Digging it
The growing public interest in archaeology is an excellent opportunity for museums to engage new audiences, writes Rebecca Atkinson
When the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology reopened last year following a £61m redevelopment, it was praised for shrugging off its reputation as an academics-only museum and allowing visitors to connect with its collections, whatever their background.
This summer the museum is hosting its first major archaeological exhibition in its new temporary exhibition galleries, Heracles to Alexander the Great: Treasures from the Royal Capital of Macedon, A Hellenic Kingdom in the Age of Democracy (see box below).
Showcasing hoards of treasure and weapons recently found in the royal burial tombs and the palace of Aegae, the ancient capital of Macedonia, the exhibition will appeal to people keen to see these new discoveries on display for the first time outside of Greece.
From fantasy figures such as Indiana Jones and Lara Croft to factual approaches such as Channel 4’s Time Team and BBC’s Hands on History website, archaeology continues to capture the public imagination.
This interest presents a great opportunity for museums, many of which boast rich archaeology collections. But despite this, some practitioners feel that museum archaeology displays remain rooted in the past.
“Museums have tended to be relatively traditional in how they present archaeology, with objects displayed in glass cases and explained using text-heavy panels,” says Council for British Archaeology director Mike Heyworth. “The difficultly with this approach is that people don’t understand what objects are or what they were used for.”
The past decade has seen some small but significant changes. TV programmes such as Time Team highlight the emotional impact of discovering and touching objects found in digs, and museums have tried to recreate this by offering handling opportunities to visitors.
Museum of London Archaeology runs a range of archaeological events, from community digs to finds handling sessions. Elsewhere, Yorkshire Museum allows visitors to walk over a four-metre square Roman mosaic floor, giving them a visceral connection to the past.
Tim Schadla-Hall, reader in public archaeology at University College London (UCL), says: “Archaeology displays need to emphasise how we think about the past, but many galleries miss the opportunity because they aren’t innovative enough.”
Most archaeological displays are chronological, helping people understand the different periods from the stone age through to classical antiquity.
This also links to the process of archaeology; the Ashmolean’s current exhibition, for example, works backwards in time to mirror the way objects are dug out of the ground.
However, surveys suggest that the average person is unable to visualise the past beyond their parents and grandparents.
“Chronological displays, where visitors start at the most distant point in time, are nonsense and do not help anyone,” says David Clarke, the recently retired keeper of archaeology at National Museums Scotland (NMS).
“A lot of people don’t know whether the Romans came before the Vikings; but they also don’t care because these things happened a long time ago.”
When NMS was creating its Early People Gallery, which opened 12 years ago at the National Museum of Scotland, it did not use chronological displays. “We tried to focus on the museum’s ability to tell certain stories rather than offer a comprehensive survey of history,” says Clarke.
Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museums Wales (NMW) is considering this approach for its archaeology collections, which are being relocated to St Fagans as part of a £20m redevelopment.
Mark Redknap, acting keeper of archaeology and numismatics, says: “Sequences are important as they show how one society develops from another, but perhaps absolute dates do not need to be presented upfront. Most people understand issues through themes, so the question for us is what is the best way to do this.”
Redknap also hopes that the new displays at St Fagans will acknowledge different voices and interpretations of objects. “There’s an opportunity for St Fagans to become a museum that has a dialogue with people and involves them in making history,” he explains.
This is part of a wider move by some museums to examine the social and political history of archaeology practice, and link this to the objects on display.
At UCL Museums and Collections, a recent project called QRator uses QR codes to allow visitors to view information via their mobile phones and, notably, send back their own interpretation.
One object included is on display in the Petrie Museum’s current exhibition, Typecast: Flinders Petrie and Francis Galton (until 22 December), which examines the impact of racial theory on archaeology.
Debbie Challis, audience development officer at the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, part of UCL, says that by inviting opinion on the object with a view to incorporating this into exhibition labels, the museum is acknowledging that sometimes members of the public can contribute just as much to the understanding of an object as the “experts”.
Elsewhere in the museum, text panels are less focused on what Challis calls “archaeological showmanship”, relating to where and when objects were found.
