Archives for March 2010

This Easter there are events in museums all over the UK and A History of the World is getting involved in as many as we can.

But first out of the blocks is The Herbert Art Gallery and Museum in Coventry, which has cunningly stolen a march on the others by holding its big event tomorrow night.

The museum is holding a special Museum at Night event starring the A History of the World objects from seven local museums.

There will be plenty to do, with activities themed around the objects: flint knapping demonstrations will show you how the Waverly Wood Handaxe was made; a gold Elizabethan signet ring is the inspiration for the Royal Shakespeare Company to perform scenes from Romeo and Juliet; and paper aeroplane races will celebrate the Whittle Jet Engine.

Plus, with Jerry Dammer's handwritten lyrics to Too Much Too Young being one of the objects on display, you can celebrate Coventry's most famous musical sound, 2-Tone, with a one-night-only supergroup from The Selecter's Neol Davies.

The event is on between 6:30pm and 9:30pm at The Herbert Art Gallery and Museum. Tickets are free but you need to reserve online here. And if you can't make it then you can see all of Coventry and Warwickshire's objects on display at the museum until the 7 April.

• The photo from inside the Herbert Museum is by Wolfiewolf and it's used under licence.

One of the great things about the BBC iPlayer is that you can watch things that you wouldn't usually get to see. And that means not only shows that are on after your bedtime or while you're out doing something else (BBC Four seem to take a perverse pleasure in showing a documentary I want to see every time I'm out)  but also programmes that you would never have seen because you live in a different part of the country.

Why am I telling you this? Because thanks to iPlayer I now know the answer to the question: "What has Wales ever given the world?" Previously I would have plumped for coal and terrifyingly loud, close-harmony singing. But in future I will be able to give a less ignorant and stereotypical answer and my list will include: the rigid hull inflatable boat, the steam locomotive, air-to-surface radar, canned lager, orthopaedic splints, the sleeping bag and the telescope.

This is because I've been watching Wales and the History of the World, in which Eddie Butler looks at the inventions and people from Wales that have helped change the world.

If you're in Wales then the final programme in the series is on BBC One tonight at 7:30pm. But if you've missed an episode, or like me are unfortunate enough not to live in Wales, you can see the whole series online for the next seven days.

Here's a taste of what to expect, as Eddie explains the link between John Wayne, tinned carrots and Carmarthenshire.



And if you like that, you should take a look at the exceedingly interesting boring bar that may have helped us win the battle of Waterloo. Or you can see the objects that have been added to the site from people and museums in Wales.

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You might have read a post here last Friday - or the Friday before last, depending on how you like to count your Fridays - about the Staffordshire Hoard.

Martin Ellis, from Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, talked about why it had caught the public imagination and why it resonated particularly strongly with the people of the Midlands.

Well now it seems that they will be able to feel those historic vibrations whenever they want, as the appeal to buy the Staffordshire Hoard has announced that it has raised the £3.3m needed to keep it in the Midlands.

This means the objects will eventually go on permanent display at BMAG in Birmingham and at the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery in Stoke on Trent, only 25 miles and 40 miles, respectively, from where the hoard was uncovered.

Fundraising continues to help towards the conservation and eventual display of the 1,600 items in the hoard and the temporary exhibit at Birmingham Museum continues for another three weeks.

• The image is of a gold hilt fitting, courtesy of the Staffordshire Hoard website.

Near Liverpool this weekend? Fancy some history? How about a great big slice of it? Then perhaps you should try Liverpool's Big History Weekend.

You'll be able to learn everything you ever wanted to know about the history of Liverpool. There will be all kinds of things going on, including talks from local historians Steve Binns, Frank Carlyle and Janet Dugdale, among others, and BBC Radio Merseyside broadcasting live from St George's Hall tomorrow morning from 9:30am.

They shouldn't have any difficulty finding people to talk to as the hall will be filled with around 70 heritage and local history societies. If A History of the World in 100 Objects has got you thinking about ancient history then you could track down the Merseyside Archaeological Society. Or how about checking out the intricate small-scale, historical re-enactments of the Liverpool Wargames Association?

You can also bring us your history. There will be a stall where you can find out more about A History of the World and add your objects to the site.

So find out more about the history of Liverpool this weekend and even add to it yourself.

• The photo of St George's Hall is by Eric The Fish and it's used under licence.

