York Museums Trust Blog

For an archaeologist, there’s nothing like getting your hands dirty. Wild Wednesdays (our free outdoor activities in August on - surprise, surprise - Wednesdays), and an adult education course, has given us archaeologists at the Yorkshire Museum a chance to do just that. Armed with scheduled monument consent we have been exploring the potential of archaeology in the gardens by reopening a trench dug in the 1950’s. Even better, we have been working with the York branch of the Young Archaeologists’ Club - they love a bit of digging, and normally only get one chance a year to get their trowels out, so this was a bit of a treat for all of us! We opened the trench on Friday to give them a chance to enjoy getting grubby just like we do. They trowelled, sieved their spoil and finally sorted their finds. And we didn’t even get rained on (much). I really enjoy working with people who are as enthusiastic as our YAC members (enthusiasm is so infectious!), especially when at the end of the day there’s a general chorus of “When are we diggin’ again?”.

(This blog was actually written some days ago, concerning the Hands on Archaeology day, but I haven’t been able to get on-line to post anything! So here it goes, days late:)

There’s nothing like a day at work, elbows deep in fish guts. OK, elbows might be a bit of an overstatement, perhaps up to my fabric bracelet (collected from festivals) is the more appropriate amount of guts tackled today. I think I will smell best of everyone tonight! But anyway, there was a Hands on Archaeology theme at the museum today, which made the day more out of the ordinary, after the general confusion of me just returning from a holiday and not having a clue about the admission prices for this shindig. It was fantastic, and should definitely be repeated. Walking around the museum, whilst taking the scenic route to the loos’, I saw stalls with colleagues presenting various interesting things, from iron to jewels to fabrics to yes – fish.

I stayed the first time to explore the fish thing further. I am somewhat of an animal rights lunatic, though I do eat fish, but have this strange fascination for icky and gooey wonderfully smelly dead animals. Or perhaps not all animals. It mainly scales down to fish. My family owns a cottage in the Finnish archipelago, and I spent many summer weeks there during my childhood gutting fish. Catching and gutting fish were the most interesting parts of the summer. And here I had fish in front of me, and 6000 year old flint to gut it with. I’ve never gutted anything with 6000 year old tools. So I scratched a bit of the scales off before feeling that perhaps I should return to front desk. But I returned later to gut a whole fish, and cutting off its head, alongside a small child doing the same, being equally excited by the yucky texture. It’s amazing that a piece of flint, basically a piece of rock that has been in the ground for six millenniums can still de-scale, gut and decapitate a fish. I found it somewhat challenging but by no means impossible, and it left me sort of proud of my work. Out then to the Roman style cooker in the Museum Gardens to cook the little beast, and then to be consumed. I felt like a true warrior. Except that I didn’t actually catch and killed the fish. I merely played with its carcass. But it was very, very cool.

And then there was some fish left over, that I got to take home. Even though I think the smell will never leave, this was a really fun day. And we, in my house, will be well fed too.

The first time I met Prince Philip he wished me a very Merry Christmas. It was a hot day in mid summer. Fast forward a few years and I see him in the flesh again, also in mid summer but much less hot and decidedly muddier. He was at the Yorkshire Show with his wife, The Queen. They had come to celebrate the show’s 150^th anniversary - a century and a half of showing agriculture at its best.  And, just like the Queen, York Museums Trust decided to mark this occasion as well, only without the blue hat. For three days a team of enthusiastic (very enthusiastic seeing as though we were up at 6am) staff members and volunteers manned a variety of activities, crafts and artefacts looking at the history of farming. More than 6,000 people came to learn things such as what the Roman’s brought to Yorkshire and how to squash a rat Victorian style. A map of where the women in the Land Army were based in Yorkshire created many nostalgic trips back to a time when they looked after land. Many city girls had never seen a cow before, but a lot stayed after the war, some as newly weds.  Gaby’s psychedelic horses caught the eye of passers by, and a life-sized milkable cow with milk bottle ears provided ample entertainment for children while their parents chewed the cud. For many the big draw was the incredible model of a steam engine and thresher. With its attention to detail and intricate design it was a labour of love for its creator. It was no surprise that it literally stopped people in their tracks, especially those who had worked on life sized versions in the past. And it was the object where most often roles were reversed, with the visitor very politely informing staff what did what.  Although I didn’t get to meet the Queen and Prince Philip, some of the Trust’s staff did. Amy, Lucy, dressed as a milk maid, Christine, dressed as a land girl and Jim dressed as a Monk/Obi Wan Kenobi, were all invited to meet her majesty, and very nice she was too apparently. But not a mention of festive tidings from Philip.

