Christmas in the Collections Office

Unlike the rest of Bath we in the Collections team breathe a sigh of relief when Christmas approaches: it means quieter days when the phone doesn’t ring, less emails come through the enquiries box, when half or more of our colleagues are away and even the buskers seem to be quieter: perhaps they are Christmas shopping as well.

The Baths are quieter (and in the early morning the Great Bath is wonderfully steamy); so we can do some of the glamorous parts of our job with impunity; dusting the inscriptions and models, checking silica gel in the cases (this is a dessicant which ensures that despite being damp outside, our cases stay dry and this protects all the metal objects) and checking the Roman monument.  We look forward to having a chance to do this during the dark January mornings and evenings.

With more than  36 volunteers and 5 placements working with us this year, its inevitable some mistakes are made: records have been left incomplete, things have ended up in the wrong boxes…..

On this year’s "to do" list is location checking: which is just like stocktaking in a shop: checking that objects are where the database says they are and that they’re in good condition.  We’ve started with photographs which were mainly taken by previous marketing teams.

Checking photographs is always fun, you never know what will turn up! An early photo of Swallow Street with sedan/bathchair hybrid and the Roman Baths in the background

We’ll be checking weights of the Beau Street Hoard coins ready for full publication of the coins to be published next year.

Verity's desk all ready (?) for Christmas 

And we have a chance to review and plan for the new year.  As a Museum Accredited with Arts Council England, we have a documentation plan that lists all the recording we have to do.  With over 64,000 records on our database, there’s only about 10,000 more objects to go!  A lot of this work will be done by volunteers so each object to be documented has to have its paperwork and history is ready for them.

So whilst you're munching on your mince pies, think of us ...

But we're looking forward to welcoming back our volunteers in mid January (a Collections Team is for life not just for Christmas)

Verity & Susan

New Keynsham Abbey display

About half way between Bath and Bristol is the town of Keynsham. Up until Henry VIII’s Dissolution of the Monasteries on the 23^rd of January 1539, it was home to the Keynsham order of Victorine Monks. While some remains can still be seen in situ in the north corner of Memorial Park, much of the Abbey was removed during the construction of the Keynsham Bypass. You can read about the work that is being undertaken with the Abbey Collection in Verity's previous blog.

As Keynsham is part of the Bath and North East Somerset Council, the Roman Baths has taken up care of objects collected from the Abbey site, including a large amount of stonework, and collection of small finds. As Keynsham itself does not have its own museum, there are currently a selection of Medieval tiles, pottery and stonework also from the Abbey on permanent display at the Keynsham ‘One-Stop-Shop’ and library, and just last  week we have installed a new display case containing small objects from the Abbey site.

When I began planning this display, I not only knew next to nothing about Keynsham and its Abbey, but I also knew incredibly little about Medieval Monks and how they lived. Now about a month later, after a few visits to the town, and reading many books, I do feel slightly less at risk of being exposed as a total Keynsham fraud. Although, my knowledge is still very basic!

I think the reason I have really enjoyed putting this display together is the variety of objects from the Abbey site that I had to choose from, including a bone flute, many keys, and a decorative, albeit slightly worried looking carved face. When choosing the objects for display I tried to pick items that were not only pretty and interesting, but similar to objects we have in our lives today. The Roman Baths looks after such a diverse collection from the local area that most people wouldn’t expect. It has been such an experience to be able to handle and work with these objects that were a part of lives so many years ago, and I am really pleased with how it has turned out.

Lead ventilation panel from the Abbey

The display “Life at the Abbey” is currently located on the first floor of the Keynsham One-Stop-Shop/Library. Downstairs you’ll find the aforementioned displays of tile, pottery and stonework, as well as well as Roman material including the amazing mosaics from Durley Hill Roman Villa.  So if you’re ever in the area looking to borrow a book, you could also have a cup of coffee and a look around the building, and maybe learn a little about Keynsham as well. 

We are grateful to Cllr Charles Gerrish who contributed his allowance from the ward councillors initiative programme to pay for the display case. 

