Neil Wilkin and Jennifer Wexler will talk about their roles in curating The world of Stonehenge at the British Museum. Neil is Curator of Early Europe (Neolithic and Bronze Age collections). His research focuses on grave goods, votive offerings and the relationships between different strands of archaeological knowledge. Jennifer Wexler is Project Curator working on the exhibition.
The Wiltshire Museum is lending important objects from our collections that are of key importance to this blockbuster exhibition.
Right so it’s my pleasure to introduce uh the team who put together the amazing world of stonehenge exhibition so neil and jennifer and that’s all i’m going to say and i’ll leave the rest up to over to you i will just bring up the exhibition sorry not the exhibition the um the powerpoint
Okay neil can you see yeah can you see that okay okay i’m just gonna mute myself back okay well um thank you very much firstly uh to david and to wheelchair museum for inviting us to speak tube this evening about an exhibition that opened a few weeks ago
The world of stonehenge at the british museum my name is neil wilkin i’m the curator of early europe and of the world of stonehenge exhibition and i’m joined this evening by dr jennifer wechsler who is the project curator on the exhibition and we’re going to do a double header
Some of you might have seen us talk about the exhibition before what we’ve tried to do this evening is give you a quite different view um subtly different perhaps um looking more at the objects from wheelchair that that have been lent to us um particularly by david but also by
Adrian green in salisbury because as you might know those objects play a key part in the exhibition um that we’re um telling uh and showing but i think at the moment we’ve probably got some technical issues is that right david so sorry nia i also um i just had an
Issue there so let me um we’ve seen the powerpoint slide editing right okay hold on let me just apologies everyone um let me just try that again to see if that will work properly um does that look correct yep that looks fine okay great okay so we all
Feel we know stonehenge and i think people who live in wheelchair or friends of of of wiltshire museum will feel that they particularly know stonehenge very well and i think that is true of many of our visitors to the museum and hopefully many of our visitors to the exhibition
That there’s something about this iconic monument that really appeals to people and that pulls them in to want to know more but what we’re trying to do in this exhibition is not to replicate the kind of information you might find at the stonehenge visitor center provided by english heritage or
Indeed the amazing displays and devises or salisbury instead in the exhibition that we’ve put together we’re trying to put stonehenge you know in a wider context so we’re trying to pan back and look at how stonehenge fits into the really the world that existed at that
Time um the the times and um the kind of places that existed at the same time as stonehenge was built so we all know that lots of other monuments are constructed around the same time as stonehenge but what we wanted to do in the exhibition is bring the public into that world
People who might only know the monument we wanted to share with them the excitement that we feel about monuments that were built at the same time um up in orkney or in ireland or in wales or indeed in in continental europe so we want you to bring those stories in while
Also keeping a thread a touchstone of stonehenge running through the whole exhibition so there are key objects from the landscape of stone engine from the monument but around those objects there are other other other objects from different parts of britain and europe that’s our our thesis really that’s what we were
Trying to do with the the exhibition and in doing this i think we’re not we’re not the first by any stretch of the imagination um william strickley was one of the first he was an antiquarian an early archaeologist some might say and he was very interested in exploring the the context of stonehenge
And he was the first really to fathom that to understand stonehenge the monument you had to really think about how it sat within this much wider ceremonial and ritual landscape how it connected to things like the avenue and other monuments there may or may not have been contemporary so in some ways
We are following in the the footsteps of this um pioneering um early archaeologists who sometimes get some short shrift partly because he is also the individual who really popularizes um the idea that stonehenge was built for and by the druids which of course we know today not to be
Historically accurate but if we can take something from stickley’s original idea i think it is that sense of of imagination if you like of being creative while basing our opinions and our sort of interpretation on the facts but he still had this sort of real sense of wonder
And interest in the period that we we have to try not to lose because we can’t become too dry and too scientific about these periods they are a long time ago but they’re clearly also periods when things were very different to today and i think we have to invest the past with
The sense of imagination and creativity as best we can while not straying from what the evidence is telling us as well so there’s things to take from strictly and things to leave behind in the exhibition why are we doing a stonehenge exhibition is something that many people ask me
Over the last 10 years as we’ve slowly sort of built up the the plan of staging a world of stonehenge exhibition and one of the key reasons is that it’s just never been done it’s never been tackled certainly not by the british museum and certainly not in london and there was an earlier
Exhibition that was held in 1984 and 85 up in edinburgh unfortunately i was too young to attend but it did um help to popularize the period it also uh produced us really useful and i recommend it even today um catalogue called symbols of power but really um the ideas that underpin the
Exhibition as you can imagine given that the exhibition took place almost 40 years ago are now somewhat outdated and the objects that they showed in the exhibition well several in fact quite a few of them have made it through into our exhibition and there’s often there’s also been many new discoveries and i
Think that’s what i personally love about archaeology and about this period is that there’s constantly new discoveries new things are found and our our thinking is shifting almost on sometimes it feels um when it comes to stonehenge at least almost on a monthly basis there’s a new story a new discovery so
Really to bring it up to date after 40 years and to put an exhibition in london um you know the capital uh about this sort of iconic monument that in many ways is an ambassador for for britain and the uk it felt like a really important really important thing to to
Stage so that’s why we we undertook we undertook that um exhibition now and we’re really glad we did because we’ve had a really wonderful response not just in the the five-star ratings that we’ve been lucky enough to receive but also even before the exhibition opened we had
Um a huge amount of interest and what was really uh heart heartening for for us as a as museum curators people who were with the public is that there was interest from all all sorts of branches of of the media so the daily star for instance ran us
Alongside the world cup and the new jurassic park film has great things to do in 2022 and then the art newspaper which is aimed at a very different audience and they put it alongside the venice fan alley and the big van gogh exhibition as the most exciting
Exhibitions to look forward to in 2022 and i think for jennifer and i and colleagues at the british museum that felt like um we had we sort of stumbled upon something that was really important to stage at this moment in in time so we were we were glad of that reception
And i’m going to pass over now to jennifer to take us through really um the time period that the exhibition covers thanks neil um so uh as you can see is quite an extensive exhibition we cover over 4 000 years of history um but the primary period we focus on is
That kind of start of farming um as it comes comes into the british isles um and i think one of the things that is really important here is this is a time of major transitions in both british and in european archaeology it’s it’s that transmission transformation of the world
Through farming and in a sense the creation of the world as we know it today um because we still live in this world so so it is really significant um to us today as well as you know archaeology and people in the past um and one thing we really were interested in
Kind of doing was often these types of exhibitions sort of tend to end around the start of metal work around 4 500 years ago when we get this kind of technology change with with the earliest metal working but we want to kind of extend beyond that because we want to show how the
World then shifted with this new technology and also you know sadly eventually shifted away from the sort of importance of monuments like stonehenge and salisbury plain to these broader connections um across the sea and to the continent so we really wanted to kind of present the
