Canada Abroad Conference

Day 1 of the Canada Abroad conference is over! Yesterday and today were 12/13-hour days, and tomorrow will be too, but then they leave on Thursday morning and we can (hopefully) bask in the success ;) (for about five minutes, before we start artifact photography for Mota Piece finds!)

I spent yesterday morning finishing up various conference-related paperwork and prep before setting up the welcome table at castle reception by 11:30am.... where I proceeded to stay welcoming delegates until 9pm (I got lunch and dinner breaks though).

Welcome table at castle reception

Today was Day 1 of the two actual days of the conference. I started at 7am, doing a few last-minute things, mainly putting up directional signs around the castle so people don't get lost! Then I manned the table for questions and more people checking in during breakfast, before attending the opening session.

Dr. Scott and I had previously agreed that I'll miss the first panel session each day and sit at the welcome table, since we know of several people on both days who will be arriving late (during the first session) due to trains etc. So I stayed at castle reception, through the first panel session and lunch, and then got to attend the afternoon panels myself!

The first one I went to was "Canada and World War One" and the papers were:

"Canadians at Cliveden in WWI and WWII" (a hospital for Canadian soldiers)

"A Comparison of Australia and Canada's Experiences During the First World War"

"Canadians in Bexhill during the First World War".

Then the second and final session of the day for me was "Canada and World War Two" (I got lucky with the subject matter of the panels today! Tomorrow's should be interesting too but aren't history-focused like these were):

"Dangers Behind, Pleasures Ahead: The Evacuation of British Children to Canada in WWII"

"Sport, Masculinity, and the British Image of the Canadian Soldier, 1939-1942"

"From Tactical to Practical: Overseas Medical Supply Disposal Operations, 1945-1949".

The second panel was my favourite. Dr Scott gave the middle paper, and the ones before and after him were two PhD candidates from Canada. I've never heard Dr. Scott speak in an academic setting that's not a lecture to students, so I found it really interesting to learn from his manner of presentation. The two PhD students had extremely interesting presentations- I was familiar with the basics of the British child evacuee chapter of WWII history, but had never heard about or even stopped to consider the issue of how supplies were disposed of after the war. I know that sounds boring, but I actually found it the best presentation of the day, because it was so unusual and interesting.

A few facts I picked up from that paper: after WWII ended there were thousands upon thousands of pieces of medical and dental equipment that had been used by Canadian army medics and hospitals overseas. However, some of it hadn't been made in Canada, and the issue of who was using the supplies vs who had manufactured them created tons of red tape for figuring out how to disperse them. One idea, which was rejected, was to donate them to soldiers who had been doctors in their civilian lives before joining up, and who were now trying to reopen their practices. It would seem obvious to just donate the supplies, but apparently Canada was more concerned about profit than philanthropy. Also, the British didn't want to receive them as a gift because they thought it would disrupt their economy: they wanted these items to begin being manufactured again to help their economy, and the sudden influx of free medical supplies would drive down the prices.

As some of you know, I spent most of this past February-April working on my major research paper for my history seminar class; the topic I created was "Memory, Mourning, and Material Culture", examining selected WWI monuments to the missing of various former British colonies. It was fun to keep catching references in the sessions today to different themes that I recognized from my research: the differences in the conscription issue between Australia and Canada; the idea that Francophone Canadians were more patriotic to Canada than British Canadians, since the former were loyal only to Canada while the latter had divided loyalties; the (stereotyped, but also correct) impression that the colonial soldiers were hardier and more physically fit than the predominately-urban British soldiers; the duality of Britishness and Canadian-ness in Canadian identities and the fact that these were not mutually exclusive; and the significance of Vimy, and WWI as a whole, as a formative event for Canada. 

One of the most interesting people I talked to today was a guy from Vancouver, who has a degree in International Relations and has been working in the UK for about a year as an assistant to the director of the V&A Museum in London. He said that 99% of the V&A staff have a background in art history, so he's definitely in the minority. I never would have imagined an IR degree leading to a job like that. 

Even though most people had checked in last night, I was still at the welcome desk today and will be again tomorrow to act as a point person for the myriad questions/problems etc that seem to crop up. A selection of things I've been asked in the last two days:

"How far is it from here to Eastbourne?"

