The working life of the Museum of London

 In this guest post, Tony Grey, Finds Specialist at MoLAS, explains where he goes on his holidays.  He presents surprising parallels between the medieval sugar installation and ancient city at Zoara, southern Jordan, and London.

Starting in 2006 and continuing this year I have been lucky enough to spend leave time working on an archaeological project in Jordan. I would recommend this way of spending some leave time to anyone from MoLAS.

The project is based at two discrete sites near the village of Safi in southern Jordan near the southern end of the Dead Sea. The project was inspired by and jointly run by Dr K. D. Politis (Dino) head of the Hellenic Society for Near Eastern Research. The first excavation season took place in 2002 run by Dino and Glasgow University. Subsequent seasons have run from 2006-8 with the excavations carried out by Adelaide University.

The Tawahin es-Sukhar site is that of a medieval sugar mill while around 500 metres distant is the site of the ancient and medieval city of Zoara which is shown on the early Byzantine mosaic Madaba map. My job was to identify and record the post-Bronze Age pottery from both sites.

The sugar installation was in use from roughly the 12th/13th century to the 15th century. Sugar cane was widely grown in the Jordan Valley and Levant coast in this period. Water from the hills above the Valley was led by channel to a drop where it turned mill wheels that crushed the cane. The cane was then boiled in iron vats and the juice poured into pottery moulds and jars. An upper sugar cone jar sat in a lower molasses collecting jar. The refined fraction was cooled and solidified in the upper jar which then had to be broken to remove the sugar loaf. The heavy molasses fraction passed to the lower collecting jar. Hence the site has huge mounds of broken sugar pots. Several other similar sites are known in the Levant.

This refining technology was used in the same way for several centuries. By the 16th century Cyprus was a major producer for the European market. By the 18th century the centre of gravity of production was located in the Caribbean. Sugar was refined using raw sugar from the Caribbean in 18th century York and Southampton. It was also refined in London at several sites such as Bishopsgate Goods Yard (BGX05) where the sugar cone pots are much slimmer and narrower than the pots used in the medieval Levant and at Limehouse (Jarret 2005).

I attempted to form a sugar pot typology based on published parallels. It appears that the industry may have begun at this site by the time the Crusaders arrived on the scene for a short duration in the 12th century. Certainly the sugar pots along with other pottery were manufactured at the site as evidenced by wasters.

In all the excavation seasons separate digs explored parts of the ancient and medieval city. Nabataean architectural stone and small sherds of pottery date to around the 2nd century BC. Roman, Early Byzantine and medieval (Islamic) periods follow with a mosaic floor dating possibly to the 7th or 8th century AD uncovered this year. Huge quantities of pottery awaited me. Some had been packed wet and had to be laid out to dry. Beautiful sherds of high status early glazed wares may have been imports from the Iraq region as well as being locally made. Moulded cream ware jugs of the Abassid period jostled with pieces of cooking pot, jars and basins. The material included a few sherds of Early Byzantine orange burnished dishes and bowls classified as Late Roman Fine Ware by John Hayes (1972). Later glazed wares were common along with a few pieces that may belong to the Crusader 12th century. The pottery indicates a termination of occupation at the site by the 15th century in the Mamluk period. This later period was characterised by glazed fritwares imported from Syria, handmade painted coarsewares and by the pottery of the sugar production industry.

Petrological analysis and glaze analysis have been carried out on material from the first excavation season at Glasgow University and we await publication of the results.

This has been a wonderful opportunity to handle a wealth of ceramic material from this interesting and beautiful part of the world and I hope that I will be able to return to complete the job as much pottery still remains to be recorded in the dig house where a day’s work is concluded with a refreshing glass of arak and ice watching the sun go down over the Jordan Valley.

This year August is “Lucky Loser” month, where the three objects have all tried their luck once before, have come close but failed to win. However, now one of them will and join previous winners in December’s object of the year comp.

Follow the link to the archaeology blog to see which lucky losers are in the running and vote for your favourite. Result will be announced on Friday 5th Sept

  Smoking was introduced to Britain in the 16th century, and pipe and cigar smoking had become popular by the 19th century. Tabacco use continued to rise and the first mass produced cigarettes were introduced in the 1880s. Evidence of smoking is often demonstrated on archaeological sites in the form of clay pipes. These disposable items were easy to make and the different types and manufactures markings can provide valuable dating information.

Recent analysis of over 700 skeletons from the Catholic Mission of Saints Mary and Michael, Whitechapel, London, who died between 1843 and 1854, has demonstrated how evidence of smoking can also be observed in the bones of past populations.