World a bit before and the world a bit after um the sort of core period um that monuments like stonehenge were in use and what we realized and this really kind of came into play as we were sort of planning the exhibition during um you know during lockdown
Is that this the objects in exhibition really tell a story about an age of connectivity um and this isn’t just sort of connectivity um in a sort of literal way literal way but you know people sort of not just living in different regions and connecting but
Also between people and the land and how this relationship is changed and transformed through these these massive changes we see in the archaeological records such as farming but also things such as monument building when people you know uh start adapting their relationships to the way they expect express their belief systems um
And i mean you can kind of see in this dramatic photo the sky is one of the key importance to this so the connection people start to show to the heavens and the sky and and something we always think about is you know these are not
People living in urban settings so we we have such a diminished idea of the sort of night sky and the power of that but you can see in this photo you know we we’re getting these monuments open to to the heavens literally um but also um especially connecting to things like the
Sun which we’ll talk about a little bit later on um but obviously this was of key importance to the livelihood and the survival of these people um so there’s a real power there that people are trying to kind of connect to in a very um in sort of a very um distinct way
As well as connections to each other and and that’s something really lovely and i think something we really want to to focus on is is you know sometimes we have this familiarity with a monument like stonehenge it’s kind of familiar to everyone but it’s shadowy we don’t often
Know the people or we can’t picture them and we really want to bring in those human stories at every scale in the exhibition um and as we sort of develop the design um one of the things we also really want to do is is have a chance to bring the visitors
You know into these kind of past landscapes which are so key as much as possible so bringing those elements of nature and the specifics of of all the archaeology we’re featuring um but as well as kind of in you know sort of enhance or or sort of i guess instill a
Sense of wonder which we get through these cycles of the sun so we kind of have that as an underlying sort of um uh organizing principle i guess you could say behind the exhibition um and the main the main exhibition is divided into these six sections and uh
We’re not obviously gonna go through the whole thing we can’t show you everything tonight but we’re going to show you some of the key objects from those those different sections so one of the first things we we actually start a little bit in the world before just a little bit before
Sort of the kind of core world of stonehenge and one of the reasons we’re doing that um is because we really want to talk about this transformation of people’s relationship with nature and their landscape and how that changes and so in order to kind of contextualize that
Change we need to start a little bit foreign and this is sort of um symbolized by this amazing um antler headdress i guess you could call it um archaeologists sometimes refer to them as frontlets from star car which is a site in up in yorkshire and you know you you see here that
People you know at this time they’re living as hunter gatherers they have a deep connection to nature and um and almost animals and you get the sense that you know we don’t know exactly what these were used for was it ritualistic was it a hunting device but this sense
That almost people are taking on these identities that kind of connect or even allow them to kind of have the power of the animal um sort of that half animal um half human creature so so they have this very direct relationship with nature in in a specific way which changes quite a
Lot once we start to get farming and another example of this is this amazing headdress um and sort of assemblage uh which was buried with a woman in germany and again we have kind of you can see there’s a similarity between um these two sets of objects obviously um
With her there’s some debate about how um how sort of the materials found with her which was a combination of lots of different antlers and different um animal uh bones and teeth as you can see here if it was also a similar headdress to um bad during burgundy and we show
Representation here possibly how it’s used um she’s a really interesting story because uh she was buried cover and ochre with a small baby uh but she also had um some elements of her anatomy which probably actually you know might have given her quite a difficult life uh
She had a sort of seizure she would have had seizures and also um headaches and probably blurred vision and you know would sometimes pass out so because of these anatomical features um we think that actually gave her kind of a special position in society as a kind of a
Shamanist a shaman um and that’s why she has these amazing assemblage of animal bones that maybe gave her this kind of special connection to the spirit world so it’s quite a it’s quite a beautiful story even though it’s um there’s some sad circumstances around her her burial
So we’re it’s really lovely to be able to feature this in the exhibition first time outside of germany and something else that we we sort of as we work through um this this you know world before stonehenge or or world just at you know as we start to um
The world that existed as the early farmer started to come in is we have um we have things that suggest that this was potentially already an important landscape to these hunter-gatherers and and one of the interesting things about salisbury plain is after the end of the last ice age it’s it remained
A more open landscape so at that time obviously a lot of of england of brit of britain was wooded so suddenly we have an area that was more open which is really beneficial for obviously um you know hunting animals and also later on for the farmers um you
Know for farming and you know uh grazing animals and things like that and the interesting thing is is that potentially this landscape because of the significance of it being open was already being marked as a special place by the hunter-gatherers um and it’s a little bit debated but potentially there is these large
Sort of wooden posts or wooden poles that were placed um if you ever went to the old stonehenge visitor center these were found under uh the parking lot there uh so there’s a little bit of debate how they were being used but it seems like at least going back quite
A long time that there’s these these large um posts that were marking this as an important place in the landscape and one of the reasons is also that uh there is natural geology which seems to align um possibly with with important part times of the year with solstice moments so
Already there was something kind of signifying that this might be an important place that people go to and and obviously these ideas are coming through um as we start to get farmers into um britain about 6000 years ago and what’s what’s the symbol that uh that transition to farming
Uh it’s the axes that we have in the thousands and um something we neil and i worked extensively on was essentially a wall of axes that symbolize this transition and this massive change that including deforestation that happens to landscape and this is just a selection of some of these beautiful objects um
From all across europe as well as britain and we see also the axe becomes sort of not just a functional object an object to clear land and um make space for your fields and for your animals but it becomes also a sort of object of desire beauty and these are beautiful
Jedi axes um from the italian alps uh which are sort of objects seduction these are these are things that people are going up to the highest peaks to get this special material and and again initially it was potentially a practical for practical purposes it’s it’s really good it’s
Really hard material but later on it seems like they’re going to get because it’s special it’s considered special and it’s really fascinating there’s not that many of these um that we find in the british isles but the ones we do were probably in circulation for over a thousand years
They would have spent hours and hours polishing them to this beautiful shine and it’s hard to see from this photo but they just they really sparkle they they really have this kind of modern um sort of sensibility about them that it is is stunning in per in person and you know
I fall in love with them every time i see them and i think the visitors do as well so so these really are amazing but you get this idea oh and this this is sorry this is a um a picture of where they come from which is monte viso in italy
But you start to get this idea that getting materials from these important places becomes significant it’s sort of pieces of places that can be moved around and um almost that people with these some of these special axes that they’re going up and touching the heavens to get this
Material and it it’s becoming this kind of secret special thing um and this is key as we start seeing farmers moving from europe because it you know is almost a way of sort of showing the glamour of this new lifestyle and you know possibly getting people on board we
