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Academic Research: A Day of Meetings…

By Chris Green on July 2, 2012 in Anglo-Saxon, Bronze Age, Day of Archaeology, DayOfArch2012, Digital Archaeology, Early Medieval, Education, Iron Age, Roman, Romano-British

I work as a researcher at the School of Archaeology, University of Oxford. My job is to look after the GIS elements of a large (ERC funded), 5 year project to study the English landscape from 1500BC to AD 1086, which we call the EngLaId project. For any who don’t know, GIS stands for Geographic(al) Information Systems (or sometimes Science) and it is, essentially, computer software that lets you create maps and analyse data in its spatial context (to cut a long story short!). Our project is using GIS as one of the tools in its armoury in order to try to understand continuity and change in the English rural landscape over the period of 2,500 years from the Middle Bronze Age to Domesday. My job mostly involves bringing together a large number of pre-existing datasets within GIS software (specifically, ArcGIS) and trying to find patterns and trends over time.

ArcGIS. Spatial data: contains Ordnance Survey data © Crown copyright and database right 2012 (OS OpenData)

However, Friday was not a day that involved a lot of GIS work for me. Two of my colleagues on the EngLaId team work at the University’s eResearch Centre (OeRC). During the morning, a few of us went over to the OeRC to meet with them and a Professor of Visualisation (Min Chen) and his team. We had a long and interesting discussion about innovative ways of visualising data. Prof Chen made a distinction between the two purposes of visualisation: to enable better academic understanding and exploration of data and to enhance public presentation of data. The former is where his team’s research interests lie and they have done some fascinating work on creating ‘glyphs’ to display multiple data attributes at once. The previous time we met with him, Prof Chen had shown us a series of glyphs that described the behaviour of sperm, which was most memorable for the erratic travel paths of the sperm found in ‘rats on drugs’! The meeting ended with me being invited to take part in a workshop on geospatial visualisation at the end of August.

I returned to my office for a couple of hours, ate some lunch, and set my computer to running some GIS tools. I then returned to the OeRC after lunch, leaving my processing processing, for our biweekly EngLaId team meeting. We normally meet here at the School of Archaeology, but the building is being partly rewired over the summer, so there is currently no space to hold meetings here. The team meeting lasted until after four o’clock, and seemed to be productive.

When we got back to the office, my colleague was told there was in a rat in her office (presumably disturbed by the builders), but I don’t think this rat was on drugs… As it had been a long day, the pub beckoned, so we swiftly adjourned to there. I had to return to the office later to check on my GIS processing (and pick up my bike), which had completed by that time.

Friday wasn’t really a typical day for me, as I am more usually found working at the computer in our attic office. But it was a fairly productive day over all, despite the relative lack of normal work. If anybody wants to know more about EngLaId, then please feel free to check out our own blog.

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Lights, Camera, Action!

By Project Florence on July 2, 2012 in Anglo-Saxon, Community Archaeology, Day of Archaeology, DayOfArch2012, Film Making

My Day of Archaeology 2012 has been an exciting one, as my volunteers arrived on site for the first time, not to dig, but to make a movie.

I am the lucky archaeologist leading Project Florence, a community project aiming to get local residents involved in spreading the word about an exciting army excavation taking place on Salisbury Plain. This excavation is part of Operation Nightingale, a rehabilitation programme for wounded soldiers.

One of our key aims for the project is for volunteers to produce a DVD about the excavation as a record of the dig and to provide a legacy for Operation Nightingale. The volunteers, aged between 14 and 25, are being trained by professional film-makers to plan, film and edit the movie, which will be premiered at the Salisbury Arts Centre (SAC) in November.

Today was the first day of filming on site, following training sessions at SAC last week, and we were all eager to start catching the action. As I have no experience of movie-production, I am making the most of the chance to learn some new skills along with my volunteers. We are all working towards an Arts Award certificate.

We started our after-school training session with the basics, running over the things we learnt last week like how to frame the shot and how to find the best angle. Our ever-patient instructors, Jamie and Simon, explained that we need to take a mixture of interviews and ‘pretty pictures’ to stick together in the edit. So, we set about filming wide shots of trench activity, interviews with the archaeologists and soldiers, and close ups of interesting finds, so far including an Anglo-Saxon brooch and some amber beads. Our highlight of the day was getting to film one of the soldiers, Al, and his son Ben, lifting the most complete skeleton on site so far.

