LAARC VIP

LAARC VIP Project - Week 7 (by Glynn Davis)

This week our focus was limited to updating my side of the Project (general finds), as Adam is away fighting bulls in Madrid!

General Finds:
We are still currently working on our largest site to-date – Custom House. Although appearing to be somewhat of a slow week, volunteers have in fact updated a huge amount of pottery – 52 boxes out of 106! This is especially staggering considering the boxes are found to be packed to the brim. One box I updated contained 70 separate bags.
CUS73 is also the first site which has adequate publications. Volunteers have been using excavation reports to check some the illustrated pottery we have been repackaging.

Out of interest the Thames Discovery Programme (for which the LAARC is currently providing swivel chairs and other useful things like computers) will be focusing their initial FROGing on Custom House! Details about the project and how you can join in can be found at their newly deployed website: http://www.thamesdiscovery.org

With Adam back next week (and hopefully un-maimed), I think we will be get even closer to finishing site CUS73. Plus we’ve got the MoL specialists in: Animal Bone and Medieval Pottery!

Steady progress was made this week throughout all three strands of the project.

General finds:

Work continued on the material from custom house (CUS73), completing the 103 boxes of animal bone and making a start on the 106 boxes of pottery. A mixture of roman and medieval contexts were previously stored in small, multi stapled bags, which have a tendancy to get lost within the box. The repacked material is now stored in context order in good standard size bags with clear legable labels.

Workshops:

The workshops this week included a second run for Roman ceramic specialist, Amy Thorpe, who explained the various types of Roman pottery found from the sites volunteers have been working on.

The other workshop was lead by Post Medieval ceramic specialist Nigel Jeffries, fresh from his appearence on BBC’s Inside Out programme. Working his way through a brief history of ceramics, the talk focused on tin-glazed earthenwares, stonewares and transfer wares, including an explanation of the story depicted on the willow pattern plates - the chinese equivalent of Romeo & Juliet.

Metal Store:

Finally overcoming the Beddington Sewage Farm material (BSF81-87), volunteers moved on to complete sites from 1981, including some impressive material from Swan Lane Car Park (SWA81) and even transfer all the finds from huge sites such as Billingsgate Lorry Park (BIG82). The next hurdle is HOR82-86; the Horse Fair site in Kingston.

 Eastern Cemetery Sites:

The University of the Third Age are now in their 6th week also and continuing with general finds from the site. This week they tackled the animal bone. For more infomation as to how they’re getting on visit their wiki : http://laarcvipu3a.wetpaint.com/

 LAARC VIP Project - Week 5 (by Glynn Davis)

General Finds:
This week volunteers have achieved a huge amount with repackaging the general finds. Having finished 106BHS73 at the end of last week we have not only completed updating all material from the next site BLH73 (Bush Lane House) but have careered on into our largest site to-date: Custom House (Sugar Quay, Lower Thames Street). We have managed to update a plethora of Animal Bone – exactly half of the material in only three days (48 boxes’ worth!). Due to the interest shown by volunteers we have arranged for another workshop with our Museum of London, zoological specialist – if not at least to settle an argument over supposed bear claws!

Metal Store:
This week Adam and volunteers have been sorting, repackaging and updating a painstaking site with copious accessioned, metal objects: BSF81-87 (Beddington Sewage Treatment Works, Mile Road). This has led to us completely filling the first set of new racking with registered finds!

One discovery this week was a medieval potter’s tool for decorating ceramic pottery. This has been added to a titan ‘Object of the Month’ competition. You can place your vote at:
http://mymuseumoflondon.org.uk/blogs/archaeology/2008/10/31/object-of-the-month-october-2008/

Museum Specialists:
Our MoL Specialist this week – Nigel Jeffries – enlightened us on Post-medieval Ceramics. Sites 106BHS73 and BLH73 produced an array of material. Below is an ensemble of red fired clay ceramics including a cullender, coin jar and ‘metropolitan slipware’ style jug. Other interesting pieces included the common ‘Willow patterned’ plate and some lively Delftware!

Roman Cemetery Sites:

For more info, take a look at http://laarcvipu3a.wetpaint.com/

Well into the project now and continuing to make great advancements in both strands of the project.

General Finds.