Instead, they highlight how our understanding of objects has changed as new finds and research constantly come to light.
Physical and digital reconstructions are also helping bring the past alive. In the Ashmolean, the elaborate funeral jewellery garb of five Macedonian queens found in an undisturbed tomb has been reconstructed and displayed upright rather than horizontally.
Susan Walker, keeper of Greek and Roman antiquities at the Ashmolean, says: “This gives people a sense of actually meeting these women and importantly it presents them as individuals.”
NMS is working with craft people to create versions of ancient objects as they might have looked when new. But this sort of work is expensive, and funding cuts could scupper the recent progress made.
The budget for the Portable Antiquities Scheme, for example, has been cut by 15% from £1.412m in 2010-11 to £1.323m in 2014-15. The scheme’s director, Roger Bland, is hopeful that finds officer posts will all be retained but, in a blow to Welsh museums, the scheme is to be restricted to England from April 2012.
Bland says core funding cuts pose the most serious threat to archaeology displays – with acquisition budgets particularly vulnerable.
The British Museum has cut its total annual acquisitions budget from £300,000 to £100,000. So while public interest in archaeology is high, thanks to spectacular finds such as the Staffordshire Hoard, fewer museums will be in a position to acquire objects. The impact of this is worrying. “A museum that doesn’t acquire is a dead museum,” says Bland.
Earlier this year the Museum of London confirmed it was looking to set up Museum of London Archaeology (MoLA) as a standalone charity, a move that would give it “greater commercial potential”, and was also considering whether to introduce charges for the London Archaeological Archive and Research Centre.
Regional archaeology services are also under pressure. At Hampshire County Council’s museum service, David Allen is now the only curator of archaeology left.
“We’ve got a great collection and people who want to come and see it, but it’s a question of keeping things like knowledge and quality,” he says. “Without those, there is no substance to the stories we tell – they are just fairy tales.”
The Festival of British Archaeology takes place from 16-31 July.
festival.britarch.ac.uk
Heracles to Alexander the Great: Treasures from the Royal Capital of Macedon, A Hellenic Kingdom in the Age of Democracy, which runs at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford until 29 August, is a joint venture with the Museum of the Royal Tombs at Aegae and in collaboration with Greece’s Ministry of Culture And Tourism.
The Royal Tombs and Museum of Aegae, in Vergina, Greece, showcase the life’s work of archaeologist Manolis Andronikos. Following a visit to the site as a student before the second world war, he returned in the 1950s to begin a systematic excavation of the ancient city.
However, it wasn’t until the late 1970s that the team discovered a series of graves beneath the great tumulus of Vergina, one of which is believed to be the tomb of Philip II, father of Alexander the Great and king of Macedon from 359BC until his assassination in 336BC.
The museum is a subterranean structure, which allows visitors to see the tombs and recovered artefacts in their actual location. The site became a Unesco World Heritage Site in 1996.
The Ashmolean is showcasing more than 500 treasures made of gold, silver and bronze found in the royal burial tombs and the palace. The exhibition is split into three main themes: the role of weapons and the military; the leading role of queens, princesses and high priestesses; and life in the palace based on its architecture and the tradition of banqueting.
Susan Walker, keeper of Greek and Roman antiquities at the Ashmolean, says: “The exhibition has a simple concept of introducing visitors to the family of Alexander the Great and the last kings of Macedonia. We want visitors to understand the society that produced these great men who created a vast empire and changed the world.”
A 36% annual increase in archaeological finds recorded through the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS) in 2010 (to 90,146) suggests a growing interest among members of the public in “treasure hunting”.
Notable finds last year include an unusual Roman knife handle (pictured, right) from AD c.43-c.410. The handle, found by David Barker in Lincolnshire, depicts a male and female locked in an embrace as well as another male holding a decapitated head. The object, which was acquired by the Collection, Lincoln, is one of just a handful of erotic knife handles known in Britain.
Culture minister Ed Vaizey says: “[The PAS is] cost effective, it works and it’s probably the envy of the rest of the world. It connects amateurs and experts, and ensures that what is uncovered underground gets recorded, gets researched and, importantly, often gets displayed to the public.”