At the end of a busy two hours, I asked the group what they thought of the session:

“I found the archaeology interesting and liked learning about excavation and watching the skeleton being lifted.” Matt, 17

“I really enjoyed learning to use the sound equipment today, especially the boom. I can’t wait to put all our shots together to make the DVD!” Jess, 15

To find out more about both Project Florence and Operation Nightingale check out our blog – click here

Laura Joyner

Project Florence Officer

Wessex Archaeology

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Everybody’s Changing …

By DeborahFox on July 2, 2012 in Anglo-Saxon, DayOfArch2012, Finds, Museum Archaeology

These last couple of weeks have seen the biggest changes that Worcester Museum has witnessed since the 1890s. We have shared our current building with Worcester Public Library since 1896 and before that, a building across the street, but during June 2012 they have moved out of our beautiful Victoria Institute into Worcester’s new HIVE building.

Consequently my day of archaeology has been about new and exciting developments as the museum expands into the library space, our new temporary displays and helping our colleagues as they get the HIVE ready to open on July 2^nd 2012.

Our new temporary exhibition at the museum is designed for our summer audience and is all about fantasy, film, brave princesses, honourable knights and really beautiful Anglo Saxon archaeology from our collections. We don’t have very many Anglo Saxon artefacts and those that we do have were collected by Victorian antiquarians in the main. Our technicians have been building and installing the exhibition all week – big oak doorways, crows with beady eyes, heavy iron chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. We are installing the artefacts today. There is a cruciform brooch, disc brooches and amber beads from Upton Snodsbury, a scabbard chape and spearhead from Bredons Norton, pottery, shield bosses and a beautiful Anglo Saxon bucket from Bidford on Avon that was excavated in the 1920s. Our local archaeological society, Worcestershire Archaeological Society have sponsored the exhibition for us – part of their mandate to become more involved in archaeological work of all types in the county.

Anglo Saxon artefacts from Bidford upon Avon in the new Legend exhibition

Downstairs in the space that the library used to occupy we have installed a fourth plinth (a bit like the Trafalgar Square one but shorter) and today’s residency is called Quilos and the Windmill. There is masking tape all over the plinth and it continues to grow. It’s called sitewriting and I understand it’s to do with mapping experiences and daydreams and the like. I don’t entirely understand it but I’m pleased to say that most of those around me absolutely do. We usually walk through this space without a thought but during the fourth plinth project we have a webcam filming the whole thing including the staff!

Worcester Fourth Plinth

The rest of my day is spent at The HIVE. This huge gold building that has sprung up in Worcester over the last year or so is opening on Monday. Our colleagues in Worcestershire Archive and Archaeology Service, Worcester Public Library and Worcester University Library have all moved into the new space. We are working on the content for the display cases. We have been given the theme of memory and we are filling cases full of nostalgia, the results of research projects and items from the collections of museums across Worcestershire. My favourite part of the displays are quotes from some of the County’s custodians of memory – the archaeologists, archivists, curators and researchers who are so passionate about what they do have been kind enough to tell us why they do what they do and why they love it. The results have been poignant and inspiring. The curator of the new Infirmary Museum talks about her responsibility to those who lost husbands, wives and parents in her ex-hospital building, The curator of Kidderminster Railway Museum describes himself as a young boy looking through the steam into the cab of an engine wishing he could be a train driver and our archivist describes the excitement and anticipation he feels when he opens a package of papers for the first time in 200 years to see what lies within it.

Hal Dalwood, Worcestershire Archaeology at the HIVE

As we leave on Friday we are exhausted but Worcester is feeling like a place full of potential for heritage services at the moment – the new HIVE building is daring and ambitious and we who are staying put in our Foregate Street building have new space and new projects and lots to look forward to.

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Eastbourne Ancestors Day of Archaeology 2012

By Hayley Forsyth on July 2, 2012 in Anglo-Saxon, Community Archaeology, Day of Archaeology, DayOfArch2012, Education, Finds, Museum Archaeology, Osteology

This is the first ‘Day of Archaeology’ that we (Eastbourne Ancestors) have taken part in and so we are quite excited to be involved!

I’m also excited as this is my first full time job in archaeology as the Project Co-ordinator for Eastbourne Ancestors. I work in the commercial world of archaeology as an osteoarchaeologist (human and animal remains) in my spare time too, as well as excavating with a local society and the Eastbourne Museum Service. Archaeology is for everyone and I strongly believe in the community aspect, getting hands on.

You can follow our progress here: http://www.facebook.com/EastbourneAncestors

Although the ‘Day of Archaeology 2012′ fell on 29th June, I was in meetings which wouldn’t have made for exciting reading…but today is a different story.

We are a Heritage Lottery Funded project run by the Eastbourne Museum Service in East Sussex. Our aim is to To fully examine all the human skeletal remains in our collection from the Eastbourne area in order to produce a demographic profile of the past populations that were living here.