Don’t know completely uh another interesting thing is is we have the sort of british equivalent of this which is langdale axes which come from the lake district and they also have this kind of greenish tone like the jade axes and and you almost get a sense that you know possibly um
There was a shortage of jade you couldn’t really get a lot of these this material so perhaps this is an alternative source and it again it connects to the special mountaintop um location that we we know about in here in the uk so it’s kind of the the
British equivalent um and this is an amazing axe because it’s it’s actually we’ve got a preserved half so we’ve got we have a preserved handle so we know they’re being used in this fashion and and it’s great just to get that kind of idea of how you know these are being
Utilized to kind of cut down trees and kind of shape this world in a new and exciting way and this is just um showing where in the lake district these come from so as we um start to kind of have this idea of transformation of landscapes we have the
Start of monumentality and um we sort of have a thread throughout the exhibition it’s kind of a thread in this tapestry which is about the broader world in contextualizing this broader world of stonehenge but we kind of try to have these points these touchstones within the exhibition where
Um people can come back to the core story of stonehenge and see how it develops and and that kind of fits into this the other developments of this world um so one of the kind of earliest points is is obviously about the first circle at stonehenge which was as you know constructed
Like um out of blue stones that came from the prestili hills in western wales um and it’s an amazing story because um you know this is over 300 kilometers away that they’re they’re bringing these stones they’re going again to um a really important place um and it’s the same at a different
Scale obviously we’re getting much bigger stones but it’s the same idea as we’re getting with the access that people are going to acquire materials from these special places and then putting them you know and using them in a significant way so it’s a similar idea and i should just note that this route
Is um is comes um from mike pitt’s new book um so it’s kind of one theory of how these the the root of movement of these blue stones from wales to um salisbury playing um but there’s obviously lots of theories about this and it’s debated still another interesting point that
We often get questions by visitors is well what what was you know what was this for what was the circle for and you know interestingly it was probably for burying the dead and we um again you know there’s some debate about this but we have um cremation
Remains from the holes that the stones the blue stones were originally placed in and um we have a few um beautiful um objects not a lot not a lot of grave goods but we’ve got a few and particularly this beautiful small mace head that is this polished stone material
From northwestern scotland so again special object special material that’s going quite a long distance showing these long distance connections early on the interesting thing about the the cremation remains is you’ve got the sense of kind of it’s connected the monument is connected to ideas of ancestry and um
From doing isotope analysis so chemical analysis of these cremation remains we know these people are also coming probably from wales at least from the western part of of the country and they are a complete intersection there’s there’s remains of over 200 individuals and their complete intersection of society so men women children
So you get the sense of kind of community spirit is coming along with these stones and imbuing them with special power so as we move into um what we would call the later neolithic um in the exhibition so from sort of five thousand years onwards we also start to
See this amazing sort of shared artistic language that develops um possibly in connection to sort of a religious understanding or religious idea and it’s it’s a type of abstract art with sort of swirls and spirals and it’s inspired by the natural world and you can see here that the beautiful triple
Spiral from from inside newgrange is sort of an amazing example of it of this but interestingly we’re not just getting this on in tombs we’re also getting this in houses and people are living with art in it in a very specific way and this this
Is a photo from nessa brogdar up in up in orkney so these ideas are traveling wide and we can see there’s kind of a shared artistic language across all of the british isles at this time but with a sort of local version of it so people
Are are using kind of similar ideas but in different ways and one really interesting thing um this is the now with mace head which is clearly a a masterpiece of art from um just over 5000 years ago um but one interesting point is we don’t have a lot of figurative art and we
Don’t completely know why and we but we get these kind of sort of hidden faces that are sort of snuck in in places and you can see here the sort of abstracted swirly eyes and then a little sort of remains of a beard and you wonder
Why why is this suddenly why are we seeing a face here is this an ancestor interestingly it is deposited now with in in this passage grave team so perhaps there is that kind of connection to a burial we’re not completely sure but you get these kind of hidden faces and
Another good example of this is with the folks in drums which were found in yorkshire these are three drums buried with a child um and they’re in chalk and so we call them drums but really they’re talk sculptures and again we get you can see the little sort
Of abstracted eyes and and you’ve got this feeling that why are we getting you know these on these particular objects are so unique um and you know wizard protective this element of protective spirit for you know this child buried interestingly we just have found a recent um burial called
In burton agnes which is 15 kilometers away from foxton where you get another similar type of chalk sculpture um that has some similar motifs so this is something that maybe was more widespread than we thought but it’s interesting to us that it’s sort of the shared idea but there’s all these
Local versions of it um so that’s something we really want to feature in the exhibition and um these are the amazing um carstone balls from from scotland and they’re sort of enigmatic they’re mystery objects we don’t completely know what they’re for but they’re also beautiful pieces of artwork and again
You get some of these kind of similar motifs these swirly designs and you can imagine someone sort of you know creating this you know by fire light at night and you know potentially there’s quite a practical um use for these in the sense of there is some
Theories out there that perhaps um rope was was wrapped around them and they were used to maybe in sort of ceremonial killings of animals for feasting and things like that um we don’t know completely for sure but um they have this kind of idea almost the
Idea of making them and you know is the process of doing that seems really important and really significant um so they’re just these wonderful objects to think about and they’re so tactile i mean when we were installing them you just want to hold them and play
With them so they have this kind of tactile feeling that you really can’t deny um so towards the end of this sort of period and um you know the two major um phases of stonehenge that we focus on are the kind of first um the first bluestone ring and then we have
500 years later when the sarasons were put up and it’s really it’s a fascinating thing because when the sarsons are put up they sort of enshrine essentially they bring in the the um blue stones into the center and so they’ve been shrined them it’s almost like they’re creating a kind of
Museum around these of these blue stones which which seem to um retain their sort of sacredness their sacred spirit um but they’re kind of monumentalized on the grandest scale and um and you get sort of these grand monuments and unfortunately we couldn’t obviously bring stonehenge to us at the
Exhibition but we could bring things like the hammerstones that were they were using to form and shape the the stones um i mean the other thing is that’s really interesting about this is obviously this is the period when we really they kind of go to town on these connections to
The important points in the in the seasonal calendar and the solstice connections that um become so important to these communities so it seems you know that idea of sacredness and gathering of people at key times in the seasonal calendar becomes key to understanding the monument
What we were able to bring um to kind of represent a monument in the exhibition is is sea henge um which is an amazing timber circle that was found about 20 years ago on the north coast of norfolk and it was originally built about 4 000 years ago
In a salt marsh and became a preserve because it was in this watery setting and you can see that it’s it’s a ring of of um outer posts um but at the center was an upturn oak uh sort of root and the roots are sort of set um inverted
Up to the sky so there’s kind of this idea of this inversion of this kind of life tree that people are looking at but the really interesting thing about it is because at this point we are starting to see um more broader use of metal work is that
