Happy Summer Holidays everyone!
We hope you have plans for lovely holidays, whether you’re going away or having a relaxing time at home.
It’s been a quieter week for us at JAM as well, which has given us plenty of time to catch up on paper work and recording.
Caption: site photography is an essential part of recording our progress.
That doesn’t mean we haven’t had some excitement. This week is week 1 of the Council of Archaeology’s Festival of Archaeology, and we’ve been working with JAM volunteer Fiona to expand on the Jarrow Hall Oral History Project. She’s been taking recordings from kind participants who have spared five minutes of their time to tell us their memories of Jarrow, and how the landscape of the area has changed.
Caption: Fiona showing off some of our finds.
She’s also been running some object handling sessions with finds frok both this season and last season. If you’re interested in seeing what we’ve found and maybe sharing a memory or two, she’ll be back in Drewetts’ Park next week as well.
We’ve also made some interesting discoveries, like this clay pipe stem.
This clay pipe stem is decorated with stylised floral designs and fleur-de-lis. it likely dates form the 19th century. Highly decorated pipes like this tended to be manufactured in major cities like London and Glasgow, though were also very popular in France and the Netherlands, often sold on the international market, and were often popular with seamen and other global travellers. The stylised design might give us some clues as to who manufactured this pipe.
For the most part we’ve just been working away, looking forward to a sunny weekend.
Speaking of the weekend, there’s still time to get tickets for this months JAM Lecture; Silver Across the Viking North, with Dr. Andrew Woods.
