Emptying Ancient Worlds

Emptying one of the Ancient Worlds cases (April 2013)

Shortly after the opening of the new Ancient Worlds last October, the curators and all the other staff who worked on the project, could have been forgiven for thinking that now they could get on with the rest of their lives. Only it didn’t quite work out like that. In any project, there are always what are euphemistically referred to as ‘snagging issues’ that have to be sorted out,  in the weeks following completion.

Ancient Worlds is no different. Some of the shelves needed consolidating and we picked up  a number of annoying errors in the labels that had evaded our proof-checking. We also received a number of comments from frustrated visitors who had struggled to read some of the labels.  For all these reasons we emptied the first gallery of objects last week to sort out the snagging.

Curatorial placement Anna Garnett and student volunteer Suzanna Haddow working in the archaeology gallery

I must admit I feared it would take a lot longer but fortunately we had some really wonderful support from volunteers and placements and members of the conservation team. Within a day or so we had emptied the cases.

The empty archaeology gallery

That was the week before last. The contractors came in and sorted out the shelves. Meanwhile I was sorting out the labels. We have switched to a card based system rather than using transparencies. Some visitors struggled to read the transparencies and printing them on card makes them more legible. Not only is it easier to read them, it gives us more flexibility if we want to change exhibits. With transparencies we would have had to empty the case and ask a contractor to come in and install the labels. With card labels we simply remove the card and have another printed.

Thunderstones are go!

Neolithic axe head from Rainsough, Greater Manchester. Image courtesy of Bury Art Museum

I bumped into Craig Brisbane on the Ancient Worlds galleries a few weeks ago and he mentioned in passing that the Prestwich Archaeology Group had found a neolithic stone axe head on the site of an old building. This immediately set off an allert on my radar  because I have been looking for some time for a local example of what are known as ‘thunderstones’ or kerauni to put on display in the Ancient Worlds archaeology gallery.

Thunderstones are explained in Ralph Merrifield’s The Archaeology of Ritual and Magic (Batsford 1987). The story goes something like this: in Greek and Roman times people did not know when they found a prehistoric stone axe that it was a piece of archaeology. They understood it to be a fossilised thunderbolt and called it a keraunos. Working on the principle that lightning never strikes the same place twice, it made sense to them to place it in the roofs of buildings to act as a charm to ward off lightning. Ralph Merrifield mentions a Neolithic stone axe head found in a Medieval building context at Treasury Green in London. He argued that the axe could have dropped down from the roof where it had been placed as a protective talisman, and ended up in the footprint of the building when it fell into ruin.

I wanted to display an example of one of the re-used axes in Ancient Worlds. As it turned out, the best example we could find before the opening was a Neolithic adze, found in the lining of a Romano-British potter’s clay pit  at Brockley Hill, Middlesex, which we borrowed from the Museum of London. I always felt that a local example ought to turn up. And now, thanks to Craig, it seems to have done.

Craig put me in touch with Ms Susan Lord,  Museum Curator at Bury Art Museum , which has the Rainsough excavation archive with the stone axe, on loan from Bolton Museum. She kindly sent me information about the Rainsough excavations.

The Rainsough axe head is made of stone from Tievebulliagh in Ireland (pers.comm. Craig Brisbane). Image courtesy of Bury Art Museum.

In the meantime I checked with Mike Nevell, Head of the Centre for Applied Archaeology at the University of Salford.  Mike confirmed, after speaking to Craig, that the axe was found whilst excavating the foundations of a timber-framed cruck cottage, at Rainsough Brow, in Prestwich, about half way between Manchester and Bolton, during the 1980s. I understand that cottages like this were still being built into the 17th century. The axe came from the middle room of the cottage, in the main heated room space. Mike told me there was no surviving floor surface there when the site was dug, but the axe was not in a pit or a cut but at the surface. Of course, we cannot be absolutely sure that the axe had been in the roof and fell down during dereliction, but judging by the location and shallow depth of the axe head, Mike felt that this was highly likely.

