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Archive for the 'Institute of Archaeology Collections' Category

Away daze – or how to make workshop training work for you

By Rachael Sparks, on 12 November 2013

UCL Museums and Collections 2007

UCL Museums and Collections staff enjoying an Away Day at Kew Gardens. No post-it notes were harmed in the making of this photograph.

Last week, I attended a Collections Trust training event aimed at developing my managerial skills. It was a slick, well-run affair, which I enjoyed despite being in the throes of a terrible cold.

Now I’m a bit of a training junkie, and go to a lot of these sorts of things. Past highlights of my training calendar include courses on dealing with contentious subjects, museum mount-making, digital photography, and record and archive management, not to mention away days visiting countless museums I’d never previously heard of.

Something of a gestalt has developed out of all this, and I think I’m beginning to see a pattern emerging in the culture that is the museum workshop event. So here’s my take on the five key ways in which training works for the museum sector, and makes us better and happier employees. (more…)

The great zombie apocalypse

By Rachael Sparks, on 8 October 2013

Curatorial dilemma no 1: how to defend against zombie attack

Curatorial dilemma no 1: how to defend against zombie attack

On September 18th, UCL Museums and Collections participated in a worldwide event on Twitter: Ask a Curator day.  The plan was to have a handful of curators on call to deal with questions as they flooded in from a curious public. The reality was that we didn’t have many queries sent directly to our feed, so we went out into the Twittersphere to seek out interesting questions to answer. As Keeper of the Institute of Archaeology Collections, I spent an hour manning the virtual desk, and found it an interesting experience. (more…)

Ask A Curator Day

By Nick J Booth, on 17 September 2013

Ask A Curator,  18th September 2013

Ask A Curator Day,
18th September 2013

On Wednesday 18th UCL Museums will be taking part in the Ask A Curator Day event on twitter. The original day was way back in 2010 and this year already has more museums signed up than ever before (525 in 34 countires at time of writing). We know that asking a question in a museum can sometimes feel intimidating , and that we curators can sometimes be hard to track down. There’s so much to do (all that cataloguing…gah!) that we aren’t always the most accessible group of people (though we really do try).  We are taking part in the day as part of our commitment to make our collections as accessible as possible.

Ask A Curator works like this.  Anyone in the world with a twitter account can tweet a question with the #AskACurator hashtag, and it will be answered by any of the institutions taking part. If you have a specific question for us you can tweet it directly to us @UCLMuseums and one of our staff will do their best to answer you. The Grant Museum is also taking part using @GrantMuseum.

In preparation for this I thought I would introduce you to our members of staff taking part… (more…)

Flinders Petrie: An Adventure in Transcription

By Rachael Sparks, on 3 September 2013

What could be nicer than to spend your day off measuring things with a stick?

What could be nicer than to spend your day off measuring things with a stick?

Flinders Petrie began his autobiography by warning that “The affairs of a private person are seldom pertinent to the interests of others” [1]Fortunately for both us and his publisher this proved no impediment, and Petrie went on to write about himself, his thoughts and his life’s work at great length.

Petrie was a prolific writer, both in the public and private arena, and we are not short of material to help us learn about his life. But not everything he wrote was wordy. I’d like to introduce you today to a more unexpected side of his penmanship: his personal appointment diaries. (more…)

Riding on the crest of a ware

By Rachael Sparks, on 6 August 2013

Felixstowe Crested WareI’m quite partial to memorabilia, and I have a passionate interest in the life and work of Flinders Petrie, not just because he’s a an impressively beardy archaeologist and legend, but also because for some years now I’ve been responsible for looking after his collection of Palestinian antiquities at the UCL Institute of Archaeology Collections. So I was quite chuffed when I did a search on Ebay a few years ago, and came across this inspiring item. (more…)

How not to do public engagement

By Rachael Sparks, on 22 December 2012

A few weeks ago, I found myself standing in the artefact store, staring down the barrel of a film camera while the cameraman and director stared expectantly back at me. I was supposed to say something bright, pithy, and appealing about our collections, and I was supposed to say it now.

Pointing at old stuff for dramatic effect

Pointing at old stuff for dramatic effect

(more…)

No lies and some statistics

By Celine West, on 16 November 2012

One of the things we do as part of Learning & Access is outreach work with London schools. This is teaching with objects in the classroom, most often with Primary school children. I have been away from work for a while and returning recently I realized this is something I don’t talk about enough so I’m just going to share some numbers with you about outreach that’s happening now.

In 2 months staff are visiting 23 different Primary schools on 27 different days. They are teaching in 66 classes and are working with 2000 children, children of all ages from 4 to 12 years old.

The schools are spread across 5 London Boroughs and in this 2 months, staff will have spent about 45 hours in total travelling on London transport to and from schools… (more…)

Getting plastered

By Rachael Sparks, on 18 October 2012

Term started a few weeks ago; new students, fresh with the mud of PrimTech on their boots have finally managed to locate their various lecture rooms and labs, and now the serious work of becoming an archaeologist can begin. For the Institute of Archaeology Collections, this means that our objects are once again in high demand for teaching.

Clay slingshots from Arpachiyah in Iraq, a cheap but effective weapon in the right hands. Hundreds of these were discovered, only going to show that sometimes neighbours are after more than a cup of sugar

(more…)

Paying the piper

By Rachael Sparks, on 8 August 2012

The first objects in the Institute of Archaeology’s Collections came from British Mandate Palestine, donated by the famous Egyptologist, Flinders Petrie.

Petrie Exhibiting material from Tell Fara in London

What was an Egyptologist doing digging in Palestine? Pretending to his supporters that he was still working in Egypt, for one. Exhausted by his endless confrontations with the Egyptian authorities, Petrie took off for the region near modern-day Gaza at the sprightly age of 73. He told his supporters he was just going to work in ‘Egypt over the border’, and promptly spent the rest of his career doing just that. (more…)

The Day of Archaeology returns

By Rachael Sparks, on 1 July 2012

The marking I intended to do ....

The marking I intended to do ….

Last Friday was the second ever Day of Archaeology, a chance for archaeologists all round the world to answer that tricky question – ‘so what is it you actually do?’ It offers a brief and fleeting glimpse into the wild and wacky world we live in. My own description of a day in the Institute of Archaeology Collections may be found here. I had intended to spend the day quietly marking in my office, but as usual things did not go entirely to plan.

The best thing about this event is you get a chance to spy on your colleagues, which for me means checking out how untidy their desks are and what their storage units look like. But for those of you who have broader interests, here’s my favourite selections from the museological musings out there. (more…)