With the first part of A History of the World still ringing in our ears, Neil MacGregor's words are clearly inspiring many of you to come to the British Museum and see the stars of the show: from the small, intimate lovers figurine, to the colossal - and frankly intimidating - statue of Ramesses II.

We occasionally get asked by visitors whether the Museum is intending to display all of the 100 objects in one room. We know it would make a great exhibition but, as lead curator JD Hill explained, we think there is an even better way to see objects from the series.

Our intention was never to put all the objects together in one room. It was always to show them throughout the Museum so that you can see other objects from the same cultures or part of the world.

So, you'll find the first 30 objects - from part one of the series - across galleries that display other objects from the same time, place, or culture. By seeing the objects like this, you get the chance to find the bigger story that each of them has to tell - much like you hear from Neil on Radio 4.

The curatorial team that selected the final objects from the millions of items we have in the collection did it so we could spin the globe at certain moments in the last two million years and see what was going on in Africa, Asia, the Americas, Europe and across the Pacific.

Here at the Museum you'll find these objects, but through them you can discover another 100, or 1,000 (or even more), each telling another part of the story of how us humans got to where we are today.

You could start in one of the ancient Egypt galleries, and from there cross the Red Sea into the next room to see objects from the Middle East. From there, you can move into Europe by way of the ancient cultures that linked the civilisations of Mesopotamia and Greece. Then maybe hop over the Atlantic, or breeze across the Indian Ocean... I could go on.

You can genuinely travel the world at the British Museum - either on site, online or on air - and it's all free. You'll have to cover some ground but whoever said telling, or indeed discovering, a history of the entire world was easy?

• The photo is by Benedict Johnson © Trustees of the British Museum

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I'm sure you remember the news last year when a hoard of over 1,500 items of Anglo Saxon gold was discovered in a field in South Staffordshire last year by a metal detectorist. Ever since there has been huge public interest in seeing this buried treasure, unearthed like something out of a pirate movie. As the Staffordshire Hoard goes on display again at one of our partner museums, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, we asked their Curator of Applied Arts, Martin Ellis, to tell us why it draws the crowds.

Back in October, although we knew in the Museum that there was a huge popular interest in the Hoard, we had no idea that it would catch people's interest so powerfully - or prompt so many to queue round the building for a chance to see the assemblage of golden fragments on show.

The ideas of treasure, of gold and gems; that it was hidden, untouched and unknown for so many centuries; the light it casts on the English Dark Ages and an ancient pagan past; its very scale, richness and rarity; all these things fascinate. But I think we are also attracted by its mystery.

There are so many unanswered questions. Who collected and buried it? and why? Was it an offering to the gods? Military plunder? Why was everything broken apart with such apparent violence and carelessness of its beauty? Sometimes too many facts, too much knowledge, can be deadening. We need the unexplained. The Hoard allows us to imagine what and who and why, unfettered by the suspicion that there is an expert in the background holding all the answers.

So a big part of the attraction is the sense of mystery as much as its value. The hoard is worth more than its weight in gold because it teases out stories that were hidden with it.

Since it was discovered there's been a campaign to keep the hoard in the Midlands near where it was found. Martin sees this as part of the connection that objects in museums can evoke in people; a connection that can help them to relate to history.

For people in the West Midlands, the Hoard has touched us with a sense of our own history, and reminded us of an ancient identity. The notion of Mercia, the powerful, controlling kingdom of Britain in the 7th and 8th centuries, is unfamiliar. But suddenly we are hearing that this might be the treasure of Penda or Wulfhere or Aethelred, great kings from a remote past which give our region an unexpected authority. We're all Mercians now.

And the Hoard holds the special attraction that all museum objects share: that it's the real thing. It is an attraction which is unfailing; the sense that we are looking at actual history, the real evidence of the past. And objects can tell so many stories - both our own history and the wider world, exploring the experience and achievements of local people in a global context.

BMAG has a put a number of objects from its collection on A History of the World. How do these objects help explain Birmingham's place in the world?

The extraordinary clock barometer, on display in Birmingham's Museum of the Jewellery Quarter, for example, tells us about Birmingham's world-wide engineering prowess. The object was made by the great firm of Elkington & Co., for presentation in Argentina and has associations with the Birmingham engineer, William Bragge. But it tells separate stories of the very beginnings of the railways in South America and India, of pioneering and colonial expansion. It also suggests a more questionable narrative about the taste of Birmingham designers in the early 20th century!