The skeletal analysis will include determining the age, biological sex, stature, metric and non-metric traits, ancestry, health, diet, handedness and evidence of pathology. We will also be conducting research into migration studies using isotope analysis, physical appearance using facial reconstruction and family connections, DNA and C14.

As part of this project, we will be giving volunteers the opportunities to participate in artefact conservation, osteoarchaeology workshops, field work, study days, talks and demonstrations and much more. We will conclude the project with academic and public published material as well as an exhibition.

On Friday, Jo (the boss) and I took a road trip to Bournemouth University to deliver 30 skeletons to students to study for their MSc dissertations. We also have a student from Exeter University studying clavicles for two weeks with us for her research. In a few months time we will be taking some of the collection to Canterbury University to be studied by their MSc and BSc students too.

Today is our first volunteer day, we have 5 volunteers busily cleaning skeletal remains from an Anglo-Saxon cemetery site in Eastbourne. Each day for a month, volunteers will be helping to get the remains ready for analysis, which they will also receive training for as part of the Project.

By the 2013 ‘Day of Archaeology’ I hope to have some interesting findings to write about: Where did these people come from? Are they local? How did they live and die? What did they wear? What did they look like?

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The Bitterley Hoard – Day of Archaeology Blog

By Peter Reavill on June 29, 2012 in Anglo-Saxon, Day of Archaeology, DayOfArch2012, Early Medieval, Excavation, Iron Age, Medieval, Museum Archaeology, Periods, Post Medieval, Prehistory, Roman, Romano-British, Viking

Dear followers of the Day of Archaeology,

I hope you have found some my posts interesting today – just wanted to say thanks for reading them and also thanks to Dan Pett and Lorna Richardson (and the rest of the team) for doing lots of the organising for this social media event.

If you want to stay up to date with what’s going on at the PAS keep an eye on our blog and news pages

http://finds.org.uk/blogs/

http://finds.org.uk/news

That’s all from me for this year

All the best

Peter

Peter Reavill

Finds Liaison Officer Shropshire and Herefordshire

Portable Antiquities Scheme

peter.reavill@shropshire.org.uk

Blog: http://finds.org.uk/blogs/themarches/

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Old Uppsala and Beyond

By Asa M Larsson on June 29, 2012 in Anglo-Saxon, Commercial Archaeology, DayOfArch2012, Early Medieval, Excavation, Iron Age, Medieval, Osteology, Prehistory, Viking

Kerstin Westrin and Jonas Wikborg, assist projectleader, excavating a pit house at Old Uppsala. Olle Heimer is looking through the contents of the floor layer. Photo: Asa M Larsson

Rescue excavations – the curse and boon of our profession. We may bleed for the heritage sites that are lost forever, but without the expansion of modern society we would get very little chance to peek into prehistory on a grand scale. This summer there are a lot of archaeologists crawling around Gamla (Old) Uppsala in Sweden, the idyllic suburb north of present day Uppsala, where the impressive great burial mounds of some undisclosed Iron Age VIPs still stand.

Urbanisation came late to this part of Northern Europe, but Uppsala was probably one of the first places in Sweden where this happened, sometime in the Early Middle Ages (or Late Iron Age as the period is still called here in Scandinavia). Exactly when – and how – is a matter of fierce debate, so you can imagine the gleeful joy with which archaeologists here greeted the fact that the railroad drawn straight through Gamla Uppsala needed to be expanded. It’s a massive project involving thousands of square meters of Iron Age and Medieval settlement sites as well as an Iron Age cemetery. It is also one of the most protected heritage areas in Sweden, so the project is a collaborative effort involving our own firm SAU, the Uppland County Museum, as well as the archaeological unit of the National Heritage Board. The more the merrier!

Sofia Prata, osteologist at SAU, is excavating a burial urn with a cremation from the Viking Age cemetery at Old Uppsala. Photo: Asa M Larsson

Not that I get to stick my fingers into the rich, dark culture layers with amulet rings and bear claw clasps, stuck behind a desk as I am doing administrative work as usual. But I manage to sneek out now and then and visit my colleagues in the field. So far the SAU team have found parts of a smithy and several pit houses, as well as long houses from the Vendel and Viking periods (c. 550-750 CE and 750-1050 CE respectively). The cremation cemetery that was identified in a field during last year’s test excavations has turned out to be much larger and more well preserved that we had expected – which is fun but, as we all know, also a bit of a headache for the County Museum that oversees the excavation. The osteologists from SAU will have their hands full, analysing all the cremated human and animal bones.

