Wilson Museum Bulletin

WILSON MUSEUM BULLETIN Spring 2018 Vol. 5, No. 17 Lakeside Life in Prehistoric Europe by Riva Berleant, Ph.D. INTRODUCTION In February 1903 the newlyweds J. Howard MISSION and Georgia Wilson left for Europe on a Building wedding trip with an on the legacy of unusual goal: to gain its founding family, a first-hand acquaint- the Wilson Museum ance with European uses its diverse prehistory. They es- collections and tablished relation- resources to provide La Tène archaeological dig, September 1907 ships with archaeolo- learning experiences Wilson Museum Collection gists and museum to stimulate curators, participated in excavations, and began to collect the artifacts of European exploration of the prehistory that later became part of the Wilson Museum. The first part of their trip history and cultures of was spent exploring well known Old and New Stone Age sites in France. Later, the Penobscot Bay toward the end of April, they arrived in Zürich, Switzerland, to visit Swiss region and world. prehistoric sites in the company of Swiss archaeologists. That visit was the be- ginning of the new Wilson Museum exhibition that opens at the end of May 2018. Let us see what happened during the years between 1903 and 2018 that bears on the new exhibition. Two strands come together in the story. One is J. Howard Wilson's vision for the Museum and its collections, and the second is an historical 1 Wilson Museum phenomenon recently summarized in the term “Swiss Lakes Diaspora.” Dr. P.O. Box 196 Wilson's vision was based on an evolutionary view of the development of human 120 Perkins Street beings and human culture. The term “Swiss Lakes Diaspora” encompasses the Castine, ME 04421 excitement that swirled around Swiss archaeological discoveries in the nineteenth (207) 326-9247 [email protected] century and the widespread mania they aroused for collecting artifacts from the www.wilsonmuseum.org archaeological sites on Swiss lakes. These strands – Dr. Wilson's vision on the one © 2018 hand, and the lakeside archaeological sites that captured the public imagination on the other – come together in the new exhibition. J. HOWARD WILSON'S ORIGINAL PLAN FOR THE WILSON MUSEUM Dr. Wilson himself explained his objectives for the Museum. In 1925 he wrote: The main purpose and plan of the arrangements of the collections are to show the antiquity of man and his cultural stages from the earliest geological times which show any evidence of his existence, down to our own historic and colonial times.2 TRUSTEES Museum visitors who are aware of this plan will find their experience of the Museum Temple Blackwood deepened and enhanced if they begin at the geological and Paleolithic exhibit cases President just to the left of the sun porch entrance and move counter-clockwise around the Robert Downes Museum. The Museum circuit takes visitors first from earth history through the Vice President stages of human prehistory in Europe as they were conventionally conceived at the Donald Small time, and still are in more complex ways: Paleolithic or Old Stone Age in the first Treasurer exhibit case, and Neolithic or New Stone Age, Bronze Age, and Iron Age in the next. John Macdonald Prehistory and archaeology give way to ethnological exhibits from Africa, Asia, and Secretary the Americas, and exhibits of American colonial and later historic periods, just as Dr. Richard Armstrong Wilson himself explained. Marianne Buchanan The evolutionary and chronological framework of Dr. Wilson's plan was not Kay Hightower unique to him, or even unusual. It was used in the classification and arrangement of Barbara Jackson Jeanmarie Reed specimens in other museum exhibitions of the time. Even today, when many Johanna Sweet museums favor interactive experiences and exhibits of life ways and environments David Wyman over artifact displays, the evolutionary framework still prevails. An important Pauline Hutchins difference today, however, is that we no longer equate evolution with progress. Honorary Trustee During the nineteenth century the idea that human cultural and technological developments were progressive was widespread, along with the concomitant notion that Western culture and society were the apex. With our new understandings and sensibilities, we have discarded these ideas. Dr. Wilson had a predecessor and model for developing his museum vision. Coincidentally, his name was also Wilson. Thomas Wilson was the Curator of Prehistoric Anthropology at the Smithsonian Institution, working in the 1880s and 1890s. He too had been intent on illustrating for the public the stages of human STAFF prehistory and the evolution of human culture, especially technology or, in his term, industry. His overall plan for achieving that goal called for arranging exhibits Patricia Hutchins Executive Director according to geographic location, ordered and dated chronology from past to present wherever possible, and the maintenance of accurate sequence where dates were less Debbie Morehouse Administrative Assistant