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 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. […]
Last week Mark shared Part 1 of this series – read it here first. Next step is to recreate Keiller’s excavation grid using the step-by-step measurements and drawings in his 1934-5 Plotting Book. I could have taken a digital approach from the outset, but to limber up, and better understand how the grid of planned […]
This month we had the first volunteers in the archive, here are some of the cool things they found in the photo albums photographed so far. The photos above show workers setting up a pulley system to help lift one of the stones into place in the West Kennet Avenue excavations. This clearly shows that […]
One of the most vexing challenges in relation to the Keiller excavation archive relates to the precise locations of the trenches his team excavated – what he termed ‘cuttings’. One of the goals of the project is to create a series of georeferenced digital trench plans for each of the years of excavation. As to […]
Dr Colleen Morgan was interviewed by Ellie Brennan on BBC Radio York on Friday 23 January. Listen to the clip below. Transcript Ellie Brennan: Now, from dissertations and homework, to a very serious and amazing project going on to do with a world-famous stone circle. It’s going to be brought to life online for the […]
Yesterday our equipment to create a digital photo archive arrived. Lensart has supplied us with the Book2net photographic studio. The setup has a 71-megapixel camera which allows us to take high-resolution images of the documents within our archive. The installation was completed by the lovely Martin French at Lensart. With the installation complete, Martin took […]