This summer the museum is hosting its first major archaeological exhibition in its new temporary exhibition galleries, Heracles to Alexander the Great: Treasures from the Royal Capital of Macedon, A Hellenic Kingdom in the Age of Democracy (see box below).
Showcasing hoards of treasure and weapons recently found in the royal burial tombs and the palace of Aegae, the ancient capital of Macedonia, the exhibition will appeal to people keen to see these new discoveries on display for the first time outside of Greece.
From fantasy figures such as Indiana Jones and Lara Croft to factual approaches such as Channel 4’s Time Team and BBC’s Hands on History website, archaeology continues to capture the public imagination.
This interest presents a great opportunity for museums, many of which boast rich archaeology collections. But despite this, some practitioners feel that museum archaeology displays remain rooted in the past.
“Museums have tended to be relatively traditional in how they present archaeology, with objects displayed in glass cases and explained using text-heavy panels,” says Council for British Archaeology director Mike Heyworth. “The difficultly with this approach is that people don’t understand what objects are or what they were used for.”
The past decade has seen some small but significant changes. TV programmes such as Time Team highlight the emotional impact of discovering and touching objects found in digs, and museums have tried to recreate this by offering handling opportunities to visitors.
Museum of London Archaeology runs a range of archaeological events, from community digs to finds handling sessions. Elsewhere, Yorkshire Museum allows visitors to walk over a four-metre square Roman mosaic floor, giving them a visceral connection to the past.
Tim Schadla-Hall, reader in public archaeology at University College London (UCL), says: “Archaeology displays need to emphasise how we think about the past, but many galleries miss the opportunity because they aren’t innovative enough.”
Most archaeological displays are chronological, helping people understand the different periods from the stone age through to classical antiquity.
This also links to the process of archaeology; the Ashmolean’s current exhibition, for example, works backwards in time to mirror the way objects are dug out of the ground.
However, surveys suggest that the average person is unable to visualise the past beyond their parents and grandparents.
“Chronological displays, where visitors start at the most distant point in time, are nonsense and do not help anyone,” says David Clarke, the recently retired keeper of archaeology at National Museums Scotland (NMS).
“A lot of people don’t know whether the Romans came before the Vikings; but they also don’t care because these things happened a long time ago.”
When NMS was creating its Early People Gallery, which opened 12 years ago at the National Museum of Scotland, it did not use chronological displays. “We tried to focus on the museum’s ability to tell certain stories rather than offer a comprehensive survey of history,” says Clarke.
Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museums Wales (NMW) is considering this approach for its archaeology collections, which are being relocated to St Fagans as part of a £20m redevelopment.
Mark Redknap, acting keeper of archaeology and numismatics, says: “Sequences are important as they show how one society develops from another, but perhaps absolute dates do not need to be presented upfront. Most people understand issues through themes, so the question for us is what is the best way to do this.”
Redknap also hopes that the new displays at St Fagans will acknowledge different voices and interpretations of objects. “There’s an opportunity for St Fagans to become a museum that has a dialogue with people and involves them in making history,” he explains.
This is part of a wider move by some museums to examine the social and political history of archaeology practice, and link this to the objects on display.
At UCL Museums and Collections, a recent project called QRator uses QR codes to allow visitors to view information via their mobile phones and, notably, send back their own interpretation.
One object included is on display in the Petrie Museum’s current exhibition, Typecast: Flinders Petrie and Francis Galton (until 22 December), which examines the impact of racial theory on archaeology.
Debbie Challis, audience development officer at the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, part of UCL, says that by inviting opinion on the object with a view to incorporating this into exhibition labels, the museum is acknowledging that sometimes members of the public can contribute just as much to the understanding of an object as the “experts”.
Elsewhere in the museum, text panels are less focused on what Challis calls “archaeological showmanship”, relating to where and when objects were found.
Instead, they highlight how our understanding of objects has changed as new finds and research constantly come to light.