"Which has better coffee, the dining hall or the cafe?"

"How does the TV in the Bader Hall common room work?"

"Where is.... the washroom/the conference room/the dining hall/Seminar 6/castle pub?"

"What time does the tour to local sites start?" (We offered a free bus trip this evening around the area)

"Where is the tour going? Are these places worth seeing? Are they outdoors? Is it going to stop raining by then?"

"I need a receipt on letterhead confirming that I paid my conference fee."

"I need a letter confirming that I was here and presented my paper. Can you write that and get Scott to sign it?"

"I lost my name tag, I need a new one."

"How much time do we have before ____ starts?"

"My boss, [a high-ranking Canadian diplomat!] wants to come to the banquet tomorrow, can I give you my credit card details to pay for his place?"

"I want to be added to/removed from the banquet."

"I think the taxi company ripped me off, how much is it supposed to cost to get here from the train station?"

"How do I sign up for the shuttle to the pub that Scott's doing?"

"What's the richest province in Canada? I need it for a joke I'm making in my presentation."

"Can you print my paper off for me?"

"What's the code to the reading room workspace?"

"What's the wifi code?"

"How do I get to the gardens from here?"

"How do I get to Bader Hall?"

"Will my laptop work with the IT setup in the room where I'm presenting?"

"I didn't register but I'm here now, can I pay and get an info package?"

"We're handing out slips of paper for people to choose their dessert for the banquet, can you collect them?" [from the kitchen staff]

It's fun because I can actually answer these questions (or find someone who can), and I like being able to be helpful and keep things running smoothly. It's been strange walking around in heels and nice clothes after mostly wearing my archaeology clothes since the field school and its aftermath; I've been washing dirt-covered artifacts for part of most days since the students left, so I couldn't wear anything that I didn't mind getting muddy!

Tomorrow will be pretty much the same drill, except that we have a formal banquet tomorrow night with the delegates and the UK High Commissioner for Canada (the former BC premier Gordon Campbell). Apologies for the lack of photos in this post, there weren't really any photo opportunities today!

Alumni Weekend and Conference Prep

A collection of anecdotal shots from this weekend:

View from my window

Beautiful sky on Friday evening. On Saturday there proceeded to be a massive thunder and lightning storm for much of the day and night, which kept me indoors reading and grad-school-researching most of the day. However, Friday and today have had gorgeous weather, so I've seized the chance to be outside when possible:

The dry moat on the north (gardens) side of the castle

Elizabethan garden 

This weekend was the alumni reunion event, celebrating 20 years of the Bader International Study Centre. One of the events was a dig with Dr. Scott, so we went up to Brickyard Field, a site on the castle estate that I hadn't been to before. It was perfect for a short timeframe and just-for-fun thing like this, since it's a very shallow site- everything is in Context 1, and we only had to dig down about 4 inches before we starting turning up broken pottery, tiles, and brick. Dr. Scott has excavated here before, so he knew where we had the best chance of finding things.

One of the alumni is a volunteer for Queen's University radio, and she interviewed me onsite about my experiences here as an intern. I've done TV interviews before thanks to dance, but never radio, so that was a cool new experience :)

I was informed today that I'm going to be one of three opening speakers (along with Dr. Scott and Dr. Stanley, the executive director of the BISC) at the Canada Abroad conference that Dr. Scott is organizing. I've spent part of tonight writing my speech. I'm very excited but apprehensive as well- I don't mind public speaking, but I have no experience with something on this scale and I know (and have been gently reminded by Dr. Scott's colleagues) that this is an extremely rare chance for an undergraduate student, so the pressure's on to make it good! :)

Fox in the field outside my window!

Bringing Order to the Chaos, and Nice Weather

'Chaos' is a large overstatement, but the archives definitely needed a great deal of organizing. I haven't had time to work there for a while, and there were still boxes of documents from several different collections that needed to be processed, some of which were donated 4 years ago and haven't been touched. It's become a priority to get that done soon, since we're almost done cleaning this year's archaeology finds and so the archives are soon going to be flooded with hundreds of artifacts to be catalogued!

On top of the desk in the above photo is the undealt-with segment of the Angela Minchin collection. Angela was instrumental in the fight to save the castle from developers 20 years ago, and when she died the castle archives received the copious amounts of letters, ads, newspaper articles, programs, etc that she had saved relating to the castle. Each item needs to be individually put in a plastic sheet protector and given an archive number (see below) then sorted into files within boxes.

