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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/