As the summer gets hotter, we’ve had a relatively chill week at JAM HQ, as we’ve been joined by groups of young learners from schools, college and work experience placements. We’ve been learning new skills, finding finds, and trying to keep out of the sun. Here’s a roundup of everything we’ve been up to.
This week we did a little bit of archaeological section drawing. A section is the vertical face of whatever we’ve been digging, in this case the structure foundations, and their relationship to our road and ditch. We make these drawings to supplement photographs as sometimes glare or shadows can obscure the stratigraphy and relationships we’re trying to record. By drawing the sections we make a record that can’t be ruined by weather or deleted by accident, and that can often lead to a clearer understanding of the site through close observation.
For a first go we would say this is a fantastic section drawing!
We were joined by our first primary school group ever on JAM this week, and they had a messy good time digging through the last of our context (0002). Take a look at some of the amazing things they’ve found.
Caption: a glass bead shaped like grapes.
Caption: a possibly military brass button.
Caption: a ceramic dolls head.
We were also joined by Route2Work learners, who took some time out of the sun to help us wash finds on site. We always love to have Route2Work with us, and it was nice having a chill morning under the gazebo.
Another work placement student is with the museum getting an overview of working in heritage. They were able to identify this tooth as the left-most upper incisor of either a cat or small dog.
While one of Jarrow Hall’s Alternative Education students found this green glass bead.
So cool!
And lastly but not leastly, we were joined by young people with Escape intervention. The impending thunder and lightning might have prevented us from being on site, but we still had tons of fun washing some of this year’s finds.