Our web presence has grown a little more; we’ve been experimenting our new Flickr account. We’ll try to restrict it to good quality photos and strong images.

It’s been there for a while, but it was really kicked into life with the Grand Tour in York’s own Flickr Set.  Since then we’ve begun adding content for each of our sites, plus a special History of York Set that’s looking really good already.

There’s even a taster in the box a the bottom of this page…..

We were lucky enough to be given a tour yesterday by Roger Tomlin, an expert from Oxford University. His specialist subject for the day was Roman inscriptions in the Yorkshire Museum, literally shining a new light on the many words in the Roman Gallery.

Personally, the greatest revelation was this stone, which I’d never paid any attention to before. It turns out to be the best piece of Roman inscription in the country and to be an important part of York’s story, marking a major gate of the Roman fortress.

You can now see it on the History of York website here.

Forrest Gump was so obviously wrong…life is nothing like a box of chocolates…life is, quite clearly, a series of opportunities to eat biscuits.  Biscuits tend to carry with them a penalty, such as attendance at a meeting or a promise (if I eat this biscuit I promise to do at least an hours work before I have another) and some turn out to be a little stale, or what you thought were chocolate chips are actually currants.  Then there’s the fact that they often come accompanied by a hot beverage, thus adding a whole layer of metaphorical complexity that boxes of chocolate simply do not have.  See? So much more like life…

Today is the first time our refurbished historic  Hospitium building has been used in anger.  Well probably not in anger - the first clients are the Museums Association who are holding a conference on collections information management.

We have a horse in the gallery. Stubb’s life-size painting of Whistlejacket arrived last Thursday and to general sighs of relief, fitted through the door (with only millimetres to spare.)

He was wrapped in pinky paper - like the Jumblies feet - and arrived in an enormous, articulated lorry. It transpires that the lorry itself is not quite big enough to accommodate him, so he travels in a sort of horse-box attached to the back!

Our new website seems to have been in development for years and years, which is perhaps appropriate for a history site.

But at last its public! have a look: www.historyofyork.org.uk

The idea is that the site will continue to develop for many more years - so if you have any bright ideas for it, let us know.

She seems constantly surprised by how the people of York are attracted to her fame (we do have celebrities in Yorkshire, but the home-grown famous are tainted by too few degrees of separation – heavens, everyone in Leeds knows someone who went to school with a Kaiser Chief and if you experience afternoon tea in Betty’s without glimpsing Alan Bennet, I’d demand a refund.) She’s exotic and glamorous (being American) and defiantly surprising, as she’s here by choice, not the happenstance of birth.  So the people come, as moths to a flame (not that Tracy would ever burn anyone, not even on an off day.)  Last Tuesday they came in hoards, like their Viking ancestors. As we set out her desk with her handwritten ‘the writer is in’ sign, in a corner of the gallery, and she sat with her pen poised, I felt I had led a lamb to the slaughter.  Would she survive?  The crowd were bemused and buzzed like angry bees “When is she going to speak?” “Well,” I suggested, “I’m sure she’ll speak if you speak to her..”  and they buzzed some more.  She did survive…and the Viking bees seemed pleased to have met her.