What do other people think? Do you agree that the Rainsough Neolithic axe head is probably a keraunos?

You can find out more about the circumstances of this discovery in Archaeology North West, the Bulletin of CBA North West No7 vol.2,part 1 spring/summer 1994 (see Dr Michael Nevell’s article ‘Rainsough a Romano-British site in the Irwell Valley’). You can find a plan and a section drawing of the cottage in Michael Nevell and Norman Redhead’s Bury the Archaeology of a Pennine Valley (University of Manchester, 1999).

We are now talking to Susan Lord and the museums at Bury and Bolton with a view to borrowing it to display in our Ancient Worlds galleries.

Though this isn’t exactly an International Rescue, we can at least say that Thunderstones are Go!

My sincerest thanks to Craig Brisbane for mentioning the axe, to Susan Lord for sending photographs and supporting information, and to Mike Nevell for confirming the stratigraphic location, all of which has helped in the reappraisal of this discovery.

Women in Ancient Worlds

The recent blog ‘Desperately seeking women in the ancient world’ seems to have struck a chord as the site statistics show one of largest totals for visitors since we opened. Not that ladies aren’t represented in the new galleries. There are interviews with Dr Chantal Conneller from Archaeology, Vanessa Oakden who works for the Portable Antiquities Scheme, Dr Sonia O’Connor who is a materials scientist and Dr Roberta Mazza in Classics. However, so far as historical references or archaeological discoveries are concerned, women don’t feature as frequently. To take an example, as you might expect, Roman inscriptions set up by women or mentioning women don’t turn up as often as do inscriptions set up by men serving in the Roman army. Wouldn’t it be great to have the equivalent in Manchester of the wonderful set of tombstones set up in memory of the wives of soldiers who served at Templeborough Roman fort?

Etruscan cinerary urn showing a reclining woman. She wears a short-sleeved, high-girt chiton, long cloak with veil over the back of her head, and a large round “jewel” on her ring-finger. MM acc. no.29946a-b

What we do have in the Ancient Worlds galleries is the mummy of the ancient Egyptian temple chantress Asru and a facial reconstruction of an Etruscan lady called Hanunia Tlesnana on display in the second table of the archaeology gallery of Ancient Worlds. Is it any accident that one of the ladies whose life can be reconstructed to some degree happens to be Etruscan? After all, didn’t Etruscan ladies enjoy a greater degree of equality relatively speaking than say Roman or Greek ladies?

Well not necessarily. I checked Antonia Rallo’s chapter about ‘The Woman’s Role’ in Mario Torelli’s The Etruscans (Thames and Hudson, 2000). ‘Both in antiquity and in modern times Etruscan women have been invested with qualities and roles that were actually not theirs…we see an attempt to overestimate the Etruscan woman’s role… thus arose the myth of Etruscan matriarchy, which appears in light of modern criticism and available information, entirely unfounded’ (p.131).

Carved frieze depicting a battle scene from the front of an Etruscan sarcophagus. MM acc.no. 29949b

Of course, if any evidence were needed that Etruscan women were not to be trifled with, one has only to look at a funerary monument in the Museum collection which shows a battle scene with what looks like a woman apparently holding a tray of muffins clouting a warrior round the back of his head (right in photo)…

All the best for the New Year.

Ancient Worlds Student Social on 7th December

Walk like an Egyptian: Chloe Morley at the Student Social

There are times when the job of museum curator is more like that of a stand-up comedian. Not that I’m claiming to be an archaeological Peter Kay or Michael McIntyre I hasten to say, but I did find myself in the uncomfortable position of doing a stand-up routine last Friday evening when there was a student social at Manchester Museum.

Organised by Naomi Kashiwagi, Student Engagement Coordinator at Whitworth Art Gallery and Manchester Museum, my job was to show the students around the new galleries for half an hour. I agonised in advance: this was an event for young people on a Friday evening and some of them would have had a drink or two at the temporary bar in reception. Something unduly formal was not likely to go down very well. A light touch and an injection of humour were called for.