But the clock barometer is linked through its stories to other objects in our selection. The Sultanganj Buddha, for example, found by a British engineer during the building of the railways in North East India, is one of the greatest treasures of the Museum. As is the Fijian Ancestor Figure, brought to Birmingham through Victorian trade and colonialism. But the figure is also a powerful emblem of spiritual and social authority in a changed world.

Perhaps, ultimately, A History of the World is more a journey than a history. It offers us the opportunity to wander through the past and around the globe, travelling from story to story, down tangential byways, to discover the inter-connectedness of human experience and heritage.

The Staffordshire Hoard is on display at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery from today. Go and get a glimpse of your ancient past and while you're there why not see if you can spot some of the A History of the World collection among the many treasures of the museum.

• Image courtesy of the Staffordshire Hoard website.

Neil Oliver is the historian familiar to most of us from trekking around the cliffs and beaches of the UK in the BBC Two series Coast.

The Radio Café's Chris Kane asked him about A History of the World and how objects can engage us with history. He also got him to nominate an object that he owns, and he chose a gold wristwatch presented to his grandfather when he retired from Cooper and Co's supermarket.

On the back of the watch it says 'in appreciation of 41 years loyal service 1913 - 1954.' But, as Neil explains in this video, the inscription quietly glosses over a momentous event in world history in which his grandfather played his part: the First World War.



So a watch presented in the mid-50s can tell us about the way people went to war, and then returned to their everyday lives, at the start of the 20th century.

And even the popularity of the wristwatch is connected to the war, as Neil pointed out on The Radio Café.

The fashion for wristwatches was essentially a product of the First World War itself. Up until that time men had worn pocket-watches - a watch on a chain. But they were less practical in the often filthy circumstances of fighting in the trenches of the First World War. And wristwatches made more sense - you were less likely to lose them.

Did you know that? I didn't. Listen to the rest of the interview for more about the watch and Neil's thoughts on why it's important to find ways to teach our children and ourselves about history.



You can catch up with stories from A History of the World on The Radio Café every Tuesday.

And if Neil has inspired you to look for history in your home, then you can add your object to the site whenever you want. Or see what others have added using our timeline (use the arrows or the bar on the right to move forward through the objects).

When is a stone not a stone? That's not the cue for a chin-stroking debate. It's actually a question that archaeologists and museum curators often have to answer.

The first week of A History of the World in 100 objects, the omnibus of which was on Radio 4 last Friday night, did a very nice line in ancient bits of stone that are in fact deliberately-shaped tools - the very earliest human technology. But knowing your axe from your pebble is no mean feat. In fact it's very easy to mistake a naturally-shaped rock for an ancient artefact.

Jill Cook is the curator of the oldest objects at the British Museum and has spent many years studying and identifying the most ancient tools in existence. She told me what to look for.

Stone tools are made by using one stone as a hammer to knock bits called 'flakes' off another. When a toolmaker is at work, these flakes originate on an edge and are systematically removed in a sequence from one or both sides.

When the flakes are knocked off, they leave shell-shaped depressions or 'scars' on the edge being modified. These scars are narrow at the edge and expand out removing much of the natural surface.

Such modification produces artefacts that show pattern and purpose. When such tools are found together among the flakes that were detached from them and sometimes with cut-marked animal bones, we can easily recognize them as tools.

So, if it's got 'flakes', 'scars', 'pattern' and 'purpose' then it might just be the handiwork of a distant ancestor. Armed with this knowledge, have another look at the Olduvai handaxe or Clovis Spear point and you can really see what Jill means.

But how does she explain the seemingly unnaturally-shaped stones that we sometimes find.

Stones modified by rock falls, waves crashing them together on a beach, cattle trampling, or extremes of temperature, look quite different. If a stone is only nibbled around the edges, this suggests that the edges are accidentally damaged by agricultural activity.

Random scars struck individually from different parts of the surface are a sign of natural impacts, whereas round scars that do not originate at an edge are a sure sign that the stone has suffered extremes of temperatures causing thermal fractures which have a characteristic saucepan lid shape.

Look closely enough and the clues are there. But if you want a second opinion local museums or Finds Liaison Officers from the Portable Antiquities Scheme can help separate the stone from the sculpted.

Although even Jill would admit that it's a tricky business, no matter how educated the eye.

Naturally modified stones often do look like tools and can fool the most experienced archaeologists.

Nice to know you're in good company eh?