Ella, Placement from New Zealand

Cataloguing Keynsham

Cataloguing museum collections is no mean feat. Back in 2011 The Roman Baths Collections team, helped by some hardy volunteers spent a number of days recording archaeological material held in the basement of Keynsham Town hall. These were objects excavated from three key sites in Keynsham’s history, the Roman villa discovered at Durley Hill, the Roman house at Somerdale and the Medieval Abbey (the remains of which are In Keynsham, Memorial Park). Excavated in the 1920’s the material from both Somerdale and Durley Hill had previously been held in the museum at the Cadbury’s site. The storage situation in Keynsham Town Hall was by no means ideal including stonework laid out as it had been excavated or would have been constructed originally. With the closure of the Town Hall and the demolition of the building imminent, the accessioning of the collections had to be done in unusual circumstances on a tight time scale, before being moved to where they are currently stored at our Pixash Lane Archaeology Store.

Window from Keynsham Abbey laid out in Town Hall basement

Since the collection was accessioned in 2011 work has been carried out on some of the collection to produce a more detailed catalogue of information, however this has not been comprehensive, and as such there are large portions of the collection that need further cataloguing.

The collection from Keynsham Abbey comprises some 2200 objects predominantly excavated in advance of the building of Keynsham Bypass in the 1960s. Many of these objects have only a basic identification, in order that the collection can be best made accessible, further information identifying each object is needed. The collection is currently organised by type of material, which makes dividing jobs quite easy; and so it was that in September a band of local volunteers started cataloguing the Medieval floor tiles. Barbara Lowe, the key excavator of Keynsham Abbey had published a catalogue of the tiles and to date the accessioning of the tiles had related to the tile design in the publication.

One of the Medieval tiles photographed by volunteers

Our local volunteers have valiantly begun photographing, weighing and describing the 34 boxes of Medieval tiles, using this publication as a reference; they’ve also been measuring stonework and accessioning even more tiles…and let’s not forget helping with an open day!

Verity

Spiders invade St John’s Store

As part of our Heritage Open Week event at our St John’s local history store this year we had a trail looking at our pest management procedures, – not as dire as it sounds!

We positioned large dangling plastic spiders as clues to the location of pictures of pests and their food stuffs. Children had to connect the pest with what it eats and how we stop them from damaging our collection.

So for instance, one spider sat above our bath chair, and on its fabric lined seat was a picture of a clothes moth and a moth trap was placed nearby.  This fiendish device contains pheromones which attract then trap male moths so they can’t go and find females to mate with… 

Insect traps are in the forefront of our battle against the creepy crawlies: silverfish eat paper so visitor books, letters and posters are at risk, but as a non-flier it is easier to control. However, the inappropriately named woodworm, actually a beetle, are the greatest threat in St John’s with 39 pieces of furniture stored there. Again insect traps near windows and doors help.  Regular visual checks ensure none get their teeth into the wood.  If furniture is infested, treating with a special insecticide and then keeping them isolated from the rest of the store, ensures no beetle escapes.

The handy English Heritage guide to Museum pests

The number of nasty nibblers who love wool, carpets, and other fabrics are many.  But they were represented in our quiz by the carpet beetle, again caught by insect traps and vigilant checking. 

Rodents are always a concern in old buildings and St John’s is in an 1875 school, but, mercifully, all holes are blocked and we do not suffer.   But traps and poison are used in the other buildings where we also store collections.

Children seemed to be unfazed by the prospect of killing pests and were very matter of fact about the demise of mice at home.

Good housekeeping: regular checks and cleaning are important and when not open, we use Tyvek covers to protect the collection. And at the event we displayed these and some of the tools we use: from soft brushes, cotton buds, a hoover as well as protection for us, the cleaners: dust masks and vitrile gloves. 

Verity covering up the furniture in St John's after our event with Tyvek covers

The final question on the trail was whether spiders and humans were pests or friends.  Our young visitors quickly grasped the idea that although spiders catch flies, their webs make cleaning difficult and the sticky fingers and messy habits of humans are sometimes worse than the smaller pests!

Note: no pest (regretfully) was harmed during this event.

Susan

A Busy Heritage Open Week

Every October Half Term, Museums, Galleries and Heritage organisations in Bath and North East Somerset Council take part in Heritage Open Week, taking the opportunity to engage a wider audience with their sites. At The Roman Baths our Learning and Programmes team run family activities on site every weekday, this year’s it’s ‘Fabulous Feasts or Meagre Morsels’ looking at Roman food. They’re also running a family activity at Keynsham Library, ‘Marvellous Mosaics’, where you can investigate the fantastic mosaics from Durley Hill Roman Villa which are displayed there.

