archive & Research Centre (LAARC) have begun our 10 week residency at the Museum to share our work with you! And if you weren’t at the museum today, here’s what you missed:

Outside our “London Before London” gallery, our archive manager had a selection of goodies:

• Visitors handled objects made in London almost 2000 years ago
• Visitors looked at the original records sheets that archaeologists wrote whilst they were digging up sites.
• School groups had fun trying to figure out a mystery object whose identity was revealed by an  x-ray
• Teachers admired a range of artefacts dug up by school children during our 2005 community project
• Londoners searched our online catalogue to find out what’s been dug up in their area
• One budding young archaeologist tried on a hard hat and held a trowel for the first time!

Meanwhile, a bit further on in “Archaeology In Action” all this was going on:

• Conservation students from University College London were showing people how a piece of wood deteriorates if not looked after.
• There was more guessing of mystery objects using x-rays for answers
• Visitors were handling, comparing (and sniffing) pieces of leather, all conserved in different ways.
• You could take a look at how conservators remove very fragile objects from an excavation

Alongside the conservators were LAARC volunteers:

• Packing archaeological finds, they were chatting to visitors about what they were doing.
• Visitors were able to pick up and handle real objects
• You could discover how we store artefacts at the museum and why we do so

To cap things off several visitors joined us for our afternoon workshop – Hands-On Archaeology – where they learnt a bit about London’s Archaeological history, got their “hands on” some real roman pottery, worked alongside volunteers and sorted pots into different types and helped us improve the way these pot sherds are stored.

So all in all it was a pretty awesome day. It was great to meet so many visitors and share a bit of our work with them. And if you weren’t there today, don’t worry, we’re doing it all again tomorrow and on Friday and indeed, we’ll be around for the next 10 weeks, so come along and say hi.

For more information about our various events visit our website’s events pages: events pages link

Happy New Year from the Visitor Services team and welcome back after what has been a very busy festive period for the Hosts here at the Museum of London.

To start of the New Year, I give just a quick update of the events and activities over Christmas, and what you can expect in the following months.

I am very happy to report that our very first Santa and Scrooge’s Victorian Grottoes were a runaway success, and greatly exceeded our wildest expectations. The Hosts have put a lot of hard work and effort into making a success of the project, and can give themselves a well-deserved pat on the back for job well done.

Both Santa and Scrooge were very popular with children and parents alike, and if 2011 was anything to go by, we anticipate another sell-out event for 2012 and anyone interest in visiting will be well-advised to book in advance!

It was not just Santa and Scrooge which made headlines. Our much advertised Dickens exhibition opened with much pomp and ceremony in December, and kept us Hosts on our toes trying to keep up for demand for tickets.

A lot of time, energy and resources have gone into making this one of our most exciting exhibitions in the Museum’s history, and the positive feedback from both visitors and the press alike is a great reward for everyone involved in the exhibition.

It is the first major Charles Dickens exhibition in the UK in more than 40 years and includes original manuscripts, his desk and chair, as well as a specially commissioned film to explore the similarity between London at night time today and the city which Dickens had described 150 years ago. Book in advance to qualify for discounted tickets!

I also want to welcome our new Hosts who joined us recently. Some of them are in the photo above.

After successfully completing two weeks of training, they’ve been thrown into the deep end and shown remarkable resilience, and also brought a lot of enthusiasm to the team for the New Year.

I speak for the whole team when I say that we look forward to welcoming you to the Museum during your next visit!

Giusy

London’s Archaeological Archive celebrates its first decade

In a unassuming building along Hackney/Islington’s Regents Canal borders a team of museum archaeologists are getting quite excited. The reason being, us staff at the London Archaeological Archive & Research Centre are soon to celebrate our 10th anniversary and we’re only days away from the starting the celebrations.

Since opening in 2002 we’ve really focused on 4 main things: To make sure London’s archaeology is stored in an space efficient way that is accessible to all; to encourage and facilitate research into London’s history using the objects and information people left behind; to promote learning and enjoyment by discovering London’s heritage and finally; to be ambassadors of archaeology and leaders in our field of expertise.

That may all sound a little grandiose so put in another way, for the past 10 years we’ve been looking after things that have been dug up, sharing them with as many people as possible and generally have a lot of fun with archaeology along the way.

AND NOW WE’RE COMING TO YOU!

