York Museums Trust Blog

Our curators Isla Gladstone and Stuart Ogilvy have been hard at work piecing together the 100-or-so sections of a giant ichthyosaur fossil in preparation for the re-opening of the Yorkshire Museum.

The massive sea creature, more than 20 feet or six metres long, was a predator in the seas over North Yorkshire during the time of the dinosaurs.
Our ichthyosaur is one of the biggest in Britain and its remains were found in Jurassic rocks near Whitby on the Yorkshire Coast. It is very rare to find one as well-preserved and complete as this one.
Isla and Stuart had to work out exactly how much space the huge fossil would take up and how it should be mounted to display it to its best effect in our new gallery, Extinct – A Way of Life.
Each piece of the huge jigsaw fossil been numbered by curators before them and each will be put back into place yet again when it goes on show.
Before then, the pieces will be sent away to be cleaned up and restored so the impact of this huge beast on visitors is as dramatic as possible. This would have been a beast you would not wanted to have encountered if you were a little fish swimming through the waters of Jurassic Whitby…

Here’s a glimpse of some of the Yorkshire Museum’s galleries before and after our building work began…

Work is well underway on transforming the  museum in time for our re-opening on 1 August, 2010, when we’ll have five fantastic new galleries.

For those familiar with the building, the difference is already striking. Not only have all the cases and displays gone, but internal walls have been torn down and covers taken off hidden windows, letting in daylight and giving the place a feeling of being much more spacious.

Behind-the-scenes shots of a press event at the British Museum.  It was the launch of the new exhibition ‘Treasures From Medieval York: England’s Other Capital’

All of the treasures are from our own Yorkshire Museum collection.  It’s the first time the BM has displayed another museum’s collection in this way.  Very exciting.

Victoria Adams, a newly-arrived archaeologist at the Yorkshire Museum, describes what it was like to be on the scene when a skeleton was found by builders…

It is claimed that you can’t dig a hole in York without disturbing archaeology, and that certainly seemed true recently when human remains were unearthed beneath the foundations of the Yorkshire Museum.

Contractors were excavating a drain as part of the museum redevelopments, when they uncovered part of a human jawbone and cranium.  A watching brief was in place, so archaeologists quickly came on the scene to record the exact location and relative position of the bones. The remains were then removed to a safe location, allowing the contractors to continue work.

I was asked along to ‘hold the end of the tape-measure’ and accurately plot the find-site, for what we thought was just a few pieces of bone. Excavating a bit lower, more of the skull was unearthed, then the ball of the hip bone amongst the skull fragments, so we concluded that the skeleton was disarticulated, or jumbled up.  Lower still though we found the arms, ribs, and spinal column all in situ, with a large Victorian pipe cutting across where the pelvis and legs should have been. It appears that the historical builders were somewhat unconscientious, and on discovering human bones just threw them out of the way!

The skeleton may be that of a medieval Christian, as it was deliberately laid out to face east in the eventuality of waking up on Judgement Day. If so, he or she is likely to be associated with St Mary’s Abbey, the ruins of which surround and continue under the museum.

However to add to the intrigue, large fragments of Roman ceramics were found immediately above and below the bones. These may have been disturbed when the grave was dug in medieval times. Or this may be Roman grave, Christian or otherwise!

An osteoarchaeologist is currently examining the bones to determine age, gender and any other information about the individual’s life and death.  If the pathology is interesting then they may be carbon14 tested, to accurately determine the age of the bones. Eventually the skeleton will be respectfully reburied.

Does the Yorkshire Museum have any other skeletons hidden in the water-closet?! Quite probably, as many people were buried in the church and grounds of the medieval abbey.  Excavation destroys archaeological contexts, and analytical processes are continually developing, so it is better to leave sites undisturbed if possible.

So yes, it is quite likely that more bodies will come to light in the future. That’s certainly something to think about as you eat your picnic in the Museum Gardens.

(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.

My first day back in the office and i’m introduced to a new member of the team who was happily sat on my colleague’s desk. I  must admit that working in museums is definitely not dull and boring as you never know what tomorrow will bring! Today i met Yorkie-saurus! Yorkie for short –  is a colourful looking remote control robotic dinosaur that was created by the fabulous Science team at the Yorkshire Museum – he is fantastic!  He moves forward, backward and can also swivel. I’ve been informed that Yorkie will be making his appearance to visitors next week at our Dino-robots Family Challenge Day. Visitors including me (during my lunch break of course) - will be given the chance to build and name their own remote control dino-robot and  enter their creation in our special dino race – it’s going to be fun. Can’t wait for lunchtime next Wednesday!

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.

Agate is a semi-precious stone often used in jewellery. It is a form of the mineral Quartz, known as Chalcedony. It is only known as agate when it is banded as shown by this specimen. There is almost always a difference in colour and translucency between individual bands. This example is a polished, oval flat cabochon and is 33 carats in weight.

The name agate comes from an occurrence in the river Achates (now the Drillo) in the South west of Sicily The old term of achates does not quite equate with our modern agate, since other minerals, including some alabasters, were also known as achates.

Agate is by no means uncommon in Britain and is known from several localities. Scotland in particular is known for particularly high quality agates. In Southern Perthshire, the Ochil Hills have produced many fine agates in the past and continue to do so today.

Info. by – Stuart YORYM : 2006.107

This is a porcelain three-tier table centrepiece by Rockingham and stands about 2 feet tall. It was made at Brameld & Co. between 1830-1868 and was decorated by Alfred Baguely in the same design as a dessert service made for William IV in 1830.

It is an incredibly complex decorative piece of 10 parts, combining modelling, matt and burnished gilding, painted scenes on the base (Hawes water from Thwaite force and Lowther Castle and Park) and tiny painted Civil War scenes on the bowl at the top. It is a beautiful though somewhat gaudy piece on its own, but imagine it covered in flowers, fruit and desserts on a Rococo period table….

From the Arthur Hurst Bequest to the Yorkshire Museum in 1940. Currently in store 

 Information by - Helen

YORYM:2000.4708

Most people would think of this as ‘stained glass’, but would you believe it’s actually painted? It’s one fragment from a collection of pieces acquired from excavations. This medieval glass has survived really well in unfavourable conditions. Much buried medieval glass decays terribly.

Looking at the intricacy of this single piece of glass, you can just imagine the hours of work which must have gone into a whole window. Church windows would have been a truly impressive sight to the vast majority of the population. Most windows would have been a shutter covering a hole in the wall!

Info. by – Katherine

YORYM : 2007.6077