You can do analysis on the ax marks the tool marks on the side of these these preserved chew posts and we know that 51 axes were used so we have this sense of a small community coming together and you know stonehenge the scale of stonehenge is sort of the
Cathedral it’s the temple it’s the grand place everyone’s coming to where seahenge is that kind of family or community shrine it’s the parish church so you really get that more kind of sense of the small scale ways that people are coming together and but they’re also still connecting to
The seasons the sort of entrance way which you can just see in this photos it’s sort of that forked timber that was the entrance right into the center of the circle um that aligns actually with the sun the sunrise on mid-summer so on the longest
Day of the year and and you get that sense of sort of the the power of the sun and the regeneration once you open that doorway and allow the beam of light into the center you know maybe that was for the regeneration of the community um
So that power of the sun kind of persists as we go through and i’m gonna let neil now talk a lot more about that thanks jennifer so one of the the key objects perhaps the star object of the exhibition certainly features on our poster in advertising it’s the nebraska disk and i
Could certainly talk to you all evening about it in fact i think there has been a talk by our colleagues at hala museum who have kindly lent us the nebraska disk to a wheelchair museum a talk a few months ago just about the disc so what i’ll do is really just try
And recap its significance and its place within the exhibition as well it’s certainly the first time the disc has ever traveled to britain and one of the only times that it’s been allowed out of its home in hala museum where it forms the real centerpiece of the the museum
There and of the whole region’s archaeology the disc is is considered one of the most important objects from the ancient world and it’s even inscribed by unesco as an important document um believe it or not we call it a document and that’s because it’s the first depiction the earliest depiction
Known from the word in the world of of course of the stars of the heavens and the key stars to look at are the group of seven the cluster of seven between what might be the full moon or the sun different interpretations and the very distinctive crescent moon but between
Those two you can see there’s a group of seven stars which have been identified as the pleiades cluster um and those are really important for early farmers they are often called the calendar stars and their appearance and disappearance is um until you know in into historic periods is considered
Important as markers of the beginning and ending of the um of the of the farming of the farming cycle of the farming year and then to take it beyond that on the left and right of the disc are these gold arcs or bands and you can
See on the left side one of them is missing but on the right side one of them is still intact and when you measure out the angle and i’ll show you a slide of that soon the angle that the the produce is is exactly the angle of the cell the sun’s
Setting and rising on the horizon um between mid-winter and mid-summer so in summits you know it’s a great sort of simplification but in some ways the nebraska disk represents a sort of portable version of one of these monuments like cng or stonehenge but made made portable made possessible by
One individual or a group of individuals perhaps priests or pre-stasis but that’s a big shift and really in the exhibition what we explore through the disc is the shift once gold and metal particularly copper and then bronze are on the scene towards a movement away from camino monuments like stonehenge towards
Individuals being able to possess and gain status and power on the back of these more portable metal objects and and really something to do with the value of those objects as well which is new in a world that previously was one of stone so a really interesting transfer
Transformation one more point um i should make about the disc that makes it a really great thing for us to have um in in england for the first time is that the the the stars and the the planets and the the gold sun boat at the bottom
It looks like the kind of happy face on the winky face those are made using gold that we think is very likely originally mined in cornwall so in one object you’ve got a sense of astronomical knowledge from 3600 years ago a connection to stonehenge in terms of souls disease and alignments but also
A direct connection in terms of the origins of the metal and it really takes us back to a time when metal was being traded and exchanged along with many other objects and materials no doubt over really long distances so we hope this object almost alone makes people
Rethink what we know about people from deep history from pre-history they’re not sort of primitives walking around in bare skins these are sophisticated creative ingenious people um at this time okay this is a slide that just makes that point that when you measure that angle it’s 82 to 83 degrees which is really
Exactly what you see in the rain in the in the variation of the the solstice um on the the rising and setting of the sun um midwinter to mid-summer and i think it’s also a point i haven’t included a site but it’s also a point that david dawson the director
Of wheelchair museum has made about the bush baro lozenge which is broadly contemporary so really interesting another connection there between the nebraska and what’s happening in britain and in particular in wessex at this point in history and in the same section which is full of golden wonders and i i we cannot
Nearly do justice to the immersive nature of that particular part of the show it’s really uh really sort of very dark and full of gold it’s it’s like being in fort knox and in that in that section you also encounter these gold hats that are very mysterious objects
And you know you almost wonder would someone look quite silly wearing one of these or would they look incredibly distinguished it may depend on the individual whether they could pull it off and but these are decorated with embossed motifs very similar to the mold gold cape if you’re familiar with that
From the british museum embossed motifs that have been closely linked to solar symbolism and some people have even suggested that they encode astronomical knowledge essentially calendrical information i’m not sure about that but they certainly do reflect and represent the power that certain individuals were able to gain by linking themselves
To gold the the material and the symbol of the heavens of the sun and people have also asked me did people wear these things and to be honest it’s not clear they’re never deposited in graves so it’s possible that some of these hats played a role within ceremonies perhaps
They were worn for only a short period of time a bit like um you know harry potter’s sorting hat or something that you wear at an initiation into a religious sect or a cult so perhaps they’re not worn regularly by one individual but maybe only temporarily whatever the case they’re clearly linked
To the power of the sun and the power of some individuals and in the same section we go back to some of the earliest gold from britain and europe so going back before the nebraska disc by a good couple of hundred years some of the earliest gold found in britain and ireland reflects
The the the significance and symbolism of the sun and these gold what we call lunula or collars um from ireland but also some from britain a recent discovery by a metal detectorist in dorset in fact um these these really represent um the early importance of the sun and what i
Love about them is that they leave this blank um area um this sort of undecorated um band and what this would have done of course would have been to reflect the light so they’re letting the sun letting the natural light of the day animate the object and really bring the object to life
And interestingly even at the end of this period so if if the gold i just showed you is from the beginning of gold working this is from the very end of the period so about 1000 bc a good 1200 years after the the previous object and yet people are still particularly in
Ireland making very similar objects so what this tells us is that the sun and the gold remained these really important symbols and materials for people’s religion but also i think for people’s social hierarchy and sort of power politics and i know some viewers are watching from scandinavia we try to also in the
Same area bring in the amazing objects that have been found in denmark and the scandinavian region more broadly from the nordic bronze age and these these objects really tell us about a very very rich cosmology that people up in the the northern parts of europe had and the
Story that they tell us about the movement of the sun some of you may have heard of the tron home sun chariot the idea of the sun pulling and being pulled across the arch of the heavens by by a horse and we tell the story in exhibition through a number of really
Wonderful objects including several that have never been loaned um before this this amazing horde from maris mindy from the national museum of denmark with these wonderful gold bowls or ladles with horse horse heads and the bowls are decorated with solar imagery but then in the next part of the show we