I consulted Louise, one of the Visitor Services Assistants at the Museum. Louise took a dim view of my suggestion that I tell some funny stories, complaining that the last time I tried to tell her a joke it had taken her a week to understand it. Admittedly there’s probably a niche market for archaeological jokes because inevitably something always gets lost in translation but these were archaeology students so in theory they ought to ‘get’ the jokes.

I tried out a humorous anecdote about how when the Roman legions were about to invade Britain, the soldiers took fright and the Emperor Claudius had to send his Greek freedman Narcissus from Rome to give them a pep-talk. Narcissus and the commander of the expeditionary force, Aulus Plautius, mounted the rostrum to address the troops. Seeing the commander and the Greek former slave standing side-by-side, one wag shouted ‘Yo Saturnalia!’ as an ironic reference to the Roman mid-winter festival of Saturnalia during which slaves swapped places with their masters and the masters became slaves.

I don’t think Louise was very impressed with the Saturnalia joke but Christian, another Visitor Services Assistant, offered to go with me and laugh at the funny bits. For the next thirty minutes I was on very thin ice as I guided the visitors around the galleries trying to tease out humorous anecdotes from the exhibits. In the second table display case there is an ancient Etruscan votive offering clay model of a woman’s womb. That was a great prompt to tell them about the ancient Greeks and their completely mad theory about the wandering womb. The Roman Manchester display provided an opportunity to talk about coy references to Roman soldiers’ off-duty activities in 1970s excavation reports. In the Egyptian gallery an entertaining mnemonic helps you remember which bit of the human viscera goes in which pot in the set of Canopic jars and which of the Sons of Horus looks after it.

The student social tour of the galleries (photo courtesy of Naomi Kashiwagi)

I fear there were more than a few ‘tumbleweed moments’ but everyone clapped when I’d finished so I was relieved to go and get a beer afterwards. About a hundred people attended and the first indications are that they enjoyed it. If we do it again I’ll be sure to dust off some more archaeologically themed jokes. On second thoughts maybe that’s not such a good idea….

The Student Social – tour of the new Ancient Worlds galleries

You can find out more about similar events and activities at Naomi’s blog – http://studentengagementmanchester.wordpress.com/

Society of Museum Archaeologists Conference in Manchester 28th-29th November 2012

Over the last few days the Museum has been hosting the Society of Museum Archaeologists conference. The society promotes museum involvement in all aspects of archaeology, especially the contribution that museums make to public understanding of the past and campaigns for acceptance of museums as guardians of this aspect of the national heritage. It made sense to invite the society to hold its annual conference in Manchester following the opening of the new Ancient Worlds galleries on October 25th. At the conference a number of papers are given and there is time for discussion. It is something of a tradition to offer a field trip so that delegates can see something of the archaeology at, or close to, the venue.

So it was that on a rather chilly Wednesday morning I led a short walking tour of some of the places of archaeological interest. As the field trip was scheduled to last for two hours on the programme I concentrated on the earliest sites along Deansgate. I took a small party of society members to Castlefield, where we saw the partially reconstructed Roman fort founded about 79 AD. Many of the best discoveries relating to Roman Manchester are now on display in the Ancient Worlds galleries such as altars, sculpture from the Temple of Mithras and the Manchester wordsquare.

Walking northwards along Deansgate we stopped off at the John Rylands library and had a quick look around. It’s a beautiful building and we were thrilled to see a fragment of the Gospel of St Mark dating from about 125 AD.

At the north end of Deansgate we saw the Hanging Bridge, a number of medieval stone arches dating from 1350-1500, popped into the Manchester Cathedral and then called in to see Chetham’s Library. Although there was some filming going on, the librarian, Michael Powell, kindly met us and showed us round, pointing out some of the antiquarian volumes in this historic collection.