Celebrating with ice coffee and cherries – ’cause we earned it!

Still, contrary to popular opinion not all archaeologists are out in the field during the summer. Some have been chained to their desk to finish up a report on sites in that we excavated a few years ago. These Bronze and Early Iron Age sites and burials in Northeastern Uppland were established during a perod where the region changed from archipleago, to coast, to inland due to the shore displacement going on since the end of the Ice Age. Today we were frantically double and triple checking the text and illustrations before handing in the manuscript to the Uppsala County Board, who will decide if it can be published.

Afterwards we celebrated. On Monday we continue with other projects at hand, or in a few cases, actually take a vacation…

If you find yourselves in the vicinity of Uppsala this summer and autumn, be sure to visit us – we have guided tours in English as well.

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Louise Fowler: Looking for Lundenwic

By Museum of London Archaeology on June 29, 2012 in Anglo-Saxon, Commercial Archaeology, DayOfArch2012, Excavation, Post Medieval

I’m having a lovely lunch amongst the roses in the garden behind St Pauls church in Covent Garden. It’s a welcome break from the basement nearby where we are working, where there are two machines, a concrete cutter and a team of guys trying to install the steel framework for a new ground floor along with building the foundations for a new staircase as the building is being refurbished. The floor of the basement is being lowered as part of the refurbishment, so we’re on site excavating any surviving archaeology below the existing basement floor.

We’re right in the heart of Middle Saxon London here, but most of today so far has been spent digging some 17th century pits. I’m saving up the Saxon gravel quarry pits for this afternoon! If our basement had been just a little shallower we might have had buildings and streets surviving, but all that’s left of them are fragments that have slumped into the soft fills of the pits, a tantalising glimpse of the town that stood here around 1300 years ago.

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SeaCity Museum: Environmental Monitoring

By Charlotte Dixon on June 29, 2012 in Anglo-Saxon, DayOfArch2012, Maritime Archaeology, Museum Archaeology, Roman

Today I have been doing environmental monitoring of archaeological collections on display at the new SeaCity Museum (opened in April this year). I was lucky enough to start a new job last week as Collections Care and Access Trainee for Southampton City Council Museum Collection Management, funded by the Heritage Lottery Skills for the Future scheme. So far I have had some fantastic opportunities to learn about collections and documentation and today we are focused on environmental monitoring to ensure the objects’ conditions are stable.

Tiny Tag in the Millbrook Roman Hoard display case

The museum houses a range of objects related to Southampton’s past which includes this fantastic hoard of Roman coins excavated in Millbrook, Southampton. Over 4,000 late 3^rd century Roman coins were found during building work. 1,000 of these coins have been put on display for the public to view at SeaCity Museum. The coins are copper alloy and need to be monitored to preserve them in as good a state as possible. To achieve this Tiny Tags were put in cases with vulnerable objects to record temperature and humidity readings at regular intervals on a daily basis.

Next job is to download the information to create graphs and interpret if the levels are right for that particular case. These Tiny Tags can record and store data for three months so the data is logged and the Tiny Tags reset at a minimum of every three months.

Another display case for monitoring is the settlement in Hamwic case. This consists of loom weights, a cooking pot, lamp, spindle whorl, linen smoother, bone comb, whistle, ice skate and tweezers. It is important to monitor this case to keep the bone and metal in the appropriate conditions to prevent the objects from deteriorating.

Putting a Tiny Tag into the Hamwic display case

Hamwic was a Middle Saxon (c.700-850) town situated around what is now Northam and St Marys in modern Southampton. It was an important port and excavations show that many crafts and industries were practiced in Hamwic. The excavations at Hamwic have resulted in one of the best collections of Middle Saxon finds in Europe so I feel privileged to work so closely with such exciting finds!

I have a background in archaeology with a BA in History and Archaeology and a Masters in Maritime Archaeology so it has been a very interesting day learning about monitoring conditions for objects post excavation and the dimensions and concerns about displaying objects, and that has been my day of archaeology. Not all archaeological work is in the field!

Now it’s back to learning about documentation and recording and exploring more interesting objects.

If you are interested in seeing the above mentioned objects for yourself then please visit the SeaCity Museum website.

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A day with the UCL Institute of Archaeology Library: 29th July 2011

By Katie Meheux on August 5, 2011 in Anglo-Saxon, Archaeological Prospection, Conservation, Day of Archaeology, DayofArch2011, Digital Archaeology, Early Medieval, Education, Egypt, Environmental Archaeology, Iron Age, Medieval, Museum Archaeology, Osteology, Palestine, Periods, Post Medieval, Prehistory, Roman, Romano-British, Science, Survey, Viking

Books, books, books. Journals, conference proceedings, technical reports, e-resources. And lots more.