Really come back down to earth with a bit of a bit of a bump and in this section we explore death and burial and the shift that takes place from about four thousand two hundred four thousand five hundred years ago towards the landscape around stonehenge being one of burial so the monument
Itself isn’t greatly altered after the sarson phase that jennifer mentioned but the landscape around it is altered significantly and what we see are the construction of these burial mounds which is given as many of the wonderful objects in in the museums of of the wessex group and in this particular case
Um we show the the finds from the amesbury archer now he’s an individual who came we think from europe probably the area around the foothills of the alps and he made this journey in his own lifetime to the the area of stonehenge to the to the region around stonehenge and it was
There that he was buried with great honor and many great goods presumably by a community many of whom may have traveled the same journey or similar journeys and he’s buried very importantly with early metal with gold and also with little copper daggers and a black stone that’s up near the top of
The image near the pot and that’s probably used to work metal so again to go back to my point my my argument about gold and metal being closely linked with this major transformation towards a greater sense of individuality but also of ideas of status and identity and moving forward a couple of hundred
Years objects will be very familiar to to many of you who are friends and regular visitors to devise his museum and these are the objects from the wonderful bush barrow uh burial the bush barrow chief and of course david dawson has recently filmed a whole section on the british museum’s
Youtube channel about this particular burial and i defer to defer to david’s insights on on this particular burl a very important individual buried very close to sun henge and what gives me goosebumps is the idea that some of these objects if not all of them were seen were used with inside stonehenge
Itself albeit several hundred years after the stones were raised these objects may have been seen sort of glittering in the middle of the circle i find that really compelling and anyone who’s seen them in london i think feels feels the same way that that connection right back to the monument right back to
The heart of the monument what we have been able to do in the exhibition um in london is to bring objects from burials that were made around the same time as bruce barrow and that are very similar and they show really close connections to the elites that are occupying stonehenge and
Related monuments in southern england so we’ve got some very fine burials from wales with beautiful beautiful flint arrowheads that really are astonishing in an age of metal but also very similar metal objects from burials of what we call the princely graves in in france in parts of brittany so um clearly linked
Across the channel at this point but also we’ve been able to bring objects from germany that show a link to the stonehenge landscape so there are miniature halberd pendants buried in burials around stonehenge and then in germany there are life-size versions of these halberds buried in rich graves so
It seems that in that period around 1 700 to 1500 bc there are very strong connections between the elites at least of of britain of france and beyond and indeed these links stretch into the the mediterranean into the mycenaean world a story that’s it’s told i think
By the new displays that um that david’s been able to put into the devices museum and in the period that we’ve been borrowing um the bush barrow burial for for a couple of months and so so those those tell that very long distance story but really in some ways this bush barrel
Burial is also the beginning of the end of the story um oh sorry i’m just going to skip that one it really is the beginning of the end of the story and in some ways the power of stonehenge as a as a sort of central place that pulls power into it and we
Think the reason for that is that from around 1500 bc particularly after 1300 bc there’s a great up upswing in the amount of bronze that’s being produced that’s the alloy of copper 10 that’s being produced in particular we think in the continent and what we start to see
Is that movement of bronze across the channel and it’s the communities along the south coast of england who of course are best placed to sort of cash in make use of these new connections with with bronze that’s coming in flowing in from european sources and in the exhibition
We tell the story of how the power shifts by several many beautiful objects but i’ve picked out um this more functional group of objects because it tells us a lot and that’s um the shipwreck from langdon bay so within sight believe it or not of the
The great sort of white cliffs of dover so that trade route between france and england is one that goes right right back and this is a ship that went down off the coast of of of kent and it was within its cargo were these big big groupings of bronze axes uh what
We call pal staves and these um are a french type but they’re never found on dry land so for whatever reason people in england like to take these objects in and probably melt them down and make their own type their own style their own regional manifestation of this type of acts but
We’re seeing that movement we’re also seeing the arms and the the um the weapons of the ship’s crew and what we tell in this part of the exhibition is the story of how homer and the mediterranean world gets all the headlines everybody wants to know about homeric epics and about sort
Of uh deeds of daring do and long distance journeys with odysseus but we think actually many of the objects that we’ve presented in the show show that in northwest europe um not just in britain but across across the continent as well in in the north uh west of the the
European mainland there are many objects that speak of these warrior identities of of people presenting themselves as as sort of heroes and of as important individuals and you know one example of that is this astonishing um piece of body armor that’s from from france in in britain we don’t have such
Things but we do have beautiful parades armor in the form of shields but in france they have these amazing pieces of body armor that you could imagine someone like brad pitt wearing in that terrible film about troy and and really what what these tell us is that people were presenting themselves as as
Warriors as important elite individuals as bronze became this currency of of the of the elite but also in the show we show and this is particularly topical given the depressing news at the moment we show that warfare wasn’t all about the sort of homeric epics it was
Actually very grim and very brutal and we have some astonishing loans from one of the earliest battlefields in europe a site called to lense which again we could fill a whole 45 minutes with a wonderful or a fantastic fascinating sight it shows the grim realities of conflict this this early
Time as it is as it is today we didn’t want to end the exhibition on sort of warriors and death and a sort of decline if you like in increasing violence and decline in society because what we do see around the same time so particularly from the middle bronze age
Around 1500 bc onwards so the end of stonehenge onwards is a real refocusing of society on the home on the settlement on the village as a sort of place of communal life and in many ways we like to think and we try to argue in the show that there’s a movement from the
Monuments like sea henge and stonehenge to village life as the center place of communal life and we wanted to represent that we wanted to represent it using some of the finest objects from any settlement found in britain if not beyond and many of you may have read about the discoveries made by cambridge
Archaeological unit in particular dr mark knight at must farm a site in cambridgeshire where a group of houses on stilts effectively were burnt down or burned down not quite sure if it was intentional or not or not and they collapsed into the fence into the watery fence beneath preserving many of the
Objects so in this part of the exhibition we get to grips as we did in z henge with the organic nature of this time this wasn’t just a time of bone and stone and metal it was also a very rich organic world and we’re able to show
Some of those rich organics in the in the show including this wonderful um axe with its wooden handle we’re used to seeing the metal bit but very rarely do we get the joy of seeing the fill the fill handle of the object and this may have been one of the axes that was
Deposited as a foundational act when the houses were first constructed and also from from the houses things that are somewhat less glamorous than the gold and the bronze that i showed you but in many ways just as important so on the right you see these these group of beats from the must farm
Settlement some of those were locally made in the cambridge area but others were imported from as far away as turkey or perhaps even egypt so long distance connections as well as local communal life and then on the left and this piece of of wood which is um actually dogwood
Which is used as a bobbin and around that you’ve got this um this amazing metal um textile that’s been been wrapped around it and this would have been capable of making very fine woven textiles so again these are not primitive people wearing whatever they can find these are people making designing
