Boxes at the start of the session .................................Boxes at the end of the session
Week 2 and the first real hands on week. Today volunteers learnt how to pack their first finds from the site and we started with registered ceramics. Previously these vessels, ranging from large amphorae to delicate fineware, had been stored in boxes of all sorts of shapes and sizes, with unimpressive packing (mainly newspaper from 1988 - interesting reads in themselves).
The first step was to identify which standard size box was needed, followed by which type of packing material (foam and acid free tissue; use of bags or laying out of objects)
Once packed, volunteers were told how to correctly fill in a new registered finds label (or accession label), noting Sitecode, context, registered finds number, material, object name and period, if known.
Finally, new box labels were written.
The next stage that will carried out is to check the corresponding registered finds cards and mark up that these objects have been seen today.