 Fifty eight adult skeletons (58/268: 21.6%) displayed wear patterns to the surfaces of the teeth. These were often smooth, rounded grooves resulting from long term pipe smoking. In many cases a circular hole or ‘pipe notch’ was clearly visable when the upper and lower jaws were closed. Thirty two of the individuals with pipe notches also showed a brown coloured staining to the inside of the teeth. Pipe notches were found on a number of young adults. These may have developed over several years suggesting that smoking could have been taken up at a younger age. Adult smokers were also found to be more likely associated with lesions to the inside surfaces of the ribs, possibly the result of lung disease resulting from smoking.

This evidence may help provide information about how smoking affected the health of an individual and if it made more susceptible to other diseases and the infections compared to non smokers. If smoking was more commonplace amongst the Victorian working class, this may be used as an indicator of status and possibly gender. This may also help better our understanding and awareness of smoking in the modern world that is reported to kill 5.4 million people each year (World Health Organisation 2008).

A year on from the smoking ban, the museum of London looks into the history of smoking in London and life in the captial since the ban with a new exhibition ‘ The Big Smoke’. More information can be found at the following link…

http://www.molg.org.uk/English/NewsRoom/Current/The+Big+Smoke.htm

This week,  Clare Wood, Archivist for the Sainsbury Archive, introduces a new website that brings the Sainsbury Archive to life and asks you  to add your memories of working and shopping at Sainsbury’s:

Alongside my regular duties looking after the Sainsbury Archive, over the past year I’ve been busy creating ‘Story of a Supermarket’, a new website for the collection, which is now live within the Museum in Docklands website.

The Sainsbury Archive at the Museum in Docklands is a unique collection of photographs, documents and objects which tells the story of Sainsbury’s from its foundation in 1869 to the present day.  It’s a fascinating and varied collection, including everything from old packaging and recipes to Victorian tiles and staff uniforms.

This new website replaces the Sainsbury’s Virtual Museum educational site which was launched ten years ago. This popular site, which enabled schools to explore the archive via a virtual museum building, needed significant updating. We therefore decided to create a new site using the Museum of London’s content management system and page templates, retaining popular elements of the Virtual Museum, but also adding extra information and images from the archive to help answer some of the 400+ enquiries received each year.

We started work on the project last July, consulting with local primary school teachers, retired Sainsbury’s staff and people who had contacted the archive with an enquiry over the last couple of years. The results were sometimes surprising, but gave us a clear picture of what people liked and didn’t like about the old site, and the kinds of information they were looking for.

We frequently receive enquiries about aspects of social history such as food and nutrition during wartime and the employment of women.  We therefore decided to create pages for a range of popular topics, arranged under the themes of ‘People’, ‘Places’ ‘Products’ and ‘Progress’.  Researching and writing this content proved time-consuming, and we have tried to find the right level of detail, so that the information is useful, but not overwhelming…

To add a personal touch to the official records in the archive, there is also a contributory area for visitors to add their memories of working and shopping at Sainsbury’s. All stories submitted will be added to the collection and highlights will be published on the website.

For schools at Key Stage 2, our Learning consultant trawled the archive to produce six curriculum-linked units exploring the history of food, shops and shopping. Linked to these are classroom activities, interactive quizzes, a timeline, and a scrapbook of images to download.

For informal family learning, as well as the quizzes and scrapbook, we have recycled popular features and activities from the Virtual Museum, including old-fashioned packaging to colour and make, the chance to ‘Explore a Store’ from 1909 and ‘Harry’s story’, a day in the life of a  Sainsbury’s delivery boy in 1912.

The project has grown quite a bit since its inception and the resulting website is a large and detailed resource. The collection is highly visual, so I’m particularly pleased that the new site features around 300 images. ‘Story of a supermarket’ has actually been live since May 2008, but following testing and approval by external stakeholders, we have now begun to tell people it’s there!

We’re also planning to showcase the site at ‘The way we shopped’, a day of free talks, film screenings and activities inspired by the Sainsbury Archive, which is being held at the Museum in Docklands on Saturday 4th October.
‘Story of a Supermarket’ is located within the Museum in Docklands website under ‘Collections Online’ and can also be found at: www.museumindocklands.org.uk/sainsburyarchive

Late:Create is an exciting monthly workshop where members get creative using our collections for inspiration.   

Photographer Fil Gierlinski lead August’s Late:Create session, and the group learned how to create that perfect picture. 