The Collections team will be busy as always, with not the usual two events, but three. This year Bath City Farm received funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund’s ‘Sharing Heritage’ strand, which will enable them to produce a history trail around their site. As part of this, they are holding a number of open days, tied in to school holidays, centred around different periods of history. For Heritage Open Week  on Monday 26^th October, 11-2, they are running ‘Medieval Madness’ which will give visitors a fantastic opportunity to learn all about the medieval period, try Medieval food and make a gargoyle. The Roman Baths Collections team will be there with Medieval objects from our collections to show off the splendour (and functionality).

Medieval cistern with an amazing stag decoration

St John’s Store, our offsite store on the Upper Bristol Road, houses our collection of oversize local history objects. These include everything from equipment from the Victorian spa of Bath, through historic furniture and even shop signs! Visitors young and old (and everywhere in between) can come along on Tuesday 27^th October, 11-3, and learn all about how we care for these collections. Find out about the pests that might want to damage our objects, and how we protect our collections against these potential invaders…

A weighing chair from the Spa Treament Centre

At our Archaeology store at Pixash Lane, Keynsham on Thursday 29^th October, 11-3, we will be running ‘Patterns at Pixash’, a chance to explore the amazing collections from Roman and Medieval Keynsham, as well as archaeological material from Combe Down Stone Mines. Keynsham Medieval Abbey, would have been a highly decorated building, from intricately carved stonework, to beautifully decorated tiles.  You can come and get a glimpse of the splendour of this Medieval religious establishment with our re-imagining of a Medieval tile floor. Kids (and grown-ups too) can take part in a number of activities based around these tiles, including making a two-tone tile.

One of the many floor tiles from Keynsham Abbey

If you want to know more about these and other events going on during Heritage Open Week, all the information can be found here at the following link, where you can also download a brochure: heritage open week

Verity, Collections Assistant, Roman Baths

Beauty in Bath: Ravishing Romans and Gorgeous Georgians

When I had the idea to explore some of the beauty regimes that the citizens of Bath endured in the past, it made sense for me to focus on the two periods that the city is most known for: the Roman and the Georgian.

I had my “Roargian”, the roaring Roman-Georgian displayed: a figure of a woman half Roman and half Georgian. The left half, the Roman side, included gold jewellery, braided hair, and clothing including her stola and tunic. The right half, the Georgian side, included a beauty patch, a sack back dress, and lace gloves. Overall, the Roargian demonstrated that the Romans and Georgians had completely different clothing tastes!

I divided my table, like my “Roargian”, in to two halves; one side Roman and one side Georgian, with a “beauty ingredient station for each” describing makeup and skincare concoctions; this made me realise the differences, between the two periods and our own. The Roman’s used urine as mouthwash, whilst the Georgians used lead-based face powders which caused poisoning, neither of these ingredients are things we would use today!

As well as the ingredients, I also had related objects on my table. All my Roman objects were bronze, a popular metal of the time, and included bracelets, brooches, rings and tweezers, just like we use today. The Georgian objects included ceramic and metal wig curlers; wigs were the height of fashion in this period, so these would have been a must for the social climber of the time (or their servants).

Romans and Georgians desired to uphold social expectations of beauty and had a certain idealised look they were trying to achieve. The Romans were more holistic in their approach whereas the Georgian approach was based on achieving a certain aesthetic and they did not care about a daily bath!  Yet, there were similarities between the two in the beauty ingredients used: rosewater, lavender, urine, lead, crushed bugs, animal poo, and vinegar. Some of these ingredients are still used today—hopefully animal poo isn’t one of them!

What I enjoyed the most about this project was how it ignited a dialogue about our beauty practices today. Has our culture really changed that much in its quest to look beautiful? Although I perceive the majority of the beauty rituals of the Romans and Georgians as odd, is our culture just as odd, if not odder? We live in a world where we can easily get an eyebrow transplant to mimic the eyebrows of Cara Delevingne, lip fillers to copy the lips of Kylie Jenner, and facial reconstruction surgery so we can have Angeline Jolie’s cheekbones. This leaves me to wonder if maybe we are the weird ones.

Codie Kish

Learning and Programmes Placement

Reflections on my 2015 placement

Late November of last year I sent an email to the Roman Baths collections team, inquiring about student placements. Eight months later here I am writing my reflection, and I can’t believe how fast time has passed. Though my placement has been a relatively short five weeks, so much has happened and all of it is experience I can honestly say I will never forget.

