York Museums Trust Blog

(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.

Well, that was one of the most bizarre (but most fun) afternoons I have ever had! Today families were given the chance to try and protect two eggs - one was to be launched in a rocket, the other was to be thrown off the roof of the musem. And, of course, the aim of the game was to see if your eggs had survived.

For me the fun was to be had because I was one of the lucky members of staff who was able to go up to the roof of the Yorkshire Museum and throw eggs off it. It was really odd to be up there for the first time (it’s a little difficult to get to, and of course only employees with good reason to are allowed on the roof), to look down on people, and to be flinging away carefully prepared eggs. We had to throw the eggs far enough for them to stay away from the edge of the building and land on a target, but at the same time hope that a child wouldn’t be really disappointed if their egg hit too hard. One egg hadn’t been so well secured in a polystyrene cup and came flying out of it about half way down, smashing right into the middle of the target. The parachute gently followed it and came fluttering down all by itself… 

 We’re doing it all again tomorrow. I’m sure I can find the time to have fun throwing eggs off the roof  help out my colleagues with an important activity!