For the next 10 weeks from January 16th to March 23rd, every Monday, Tuesday & Friday, from 10.00 – 16.00, we’re heading to the Museum of London itself to share London’s archaeology with museum visitors. Part of the celebrations will see our Award Winning “Visitor Inclusion Project” return, only this time on a much larger scale.

Joining LAARC staff will be a team of volunteers spanning the past decade, from those who have only just completed a volunteer project, to those that were here from day 1. You can meet them at the “Archaeology Exposed” tables and find out what they’re currently working on every Mon, Tues & Friday in the Archaeology in Action Exhibition.

In addition, on Mondays you can find out about archaeological conservation and meet student conservators from University College London who’ll be sharing the techniques they use to preserve artefacts.

On Tuesdays come and meet our volunteers from the Centre of Human Bioarchaeology and find out how they use skeletal remains to understand past Londoner’s lives.

On Fridays join our archivists who will reveal the importance of recording archaeological data and the wealth of information that site archives can reveal.

And if this wasn’t enough, you can directly GET INVOLVED by coming to a “Hands-On Archaeology” workshop where you’ll have the opportunity to handle real pieces of pottery that were excavated during the 1970s, learn how the museum stores its archaeological collections and help us improve the way these important artefacts are stored.

Each session lasts just an hour (3.15 – 4.15) and are completely free of charge (though you have to get a ticket from the front desk when you arrive).

As the weeks progress, we’ll be keeping you updated with our happenings, sharing stories from the past 10 years and introducing you to some of our excellent volunteers, right here on the blog pages.

We really hope you can drop by and join us as we’re sure it’s going to be a blast. For more info about how you can get involved in the Hands-On Archaeology sessions, visit the events page by clicking here: Hands-On Archaeology event

I have come to the conclusion that it is not the circus as a whole that I dislike but that my aversion is pretty much directed solely towards clowns. Maybe something happened the one and only time I went to the circus in my hometown. All I can remember is the outside of the tent …

I have a very soft spot for aerialists, though, and not just on account of Burt Lancaster (honest!). And I generally adore circus outfits, and not just because of Merna Kennedy.

So when I realised we had what was listed in the register as ‘a child’s acrobat costume, circa 1860′, I instantly had to check out this marvelous sounding object.

You will agree that anything with a rosette is good. But a sky-blue object with a rosette in a very complimentary shade of muted red? With decorative elements that have the potential to sparkle?

The costume was donated in 1928 together with more than 30 other items of clothing from the 19th century, mainly accessories including three bonnets, a bustle, two pairs of mittens, a fur collar, a cape and such like. All very nice but nothing super-extraordinary. I had a look at the file for this group in the hope it would explain the inclusion of an acrobat’s outfit. Alas, as is so often the case with our early acquisitions, I could not find anything particularly illuminating. There was a handwritten note listing every object with an approximate date, mainly between 1860 and 1875ish. But had this been provided by the donor or had it been written by the curator/keeper at the time?

Shape-wise the object fits in very well with visual examples of male acrobat outfits of the mid 19th century. First up: the beautifully moustached trapeze artist Jules Léotard (1838-1870) – yes it is he – wearing a dark body suit with low V-neck over a white one-piece in this photo from around 1860-65 (another good one is here). At the time, if acrobatics were your thing, the Alhambra Theatre in Leicester Square was your place and Léotard duly appeared there in 1861.

In the same year, it seems, Léotard’s compatriot Charles Blondin (1824-1897) made his debut at London’s Crystal Palace. The Great Blondin was a tightrope walker probably best known for crossing Niagara falls several times, including on time carrying his manager. I presume the first photo below records a reenactment of this momentous occasion. The second image shows Blondin’s low V-neck outfit even better.

Last up, and in an outfit quite similar to ours: the famous El Niño Farini (1855-1939). The orphan Samuel Wasgate, his real name, was adopted by a tightrope walker and first appeared at the Alhambra in 1865. In the photo below, which was probably taken around that time or a little later, El Niño looks as if he has already seen it all. Farini later gained many admirers under the guise of Lulu, ‘The Beautiful Girl Aerialist and Circassian Catapultist’. Many a year went by before it was realised that the Child Farini and the lovely Lulu were one and the same. More on this most intriguing story here.

Now we know that the 1860s represent some sort of peak period for aerialists. But was our costume worn by another acrobatic child prodigy?

Some of you will already have their suspicions. Will they be confirmed?