Really complex and sophisticated clothing by this at least by this period in the in this story and then to close the exhibition we had a very tough job of deciding how can we bring what has been a long period of time that we’ve been looking at many transformations that we laid out many
Changes in society many different focuses we’ve looked at stonehenge we’ve looked at scandinavia how can we bring all this together and we decided that there was really only one or two objects that we could possibly show and and one of those objects is um to conclude the
Show is is the the shop what we call the shropshire sun pendant this is a little object so it’s probably about six seven eight centimeters across at the top at the maximum and it’s decorated with the most beautiful pattern and it’s also amazingly sophisticated three-dimensional objects
So you really have to come and see it because it’s it’s it’s kind of the the detail on the side that i can’t show you is is much like a sort of almost faberge cigarette holder or something like almost like it’s machine turned just beautiful beautiful decoration and very sophisticated in its construction
And the point we’re trying to make with this object where there’s three points we’re trying to make one is the connectivity of the times that we’ve been exploring through the whole exhibition so this is an object thrown intentionally as a vote of offering we’re almost you
Know completely sure uh into a bog in in the shropshire marches but it’s very similar to others that have been found um further north up in manchester but also in ireland um and also it’s a kind of object that we find right across in in possibly in
This sort of etruscan area of italy this idea of a bula that you hang around your neck very similar concept one that you find in italy this time so possibly even a very long distance connection in that in that orientation and then the second thing it tells us is
The sophistication of of people at this time their ability to work gold in this amazing way and the patterns that are on this object are very similar to the ones i showed you earlier on in those lunula those gold crescents with the sort of undecorated band and what amazes me is
That those motifs are carried forward almost a thousand or a little over a thousand years so that’s generation after generation of gold workers passing on those motifs but once the shropshire sun pendant is deposited around that time around 800 bc it marks you know we don’t see this type of decoration we
Don’t see this type of of of object so there’s a real it’s a real end it’s it’s the end of a way of decoration and arguably a kind of way of of a cultural moment that ends at this point and then there’s 200 or so years before the iron
Age as we know it really gets going so this object also marks the end of what has been a period of some you know remarkable continuity in the kind of design and art of the period and then thirdly and finally if you turn it upside down if you flip it in your mind
It shows we think a stylized sun either rising or setting on the horizon so that idea of the sun as being this guiding star we don’t know exactly what role it played in people’s religions but it is amazing to us in putting on this exhibition how often it cropped up it
Cropped up on stone steli from italy it cropped up on the gold it cropped up in the alignments of seahenge and stonehenge and it’s a you know it’s quite a generic concept the sun but it clearly did play a really important role in the sort of punctuation of people’s
Lives giving them the rhythms of their daily and seasonal movements but also and the sort of events within their religious calendar so i think that’s that’s the third and maybe most important point to make about this wonderful object that closes the exhibition and then just to leave us with a thought and i
Think this is this is also the thought we we hope people leave the exhibition with and that’s every age has the stonehenge it deserves or desires and we hope we’ve laid out in the in exhibition but also in reduced form in this talk some of the concepts and some of the the
Key themes of of of the times and we hope that that’s useful in some ways for the the present moment not as a instruction manual but maybe to allow us to reflect on our own moment in our own times and also to think about how the
Future might look um how it might pan out so it isn’t really i think the past is useful as a way of reflecting on our own times and our own futures and we’ve we’ve touched on some of those aspects of connectivity and and also the importance of the natural world um in
Our talk on our talk tonight and i’ll leave you with a list of um the key lenders to the exhibition i think it’s important particularly to thank david and he’s too modest to say it but david actually met jennifer and i met many years ago now six or six or so
Years ago five or six years ago to talk about the exhibition and really we couldn’t have done it um if it wasn’t for david and if it wasn’t for the other key lenders um who were able to very generously give us these objects you know we there was no exhibition without
Without the the kindness of fellow museums and curators and of course without people uh the public um coming to see the exhibition so thank you very much for your attention and i think um if it’s okay we will stay and answer some questions if there are any
Thank you neil and jennifer a fantastic talk um there are already some questions but while people uh sort of get themselves organized um there are a couple of notices that i’ve got to give at the at the beginning but actually even more appropriate now the first is
That uh if uh for members of uh the society for one’s members um there’s good there’s a discount for you uh to go if you would like to go and visit the exhibition and we’ll be emailing that out shortly that’s a discount code that you can punch in when you book your
Tickets online that’s valid until the end of june because in july i suspect it’s going to be rather busy the second is that our next talk is actually going to be in real life for the first time since uh the pandemic started and that’s mike pitts who’s going to be talking about
Building stonehenge what happened in wiltshire so i think he’s really focusing on the journey of the stars and stones from um westwood’s up to the monument and i i love the um the way you showed his uh diagram about the the journey up the a30 as he put it
Um of the the blue stones so um if you’re uh if you’re fit and and well then let’s have a go with some questions um carol and emma both asked essentially the same uh question which is about the nebraska disk and about the holes around the outside what uh what they were for
Um yeah that that’s a that’s a good question i i think um one point to make and this is something that uh we do kind of talk about in the exhibition also the catalog is um it it actually went through a series of transitions as an object so
Um things were added and moved around but at the final stage of the object use which probably was about 500 600 years out after it was originally made it seems to have been attached to something else and sort of used as an emblem so possibly sort of a banner or a
Shield something that could be held up so we think those holes actually was to attach it to another object and um actually in the talk that you had last year um about the never skydisk she she goes a little bit more into the details of of those different phases um
But i i think she makes a really good point which was um that some of the the sort of initial ways of using the disc or or some of the the knowledge and the meaning might might have been lost but the but the symbol of it retained its power so
You know it became this kind of iconic emblem which which is obviously very similar to stonehenge in the sense of we get objects referring to stonehenge you know a thousand years after sort of the final construction of it um so it it contains this power that remains for
Quite a long time after its initial creation okay thank you yeah it was it’s absolutely fascinating i think there’s six different stages in in its use and was changed and adapted which tells you something about how important it was to people at the time um and debbie has asked is there any
Evidence that spare gold hats are actually hats um that that’s a good question and obviously um there’s only we only have a few of them and they kind of come from france and in germany so there’s sort of a region where these are occurring um it is debatable if they were actually
Hats obviously they’re not found with skeletons um but we do have imagery um from a site called kivik which is in a tomb in sweden which actually shows one of these hats sort of sitting in in what we could interpret as a shrine so it’s pretend there’s potentially they are sort of um
You know religious holy objects that maybe will be being used in shrine and as cult objects you know maybe even used on a on a statue or sculpture um so we don’t completely know if there are hats um they’re obviously uh the imagery on it it has that solar imagery which neil
Spoke about um there is also some debate if if they almost had a sort of um an element of an ancient calendar about it that idea is very complex i’m not gonna go into it you can google it but um it’s quite a complex idea so um you
