Welcome to our first spotlight! What are spotlights, I hear you cry?
Did you know that in a lot of museums, the majority of their objects aren’t on display? According to ICOM (the International Council of Museums), 70% of museums had less then 15% of their collections on display. The British Museum displays only 1% of their collection, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art shows only about 5%.
As a museum, we can’t fit all of our collections on display at once. We thought this was a shame because we have so many amazing objects we want to share with you. Not only that, but there are so many brilliant things happening around our museum, farm and Anglo-Saxon village all the time that we would love to shout about.
That’s why we came up with spotlights! These will be features on our objects or other fantastic things we want to highlight, including blog posts and displays in our new case inside the museum. Keep an eye out, because the spotlight will change regularly. This means we’re able to share things with you that you might not normally get to see, and we can change the display much more quickly than our temporary exhibitions.
So let’s dive into our first spotlight. We created this spotlight with the help of the Young Archaeologists’ Club (YAC) members aged 8-12 who we have had the pleasure of hosting here at Jarrow Hall. Our YAC was made possible thanks to the National Lottery Heritage Fund.
The young archaeologists found these objects when they were learning archaeological excavation techniques. Our young archaeologists chose which objects they wanted to show in this spotlight with the help of Corey Lyddon-Hayes. Corey is our Education Project Officer (Culture and Heritage) who facilitated the YAC sessions.
The first objects our young archaeologists chose were these replica Roman coins. There was definitely some excitement when they saw the glint of gold! A re-enactor in our village probably dropped these coins. They include a replica of a large copper coin called an as. This was was the most basic unit of Roman currency, sort of like our pennies! The emperor on this coin is Domitian, who was emperor from 81 to 96 AD. We can tell this from the image of the emperor on the obverse, which is the front of the coin, as well as the inscription around the outside. They also found a replica of a gold coin called an aureus, which was the largest coin in Roman currency. This is a replica aureus of the emperor Augustus, who was the first Roman emperor. He ruled from 27 BC until 14 AD.
Staying with our theme of trade, our young archaeologists also found this fantastic trading token. Trading tokens are coin-like objects that might be used instead of money. They would be issued by a specific business and the tokens could only be used to buy things at that shop or business. Trading tokens were normally made of cheaper metals like brass, copper, pewter or tin. They were common between the 17th and 19th centuries, but especially when there was a shortage of coins. For example, people used trading tokens a lot when there were coin shortages due to the English Civil War.
This trading token is made of lead, another cheap metal often used for trade tokens. It dates to around the 16th or 17th century and has a flower with five petals on one side and an anchor on the other side.
A fairly common find on archaeological sites are animal bones. Our young archaeologists found some animal bones as well as a pointy canine tooth (possibly from a dog or a pig) while they were digging. What animal do you think these bones might have come from?
There is a special word for archaeologists who work with animal bones – we call them zooarchaeologists! To find out what animals these bones are from we might ask a zooarchaeologist to examine them. Zooarchaeologists can also investigate animal bones to find out how old an animal was and even what it ate or where it lived. To find out more about what zooarchaeologists do, why not check out our newest temporary exhibition, Zooarchaeology: Animal Stories Told through Bones? You can learn about the work of a real zooarchaeologist, Meg Leake, who has been studying the animal bones found here at Jarrow as part of her PhD with the archaeology departments at Newcastle University and Durham University through the Northern Bridge Consortium.
Lots of organic materials do not survive very well for a long time. This means that archaeologists are more likely to find objects made of other materials like stone or metal. Our young archaeologists chose these metal objects. We have a handle from a bucket, nails and a washer. A washer is a small, thin metal disk used when fastening nuts or screws to make sure they don’t loosen. We have lots of very old nails in our collection – they are another common find. Metal nails gradually replaced wooden pegs as producing metal nails became cheaper and more efficient. However, people might have used wooden pegs more often than it seems – they just don’t survive as well as the metal nails.
Another object chosen by the YAC group is this brick. Bricks are another type of object archaeologists might come across quite often. They might also have some sort of writing or marking on them to show who made it and when. This can be really important for archaeologists if they are, for example, trying to find out how old a site is.
This brick says ‘Jones Bros., Pelaw’. The Pelaw Terracotta Works was an important brickyard. By 1911 it was owned by the Jones brothers and became the biggest factory of first class engineering and facing bricks in the North East for more than 50 years. This brick shows us an important aspect of North East industrial history!
Our young archaeologists also found lots of flint during their excavations. Flint is a very useful material that people have used for a very long time for making tools and starting fires. Humans first started making stone tools at least 2.5 million years ago. Two of our young archaeologists found lots of flint and the group dubbed them the ‘Flint King and Queen’! Long may they reign.
It was wonderful to see our young archaeologists learning about archaeology, developing new skills, and lighting up with joy when they uncovered something during their excavations. We hope you enjoyed this first spotlight – keep your eyes peeled for our next one soon! And in more archaeology news, make sure not to miss the regular updates on our Jarrow Archaeological Mission (JAM) excavation. It has certainly been a very exciting summer of archaeology.
In the meantime, keep an eye out for more spotlights! When you visit the museum, be sure to check out our brand new spotlight showcase where we will be displaying objects for our spotlights.