February 20, 2002

Cool stuff: Get in Touch with Ancient Britain !

from UK Telegraph

Europe's largest archive of broken pots, scraps of clothing, household junk and human bones has thrown open its doors to the public. The archaeological collection, stored in 120,000 cardboard boxes stacked on more than six miles of shelves, includes some of the most important remains dug up in Britain over the past two centuries.
More than 18,000 human skeletons are stored at the centre, along with Roman pomegranate seeds, Saxon jewellery and Tudor tankards from more than 4,000 digs.
It is the first time such a large British collection has been brought together and made available to the public. More than 200,000 individually recorded finds collected since the 1830s are stored at the centre. They include Roman dog and cat footprints, medieval loaded dice and 17th-century graffiti.

Boxes are filled with thousands of Roman shoes but only one matching pair. The oldest artefact is a 20,000-year-old flint knife. The remains of the Globe and Rose theatres are housed in the archive, along with remains from the Temple of Mithras, one of Roman Britain's greatest treasures discovered in the City of London.

Anyone with access to the internet will be able to search for archaeological sites or particular finds.

The new London Archaeological Archive and Research Centre, run by the Museum of London, is based in a warehouse in north London.



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