The first week I began helping process coins from the Beau Street Hoard and though I’m sure coins are burned into the backs of everyone’s eyes, I was new to the project and quite keen. You can believe my excitement then when I was given the opportunity to design a display that would be exhibited at the nearby Radstock Museum for a month. I have always been into the arts, so putting this exhibit together was like combining my two loves: design and ancient history. Research into my display was also quite the eye-opener, and through hands-on experience with the coins I learned a lot. I also learned some important curatorial skills in regards to the public. I had to consider what would catch people’s interest and show them that this collection was not just ‘a bunch of old coins’ but something fascinating and historically important. I doing this I improved my skills in writing labels that would be accessible to everyone, keeping in mind that many visitors’ first language would not be English.

I was later able to apply these newly-acquired skills to my next and last project: my Tuesday Timetable. Tuesday Timetables, the fancy alliterated name for the Bath’s weekly handling tables, each have their own theme depending on the person running them. For my table I chose ‘Tools and Weapons’ since I feel this category would really catch the attention of children and adults alike. My hypothesis proved correct as during the table families crowded around and examined all the different artefacts (especially the hand-axe – with its size and weight it was a really fun object to pick up).

In all, my time at the Baths is something I won’t forget. Though this sounds cliché there is no other way to say it without sounding pretentious. This was my first opportunity to work in a museum and gain first hand experience and I will always look back on these few five weeks for the rest of my career. Who knows where I will be in five years?

Flora

Roman Games of Chance and Skill

 Having just finished my dissertation on the topic of object handling in museums, I was thrilled when the Collections team asked me to design and deliver a Tuesday Times Table by the side of the Great Bath.

At the end of my first week here, I did a handling table for the Festival of Archaeology that involved a mix of touchable objects and objects in boxes. This worked well, but I was left wondering whether it was possible to have an entire group of related objects that were all touchable. As a result, I tried to pick a theme for which all of the items could be handled.

Gaming seemed like a good topic because all of its accoutrements were made of bone, stone, pottery, or robust glass, which made them perfect candidates for handling. However, these objects were not very interesting to look at, so I figured I needed to do something extra to encourage visitors to engage with them. I decided to experiment by allowing people to actually play with these Roman gaming counters. And, happily, Susan and Verity let me do it.
       

This meant that my handling table involved the usual sort of handling for several objects, such as Roman dice, knucklebones, and some decorative counters, while the experimental portion consisted of two laminated boards and twenty Roman gaming counters with which to play terni lapilli, which is essentially Roman Noughts and Crosses (or Tic Tac Toe, if you’re American like me).

 

Gaming in Action

Thankfully, my experiment was successful! Visitors of all ages enjoyed playing terni lapilli and were consistently surprised by the similarities of Roman and modern games, which was a great outcome for the table. We often make the mistake of imagining ancient people as totally different from ourselves, so it was fun to highlight that, in fact, the Romans played games very similar to the ones we play today, including variations on checkers, backgammon, and noughts and crosses.

Games provide a fascinating glimpse into Roman life because they were played by everyone – soldiers, civilians, adults, and children – and in many different places – homes, pubs, soldiers’ barracks, and bathing complexes. At Tuesday’s Times Table, visitors played one of these games in the baths, just like Romans would have done almost 2,000 years ago! 

If you are interested in finding out more about Roman games, see our blog post called “Roman board games at the Baths” http://bathsbloggers.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/nicola-002board-games.html, written by intern Nicola Pullan in 2013.

Tory Wooley, Collections Placement Student

Roman Food

Everyone loves to know what the Romans ate, but do people really know where the Romans’ food came from?  For my Tuesday Times Table, I decided to focus on Roman butchery and hunting practices therefore many of my handling objects were in fact the excess or ‘off cuts’ of Roman food products.

The table layout itself followed the basic process of Roman food production, from hunting depictions on samian pottery, through butchered bone and marine products and then concluded with Roman cookware.

The three pieces of samian were excavated during the Spa excavations (1998) and on all of them are images of hunting. The first dates to AD 80-110 and originates from Southern Gaul (modern day France), and features the rear of a boar. The second piece is from Central Gaul, and dates to AD 125-150, and depicts an image of a panther being attacked by a hunter. The third piece is also from Central Gaul and dates to AD 160-190, and has two deer running towards the right. The interesting thing about these pieces of samian is that two of them (the boar and the deer) depict images of species eaten by the Romans, but the panther sherd shows an animal not indigenous to the UK, especially Aquae Sulis (Roman Bath) and therefore shows  that hunting was a recreational sport, rather than a necessity to produce food.

