Anti-plague amulets and IOUs: the excavation that brings Roman London thundering back to life With sandals that look fresher than last year’s Birkenstocks, gossipy messages recovered from writing tablets and 73,000 shards of pottery, London Museum’s new collection is like falling head-first into the first century

Archaeologists don’t always get lucky when a site is redeveloped in the middle of London. People have been building in the city for millennia and, in more recent times, bombing it. But if the building before went too deep, or there has been too much exposure to the air by bomb damage in the past, there won’t be much to find. Things were especially bad before 1991, when there was no planning protection for anything but scheduled ancient monuments. “We used to have to beg to get on site,” says Sophie Jackson, archaeologist at Museum of London Archaeology (Mola).

It’s not that developers are insensitive, says Jackson: “When we did the excavation at Barts hospital, [it] was functioning above us – we were right under the MRI machines. Developers recognise the social value.” It’s just that the stars don’t often align. (read on)