Our regular blogger, Liam, tells us more:

‘This month’s Late:Create was photography. Fil, the photographer, showed us how a picture captures the texture and shape of an object. When learnt how to take pictures close up using the camera’s macro setting. We paired up and went outside taking close-ups of anything we could find. We took photos of walls, railings, pavements, stairs and anything with an unusual surface. We produced some eye-catching images. We then took the cameras into the museum galleries and from different angles captured an object that would tell us a story about it - its shape - its texture - and what it was. Finally we watched a slideshow of everyone’s work.’

See more photos of the workshop here!

Late: Create is free and takes place 6 – 8pm on the 1^st Thursday of every month and is for people who are currently out of work.  Future workshops include creative writing and sculpture.  The sessions are coordinated by the Museum’s Inclusion Officer, Lucie Fitton. To find out more contact community@museumoflondon.org.uk  

You can find out the winner of July’s Object of the Month Competition by following the link to the archaeology blog site:

http://mymuseumoflondon.org.uk/blogs/archaeology/2008/08/08/julys-winner/

Dave Sankey, Senior Archaeologist for the Museum of London Archaeology Service, writes:

“If you wander around St Paul’s Cathedral, you’ll see some curious modern pavements in the South Churchyard, opened this summer. The area has been landscaped following small “evaluation” trenches excavated by Robin Wroe-Brown and his team and a watching brief on the initial landscaping excavations by David Sankey and Aleks Cetera, with expert input by the then diocesan archaeological advisor John Schofield.

The “new” pavement is a modern representation of the remains of the medieval church and illustrates the square cloister surrounding the octagonal chapter house.  [Image from the Telegraph article, St Paul’s Cathedral opens new South Churchyard]

The new design is a simplified version of the original. For instance, the original pavement of the chapterhouse (a building attached to a cathedral, church, or monastery and used as a meeting place for the religious fraternity) had different-sized panels near the door on the west side and equal -sized panels in the east (see photo below).  These floor panels are equal-sized throughout the new version.

The medieval internal pier-bases and ribs (below) were far more intricately carved.    However, the use of Purbeck stone for paving and the ribs and yellow limestone for the walls does accurately represent the original materials.  It would be wrong to quibble about detail when what has been achieved is a worthy attempt to evoke the medieval cathedral that lies below.  After all, to accurately represent the originals would require a tall structure that would obscure the view of Wrens cathedral, and a user-friendly picnic or meeting area with modern wheelchair access to the cathedral.

Rather, I’d encourage anyone to mentally wander around the space and imagine the tall chapterhouse with it’s imposing buttresses dividing large stained-glass windows, surrounded by the square 2-storey cloister with open tracery on the ground floor, overlooking the minuscule lawns. And the hunched figures of medieval clerics, plotting or worrying about relations with the king or the Pope in Rome, or the rival Pope in Avignon. Even if you can’t visit it, you might get the picture.”

This video explains more about the old St Paul’s Cathedral.

A quick announcement before I go on leave, and fingers crossed I haven’t broken anything, but site pages on the LAARC will now display maps again.

They’re only static maps, I’ll add dynamic maps (so you can zoom, move around, etc) if I get a chance when I’m back from holiday.

July’s objects can be found on the archaeology blog pages - the winner will be revealed on Friday August 8th.

http://mymuseumoflondon.org.uk/blogs/archaeology/2008/08/01/object-of-the-month-july-08/

A display of stunning photographs of the self-governing Maroon community in Jamaica are on show at Museum in Docklands until 31 August as part of the London, Sugar & Slavery gallery’s rolling community exhibition space.

The display of over 50 photographs in a montage and a short film draws attention to the forgotten story of the Maroons who refused to be enslaved, survived in remote parts of the Caribbean islands and helped destabilise the plantation system.

The project is the brainchild of hip hop photographer, Jennie Baptiste, who guided a group of six young Londoners who call themselves the Linx, teaching them research, communications and photography skills. The group of 14 to 19 year olds then researched the history of African resistance to slavery and visited the Maroons in the town of Accompong in the Jamaican mountains to take the photographs.

Linx member and 19 year old art student, Asia Bharj, said:

‘Never in my life did I think I would be part of this amazing project, being with the Linx I overcame personal challenges which allowed me to grow mentally and to become a better person.’

Don’t miss out - the display closes on August 31!  There’s information on how to plan your visit to the Museum in Docklands or find out more about the community exhibition in our newsroom article, Journey to Accompong.  Entry to the display is free, but there is a charge for entry to the Museum in Docklands itself.