The butchered animal bone was next on the table. It featured bone from cow (Bos), pig (Sus), sheep (Ovis) and rabbit (Lepus). The majority of the bone shown was from the Spa excavations, and then I also chose three cow bones, a cervical vertebra, a knuckle bone and a long bone, from the Hat and Feather site excavation Bath, of 1992. Almost all of the bone showed evidence of ‘chop’ marks on the distal and proximal ends of the bone, which take the form of a deep ‘V’ shape, suggesting that the bone was cut for butchery purposes with a cleaver or large knife, due to the location of the cut. However one piece of cow long bone and been ‘carved’ parallel to the bone, and this would suggest evidence for the consumption of bone marrow in Aquae Sulis.

The evidence of seafood at the Spa site was extremely high. A multitude of mussel and oyster shells were found, probably originating from the South-East coast of England, along with 257 remains of fish bone, both freshwater and marine. This interestingly suggests the evidence for trade, not only across England, but also across the Mediterranean. It is likely that these marine fish (mainly sea bass) were transported in large amphorae (a large jar with handles) from different areas of the Roman Empire.  Snail shells were also found in abundance from the site, and the combination of all of these food types suggests that Roman delicacies were not too different to those we eat today.

I also wanted to display evidence for Roman cookware to allow the public to gain a concept of the process of Roman food products. From the Spa site was found a white flagon sherd with a rimmed neck, that would have held wine; a strainer spout, that would have been used to strain either food or infused drinks and a sherd of mortarium (used for grinding and mixing herbs) in which all of its stone inclusions had been worn down, creating a smooth surface, clearly showing evidence of high usage in the period. I thought that it was also useful to display a replica samian ware bowl and replica mortarium in which people could try grinding and crushing rosemary and black pepper corns in the same way that it was required to for nearly every Roman meal.

This Tuesday Times Table allowed me to research a topic that I had not encountered previously, and also meant that I was able to give a flavour of Roman lifestyle and food preparation that is not commonly thought about by many.

Ellen Wood

Roman Society Placement and student at the University of Reading studying Archaeology and Ancient  History.

Romans in Radstock

Last year the Beau Street Hoard came to Radstock museum in the form of a Roadshow.  This event proved to be so successful that last month Radstock asked the Roman Baths collection team to bring the coins back, this time as a temporary display. It would be during the village’s ‘Radstock in Bloom,’ this year’s theme being ‘Romans in Radstock.’

Unbelievably, Susan and Verity asked me to put this display together. I was over the moon when asked if I wanted to do it, for display design is something I want to do in the future. Immediately I began brainstorming and researching different subjects and approaches for this exhibit. I had to consider what would catch the public’s interest, show them that this collection was not just ‘a bunch of old coins’ but something fascinating and historically important.

Eventually I settled upon focusing on the coin reverses and their connotations. This idea was spurred by my interest in the reverses for the Roman women on the coins. All of them (except for Otacilia and her hippo) were paired with a symbol or deity that promoted their character. I noticed this when cataloguing Herennia Etruscilla’s coins: On many is the image of Pudicitia, the female version of Roman Virtus. There are no English equivalents for either word, but in short Virtus was the ideal roman male while Pudicitia was the ideal roman female, staying out of trouble and remaining loyal to her husband. Looking at the other ladies, all their coins followed the same idea. Salonina’s coin depicted Juno, the Queen of the gods and the goddess of marriage. Thus her character and status as Empress were upheld by associating herself with the world’s most loyal wife and most powerful goddess.

I then moved on to study the Emperors’ coins. Like the ladies their coins served to promote their image, but unlike the ladies they covered far more different stances. Elagabalus had the military standards and an eagle on his coins, showing him as a strong emperor who would continue Rome’s legacy of glory and conquest. Hostilian compared himself to the war god Mars, a strong favourite of Rome, embodying the perfect Roman soldier. Severus Alexander even had Annona, the representation of the grain supply to Rome, in an attempt to depict himself as a competent ruler who would sustain a prosperous Rome.

Before working on this display my knowledge about these coins was very limited. That is not to say I became a coin know-it-all overnight, but researching and having hands-on experience really gave me an in-depth chance at learning more about these ancient windows to the past.

Flora,   Collections Placement