SMA Conference 2011 Making an impact: Why museum archaeology matters

Speaker summaries

SESSION ONE

'M Shed - Bristol's newest museum' - An introduction and guided tour by Gail Boyle, Senior Collections Officer (Archaeology) Gail Boyle is a Nottingham University graduate (BA Joint Hons. Archaeology & Ancient History) and a Leicester University postgraduate (Museum Studies) and has been a member of curatorial staff at Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery since 1986. She is currently Vice Chair of the SMA, a Visiting Fellow at the University of Bristol and has recently been elected as a Parish Councillor. For the last two years Gail has played a leading role in the development of M Shed, the delivery of its stories through objects and the journey through its exhibition spaces.

Know Your Place - learning and sharing information about historic Bristol Peter Insole, Bristol Archaeological Officer With funding from English Heritage, the City Design Group at Bristol City Council in partnership with the Geographic Information Services (GIS) team, Bristol Museums, Galleries and Archives and local volunteers have created a web-based tool called Know Your Place (www.bristol.gov.uk/knowyourplace) that enables people to explore their neighbourhoods through historic maps, images and linked information.

The website allows the public to investigate the history of their neighbourhoods and also enable users to add their own images and information. The uploaded information contributes directly to the Bristol Historic Environment Record. This will not only contribute to the wider understanding of Bristol but will also contribute to the development of neighbourhood planning as defined by the Localism agenda.

Know Your Place was awarded the Local Government Vision Award for innovative use of GIS software at the ESRI UK Conference in May 2011. The site is in wide use by communities as well as City Council officers in a wide variety of departments from archivists to engineers.

Peter Insole is a Senior Archaeological Officer at Bristol City Council with responsibility for managing the Bristol Historic Environment Record.

The Portable Antiquities Scheme - Database, Website & Volunteers Daniel Pett ICT Adviser and Kurt Adams Finds Liaison Officer for Gloucestershire and Avon This paper will present developments on the Portable Antiquities Scheme website, since the re-launch in March 2010. The site has subsequently won a 'best of the web' award at the Museums and the Web conference in Philadelphia and now has over 730,000 objects available for academics and public to study. Over 250 research projects are now in progress and museums are reaping the benefits of the information that has been recorded over the last 14 years. It will cover use of third party data from the Ordnance Survey, English Heritage and Wikipedia to enrich records and show how the data can be used by the research community and has developed for public archaeological engagement. Along side this it will discuss the work of volunteers with the PAS.

Kurt Adams graduated from Cardiff University in 1999 with a BA in archaeology and Bristol University in 2001 with an MA in Landscape Archaeology. He originally worked as a field archaeologist in south Wales for three years before joining the Portable Antiquities Scheme in 2002 to work as the Finds Liaison Officer(FLO) for North Lincolnshire, before moving to Bristol in 2004 to become the FLO for Gloucestershire and Avon.

Dan Pett graduated from UCL's Institute of Archaeology in 1998 and subsequently from the University of Cambridge with degrees in archaeology. After a 2 year stint working in an Investment Bank, he returned to archaeology at the British Museum and taught himself how to programme. The database is a result of these labours. He is also an honorary lecturer at University College London and a trustee of the Palestine Exploration Fund. He doesn't like computers. Keynote

Facing an uncertain future

Dominic Tweddle, Director General, National Museum of the Royal Navy Museums are going through a period of rapid change. Budgets are being cut, post are being lost, and museums are having their opening hours reduced or being closed altogether. On top of all that there is a major restructuring with the MLA being absorbed into the Art Council for England. Is all of this just a temporary blip? Will normal service be resumed shortly? Or is the museum landscape changed forever?

There are no definitive answers to any of these questions, but as a profession we should be seeking to extract advantage from these shifts. This overview will explore how we can achieve that desirable end, how, despite all that is being thrown at as we can change and adapt imaginatively. We are not and cannot be passive bystanders.

Dominic Tweddle is a graduate of Southampton University, Emmanuel College Cambridge and University College London and was awarded his doctorate in 1986.

He is a former Assistant Director of the York Archaeological Trust and was part of the team directing the development of the Jorvik Viking Centre. He also directed the development of the Archaeological Resource Centre and Barley Hall in York.

In 1995 Dominic left YAT, purchasing from it two of its commercial businesses, a design business and a multimedia business. As Managing Director he developed these businesses into successful enterprises and then merged them a larger company which operated visitor attractions. Dominic became CEO of the group. By the time Dominic left, the business owned five modern visitor attractions, had a successful subsidiary company in Estonia, and had developed over 200 cultural heritage projects for clients all over the world.

Dominic became Director General, National Museum of the Royal Navy in January 2009.

