East Kirk of St Nicholas dig March 2007
East Kirk of St Nicholas dig March 2007
Jan Dunbar, illustrator, writes…
As the post excavation work progresses, the time has come to start thinking about the forthcoming publication. As one of the illustrators at the archaeology unit, it is my responsibility to draw all the significant finds (of which there are hundreds!) and also to pull together all the plans, drawn by different people on the site, producing a clear and accurate picture of the church as it developed over the centuries.
Nowadays we draw the plans on computers, although up until fairly recently we were still producing hand drawn plans which were annotated with Letraset! The first step is to get the pencil site plans scanned and stored digitally. This also keeps an extra copy of them just in case something gets lost.
At the beginning of the excavation, a grid system was set up to enable plans of all the features to be drawn accurately and allow them eventually to be tied into the national grid. As the dig progressed, more and more grid pegs were added as the original ones became too high up to use or became unusable for other reasons. Each new peg was carefully plotted on to a master plan so that all the individual plans could eventually be put together.
As with any excavation there can be problems – the position of grid pegs are traced from one plan to the next which can cause slight inaccuracies and using tapes at long distance or holding them at too much of an angle can create other problems. I’m pleased to report that so far things have worked out well and everything seems to fit to within a tiny margin of error.
I’ve included two images of the plans as they are at the moment. The first one shows all the various scanned plans underneath the drawing (in black).
The process becomes very complicated but fortunately you can switch on and off the various layers on the screen. The fun will really start when all the skeletons have to go on! The second image shows the plan as it will be published although I still have to annotate it and add a bit to the area of the ‘Sacristy’ to the north.
The finds are drawn as they come back from the conservation lab. The intention is to draw virtually everything in pencil so that we have a complete record and then the more important pieces will be finally drawn in ink for publication. The photos show the various stages in producing a finished drawing – an accurate scale drawing in pencil first and then an ink version on draughting film (the same stuff that’s used on site for the plan drawing).
We use Rotring pens and then scrape the drawing back with a scalpel blade to produce a tidier and more sensitive line.
Unfortunately the pens, especially the very fine ones, block all the time and I seem to spend more time shaking the thing than using it to draw with!
A few particularly interesting objects, such as the lead pilgrim’s badge, were drawn as they were discovered, but the vast majority is still to be done.
More artefacts are still being discovered during the processing of finds and, as large numbers still have to be examined by experts to determine their significance, I suspect that I’ll be working on this for a very long time.
For further information and comment, please contact Judith Stones - judiths@aberdeencity.gov.uk or on (01224) 523658.
East Kirk of St Nicholas February 2007
