Excavating Human Remains, Middlesex Annexe

A manual for muddy hands.

The manual open on a wooden table at the bones of the hand and foot.
Client
L-P Archaeology
Sector
Heritage · Archaeology
Services
Editorial design
Format
52-page saddle-stitched manual

L-P Archaeology were excavating a workhouse burial ground on Cleveland Street, in use for sixty-three years, where parishioners and inmates were buried together. Every skeleton had to be identified, drawn, photographed, lifted and crated to the same standard, by teams working in the open. What they needed was that standard in fifty-two pages, out in the trench with them.

Copies of Excavating Human Remains stacked on a workbench.
The manual standing upright against a grey wall.
The manual open on a green finds crate on site.
The manual open at skeleton drawings, a trowel beside it.

Instructions read standing in a trench.

Every page had to work at arm’s length, on site, held in one hand. The procedures run in the order the work happens, from identifying a grave cut to labelling a crate, each given as many spreads as it needs. A running head and folio on every page, so you can find your place even with gloves on.

Where a step can be drawn, it is drawn. Francesca Southon’s line work carries the anatomy, the burial positions and the slumping sequences as a visual that reads instantly. Where it cannot, the type does the work, with numbered markers and bold lead-ins so a step can be found mid-task.

Line drawing of the bones of the hand.
Line drawing of the bones of the foot.
Drawing of the phalanges in isolation.
Drawing of the sacrum and coccyx.
Drawings of a vertebra from two angles.
Burial stack, stage one, a single burial at the base of the cut.
Burial stack, stage two.
Burial stack, stage three.
Burial stack, stage four.
Burial stack, stage five.
Burial stack, stage six, the cut filled.

Francesca Southon’s drawings: hand and foot, vertebrae and phalanges in isolation, and a burial stack filling in stages.

The manual's cover propped on the soil of the excavation.

Credits

Client: L-P Archaeology · Osteology and excavation: Erna Johannesdottir · Illustration: Francesca Southon · Digital archaeology: Kit Ackland · Images: 3D visualisations built from the original artwork

O.R.S