Dominic has run courses for the Universities of York, Durham, and University College London, where he is a Visiting Professor. He has also lectured widely for the British Council/DTI on the development of cultural attractions. Under their aegis he has lectured in India, China, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Estonia, Russia and Turkey. Dominic has written five academic books, a best-selling children’s book, and over a hundred scholarly and popular articles.

Dominic is a Trustee of the Society of Antiquaries of London, a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, and a member of both the Institute of Directors and the Institute of Field Archaeologists. SESSION TWO

Luton Osteology Initiative: Opening up sensitive collections to unusual audiences Tim Vickers, Collections Care Officer and formers Curator of Archaeology at Luton Culture. This paper will aim to talk about the initiative, how it was set up, the aims and ideas behind it. It will consider the new audiences it attracted along side some of the challenges, problems and outcomes.

It will look at alternative, sustainable ways to fund collections care in difficult times which meet the ethical considerations of collections and the possible ways forward.

Tim Vickers studied Archaeology and Anthropology at Cambridge graduating in 2003. After graduating Tim worked at Cambridge Archaeological Unit before becoming the Curator of Archaeology at Luton Museum in 2007. In between Tim also completed a Masters at Birkbeck College, London. Tim is now the Collections Care Officer at Luton Culture.

The Lawrence Room of Girton College: Making University Collections Accessible Imogen Gunn, Curatorial Assistant for Archaeology, Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology, University of Cambridge Girton College was founded in 1869 as the first college for women at the University of Cambridge with the foundation of its archaeological collection laid shortly afterwards with the discovery of an Anglo-Saxon cemetery on College grounds. A formal College museum was established in 1934, the Lawrence Room, and the collection expanded to include Tanagra figurines, Chinese roof-tiles, Cycladic material and a first century AD portrait mummy.

This paper will show how a 20th century private teaching collection has been opened up to wider appreciation both physically and virtually and how, through the support of Girton alumni, a once-hidden gem can now be appreciated in the 21st century by both Town and Gown.

Imogen Gunn is the Curatorial Assistant for Archaeology at the Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology, University of Cambridge. In her spare time, she catalogued the Lawrence Room collection and serves as a consultant for its outreach activities.

Museums, Plans and Planning Duncan Brown, Head of Archaeological Archives, English Heritage Recent developments in planning guidance (PPS 5) and central policy (NHPP) have opened up opportunities for museums to become more involved in the way archaeological projects are formulated and managed. The requirement for archive compilation to be a central part of project planning and delivery should give museums a higher profile than heretofore. At the same time, however, there is a mounting storage crisis in museum repositories and with commercial archaeological organisations. This paper will consider the overall context within which archaeology is practiced and where museums fit into that, before looking forward to the potential future that is offered.

Duncan Brown joined English Heritage at the beginning of 2010 after 27 years at Southampton City Museums, where he was a medieval pottery specialist, finds officer and curator of archaeology. He is President of the Medieval Pottery Research Group, Chair of the IfA Archives Group, Committee member of the SMA and the EH representative on the AAF. SESSION THREE

Why Museums Matter: the Caithness Broch Centre Dr Andy Heald, Managing Director, AOC Archaeology Group In 2004 a team of archaeologists began studying a number of brochs - 2000 year old Iron Age tall roundhouses - on the north-east coastline of Caithness. All of the brochs had been excavated over a hundred years ago by members of the local community, some of whose grandchildren still live in the area. The project soon burgeoned into a community experience with scores of Caithnessians taking part in the excavations and survey.

The most important legacy, however, has been the design, development and delivery of the Caithness Broch Centre (www.caithnessbrochcentre.com). What started off as an idea for a small exhibition in an old school house turned into a £250,000 redevelopment involving a number of internationally renowned designers, architects and curators. Central to the design of the new centre were the local community: the grandchildren and the great grand children of the local people who first excavated the heritage on which the museum is based. The Centre is not really about brochs at all. It is about local communities: the local communities who first excavated their brochs a hundred years ago; the local communities who lived in their brochs 2000 years ago; and the local communities who live amongst their brochs today.

This presentation will outline the journey the local communities took on the design, fundraising and delivery of one of the most important local museum projects in Scotland in the last decade. The talk will illustrate how the Caithness Broch Centre is a marker both for the local communities past and their future aspirations. The presentation will end by highlighting how, stimulated by the museum, the local community are actively pursuing new avenues for celebrating and presenting their heritage.

'I never knew ceramics could be so interesting!': Community engagement at Conisbrough Castle Kevin Booth, Senior Curator (North), English Heritage, Sally Rogers

This paper looks at a recent volunteer project at Conisbrough which focussed on archaeological ceramics from the Castle. A collaboration between two museum bodies with external expertise and HLF funding developed a 12 week project to document and repack ceramics excavated 40 years ago. We will look at how a programme of learning and activity provided basic collections management skills and an underlying knowledge and appreciation of ceramics amongst a group of volunteers from the local community. The paper will outline the circumstances for the project; the methodology adopted and highlights the benefits the project has had for collection, museum and individual.

