National Museums Liverpool Blog - archaeology

A divine Clarice Cliff 'tea for two' set from Age of Jazz.

It's an eclectic selection and there are some great books, my personal favourites being 'When Time Began to Rant and Rage...' which is a fab book of Irish figurative work and totally worth a fiver,  Age of Jazz: British Arts Deco Ceramics as I'm a sucker for a deco teaset, and British Watercolours and Drawings from the Lady Lever's collection.

If you've still not got a John Moores catalogue then now is the time to buy one as they're reduced to £7.50. And if you buy it from the Walker shop you get the John Moores China version for free.

My name is Ellie and I am a new addition at the National Conservation Centre in Liverpool.  I am here on a year long internship in Objects Conservation and Public Engagement, funded by ICON (Institute of Conservation) and the Heritage Lottery Fund. 

While I am here I will post regular updates on the blog to provide a glimpse of what is happening behind-the-scenes at the National Conservation Centre, as conservators look after and investigate fascinating objects from the collection.

Last Saturday’s event ‘Looking After Liverpool’s History’ provided a sneak preview of some of the objects that will be showcased in the new Museum of Liverpool next year.  One hundred year old chocolate, modern day beer bottles and bomb damaged ceramics went under the spotlight, as conservators explained how they look after the enormous variety of objects in the museum’s collection.

If you missed out, then why not join us this Saturday 20th November between 1-3pm for ‘Object Detectives', when we will be revealing the hidden stories of objects using investigative techniques.  Drop in and see our x-ray and high powered microscopes in action, find out more about objects and discover what is eating our collections!

Image of a clothes moth larva taken with a scanning electron microscope.

Yesterday morning there were 15 eager first year Egyptology students waiting outside the museum doors in the pouring rain. They were here for a museum class translating inscriptions in the Ancient Egypt gallery, all done early in the morning before the museum opens to the public. The group had an hour to make their way round the gallery and translate hieroglyphic inscriptions on a varity of artefacts - wooden coffins and stone stela. Some had to crawl on the floor to read the very bottom lines of text on the coffins.

This is their second museum class of the new academic year: last Saturday they came round for a tour of the gallery to get them familiar with the collections. It's always good to meet the new students, especially when they are so keen and excited about putting their first month of language training into action with ancient artefacts in the museum. I look forward to seeing them keep returning over the next 3 years of their degree. In recent years the museum has become more involved with the teaching of Egyptology at the University, building on a relationship that stretches back over 100 years. Much of World Museum's Egyptian collection comes from the university's excavations by Professor John Garstang who was digging in Egypt, Nubia and the Near East in the early part of the 1900s. The university still continues to excavate in Egypt and next week I'll be joining colleagues from the university to assist with the on-going study of a fortress town of Rameses II. I'll be updating the Ancient Egypt gallery Facebook fan page with news from Egypt if you want to find out more.

Helen with Snorri the viking and friends

Helen Gornall tells us about the upcoming festival and a visit from Snorri the Viking!

Festival of British Archaeology – 17 July until 1 August 2010

The Festival of British Archaeology is here again and the Weston Discovery Centre (WDC) at the World Museum is leading the way with two weeks of fun-filled activities! The Festival is co-ordinated by the Council for British Archaeology (CBA) and is designed to showcase the very best of British Archaeology – which of course the WDC uses to showcase the very best of our archaeological collections!

The events are all pulled together by the CBA. Our events have got pride of place on their website next to hundreds of events across the country!

In the first week of the Festival we kick off with a visit from Snorri and friends, our ‘real’ Vikings who will be around to chat to all our visitors about how the Vikings used to live, what they used to eat and what they used to wear (modelled by Snorri himself)!

We continue with spotlight talks throughout the week about conservation, stratigraphy and the ancient Egyptians! As well as our family craft workshops on ancient writing, learning from poo (not real poo!) and Egyptian coffins. Also, as a special for the festival our hominid badge challenge and skeleton excavation and recording will be available with our staff on hand to help!

Our second week continues in much the same vein, with our hominid badge challenge and our skeleton excavation and recording continuing to be available with staff on hand! Our spotlight talks cover conservation and stratigraphy again, as well as talks at the weekend on the Vikings! Our workshops include ancient buildings, Greek pots and Viking craft activities to round off the festival! See the full list of events. 

The Weston Discovery Centre, from the World Museum is on Twitter. Follow us at @NML_Discovery and find out when our events are and what’s going on!

I can't believe our Spring Public Lecture Series is concluding tomorrow, Thursday - the weeks have flown by and the talks have been fascinating.