Glynn and his team of volunteers this week finished off their second big site - 106BHS73 - which had produced some excellent Roman material last week and some equally impressive post medieval sherds this week.

To compliment their work, we held a roman pottery workshop in the Ceramic & Glass store with MOL archaeology specialist, Amy Thorpe and found out about amphorae, samian, burnished wares and mortarium.

Metal Store

The metal store tackled the tricky year of 1980 this week. The first half of the week saw vip volunteers join existing LAARC volunteers working on the huge site from Southwark Street - 15SKS80. There are over 2000 individual metal artifacts from the site,  and they were previous stored by object type but have now been reorganised into material then registered find number order. They now await packing with foam or acid free tissue.

There were no U3A volunteers this week, but there return next week when they start to tackle the general material from MSL87 - Mansell Street.

 If you would like to find out more about any of the sites, you can type in the sitecode on LAARC’s online catalogue:

http://www.museumoflondonarchaeology.org.uk/English/ArchiveResearch/ArchiveOnline/

and all LAARC’s photos for this and other projects can be found on flickr:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/laarc/

LAARC VIP Project - Week 3 (by Glynn Davis)

We are well underway with the VIP Programme now - everyone has settled in and we are making great headway with both projects! Volunteers this week have discovered a smorgasbord of artefacts through repackaging objects in both the Metal store and General finds!

General Finds:
As of Monday we completed updating general finds from the VIP’s first major site - Milk Street 1972! And without pause we launched into the next one - 106 Borough High Street 1973. As of today we have managed to repackage all of the Roman pottery from the site which was a real task considering the poor state the material was in. More decorated Samian pottery was found this week, but my personal favourite is a rare Roman Cheese Press (below left). At this rate 106BHS73 should be completed by the end of next week!

Metal Store:
Not only have volunteers done a great job with the general finds this week, but the metal store project has also come along in leaps and bounds. Adam and volunteers have managed to segregate and update Registered and General material from all 1970s excavations. Although unidentifiable iron seems to prevail in the metal store, there have been some exciting discoveries. An inscribed spoon and tankard from site CUT78 (Cutler Street PLA Warehouses) are two amazing post-Medieval, lead artefacts. Close-ups of these and photos of other artefacts and the VIP Project can be found at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/laarc/

Roman Cemetery Sites

For more info, take a look at http://laarcvipu3a.wetpaint.com/

LAARC VIP Project – Week 2, (By Glynn Davis)

The second week of the LAARC’s VIP project has really started to make an impact on the Archive – with new volunteers on board, new shelving space acquired and a study of Milk Street’s archaeology by Museum of London specialists.

General Finds:
Having started repackaging pottery from the 1972 Milk Street excavation (MIL72) last week, this week we have really achieved a lot! All Ceramic Pottery has been repackaged and ordered as well as all the Animal Bone, and we have made a start on the site’s Building Material. Along the way we have discovered some interesting animal scenes on Roman Samian Ware and the remains of a few moggies amongst the large collections of Animal Bone. Already our work shows the vast improvement that can be made to the storage and packaging of material as well as the extra shelf space – in addition we’re discovering artefacts that have been completely forgotten about!

Metal Store:
Although focus has been on the general finds this week, Adam and volunteers have still made great headway in the metal store. All site codes to 1975 have been segregated and some fantastic artefacts have been brought to light. A metal plaque belonging to an antique knife cleaner (researched by Andy) will certainly be entered for our object of the month. In addition a database has started to be complied to make sure we know where all this material is being moved to!

Roman Cemetery Sites

For more info, take a look at http://laarcvipu3a.wetpaint.com/

Museum Specialists:
This week we started our workshops with the Museum of London specialists. Jacqui Pearce examined some of the reconstructed pots from MIL72 - some great examples of Kingston Ware (London) and Surrey/Hampshire border Ware. The Glass & Ceramics store was a great resource for seeing how the site’s examples fit into the history of London’s ceramics.
Alan Pipe took us through some of MIL72s huge amount of animal bone, pointing out the subtle zoological differences between Cow, Sheep, Pig, Horse, Cat…and Duck!

This week, LAARC kicked off its new volunteer project. Overall nineteen new volunteers joined our team to help create more space for future archives, whilst at the same time, improving the accessibility of existing archives.

