Stuff you never see Indiana Jones doing..

I suppose that there are moments in everyone’s jobs that stick in their minds. Mine tend to revolve around those things that I never pictured myself doing while studying archaeology at University and dreaming of a career in the subject.
One of them happened this morning, when I could be spotted lurking about in sheltered corners of the gardens around the NT York Office, Goddards. If an observer had looked more closely, they’d have seen a box of matches in my hand, and growing irritation as another and another blew out in the breeze. Have the pressures of life finally forced me to find comfort in the evil weed? Or was an act of arson, a desperate publicity seeking act to promote “Treasured Islands”, about to happen?
Neither, as it happened. My mission was to set fire to some of my own work, to try out the look of singed versions of the “Treasured Islands” posters – tying into the themed – and hopefully engaging - title for the project. No doubt there’s a clever tool on Photoshop for doing this digitally, but I haven’t find it yet, so had to try the more traditional approach.
The project’s high degree of emphasis on public engagement is something the whole project team is having to learn about as we go. It has very considerable capacity to take up time and energy, but it’s really energising thinking about how to present archaeological research in new ways. Why not popularise what we do? The excitement of archaeological discovery is ever present when we do our investigations, but sometimes hard for people to get at behind the fog of “boffinism”. Giving the project a popular face doesn’t harm its scientific footing for a moment, but should make it accessible to so many more people to enjoy.
Work on the posters is just one of things progressing at the moment. We’re finalising the booking of the eighteenth century re-enactors, “Lace Wars”; the first version of the project’s web pages have been designed and gone live on Fountains Abbey’s website, and there’s lots of progress with the on site exhibition. The original plan of having traditional exhibition panels on a trail through the site (from August into September) has evolved and evolved, into something far more innovative and exciting…..
Now, next to turn to the detail of the family-friendly hands on, surveying related, activity for the Festival of British Archaeology events planned for July 22nd and 23rd.