The excavation and analysis of an 18th-century deposit of anatomical remains and chemical apparatus from the rear of the first Ashmolean Museum (now The Museum of the History of Science), Broad Street, Oxford

Abstract

Rescue excavation during refurbishment at the Museum of the History of Science in Oxford recovered deposits which appear to have been placed in the later 18th century and comprise human and animal skeletal parts, domestic pottery, chemical apparatus, clay tobacco pipe, glass, food refuse, fuel and building material. A synthesis of the archaeological and historical information particular to this site has provided unusually fine resolution to the activities at the Old Ashmolean Museum in the late 17th and 18th centuries. The material appears to represent the disposal of unwanted equipment and specimens from the first Ashmolean Museum and the chemical laboratory which shared the premises, probably when the latter was renovated in 1781.