Where Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels once sat: SMA Conference 2012 visit to Chetham’s Library

It has become something of a custom for visitors, to see where Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels did their work. With a little cajoling I managed to take a group photo of our party as a lasting souvenir of their short visit to Manchester. Then it was back to the Museum on Oxford Road to start the conference.

Visitors from the Malmo Museum in Ancient Worlds

Visitors from Malmo in Ancient Worlds November 2012

It’s little more than a fortnight since the Ancient Worlds displays opened and we’ve already had our second party of international visitors. Last week museum professionals from Malmo Museum came to the Manchester Museum. Menaka Monro, Learning Manager, Campbell Price, Curator of Egypt and the Sudan, and I showed them round the new galleries. They are planning new displays of their own and were on a fact-finding mission to see new developments in the UK. They’d already spent some time in London and were flying back to Sweden the same evening.

The photos show the third gallery of Ancient Worlds, which takes a different approach to displaying material. Whilst we always wanted to show more of the collections the third gallery was an opportunity to present dense displays of lots of objects that have an aesthetic impact.

You get a flavour of that approach from this photo showing Menaka talking to the visitors in front of what has become known as the ‘death by shabtis case’. This is one of the most visually stunning cases in the third gallery. Tiers of brightly-coloured shabtis fill the case. Although this image doesn’t do it justice, from a distance the lighting makes it look as though there is no glass.

The impact of this case is very much an aesthetic one and some visitors have commented that it looks like an art college display. Objects can be shown in many different ways, and whilst there is text for the shabtis in the case as a group there was no need to label each and every example. If further information is needed it can be accessed via a code using a mobile device.  The same approach has been taken with the lamps, glass vessels and jewellery to name but a few also displayed in the third gallery. And of course it allows us to bring out many more items previously in storage than would otherwise have been possible.

One of the visitors from Malmo Museum using the Haptic in the third gallery

The visitors also tried out the Haptic in the third gallery. This is an advanced prototype that enables visually-impaired visitors to interact with objects in a tactile way. One of the objects is the Museum’s ‘Odysseus in the Cyclops’ cave’ pot. The Haptic allows the visitor to move a censor across the body of the pot and to feel the body of the pot, for instance the turn of the shoulder or the projection of the footring. It also calls up other information. The development of the Haptic was generously funded by the Stavros Niarchos foundation.

I think our Swedish colleagues went away with a positive impression of the new galleries. It’s great to maintain the relationship with the Malmo Museum.

Flying Visit to Ancient Worlds

Ancient Worlds – archaeology gallery

A number of colleagues are taking leave following the opening of Ancient Worlds last Thursday but I called in this morning to meet Joyce K. from Victoria in Australia who is visiting the Museum today. Joyce and her colleagues are planning new antiquities displays and she was naturally interested to see how we had approached Ancient Worlds. We’ve been talking to Joyce for a little while now and she timed her visit to take advantage of the opening.  It’s gratifying to know that the new displays are attracting international interest within days of the opening.

Joyce K. looking at the new displays with Campbell, Curator of Egypt and the Sudan earlier today

For me it was fascinating to see how the visitors were reacting to the new galleries. There seemed to be a real sense of engagement with the displays. Whereas before visitors tended to walk through the old displays despite the quality of the exhibits, now they seem to be stopping and looking at things, reading the labels and looking up information using the codes attached to each label.

Joyce talked about displaying material in an art gallery context and Campbell and I couldn’t wait to show her the third gallery with its stunning displays of Egyptian shabtis, lamps, glass and other material.

Shabtis and lamps in the 3rd gallery displays

I also realised belatedly that visitors can read this blog on the gallery. Within seconds of me clicking the button visitors will be reading this and looking at the photos. I can’t think of anything that makes the curatorial input to the museum going experience more immediate. And if you don’t read the blog there’s always some spectacular images on the large screen at the end of the gallery.

Scan of Egyptian mummy in the 3rd gallery of Ancient Worlds