Header image: Denis Grant King’s diary, Accession Number 1732623-002. In the ‘archive scoping’ blog post I talked about our ambitions for the archive, and how we hope to embed reminders that, behind the digital files we create, there are real objects. We’ve now been photographing for 4 months, and making good progress. Our wonderful volunteers […]
This blog post is part of a series: you may want to read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5 first. Having reconstructed the process and produced an analogue plot of the final grid arrangement, I was ready to replicate the process ‘on the digital ground’ within a Geographical Information System (GIS). My starting […]
Whilst going through the archive in the Alexander Keiller Museum I came across some boxes of worked flint from the West Kennet Avenue. The material consists primarily of flint flakes, some of which is waste material from making stone tools, some of which are tools in their own right. The latter would have been flakes […]
This blog post is part of a series: you may like to explore Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4 first. Although I promised that this post would cover the process of geo-referencing – i.e. locating Keiller’s cutting grid on the ground today – I would like to briefly digress and talk a little about the […]
In the archive, we have several photo albums for the 1934 to 1939 excavations at Avebury. Each album shows us how Alexander Keiller and his team carefully excavated and lifted the stones in the outer circle and down West Kennet Avenue. Alexander Keiller was very particular about which photo prints he used in the albums […]
We are two short months into the digitisation here at Avebury! Below you can watch a very short video going over what we’ve been up to with the volunteer team in the paper archive so far. This video was originally made for the local National Trust spring update. Please leave your questions or comments – […]
We are now well into our second month of digitisation here at Avebury. So let’s look at some cool finds we’ve had this month. This photo found in photo album E shows workers pumping water out of a stone hole, presumably after heavy rainfall, to complete the stone’s excavation. This cool sketch was found in […]
This blog post is part of a series: read Part 1 here, Part 2 here, and Part 3 here. If the West Kennet Avenue had followed a largely straight line (as John Aubrey portrayed it in a drawing carried out shortly after his survey in September 1663), Keiller’s 80’ wide corridor would have done the job. […]
This blog post is part of a series: read Part 1 here, and read Part 2 here. I have a confession. Much as I admire his surveying chops, Keiller’s approach to numbering and labelling (stones, cuttings, whatever) leaves me sobbing. Let me give you a flavour of what I mean. In an earlier post I […]
Choosing a photograph for the homepage of this website was tricky. We wanted something that would represent a wide selection of items held at the Alexander Keiller Museum, while taking conservation requirements into account. So, while we couldn’t mix paper and artefacts, we went for a selection of photographic prints, letters, diaries, and archaeological drawings. […]