Monday, July 8 - Museum of London Archaeological Archives

Day 11 - July 8

Today we visited the Mortimer Wheeler House of the Museum of London Archaeological Archive and Research Centre (LAARC).  This is one of three buildings that make up the Museum of London.  This building is where everything is kept that is not being displayed.  The building has three different areas.  The top floor holds the field staff, the archaeologists   There are 120 people that work for MOLA (Museum of London Archives).  These specialists go over every item and make sure that each piece is correctly identified.  The middle floor is LAARC, the research centre.  The bottom floor houses Social and Working History Collections   

http://www.museumoflondonarchaeology.org.uk/MuseumOfLondon/img/archaeologylogo.png

Social and Working History contains six different areas.  We started out in the toy and game room.  It was a lot of fun seeing some of the old games and toys held there.  There was even a toy red phone box and a royal urinal.  All items can be found through the MIMSY system which is the museum information management system.  Another area holds x-rays of many items in order to get better views of some things.  In the processing room, Dan, our guide, told us how things are labelled.   The first number has 3 letters and 2 numbers.  This tells the worker where the item was excavated and in what year.  The 2nd number is the context number that tells the worker where at the excavation site the item was found.  We saw many examples of animal bones.  We were also shown the drying process.  

Some of the interesting items we were shown include a whale jaw bone that was found in the Thames, a stone cannonball from a Shakespeare theatre, and a leather boot from a Shakespeare theatre.  The cannonball was used as a prop and rolled across the stage to create thunder like sounds.  It was found in Shore-ditch at The Theatre.  This theatre was taken apart piece by piece and rebuilt across the Thames as what we now know as The Globe.  

The LAARC is the world's largest archive.  There is a Guinness World Record certificate to prove it.  The archive level is broken down into 3 sections; the environmental section, the registered finds, and the general finds.  There are over 10 1/2 Km of shelving.  They also maintain a volunteer and work experience programs.  Everything is stored alphanumerically by site and then year.  

The archive was extremely interesting with the number of artefacts we were able to view.  We were able to spend the rest of the day on our own.  

That is all for now...