An example of how each document is prepared for storage with sheet protector
and archive number labeled. These are the 38th and 39th documents in
File 2 of Box 21 of the Herstmonceux Castle Angela Minchin collection.
I didn't notice until I uploaded these photos that the top letter is addressed
to someone with 'Smyth' in their name :)

Dr. Scott's archive code is that anything on the floor needs to be dealt with, and anything on the shelves has been fully processed and documented. I finished processing the remains of 6 different document collections that had been lying on the floor, but what I couldn't do myself was the undealt-with archaeology: finds from multiple different digs around the estate stretching back ten years that are in various stages of being documented. Dr. Scott needs to deal with that, because a lot of it requires his memory to determine how things are labelled or what section of the archives they need to be stored in. The best I could do was to gather everything into one area of the archives for him to deal with later, although now it makes a much more daunting pile!

I also did various things to straighten up, like making the boxes fit on the shelves, scrubbing the chairs and moving them out of the way, and setting up a storage cabinet full of all the spare supplies floating around. 

This castle model is entirely made of fondant-covered fruitcake! Dr. Scott had given me permission to throw it away- it's several years old with broken pieces and crumbs, not something good to store in an archive- as long as I took photos of it first. I have no idea when or why it was made. 

Although I got all the documents sorted and numbered into the archive system, a description of each one still needs to be written into the archive notebooks. I was doing this earlier in the summer, but now I've run out of time; we decided that it was more important for me to organize all the documents into the system, since the job of writing out descriptions is easier for Scott's term-time student volunteers to pick up and drop.

On that note, an issue with the castle archives is the nature of how it's maintained. Dr. Scott runs it as a hobby, and it's too big of a job for someone who is also teaching and doing research! He recruits student volunteers, but with them changing so frequently, there hasn't been very much consistency in how things are catalogued. So, today I wrote out guidelines for artifact and document processing and artifact photography (see above), to try and ensure some consistency after I'm gone. Hopefully it works! :)

(Above) This is where I've spent 8 hours a day alone for the last two days. I know what I'm describing probably sounds pretty boring, but I really enjoy it. I feel like I've been given my own archive to play in and I love trying to help set it to rights!

It's also continued to be lovely outside, so here are a few recent shots of the South Downs as seen from Bader Hall:

Meanwhile, at the castle...

Yesterday's post was the last of my archaeology end-of-term trip photos. We've been back for a week now and there has certainly been plenty to do, even though the students are gone!

First, though... this is actually from the night before we left for Cornwall- Bruce, the executive
director, took the field school students and I up on the roof. It was fun to get
this vantage point again!

One of my big tasks was photos... I'd been taking 100+ photos a day during the dig and field studies, sending the best to Dr. Scott each evening, so when we got back I had to do the same thing for the hundreds of photos I took during our trip. Then, since the students and other BISC staff/faculty wanted access to them, I had to upload them in an album somewhere. After much fruitless experimentation, computer freezes and delays with Flickr and Facebook, I finally found that Picasa worked well. The photo below is from when I was still trying Facebook (to put in a private album and then send the link); it was taking up to a minute to recognize each time I clicked the mouse, so I was trying to save time by multitasking and also editing the next batch of photos on my laptop.

We also had hundreds of finds from Mota Piece waiting for us! Below you can see some of them in their bags on a table in the archaeology room. All needed to be sorted by material (we can't wash charcoal, oyster, wood, or metal; yes to bone and pottery, which is the majority) and then scrubbed by hand with a toothbrush in a basin of water. 

Our washing station outside the archaeology room.

The castle receives many tourists who come to see the gardens, and we're visible to them as they walk by, so it's been really fun getting questions from them about what we're doing. One lady came down to talk to us, and it turns out that she's been volunteering in nearby Eastbourne helping to clean 300 Anglo-Saxon skeletons!

Setting out trays of cleaned finds to dry in the sun. We have
to be really careful to make sure the plastic bags stay
with the correct items, since the bags are labeled with the finds'
location; if we don't have this information, the finds are almost useless.

