I joined the company as a project archaeologist in June 2015. For the majority of my time here so far I have been out onsite digging, firstly working on the large Roman site at North Killingholme and since then a variety of other sites across the country. Every now and again, I’m posted in the office where I participate in post excavation tasks such as washing and marking finds, which I quite enjoy.

At the end of February there was an advert on the front desk advertising a temporary secondment as an archives assistant; I jumped at the opportunity to apply. I saw it as a good opportunity to learn valuable skills; develop my interest in post-excavation processes further and increase my knowledge of artefacts.

My application was successful and for the best part of March and April I undertook the secondment; temporarily becoming an archives assistant. During this time I had the opportunity to learn a variety of new skills and experience more of the processes that happen in post-ex, alongside getting to handle all the exciting artefacts that come back from site. I helped to package artefacts to be sent to the specialists, sort and catalogue skeletons, write inventories and help organise finds from incoming projects.

My primary role was to assist and prepare a number of site archives to be deposited to their corresponding museums across the country. In this I prepared both the written site archive, so all the registers, drawings, context sheets etc. and boxed the associated site artefacts. The whole process for each site had to adhere to their associated museum guidelines, each of which was different. I assisted with site collections from Leicestershire, Lincolnshire and Winchester. Some of the tasks within this were quite repetitive, such as numbering and labelling digital photographs to correspond to the photograph registers or writing accession numbers on all the documents. Nevertheless these repetitive aspects are quite necessary as without it the allotted archive wouldn’t adhere to the correct format and so would be at risk of being rejected by the museums.

I really enjoyed my time in archive department, it was great working with the Archive team and getting to know the ins and outs of what goes on downstairs. It was an enlightening experience, as I have now seen first-hand the full process to which each site and it’s artefacts and documents, takes before it finally it ends up in a museum. From being excavated in the field, then in post ex getting washed, dried, marked, sorted, catalogued, sent to a specialist, reports written, stored then finally boxed up with the related documents and deposited to a museum.