Know but again you know the important element of it is that people are making these astounding objects and i always think about you know if they were worn you know this really tall hats you know basically you’re sticking out into heaven and you’re wearing you know trying to connect up there with these
Can i come out come in on that oh i um i i think what’s interesting is that the i totally accept that they seem unpractical to be born on a regular basis but in the exhibition we actually show them next to the mold gold cape which shows many similarities in design
And is a ridic you know in some ways a ridiculous object and by by which i mean incredibly elaborate almost beyond what you would ever need or want and yet it’s buried on is found in a burial so if you if you accept that the something is elaborate is the mole cape
Is war and then perhaps something as elaborate as the hat was worn that’s just a kind of bit of side logic but the other point to make i think is that there are other gold hats from europe that are much more like in fact many of them were misinterpreted as as bowls
Because they’re more bold shapes so they do belong to a slightly bigger group of of objects that may have been maybe worn on the head so their hat their head shape and they work as a hat so yeah that my my guessing is that they they weren’t worn on a regular or they
Weren’t worn on a daily basis i don’t think i’ll win any prizes for saying that and i think yeah it’s interesting that there’s what we would consider very uncomfortable objects of clothing that are being worn for for these for these purposes possibly yeah okay a question from richard
And you sort of touched on on this right at the end but i think a little more would be really interesting to hear which is how long did it take to organize the exhibition yeah um so the first idea came about 10 years ago and that was um with neil mcgregor our previous
Directors that tells you how long ago it was we had a sort of initial discussion um but really we didn’t get going i think until five or so years ago when we did an exhibition with um we staged an exhibition or co-curated one that english heritage staged at the visitor center and that
Was a that was an important moment and then after that we started to talk much more to key lenders like um adrian and david and of course our colleagues in hala who are a big big partner getting the gold uh nebra disc was a big part of
That so i think the most intense period of of of the Lead-in has been the sort of last five four or five years of course covid um has had um an impact on the timing of everyone’s lives but also put us back i think at least a year from where we were when we were meant to open so that added
A bit to the process but yeah it’s definitely not something that we could have done in a in a couple of years it’s something that needed um longer to build more than anything to build those links to to colleagues in other museums i think it’s worth sort of
Many people won’t realize that there was a really big exhibition in hala um immediately before uh you opened many of the objects came from hala oh to hala and then from hala to the british museum which is why it’s very the exhibition is very much in collaboration with the the
Team at hala who were absolutely amazing and i i’m so gutted not to be able to go and see it i i thoroughly recommend to to all your viewers everyone watching um if you’re in germany it’s like i think it’s about an hour trip from from berlin to
The museum of hala the museum itself is one of the finest museums of prehistory anywhere in europe and the way they do things i think is probably the future for many many of us um in this country so really worth a visit if you’re in if you’re in that part of europe
A question from chris um do you think henge monuments just develop gradually in lots of places or develop in one place then spread to others Um they did um i guess also that there’s kind of two does he mean henches as in um banks and ditches around sort of monuments or or sort of stone circles because that that’s slightly also two different elements um but uh i mean there is some thinking that some of the
Earliest monuments of that type are up in orkney and so potentially that idea but the thing is i think obviously there’s a gradual development that happens because we get earlier um you know sort of long barrels and stuff that start to have stones and closing them this idea
Of enclosing space in space and space in specific long periods of time i think i think well i think it’s clear that there’s move i think it’s clear there’s movement of ideas and and arguably people across the whole of the country so there’s lots of i think there’s probably lots of
Coming and goings and we see that in sort of groove where a poetry of the latino i think as well i’m i’m sure that there’s there’s lots of small movements of people over relatively short distances as well as over long distances so it’s probably a very difficult picture to try and
Produce one model of it coming from one place or another you probably got a lot of a lot of sharing of ideas over over both regional and long-distance um links so i’m sorry that’s a bit of an academic is an academic answer but i think i think it
What’s clears is a lot of connectivity at this time across britain and ireland my favorite my favorite trivia fact is that is the idea the term henge which i actually coined by an ex-keeper um at the british museum in the 1930s so he’s called the photo
Yeah he’s got a lot to answer for this confusing term that’s caused you know thousands and thousands of pages of archaeological debates so it seems proper that we’re kind of coming back to it at the british museum now and suzanne has pointed out there’s a lot of small scale hinges like you see
The one in um by the dorset cursors for example they’re looking in there and and that’s during the the um the stonehenge landscape as well you get this idea that there’s stonehenge and nothing else now many people have heard of woodhenge but they’re you know there’s sort of 20 or so
Hinges or timber circles in the in the area and many of them are not and this is true throughout throughout the country many hinges and stone circles are really not well dated so many you know seem to be in the bronze age but others are earlier and so you know it’s
A lot of evidence is sort of not really there great work by susan greeney recently of course of course and and many monuments of of timber that you know i think for tvs up in in east central scotland kenneth brophy and gordon noble excavated huge monuments but because
They weren’t made of stone um sort of lost if you like and and and easy to easy to overlook that there were these big ceremonial centers that weren’t just because they weren’t made of stone doesn’t mean they weren’t known far and wide yeah an interesting question that’s
Always a challenging word from uh david jennifer describes the early time of stonehenge’s nature of connectivity and beauty what does this tell us about the language available to people in the neolithic she also quest mentioned abstract ideas that sound like an advanced language of concepts is this true whoa
So there’s an interesting one so it’s i guess that’s kind of there’s two different issues there that there’s spoken language and you know unfortunately we we don’t have a documented record of the spoken language but you know obviously um sort of the first farmers and farming originates in middle east and turkey and
Slowly spreads across europe so what we would imagine people are speaking is some derivative of the languages that came with that kind of farming those forming people those farming cultures um but we don’t know a lot more beyond that as far as the artistic motifs there there are some people who have argued
That maybe it is a it is kind of a of language or not not in the sense of a form of writing but you know there is something there that people symbols that people understand it’s just that we can’t get to that understanding completely so all we can do is look at
That patterning of where these these types of objects are occurring you know in the archaeological record to kind of try to get a sense of how they were being used um but you know it is interesting that there’s these repeated motifs that we see over long distances and in long periods of
Time and and i think you know as neil is pointing out at the end even with the shropshire sun pendant we’re still getting these kind of beautiful triangle geometric designs and so there’s some power connected to these to these designs that that continues on for a long long period um
It’s fascinating isn’t it and something recently jennifer mentioned the new chalk drum about found in burton agnes and if you look on the top of the new chalk drum in the pictures that are in the media reports there’s um the top is a circle and inside the circle there’s the cruciform pattern
Which we know from much later in time from the beaker period so from the early part of the bronze age in fact it’s on the little gold disc that’s often used by by wheelchair museum as a kind of icon this idea of a sundisk motif but it’s on this
Chalk object that’s from 3000 bc so clearly some of these symbols had real enduring power and and on the burton agnes drum there’s also a wonderful lozenge which is you know the the the proportions of dead ringer for um uh bush barrow and also very similar to those on um the
West connect beaker and on the carved stones from up in um vanessa broga yeah yeah you get you get the kind of butterfly design as well from frogdar so i think that’s what we yeah no i was just gonna say that’s why we feel quite um although we’re covering a long time