With the students gone, there haven't been scheduled lectures/hikes/activities in the evenings anymore, so there's been more time to walk around the grounds and read in the gardens:

Herb garden

Magic garden 

Butterfly garden

Butterfly garden

Rose garden

Rose garden

From the Rose garden through the Elizabethan garden

Since we returned I've also worked on and finished an inventory of all the finds from Beechtree Field, the Roman site on the castle estate that we dug last year. It had been excavated several times previously over the last six years, and it was another case of sorting out mislabelled and unlabelled artifacts, creating an inventory spreadsheet, and trying to reconcile the artifacts into some kind of order, despite missing many pieces of crucial information (like the earlier years at Mota Piece, these excavations at Beechtree Field prior to 2012 were done by a different archaeologist whose field notes we don't have and whose methods we don't entirely understand).

Working on the Beechtree Field inventory

Since the conference is coming up soon now, I've been mostly working on that yesterday and today. Nina's away on vacation, so I've re-occupied my desk in her office so that I have somewhere to work. Dr. Scott has no room in his office for me to work and Nina's office is right down the hall, so it works out perfectly. Below is a photo of her bookshelf next to my desk, holding her library of guidebooks that students are allowed to take out. So many places I'd love to see someday :)

With the field school over and my time here ending soon, there's been a fair amount of interest and discussion about who will hold my position next year. I'm in a pretty unique situation this summer because this position didn't exist previously- I asked to come back and it was created. But I've received many questions during my time here about how I got this internship, and some of the archaeology students- both my friends/classmates from last year and the students I got to know this year- have expressed an interest in applying. It'll be a bit more formal since there'll be more than one candidate, and it sounds like I'll probably get to (from a distance) sit on the committee which selects next year's intern. I'm interested and excited to be involved in that process!

Muchelney Abbey and Bath

We arrived there an hour and a half late after getting lost en route, but it was definitely worth the extra hours in the coach. This is Muchelney Abbey:

From Muchelney Abbey we made our way to Bath. We got there around 7 and I checked us in to the YHA. I walked into the city centre with some of the students, but declined their invitation to join them for dinner because I knew it was their last evening together. This was my third time visiting Bath so I knew my way around, and I had a lovely walk along the river past all the moored houseboats (below).

The next day was the final day of the trip, and ended with us dropping the students off at Heathrow. Before that though, we spent most of the day in Bath; we all visited the Roman Baths together, and then had free time afterwards. I've posted quite extensively about the Roman Baths in my two previous posts from 2011 and 2012 about my visits there, so these are just a few things that captured my attention:

Representation of Sulis Minerva, the hybrid deity that the Romans created
by combining the pre-existing Celtic goddess Sulis, whose Baths these were,
with their own goddess Minerva (aka Athena in Greek mythology) when they
invaded Britain in 43 CE.

I hadn't known this!

The British Celtic text described above

Innovative way of displaying coins and a bar graph
about which foreign countries the coins came from that
were dropped in the baths in Roman times

Bath Abbey in the background

One of the auxiliary baths off the Great Bath, which has now been designated
as the official wishing well-type location for people to throw money in. All
profits go towards the goal of purchasing the Beau Street Hoard, a coin hoard
found very nearby the Baths and currently undergoing conservation, I believe.

Roman bathers projected on the side walls

Water from the baths' hot spring that has been treated so it's safe to drink.

Floor plan of the baths at the height of their glory under the Romans,
connected to a screen that pinpoints certain people moving around the map
and says something about them. Watching all these digital people scurry
around the floor plan reminded me faintly of the Marauder's Map from Harry Potter...

During the following free time I visited Bath Abbey. I'd been here before but there's nowhere else in Bath I'd rather spend my time!

Memorials to the dead

Book of Remembrance

Note that more than half of Bath's WWII dead were civilians killed in air attacks,
not enlisted soldiers; that definitely surprised me.

The Bath Diptychs, created over 3000 hours by one local woman, combining
her skills with lettering and embroidery. On the left of each one is an illuminated
quote from the Bible, and on the right is an embroidered artwork representing its
themes and events.

The Abbey is undergoing the installation of underfloor heating (heated
by the hot spring underneath the city which also feeds the Roman Baths). They're
doing one section at a time, removing the pews and exposing the floor tombstones
for the first time in 200+ years.