Institute of Archaeology Library

You might wonder why a library wants to contribute to the Day of Archaeology and what our relevancy might be. But libraries, especially specialist libraries like the UCL Institute of Archaeology, are vital for archaeological research and have been part of archaeology since the beginning – the Society of Antiquaries Library was founded in 1751! Researchers – students, academic staff, commercial researchers and even interested members of the general public – come to libraries to find the factual information and the theoretical frameworks that drive and structure their work. It’s also here that the final published results of excavations and fieldwork – site reports – end up!

So if you want to find out a little bit more about what we do and what our customers use our facilities to research, read on!

Our day…

My day starts at 8.30 a.m. I have an hour before the library opens and I usually take this time to open up, sort out the ‘reshelving’ (books used in the library or returned during the previous day) and have a look round for any problems, potential areas of work or to get ideas about how to improve our working space and collections. Ian, one of our shelvers, has been working on periodicals (journals) ‘weeding’ and created some extra space for both the periodicals and the

Egyptology shelves

Edwards Egyptology Library. I work through the Egyptology collection, assessing where we need to shift the books to leave space for growth – I estimate we have space for 3-5 years’ growth overall that can be distributed amongst the shelves. Most humanities and social sciences research libraries have space problems and we’re no exception. Because so many of our books and journals are used for research as well as teaching, we can’t send older material to Stores, as it needs to be on the shelves for researchers to consult. We’re trying to make space where possible by sending journals that are also available electronically to Stores – ‘weeding them’. Electronic access means that we can still provide access to key resources, but we don’t have to have them physically on the shelves.

Yu-ju Lin and Paul Majewski, two of our library assistants, arrive and the library opens at 9.30 a.m. Paul starts work on the virtual exhibitions page we’re building to accompany a Friends of the Petrie Museum exhibition that will be opening in the library in September.

Yu-Ju and the missing book

Yu-ju goes out to look for missing books. In a library with over 70,000 books and 800 periodical sets (I’ve no idea how many actual individual volumes of these we have!) books can easily become mislaid. So shelf tidying and looking for books reported missing to us each week is a vital part of our work. It’s a good day – she finds an important missing book needed by the Ancient History department straight away.

I look through my emails and answer any enquiries. These can be from our current students and staff about their library records and our collections, but also from other researchers asking about our archive material (which is held by UCL Special Collections), staff and students from other universities asking about using our collections or from members of the public who just want answers to archaeological questions. There aren’t too many today, so I start working through our Accessions List (the list of new books that have arrived in the library that month) highlighting some for our Ancient World/Archaeology blog. Once I’ve done this, I continue some on-going work with free online journals. I have a long list of free electronic resources from AWOL (Ancient World Online) that I’m working through looking for digital duplicates of our paper resources. Where possible, we try to always provide digital access to resources – students and staff can get to the 24/7 and pressure on our paper copies – both in terms of use and preservation (general state of repair) – is lessened.

Ricky Estwick

Ricky Estwick comes with our delivery of mail from elsewhere in UCL Library Services. Although we’re a library in our own right, we’re also part of UCL Library Services and our work flows and patterns fit in to the larger structure of the organisation. We don’t for example, do our own cataloguing. This is done in a central cataloguing unit to ensure standardisation across UCL’s library collections and so our material is in line with global information standards. Ricky brings books and periodicals that have arrived for us from different libraries, as well as materials from cataloguing, acquisitions and Stores.

Scott Stetkiewicz comes to the Issue Desk to ask about obtaining materials from Scottish excavations for his MSc dissertation on slag analysis. We have a look through the resources available in the library and online through English Heritage, the Archaeological Data Service and Heritage Gateway.

Stuart Brookes comes in to borrow books for his project ‘landscapes of governance: assembly sites in England, 5^th – 11^th centuries’. Continue Reading →

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8. Community Education: Preparing to teach a workshop

By LIPCAP on July 30, 2011 in Anglo-Saxon, Community Archaeology, Day of Archaeology, DayofArch2011, Digital Archaeology, Early Medieval, Education, Finds, Romano-British

This post is going to outline work I’m doing in preparation to teach a community archaeology course (which focuses upon the transition from the Roman to Early Medieval period in Derbyshire). I’ll be discussing some of the research I’m undertaking for this, and the process of planning and developing a course. I’ll also discuss the importance of AdEd beyond personal interest and development at the end of this post.

Continue Reading →

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