Just a quick recap of all the progress made over the last few weeks on today’s JAMCam. We’ve been busy cracking through another two-week block of post-excavation work and can finally say that we’re just about finished processing everything recovered last September.
Caption: The drafty corridor for us poor souls.
Last year, we finished washing, marking and counting the majority of our material, mostly glass bottles and pottery sherds, which meant this year we had to go through the fiddlier objects.
Caption: A finds tray filled with treasures.
This included all of our Small Finds and delicate materials such as fabrics and cork. This is an essential part of the process, especially at this stage where our priority is making sure all of our objects are stable, safe, and ready for either storage or study. A large part of this process has been going through each and every object and deciding whether they need to be moved from finds bags into small storage boxes with acid free paper.
Caption: A potential knife blade tucked safely away in its archival container.
This is usually a treatment reserved for delicate objects such as organics, heavily corroded metals, or breakable glass. The plastic containers are stackable and prevent breaks and crushing, and the acid free paper creates a stable, pH neutral environment. Acid free paper is treated to remove acids and lignin, which would otherwise cause the paper to discolor and degrade over time. As a result, acid free paper lasts much longer and can prevent damage to the artefacts themselves.
We also enjoyed the first in our series of JAM Lectures last month. We were treated to a look at our preliminary results by Dr. Marco Romeo-Pitone, and then to an afternoon of brick scrubbing (yay!). If you didn’t catch this lecture, that’s okay because we’ll be holding a new lecture every month. These lectures are meant to contextualize the Anglo-Saxon world beyond the monastery and will take a look at topics from Zooarchaeology to Numismatics. This month we will be joined by Professor Michelle Brown who will be talking to us about Ancient Manuscripts in Jarrow. This lecture will be taking place on the 28th of March, 10:00 in the Museum Conference Room, so make sure to save the date!