Physical and digital reconstructions are also helping bring the past alive. In the Ashmolean, the elaborate funeral jewellery garb of five Macedonian queens found in an undisturbed tomb has been reconstructed and displayed upright rather than horizontally.
Susan Walker, keeper of Greek and Roman antiquities at the Ashmolean, says: “This gives people a sense of actually meeting these women and importantly it presents them as individuals.”
NMS is working with craft people to create versions of ancient objects as they might have looked when new. But this sort of work is expensive, and funding cuts could scupper the recent progress made.
The budget for the Portable Antiquities Scheme, for example, has been cut by 15% from £1.412m in 2010-11 to £1.323m in 2014-15. The scheme’s director, Roger Bland, is hopeful that finds officer posts will all be retained but, in a blow to Welsh museums, the scheme is to be restricted to England from April 2012.
Bland says core funding cuts pose the most serious threat to archaeology displays – with acquisition budgets particularly vulnerable.
The British Museum has cut its total annual acquisitions budget from £300,000 to £100,000. So while public interest in archaeology is high, thanks to spectacular finds such as the Staffordshire Hoard, fewer museums will be in a position to acquire objects. The impact of this is worrying. “A museum that doesn’t acquire is a dead museum,” says Bland.
Earlier this year the Museum of London confirmed it was looking to set up Museum of London Archaeology (MoLA) as a standalone charity, a move that would give it “greater commercial potential”, and was also considering whether to introduce charges for the London Archaeological Archive and Research Centre.
Regional archaeology services are also under pressure. At Hampshire County Council’s museum service, David Allen is now the only curator of archaeology left.
“We’ve got a great collection and people who want to come and see it, but it’s a question of keeping things like knowledge and quality,” he says. “Without those, there is no substance to the stories we tell – they are just fairy tales.”
The Festival of British Archaeology takes place from 16-31 July.
festival.britarch.ac.uk
In the footsteps of Alexander
Heracles to Alexander the Great: Treasures from the Royal Capital of Macedon, A Hellenic Kingdom in the Age of Democracy, which runs at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford until 29 August, is a joint venture with the Museum of the Royal Tombs at Aegae and in collaboration with Greece’s Ministry of Culture And Tourism.
The Royal Tombs and Museum of Aegae, in Vergina, Greece, showcase the life’s work of archaeologist Manolis Andronikos. Following a visit to the site as a student before the second world war, he returned in the 1950s to begin a systematic excavation of the ancient city.
However, it wasn’t until the late 1970s that the team discovered a series of graves beneath the great tumulus of Vergina, one of which is believed to be the tomb of Philip II, father of Alexander the Great and king of Macedon from 359BC until his assassination in 336BC.
The museum is a subterranean structure, which allows visitors to see the tombs and recovered artefacts in their actual location. The site became a Unesco World Heritage Site in 1996.
The Ashmolean is showcasing more than 500 treasures made of gold, silver and bronze found in the royal burial tombs and the palace. The exhibition is split into three main themes: the role of weapons and the military; the leading role of queens, princesses and high priestesses; and life in the palace based on its architecture and the tradition of banqueting.
Susan Walker, keeper of Greek and Roman antiquities at the Ashmolean, says: “The exhibition has a simple concept of introducing visitors to the family of Alexander the Great and the last kings of Macedonia. We want visitors to understand the society that produced these great men who created a vast empire and changed the world.”
Connecting people to their cultural heritage
A 36% annual increase in archaeological finds recorded through the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS) in 2010 (to 90,146) suggests a growing interest among members of the public in “treasure hunting”.
Notable finds last year include an unusual Roman knife handle (pictured, right) from AD c.43-c.410. The handle, found by David Barker in Lincolnshire, depicts a male and female locked in an embrace as well as another male holding a decapitated head. The object, which was acquired by the Collection, Lincoln, is one of just a handful of erotic knife handles known in Britain.
Culture minister Ed Vaizey says: “[The PAS is] cost effective, it works and it’s probably the envy of the rest of the world. It connects amateurs and experts, and ensures that what is uncovered underground gets recorded, gets researched and, importantly, often gets displayed to the public.”