My name is Kayley and I am a curatorial assistant here at the Museum of Ontario Archaeology. I got the position as part of the work-study program with Western University. I also split my work-study hours with Sustainable Archaeology. I have worked at the museum since September, and have worked with Nicole since she returned as our full-time curator! I love working at the museum because I have no prior experience in a museum setting, only in cultural resource management archaeology (CRM). CRM is very different from museum work because most of the artifacts that I have experience with aren’t nearly as pretty as those that are in the museum’s collection.

So far at MOA I have learned so much about how museums work. I have been shadowing Nicole through her daily activities. A lot goes on behind the scenes here at MOA! Nicole and I have been going through artifact collections and putting them out in exhibits, plus finding additional background information on some artifacts for those exhibits. One example that always comes to mind was the day that we did research on, and weighed, iron cannon balls to see if they were equivalent to those used by the British during the War of 1812 for the current “War of 1812: The Chippewa Experience” exhibit. Unfortunately the cannonballs didn’t make the cut but the pipe tomahawks we researched did, there is still time to come and see them before the exhibit ends April 10th!

Another responsibility that I have taken on at MOA is working to organize the transfer of a large portion of the MOA collection over to Sustainable Archaeology. Sustainable Archaeology is the facility next door that houses archaeological collections from Ontario. The transfer started long before I began at MOA so it has been a fun and challenging experience to standardize the transfer.

I can’t recommend getting involved with MOA enough! I strongly believe that my experience at MOA was a contributing factor to my acceptance into a Master’s program in archaeology at Memorial University in St. John’s, Newfoundland.