Our topics this week are, at 2pm, Beautiful Toxteth - The Unusually Royal History of Toxteth Deer Park by Dr Clemency Fisher, who will be revealing the beauty of Toxteth and discussing a couple of Toxtethian zoological riddles, including the identity of some very rare cows. This is followed by, at 2.25pm, Prehistoric, Roman and Medieval excavations at the M62 Tarbock Interchange, 2007. As is the case of many in Liverpool, I travel regularly on the M62, so I'm sure future trips will take on added meaning after tomorrow!
The Public Lectures are held in the Treasure House Theatre, World Museum, from 2pm.

I have really enjoyed Thursday afternoons: what an impressive range of research, and a wealth of knowledge. Our curators' presentations have given great insight into our collections across National Museums Liverpool. I am already looking forward to our Autumn Lecture Series, which starts on Thursday 23 September. Put it in your diaries!

Thursday 6 May is the day people have been talking about all across Liverpool: it's the day our public lecture series features the history of World Museum Liverpool.

Liverpool's Museum - The First 150 Years is the first of three great talks lined up for this afternoon's session. Presented by our Executive Director of Collections, John Millard, the event starts at 2pm in the Treasure House Theatre, World Museum, and is part of our celebrations in the museum's 150th anniversary year.

John's talk will be followed by, at 2.25pm, Collecting Tibet: Objects, People and Places in early 20th-century British India - presented by Head of Ethnology Emma Martin; and at 2.50pm A Place Called Home: Liverpool Court Housing by archaeology curator Liz Stewart.

An impressive line-up for your Thursday afternoon!

Thursday afternoons are never going to be the same again…

I am really excited about our new Spring 2010 Public Lecture Series, which kicks off tomorrow (April 22). It’s being held at the Treasure House Theatre, World Museum, and features a selection of subjects from our museums and galleries’ collections and exhibitions, from archaeology to contemporary slavery.

For the next four Thursdays, our curators will be talking about some of the fascinating things they have researched.

Tomorrow’s topics are Researching 10th to 16th-century Caribbean wood sculpture; Collecting contemporary slavery objects for the International Slavery Museum; and The Huxley Hoard of Viking Silver. Each talk lasts about 25 minutes.

Future highlights include Toxteth Deer Park; Liverpool's court housing and the history of World Museum Liverpool, as part of the venue's 150th anniversary celebrations.

The public lecture series is admission free and runs on Thursdays 22 April - 13 May from 2pm-3.15pm. Hope to see you there!

It may still be freezing outside, but here at the museum one of our curators has been occupied with thoughts of sunnier climes - Greece to be exact! Here's our Curator of Classical and European Antiquities, Gina Muskett, to tell us more...

Careful with that pot!

Visitors to the third floor of World Museum will see a change – a brand-new display of Greek objects. Lots of people – not just me – have been working on this display, and it’s taken us less than a year to get ready, from start to finish. Above you can see a photo showing two of us arranging the objects in one of the cases. It takes a lot of time to get things just right and, of course, we have to handle the objects with great care – the pot we’re putting into position is about 2,500 years old.

My favourite case is the display of some of the oldest objects in the display, made about 3,500 years ago by the people we call Minoans and Mycenaeans. Have a look at the tiny pieces of semi-precious stones, cut with very detailed designs, and imagine the skill it took to make them. The people who made the pottery were real experts, too - some of the pots have really thin walls, not much thicker than an egg-shell.

It was fantastic for me to have the chance to work on the display because Greek art and archaeology is a subject very close to my heart. I hope you find time to visit the new display; as well as some lovely objects, the colours in the cases are bright and sunny, reminding me of the wonderful blue sea and skies of Greece. Just the thing to brighten up a cold and chilly winter day in Liverpool!

Françoise Chircop Rutland of the University of Liverpool, who is doing her PhD on NML Hittite collections, asked Annemarie Le Pensèe in Conservation Technologies to scan a mysterious mould from an excavation by Professor Garstang in 1907 to 1911 at Sakje Gözü, southern Turkey.  Making a computer positive from the scanned negative it turns out to be a mould for a type of axe known in Middle to Late Bronze Age Egypt - between 1300BC and 1180BC.

Screenshot of a 3D computer model of the the cavity of a Hittite mould mirrored and reversed. The 3D model was created using non-contact laser scanning.

The axe - called a 'fenestrated "duck-bill" axe' on account of its window shaped apertures and its duck-bill shape - is known from other examples (not in our collections) though both moulds and axes of this type are rarely found outside of Egyptian collections. There's not many moulds about... and moulds, presumably, facilitate the production of more axes for use in the ‘smiting’ of which the Hittites were so fond according to the Old Testament of the Bible.  Some archaeologists now believe that these axes were used for ritual battles between prize fighters and symbolised high social status both in life and death – since these axes were buried with them.