[Bell Historians] Recording inscriptions (WAS Re: Digest Number 1353)

[Anne Willis]

In practice, don't we want to use a mixture of methods, each playing 
to their own strengths? I'm not a practitioner of the art of 
recording inscriptions, but I would have thought that photographing 
inscriptions was an invaluable part of the mix. If nothing else, it 
can provide a quick and easy aide memoire when writing up recorded 
details.

Does anyone know the approach used by academic archaeologists to 
recording their finds? I'd have thought that they would be likely to 
have good practice that could illuminate issues for us.

Cheers


Giles Blundell
Liverpool


There's always the good old method of taking a rubbing with a soft pencil
and yards of paper.  There's a nice collection of various Wiltshire bell
inscriptions done this way.

E.F. Benson (of the 'Lucia' books) was also an archaeologist and took
'squeezes' of inscriptions (not bells as far as I know) using wet blotting
paper.  I know that the inscription on a medieval bell at Broughton Gifford
was recorded using plaster of paris, the cast being deposited an Oxford
museum.  


Anne
AW