Kevin Booth has been Senior Curator in the North of England since 2005. His responsibilities cover collections from 123 monuments in care, with 35 small museum galleries spread across the territory.

Sally Rodgers is a Community Heritage Officer based at Heeley City Farm, Sheffield. She has successfully led a number of projects over the last four years focusing on actively engaging communities with the heritage of their local area and the process of archaeology.

Conquering the north: the first human colonisation of Britain Dr Nick Ashton, The British Museum Recent excavations at Happisburgh, Norfolk, by the British Museum show that Britain contains the earliest evidence for humans in northern Europe at over 800,000 years ago. The talk will discuss the difficulties faced by humans colonising from southern Europe and how they coped with a diversity of environments through the development of technologies such as fire, clothing and shelter. The talk will conclude with thoughts on how this research is best conveyed to wider audiences. Dr Nick Ashton has worked at the British Museum for over 25 years where he has specialised in the early Palaeolithic of Europe. He has directed excavations at many Lower Palaeolithic sites, including Happisburgh and is Deputy Director of the Leverhulme-funded Ancient Human Occupation of Britain Project (AHOB). SESSION FOUR

A joined up future? John Orna-Ornstein, Head of National Programmes, the British Museum Caroline McDonald, Curator of Archaeology, Colchester and Ipswich Museum Service Museums are more relevant now than ever before, helping us to make sense of our own places in the global village. But each one of us - whether international museum, regional service or individual amateur archaeologist - tells only a small part of the story, and it is only by working together that we can make the most of the enormous potential of museums in the 21st century. And working together brings other advantages - of economic benefit and wider resilience - that are increasingly important in the current economic and political climate.

John Orna-Ornstein is Head of National Programmes at the British Museum and a board member of the Museums Association. His former roles include curator of Roman coins at the BM.

Caroline McDonald is Curator of Archaeology at Ipswich Museum and a former Finds Liaison Officer for Essex. Everything she knows about working in museums was learnt from her time as a studio director at QVC the Shopping Channel.

‘It’s the economy- stupid’ a case study on economic impact and its relevance Paul Burtenshaw PhD candidate Institute of Archaeology, Tim Schadla-Hall Reader in Public Archaeology IOA

This paper aims to discuss the potential economic impact that museums can have the problems of assembling data and the difficulties of long term sustainability in the tourist market and highlights a case study of Kilmartin House museum to underline the points.

Paul Burtenshaw is currently completing his PhD on the economic potential of archaeology with specific reference to tourism, Tim Schadla-Hall is an ex museum archaeologist without a future.

Governance Matters: Why Institutional Design is Key to the Success of Community Organization Peter Gould, MPhil/PhD Institute of Archaeology, UCL

Archaeologists regularly create or promote community ventures--museums, crafts cooperatives, guides and docents, and many other activities intended to promote awareness of heritage and economic benefits that will favourably dispose the community to support excavations and investigations.

Archaeologists also speak often of sustainability for such ventures. Yet the track record for survival of museums, crafts cooperatives, or other community ventures in much of the world is very poor. This is an early report on research into why certain community-based projects do survive for many years. The theoretical foundations for the project are from the study of institutional features of successful community efforts to manage common pool resources initiated by Elinor Ostrom and her colleagues at the University of Indiana.

Building on that work and related case studies from tourism and heritage studies, the project on which this paper is an early report will examine in depth three community-based projects in three diverse cultural, political and legal contexts in order to identify the common features that underlie their success. The present paper will present the background to that study and findings from preliminary field work, and present tentative views on the features that are in fact key to sustainable community ventures.

Peter Gould is a former economist and business executive. He is a member of the Board of Overseers of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology; a former overseer at the Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College, Ohio; and former Chairman of the Board of the Zoological Society of Philadelphia. Peter is a director of the Sustainable Preservation Initiative, a new NGO focused on underwriting community development projects associated with archaeological sites. He is currently an MPhil/PhD candidate at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London.

SESSION FIVE

‘Art and Archaeology’– Museum Archaeology in an Arts Council World Hedley, Swain, Director Museums and Renaissance, Arts Council England

This paper will give a perspective of what it will mean for the museum sector to have the Arts Council replaced by the MLA as government’s strategic agency and in particular what challenges and opportunities this might bring for museum archaeology.

Hedley Swain is a former field archaeologist, museum archaeologist and chair of the SMA. In recent years he has helped guide the museum sector in his roles at MLA and now with Arts Council England. He is the author if ‘An introduction to Museum Archaeology’.