We’ve been doing more Post-Excavation work over the last few weeks at JAM, trying to push through the last little bits of brick scrubbing. It’s not all been washing dishes though, as this week at JAM we were joined by a group of young people from Escape Intervention who spent a morning taking photo’s and learning about archaeological illustration. We thought that maybe it would be interesting to hear about the collection in their own words, and let them take over the JAMCam for this week.
“We picked some of our favourite objects from today.”
“I like the ration tin because its from 100 years ago from WW1 which started in 1914 to 1918. You can still see the biscuits and cigarettes, it will make you sick if you try to eat it. the metal is all crushed together so you cant really open it to see the 100 year old contents and its from Christmas, it would have had the Royal Family on it.”
“It was used in Victorian times, it was one of the most famous ways to assassinate a King or Queen! They could have contained Arsenic, but this one contained Silver Nitrate. it was used for developing pictures and as a disinfectant. It was made by mixing up chemicals and it is quite old.”
“It is nice and colourful, its got patterns on. The patterns were used so that blind people could feel that it was a poison bottle. I picked it because its nice, its just the right size to measure things, its interesting because I learned that it was used so that people know that it was poison and was made to save people from drinking it.”
“It’s really cool, it shows details of what things looked like and where people might have lived- what the buildings looked like. it was made locally as well so that’s what Newcastle might have looked like. We can date it to 1924-35. its only a piece so there’s probably more, if it was dug up before people could have lots of little pieces of it.”
“if you were a farmer you would have had a barn- a cow or a pig one- and you might have nailed it to the door to show which-is-which and you might have had a chain to show how many you had.it looks like its been cut in half and needs to find his other half. Maybe they cut it in half to save money, so you have two pig statues for one.”
“The dolls face is really creepy, but it was probably seen as normal and was probably an adult or a child’s. it was broken into two bits. it was probably made in Germany.”
“Goo jar might be human goo! It’s in a medical sample bottle so could be anything.”
“We also did some archaeological illustration!”
“Today was really fun!”
“This is Larry.”
We had tons of fun letting the young volunteers write todays blog, and it’s possibly one of the best to-date.