http://www.finds.org.uk/wordpress Recording antiquities till they rock on! Thu, 24 Jul 2008 14:31:52 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en The British Museum has undergone some extensive work over the last year or so. One of the latest additions are British Sign Language videos which were produced by students from Frank Barnes Primary School for Deaf children. They worked with Museum staff to give their own interpretations of African masks ... http://www.finds.org.uk/wordpress/british-sign-language-videos-on-bm-website/ One of our ex Finds Liaison Officers, Faye Simpson, is now pursuing a PhD at the University of Exeter and regularly presenting on Time Team. She's asked me to publicise this free conference. Community Archaeology in South West England Free Conference held at Exeter University on the 21st of February 2009. For abstract ... http://www.finds.org.uk/wordpress/commarchaeologyconferenceexeter/ The forthcoming Hadrian exhibition is now starting to generate quiet a lot of coverage in the press. The RSS feed from Yahoo! (Google has tables in their markup and that ruined my aesthethics :( ) incorporated into this post updates with the latest news stories relating to the exhibition. Happy ... http://www.finds.org.uk/wordpress/hadrian-exhibition-in-the-press-and-tv/ This just came through in our office notices and might be of interest to those with a Romanist stance. 'Hadrian' - Saturday 19th July, BBC2, 20:00 As the British Museum prepares to launch its spectacular exhibition on the emperor Hadrian, Dan Snow takes us on a journey around Hadrian's vast empire. As ... http://www.finds.org.uk/wordpress/hadrian-on-tv/ I just saw this on the Britarch list, in amongst the ire being directed at the awful Bonekickers series. In a roundabout way, we're sort of connected to this..... The 1st September will see the deadline for this year's Young Archaeologist of the Year Award 2008 entries. This competition is organised ... http://www.finds.org.uk/wordpress/youngarchaeologistprize/ I've had a couple of queries over the last week regarding the traffic light system that we use on our database. This reflects our workflow system of publication and is explained below: - The red dot, which researchers and Finds Liaison Officers, admin and Finds Advisers can see means that ... http://www.finds.org.uk/wordpress/workflow-icon-semantics-on-our-database/ [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="210" caption="Marble bust of the Roman Emperor Hadrian wearing military dress. From Hadrian’s Villa, Tivoli, Lazio, Italy, c. AD 118–130"][/caption] On the 24th July, the British Museum's eagerly awaited exhibition on the life of the Emperor Hadrian is due to open in the Round Reading Room. This follows ... http://www.finds.org.uk/wordpress/hadrian-exhibition/ The Wordpress team released their latest offering of their fantastic blogging platform yesterday, so I took the opportunity to upgrade our system. We're now running on 2.6 and it allows for a lot more functionality in the editing suite. The side by side edit comparison is particularly useful in the ... http://www.finds.org.uk/wordpress/upgrade-permalink-change/ Tomorrow sees the start of National Archaeology Week (intriguingly it runs for 9 days - 12th July - 20th August) and there is a wide and very varied series of events around the country that anyone can join in with. The Portable Antiquities Scheme is going to be at a ... http://www.finds.org.uk/wordpress/national-archaeology-week-is-coming/ In these cash strapped times for PAS, we won't be running a conference this year. However, there is one that might be of interest. Conference Announcement: The Council for British Archaeology is pleased to announce the Archaeology and Education conference for 2008 will take place on 5th September to ... http://www.finds.org.uk/wordpress/archaeology-and-education-conference-cba/ On July 1st 2008, the British Museum Review for 2007 - 2008 was released. The Scheme features prominently on pages 46 - 47 with details of the two gold aurei of Carausius found in Derbyshire, a Pilgrim's badge depicting Saint Thomas Becket (or classical name St. Thomas a Becket) from ... http://www.finds.org.uk/wordpress/portable-antiquities-scheme-in-the-british-museum-review-20072008/ Roger Bland passed this information onto me for publicity and it seems like a very useful source of funding for the acquisition of artefacts for museums. The Headley Trust, one of the Sainsbury Family Charitable Trusts, is delighted to announce that following the success of the Headley Museums Treasure Acquisition Scheme, ... http://www.finds.org.uk/wordpress/launch-of-the-headley-museums-archaeological-acquisition-fund/ We are pleased to announce the 5th AHRC collaborative PhD award related to the Scheme, details are below. It is a much needed piece of research work that will add to the validity of our dataset. AHRC Collaborative PhD in analysis of the distribution of Portable Antiquities Scheme data: Archaeology, University ... http://www.finds.org.uk/wordpress/ahrc-collaborative-phd-in-analysis-of-the-distribution-of-portable-antiquities-scheme-data/ I'm on the way to Dublin right now and I've just finished my presentation for the session I'm speaking at tomorrow. It is now available on slideshare as I've just uploaded it from Gatwick. Probably not that useful without the words to accompany it.... World Archaeology Congress Paper http://www.finds.org.uk/wordpress/world-archaeology-congress-presentation/ I started this post about 3 weeks ago and forgot all about it. However, one of Tom Goskar's tweets reminded me about the relaunch of Wessex Archaeology's website. Like Surrey Archaeology Society's website, this is another site done with Drupal as the content system and it has been heavily modified ... http://www.finds.org.uk/wordpress/wessex-archaeology-site-relaunched/ Last Friday (20th June 2008) the British Museum's departmental web representatives had a presentation from George Oates one of the key people behind the relatively new initiative from Yahoo!'s Flickr team known as "The Commons". It was an interesting talk, and highlighted what they are trying to achieve, and ... http://www.finds.org.uk/wordpress/flickr-the-commons/ Andrew Larcombe asked me by Twitter yesterday for a feed of images from the database for Surrey. This could be reused on the Surrey Archaeology Society website. Andrew has redeveloped their site using Drupal as the content management system, with jQuery as the javascript framework. They have some nice features ... http://www.finds.org.uk/wordpress/image-feed-by-county/ If you're interested in getting the latest images direct from the Scheme's database, please feel free to subscribe to the Scheme's feed: http://www.finds.org.uk/rss/imagefeed.php When I have finished the database rebuild, we'll have geo referenced feeds on demand and various other data formats for you to reuse. Enjoy. http://www.finds.org.uk/wordpress/image-feed-direct-from-database/ The MLA has commissioned a review of the Portable Antiquities Scheme. Its aim will be to ensure the scheme is as effective as possible and look at: The objectives of the scheme in the light of changes in regional museum provision, most particularly the Renaissance programme Options for levels of activity and ... http://www.finds.org.uk/wordpress/mla-public-statement-on-scheme-review/ The Scheme currently has two vacancies within it's ranks! First off, a fulltime post as Finds Liaison Officer for Oxfordshire and Berkshire:Finds Liaison Officer: Oxfordshire and West Berkshire,  Ref: FLO267 Salary: Grade 7 £18,907 to £20,736 Closing date: 8th July Interview date: 17th July We need a dedicated, enthusiastic individual with excellent communication and ... http://www.finds.org.uk/wordpress/two-vacancies-at-the-scheme/