Week 5

Yesterday was week 5 of our project. Our plan was to view a selection of objects for each Greek god/goddess or characters we had chosen to put in our catalogue. However, unfortuneately we weren't able to do this yesterday due to slight communication issues!



It was not all bad news though as we did have a selection of coins to photograph as posted by Erika! This allowed us to at least assign some of our chosen gods/goddesses and other characters to some objects and as a result we had quite a productive day!



More good news followed with some of our group visiting the archaeology store today in order to select and photograph the remainder of the objects. This means that by next week we should have all of our objects selected and photographed.



We also had a small chat about other research everyone had been doing. We all decided that an introduction to archaeology and the ancient Greeks was vital in the catalogue and so Hannah is sending around what she has written already for us all to add to where we feel it is necessary! I am doing the same with regards to a glossary which we think is essential for children to understand some of the terminology we are using. It is a great way to succinctly explain what we mean by things like accession numbers, artefacts, conservation etc.

This will be created by any words we feel need explaining in the catalogue being outlined in bold which will then refer the reader to the glossary and the definitions of the words at the back.

We also decided on a visual diagram of a museum object to add to the catalogue which will label the accession number, the material, the dimensions etc. This will set the reader up with what these things mean with regards to the rest of the objects in the catalogue.



We also discussed the need to be interpretative in our introductions and explanations within the catalogue. It is important we go beyond explaining what different things mean to explaining why these things are there. Why is it important to have an accesstion number? why are the objects in the museum? why did the ancient Greeks have images of gods and goddesses on coins or pottery? what do the depictions mean?



Finally we all agreed to come up with one activity to add to the catalogue for next weeks meeting! This should be interesting to see what we come up with! It could range from word searches to toga making! Maybe we should try them out!

(written by Louise Thomas)