Pull Tabs at Archeonacht RMO Leiden

October 6 the Pull Tab Archaeology project visited the Archeonacht ‘Night of Archaeology’ hosted at the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden, (RMO, National Museum of Antiquities). I did not yet comment much on this project on my blog before, so it’s high time to give an update. In August I started a crowdsourced attempt to establish a world wide archaeological typology of pull tabs (ring pulls) asking people on social media to send me their tabs. There’s many different goals of, and aspects to this project, some hilarious, some critical and some rock hard science, but the main drive behind it is definitely fun and broadening the horizons of Dutch archaeology. With pull tabs everybody can be an archaeologist, and there is a lot more to discover than most people assume.

With pull tabs everybody can be an archaeologist

And people are picking up on it! One proof of this was the invitation to the Archeonacht at the RMO. Leiden was the city in which the first archaeology faculty of the world was founded by Caspar Reuvens in 1818. And now, 200 years later, pull tab archaeology manned a table in the State Museum main hallway in front of the 2000 year old temple of Isis. How cool is that? Let it be known that Pull Tab Archaeology has entered the utter vestiges of archaeology and WE ARE HERE TO STAY!

Thanks Jesper de Raad and Lara Boon for the invite. I had tremendous fun and friendly, enthusiast visitors at the table. A real treat was the talk with a graduated aluminium specialist (PhD) on the types of aluminium in a beverage can. Sure hope we will have more contact soon. But there were also a few intenser conversations about if pull tab archaeology inflicts harm to what others called ‘genuine archaeology’. Of course, RMO being the heart of Dutch archaeology, we did not avoid such discussions. In fact, we welcome it! And if you have an opinion, please comment below this page.

Also I feel really blessed that the CHAT board agreed on promoting the project so when truly critical archaeology geeks past the table with big frowns, I could refer to the CHAT-conference sign in front of them with great relief 😉

Our experiences have been included in Update Video 6. We had more fun at RMO than the video shows…but sorry, the practical jokes are for utter in-crowd only 🙂 Become a patron and check the bonus video here.