Period in exhibition we feel that there are these echoes that that seem to sort of many of them stop around 800 bc so when celtic art comes on the scene it’s a very in some ways it’s a very different idea in some ways there’s some connections we could that’s a whole
Other lecture but but really those those lozenges and um chevron patterns are something that feel very characteristic of of the later parts of the stone age in the early part of the the metal metal ages and and coming back to the question because i think we’ve strayed off it quite spectacularly congratulations
The the thing that also strikes me is the particularly in you know the period i i’m obsessed by the sort of early bronze age the evidence of long distance contacts through things like the exchange of amber and walrus ivory and links to the mediterranean suggests that there are that there’s an understanding of
Different languages um you can’t you can’t believe that right the way across europe everyone speaks speaking the same language but clearly people are moving across huge distances and must be crossing different language groups and different i don’t know what to call them they’re not countries tribal groups you know whatever you call them
Which implies sort of real sophisticated understanding between different communities i think um it’s an area of huge complex complexity trying to relate the archeological record to the linguistic side of things but it is one that was tackled um in a project that barry can live some some of you might have heard
Barry khan left a very distinguished professor from oxford and he was part of a project that was looking at the links between the archaeology and the language of the times and i think i think there’s some i mean i don’t like to sort of get it wrong but i do think there’s
Potentially some link between the movement of the beaker people that we know come into britain around 2500 bc and the movement of of of language as well this seems to be an interesting thesis that there’s something happening at that time and naturally his art has said um i think it’s interesting the evidence
Suggests that bronze artifacts being brought in from france not for reuse but to be melted down um is there any evidence to suggest how these objects are being obtained spoils of war and raiding trade anything else yeah so that’s that’s something that stuart needham looked at in the the
Publication of the langdon bay uh material and i think he felt that a lot of those a lot of those objects in that particular shipwreck came from a quite localized area of france so that would sort of rule out somebody on a ship going right around europe and picking up
Different things they were quite a coherent group of objects so i think given the standardization of the objects i think what we can say is that this is clearly very well organized trade um that might sound a bit of the boring answer but i think that um that’s also important because it shows
That these these societies are very well organized and they’re undertaking a kind of standardized trade that we might recognize today even though there’s no currency and there’s no sort of presumably no um sort of weight system that it’s agreed upon by by the whole of by everyone trading
What what that’s bringing to my mind is there’s a gran the grass i’ve seen showing the way that lots of metal is being produced at great horm in uh north wales and san diego in quite a short space of time so over a sort of 100 200 years and then suddenly
Production moves to the uh the alps where again materials bronze is being produced in enormous quantities about 300 years or something which does imply you know very well organized industrial industrial scale production what’s what’s fascinating in in the sulcum shipwreck which is a different shipwreck from um we also show
Which is from off the devin courses that these little blocks of bronze that we think are weights so we’re starting to see people using weights as a way of measuring out presumably precious metals it’s the sort of beginnings of a standardized trade and exchange system
And and also from salk when we we have um the ingots we have raw material in in again in semi standardized forms so tin and copper the components of bronze that are being traded over long distances and i mean salcom’s a fascinating rock because you have some sort of remains of
Objects that might have come from quite a long distance maybe even sort of mediterranean world um and it seems a shipping route that continues on into the medieval period because there’s a medieval shipwreck with similar connections to the mediterranean world and right next to the bronze age shipwreck so
So it’s kind of fascinating um it is another kind of start of a world a connected world in a different way than what we get earlier on yeah it does it does feel like that i agree okay and i think we’ve probably got time for two more questions so i’ve got one
One here from carol which i think is a cracker what’s the earliest evidence of woven fabric in the period and errors covered in the exhibition but i think i think can we widen that out into sort of evidence for fabrics textiles that’s a good question i think
I i think if i’m remembering correctly though this doesn’t necessarily think of the exhibition is that at ness of brogdar they do have impressions of fabric or woven material on some other pottery which they actually interpret it as potentially even just mats that they’re they’re drawing their pottery on so that
Might be sort of the first um sort of evidence but it’s not physical the physical meanings and materials so i guess the earliest we have is the most isn’t it or no no in the exit in the exhibit we’re i think are we limiting ourselves only to the exhibition here
Are we going are we going across the whole archaeological record i need to be at least be clear i think i think you sort of think about i think they’re spreading it out to the textiles in the neolithic and bronze age where so few survive yeah i think there
Are some early early neolithic examples i think etton and cambridge comes to mind uh excavation by francis pryor i think that’s that’s probably an early example um but it it’s yeah it’s not our i’m afraid that’s not our specialism it’s something that um susanna harris at the university of
Glasgow is really the the leading expert in this country on the the pre-history of textiles and a very good person to have give a talk is that a hint what can you say also one of a really interesting example is we have from white horse till kiss in
Devon and uh which is our display yeah which is on display and that actually we have remain um because again it’s a slightly kind of boggy site so you get some organic materials and you get remains of this this sort of um bare skin which maybe was sort of
Wrapping and closing the body um in the burial which is pretty pretty rare obviously but then you also get this amazing sort of it’s it’s lime fast isn’t it the basket and and also this really really delicate bracelet that is woven from cow cow hair and has tin beads
You get again this kind of just this little picture into this organic world which we barely get and that’s again why it’s so exciting to have the most farm material um because there’s so much more from that site um i mean there’s also in in our collection we’ve got the amazing
Textiles from the swiss lakes but i i just to answer the questions that are more more holistically i think what we tried to do in the exhibition is show that this wasn’t just a time of of of stone and born and the things that normally survive i think from the
Beginnings of of sort of modern humans the organic world has provided really important materials for clothing for all sorts of activities and i think it’s just really easy for people and i count myself in this when you only see the types of materials that survive it’s
Quite easy to imagine that the world of the past didn’t have that richness of materials and i think in the show we’ve done our best to get the organics back into the people’s impressions of of that period sally on the chat has reminded us that there’s great evidence of early textiles
From last farm of course you showed that the string in inverted commas but there’s evidence of really good evidence textiles of textiles being woven yeah that’s right thank you for that okay i think we better call a halt there it’s uh almost nine o’clock we grilled you for long enough i
Think so if i can just say a huge thank you to neil and jennifer absolutely fascinating talk and um i’ve seen various people on the chat saying they’re going to the exhibition you must it’s absolutely amazing even though when i was there for the opening i’m afraid i
Spend most my time chatting to people rather than looking at the stuff which means i do have to go back so a huge thanks to the two of you for a fascinating talk um a reminder that members if you join the society um you’ll get a discount on your entrance
To the exhibition and also mike pitz’s talk at 7 30 in real life next um next thursday so a huge thank you and thank you to everyone for coming thank you thanks for having us yeah it’s been fun fun working with you on the exhibition it’s been it’s been
Quite a journey hasn’t it one way or another it’s been highs and lows but we you know we’ve got there brilliant thank you thank you so much good night everyone cheerio good night