The working life of Museum of London

 The second week of 10 for our fourth VIP project and the focus switched this week from general to registered finds.

Registered finds are objects which have some kind of individual value to them, have been worked in some form or another, or are special or unusual enough to have an individual number assigned to them.

Monday’s volunteers kicked us off with the metal objects from 199 Borough High Street, excavated from 1974 - 1976 (199BHS74). We started the day looking at some interesting bits of iron. Well, I say interesting. In truth, they were nothing special to look at, however, on the back of each object’s associated finds card was an x-ray image, which showed the hidden object within the rusty, crusty exterior. Having learnt how to pack a registered find with these unprocessed objects, we then checked the ones that had been packed previously, updating their finds location and improving the packaging when necessary. After the iron, we moved on to the lead and the copper finds, including sorting out all the coins from the site, whose labels all needed updating from site “small find” number to archival “registered find” number. By the end of the day all the site’s metal finds had been updated and checked off and we had even started looking at the stone and glass artefacts.

 Tuesday’s volunteers continued with 199BHS74 material, but the focus was on the non metals. Starting with some fascinating bone waste, just like the previous day’s team, Tuesday’s learnt how to pack unprocessed bone finds. Bone waste in itself doesn’t sound that interesting, but these were all bits that had been squared off at the ends and it is highly likely that they were intended for making dice. Some others had drill marks and there was one possible piece that may have been an intended needle.

Having updated these artefacts, Tuesday’s team, went on to check off the already processed bone objects, the rest of the glass material from Monday and then start and complete the updating/checking of the sites registered ceramics. Included in these boxes were some incredible stamped vessels and an amazing gladiator decorated piece of samian ware. By the end of the day, almost all the non metals had been checked and by doing so and amalgamating a couple of boxes along the way, we had reduced the site by 3 boxes!

Wednesday saw the second week of finds for our U3A / Mossbourne Academy Shared Learning project. The volunteers, tackled metal artefacts from Shoreditch Park excavations (NNR05), including brooches, badges, buttons, spoons, thimbles, knitting needles, toy soldiers and decorative mounts. There was a fair amount of wire and metal fittings too… For more info about their session visit their wiki site.

 Thursday’s volunteers started their day with a completely new site - Canvin Street, Hammersmith (CVS74). Finds from this site included tobacco pipes, tortoise shell fan and 18th century wall tiles. Having completed these, they then finished  the general glass finds from 199BHS74, ending  their session with leather finds from 2 forthcoming sites, Ludgate Hill (LH74) & New Fresh Wharf (NFW74).

 This week also so the start of our specialist workshops; Liz Goodman explained conservation practices on Monday, followed by Geoff Egan on metal medieval/post medieval goodies on Tuesday, an excellent talk on tobacco pipes on Wednesday by Jacqui Pearce and Jackie Keily completed the set on Thursday with leather finds.

Below are some images of finds seen this week - for more visit our Flickr Site