certain. This plan was not the only one that museums followed. Some prehistoric Bulletin Editor anthropologists and curators favored exhibits organized on other principles, such as Abby Dunham the functions and uses of objects, or around comparisons of objects from disparate Collections Manager geographical locations. In making his argument for his museum arrangement, Jan Marie Miller Thomas Wilson wrote: Education I prefer to group all the objects and implements made or used by prehistoric man Jocelyn Willis in a given locality, so that we may see at one glance everything bearing upon his Program Support capacity, condition, industry, and his social and political life.3 Sherman Hutchins That kind of grouping of objects, principally by geographic location and sequence, Buildings Manager guided the acquisition of J. Howard Wilson's prehistoric European collections, and the subsequent exhibitions illustrating the Paleolithic, Neolithic, Bronze Age, and Iron Age in Europe. The European focus of J. Howard Wilson's collecting activities reflected his personal interests but was also conditioned by contextual factors. One was the prevalent Eurocentricity of the time that sent both professionals and amateurs toward European archaeology. Another was a fashion in the United States for undertaking trips to Europe to excavate and collect prehistoric artifacts. Still another was the almost universal Swiss lake-dweller craze, which we will come to soon. Page 2 Wilson Museum Bulletin THE NEW EXHIBITION AND THE THREE AGES Italy: c.1000 to 200 B.C.E. France: c.800 B.C.E. to 100 C.E. A renewed and updated Paleolithic or Old Stone Age exhibition opened at the Wilson Museum in Britain: c.800 B.C.E. to 100 C.E. c.800 to 50 B.C.E. 2008. Now, ten years later, a rejuvenated exhibition Alpine: . Scandinavia: c.500 B.C.E. to 800 C.E will give the European Neolithic or New Stone Age, Bronze Age, and Iron Age collections a chance to The three-age plan for classifying the diversity in shine. The original basic three-ages plan is preserved, cultural practices, technology, and other forms of but pieces that have been stored unseen for decades material culture that is found in the archaeological have been brought into the light. These formerly record was codified by a Danish scholar in the early stored artifacts include tools and ceremonial objects in nineteenth century. Christian Jürgensen Thomsen stone and metal; ceramic ceremonial and household hypothesized stone, bronze and iron ages from the goods; personal ornaments in metal, shell, amber, collections of artifacts he was organizing for the bone, and stone; status and prestige goods; and other Danish National Museum, then in its founding period. material expressions of life in central Europe from The idea of these ages has a long history as between 5,500 to 4,500 B.C.E., depending on their conjecture, but Thomsen was the first person who location, through 50 B.C.E. These dates encompass proposed these ages from the study and examination the earliest arrival of food-production – as distinct of archaeological specimens. He may well have been from food hunting and gathering – in Alpine central influenced by the Roman poet-philosopher Lucretius Europe, the introduction of metals, and the end of (first century B.C.E.) whose speculative prehistory of European prehistory with the Roman conquest of the human beings included developmental stages of stone, region. These innovations were part of a set of copper or bronze, and iron. The scheme has profound changes in human societies. undergone refinements with continuous research and The sweeping temporal, cultural, and societal range new understandings. Thomsen's Stone Age was of these changes is brought into a manageable focus divided into two: the Old Stone Age or Paleolithic and for a small museum by one of Thomas Wilson's the New Stone Age or Neolithic. A transitional stage express principles that J. H. Wilson followed: the from the first to the second was also added, the principle of grouping material by geographic location. Mesolithic. In this case, the location is Switzerland, further A technology using raw materials of stone, bone, circumscribed by the focus on lakeshore settlements. antler, and horn characterized the Neolithic or New Let us begin a brief explanation of the New Stone, Stone Age period, as well as the preceding Paleolithic. Bronze, and Iron Ages in Europe with a timetable. But a fundamental and far-reaching change in The dates are close, but not precise, and the onset and livelihood marked the onset of the New Stone Age. duration of each age differ from one part of Europe to Paleolithic livelihood was based on food-gathering: another as innovations diffused outward. hunting, fishing, and scavenging wild animal species Neolithic, Bronze, and Iron Ages in Europe4 and collecting wild plants. Food-gathering required Neolithic Duration: c.7000 to 2300 B.C.E. temporary camps and the seasonal movement of small bands.

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