The project falls into three strands; General Finds improvements, Metal Store Improvements, Roman Eastern Cemetery sites improvements

General Finds: This week we started working with ceramics from 1972’s Milk Street excavations (MIL72). At the start of the week, pottery sherds from various contexts could be found over a range of 6 shelves, the boxes weren’t organised by context order, often several materials were within one box and bags weren’t labeled and sealed according to our standards. At the end of week one, we now have a continuous run of contexts for the ceramic finds, in standard packaging and standard boxes. Just by doing this, we have created a shelf and a half of extra space. Hooray!

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And along the way, already we have come across some incredible artefacts, including almost complete medieval jugs and a range of roman pot sherds. Some volunteers have already started to compare these sherds with complete vessels in our Ceramic & Glass Store (http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/ceramics/) and next week specialists from MoLAS will be running workshops to provide further information.

Metal Store: Although the focus has mainly been on General Finds this week, we have kicked off the second strand of LAARC VIP and already seen vast improvements.

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 LAARC’s metal store has suffered over the years mainly through lack of shelf space, which has meant that General and Registered metal finds have sat together on shelves and certain sites (due to iron being transfered from cardboard boxes to wider plastic air tight boxes) have material on temporary shelves.

After week one, all the registered finds from 1972 and 1973 have been transfered to new racking and sit in order of finds number, making locating a object much easier.

Roman Cemetery sites: the third mini project is in collaboration with the University of the third age. This week was actually the second session for them but the first where they handled artefacts. We concentrated on ceramics, mainly from burials, which had been stored in various sized boxes, often padded with newspaper from 1989. Not ideal. Now however, with effective packing, vessels are padded with acid free tissue, stored in standard boxes and fit much more sweetly on the shelves. Almost a whole shelf of space has been created.

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For more on the U3A/LAARC project visit its mini website: http://laarcvipu3a.wetpaint.com/

Hi, I’m one of two Archaeological Collections Officers working on the LAARC VIP Project. I shall mainly be in charge of the Metal Store Project.

I have actually worked at LAARC for almost four years and I started as a volunteer a year before working here. I studied classical archaeology at university and then went straight into being a field archaeologist once I had graduated. I have worked on sites both inside and outside London, including the site in Southwark where the earliest marble inscription with the word “Londinium” was found (which can be viewed in the museum’s Roman Gallery) and a site just outside of Rome itself where I got to excavate a mosaic and a temple covered in painted wall plaster.

My previous role at LAARC was to curate its registered finds, which saw me supervise a team of excellent volunteers, packing and updating the storage conditions of this part of the archive. However, the job also involved assisting researchers, leading tours of the stores and running outreach and handling sessions as well as organising open days. I’ve even been lucky enough to have given a presentation on the LAARC at a conference on the other side of the world in Seoul, Korea.

I’m looking forward to this the role as it allows me to focus on a single project and improve the condition of our metal store, which has not been in the best of states for some while now.  

LAARC is about to start a brand new volunteer project which will develop the good work carried out over the past 6 years in previous projects

LAARC stores and curates over 180,000 boxes of London’s archaeology and although access to these archived sites is good we’re always looking for ways to make it better. One of our biggest problems is the condition of material excavated over 30 years ago. More often than not, excavations run on limited budgets and back in the day, bags and boxes weren’t a priority. This has left LAARC with several “old” archives stored in bags that have seen better days within random sized boxes Although previous projects have involved changing damaged and contaminated boxes, there are still non standard ones sitting on our shelves and there has never been the time or funding to sort out the bags inside.

However, thanks to HUB funding, we can finally start to tackle this backlog of 1970’s material. Over the next 6 months, with the help of teams of volunteers, we shall be rebagging, reboxing, relabeling and sorting out our general finds, with the aim of not only getting them in a tip-top shape, improving accessibility, but also generating more space, which can be used for future archives.

Running parallel to this project, we shall also be transforming our metal store, which has recently benefitted from new racking. These new shelves will form our metal registered finds archive whilst the current shelves will store our metal general finds - again improving accessibility whilst making efficient use of our space.

Finally, not forgetting the registered finds, we welcome back the University of The Third Age, who will be improving the condition of the finds archive for the roman cemetery site on Mansell Street (MSL87/MST87) excavated in the 1987.

 We shall be posting updates and images of our progress on these pages, so why not revisit these pages to see how we’re getting on.