A little while back, me and my friend Craig went on a little outing. We do that pretty regularly. On this outing, we went over to the Museum of London Docklands to see the current, free, exhibition, ‘London: Port City’.
The exhibition does exactly what it says on the tin, with an examination of the port of London over the last 200 years. The huge Royal Victoria Docks, built in 1855, are a focus and the expo features stories of the working lives of people in different jobs, the equipment used, the goods coming in and going out and the docks’ connections to the rest of the world.
My Grandad, Mack, served his apprenticeship in the graving docks and he worked there for many years. He was a Shipwright so not actually a involved in the trade of goods, but it was nice to see his workplace in the featured maps.
I liked the walls of words and phrases that have come into our language via the docks. If London as a port represents our connections with the world, ‘Cock-up’ seems the most appropriate for our current situation.
The exhibition is free and runs until 8th May. Museum of London Docklands is at West India Quay, London E14 4AL.
Visiting Glasgow is always a pleasure for me. The rough-and-tumble of the city feels familiar and comfortable, and I have a long-ish history with it, largely through its music. But as well as the art galleries, architecture, music and foodie scenes, I’ve become very interested in Glasgow’s archaeology, and its industrial and maritime history. With this in mind, on a recent quick visit I boarded the (free!) ferry outside the Riverside Museum and headed over to Govan.
Govan may not be at the top of the list for many visitors to Glasgow, but it really should be on there somewhere, not least to see the amazing 10th/11th century Govan Stones at Govan Old Church. However, alongside these ancient monuments, there is also evidence of Govan’s more recent, industrial, history to be seen: Govan Graving Docks.
The docks are situated on the south side of the Clyde, just west of the Science Centre. A ‘graving dock’ is another name for a traditional type of dry-dock where the repair and maintenance of ships is undertaken. The ship is floated into the dock basin and then water-gates (or caissons) are closed behind it and the water is then pumped out of the basin, leaving the ship resting on blocks. These docks were constructed by the Clyde Navigation Trust in the late-nineteenth century, opening in stages between 1875 and 1898, and were used for the maintenance and refits of Clyde Steamers and other large vessels up until their closure in 1987.
I wasn’t sure how accessible the site would be but the gate was open, so I made my way in to the dock area where there are three large basins, a couple of derelict buildings and other bits and bobs of dock equipment.
The docks are a Category A listed monument but also on the Buildings at Risk Register for Scotland. In Glasgow, as in other industrial and maritime cities, many ex-industrial sites and structures have long since been sold off to developers and now command top price as luxury apartments and high-end shopping and dining areas, so the graving docks are special; a rare survival of Glasgow’s industrial and mercantile past (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-45331246).
Some of the fragments of equipment look like winch or crane bases, haulage wheels and some lengths of track. Around the basins there are stone-cut steps allowing access to the working space around the undersides of the ships’ hulls.
This basin still has its depth-markers.
The water-gates are a bit battered but still basically intact.
After some time of wandering around and generally peering at stuff, I made my way back to the gate, only to find that it was now shut! Fearing that I would have to attempt to climb the fence (an unseemly activity for a woman of my advanced years), I tried the bolt and, to my relief, it wasn’t locked*. I did get a few funny looks from the mechanics working in the garages along by the docks but I bet I’m not the first random dock-fan that they’ve seen.
For lots of lovely information about Govan Docks, have a look at the excellent Hidden Glasgow website, where you can see photos of the docks in use. Other references are also below.
TTFN
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* Sam Wineburg
** Don’t worry, I made sure that the gate was shut behind me.
Just a super-speedy flying visit, but it was nice to be there all the same. But the trouble with super-speedy flying visits is that, no matter how nice they are, they always leave you wanting more. There’s just not enough time to do everything. I mean, I need to get to Musee Cluny to see the new entrance and walkways around the thermes, and for the winter expo, Naissance De La Sculpture Gothique. There’s also an exhibition at Cité de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine, Le Crac des Chevaliers. Chroniques d’un rêve de pierre, examining the architectural and political significance of the Syrian crusader castle, Crac des Chevaliers. But, in the end, the short time that I had just had to be spent at the brilliant Institut du Monde Arabe for the exhibition Age-old cities: Virtual trip from Palmyra to Mosul.
The exhibition takes in four ancient and modern cities affected by recent and ongoing conflict, and presents aspects of them as they are, as they were and as they may be in the future. This is not an exhibition of artefacts but of images. Using photographs, films and photogrammetric survey footage, taken using drones (carried out by UNESCO), we get a view of the cities as they are today. The use of drones, in particular, reveals the significant damage, destruction even, of whole swathes of the urban environment, with deserted, bombed-out buildings apparently teetering on the brink of collapse and the still-inhabited areas thick with dust and debris. As I’ve been to three of the places featured in the exhibition, I’ve added in a few photos of mine, taken on my visits. Some of the other photos,which were taken in the exhibition, are a bit blurry, as they’re of moving images.
Mosul
The exhibition opens with Mosul, a city which I have never visited. On entering the first main exhibition space, I walked into a large-scale panoramic projection of a fly-over of the city as it is now. Now, I’ve seen plenty of drone footage of areas affected by the ongoing conflict but, particularly on a such a large scale, these images of destruction are truly shocking.
Mosul Mosul
Sitting on the west bank of the Tigris, opposite the Assyrian city of Ninevah, and around 400km north of Baghdad, Mosul has existed as a settlement, at this location or hereabouts, for at least 2500 years (Ninevah is far older). Capture by daesh on 10th June 2014 and only retaken by Iraqi forces, after heavy bombardment, on 21st July 2017, Mosul and Mosulis have suffered terribly as a result of the conflict in Iraq, with women and religious minorities particularly badly affected. The city had been known as relatively diverse, with the Iraqi Sunni Muslim majority sharing the city with Assyrians, Kurds, Turkmens, Shabaks, Yazidis, Armenians and Mandeans. Although many of the city’s Jews left for Israel in the 1950s, there was still a significant Christian population until the arrival of daesh in 2014.
One of the specific structures zoomed in on was the al-Nuri Mosque. Famous for its leaning minaret (possibly due to the effects of thermal expansion caused by the sun’s heat), the mosque was the focus of pilgrimage and veneration for 850 years. It was the site at which the daesh leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, self-declared the (so-called) “caliphate” and the daesh flag was flown from the minaret. The mosque was destroyed during the Battle of Mosul in 2017, although there is some disagreement over whether it was destroyed by daesh or by the forces liberating the city.
Still from drone footage of the al-Nuri Mosque, Mosul.
There is really very little left of the mosque, just the ruin of the domed central hall and the stump of the famous minaret. All the rest is rubble.
As part of the film, we witnessed the digital ‘reconstruction’ of the site. These images are built up using recent photographs from all angles, often people’s holiday snaps (I actually sent some photos of a site in Syria for exactly this purpose), which are digitally stitched together to create a 3d image.
Still from drone footage of the digital reconstruction of the al-Nuri Mosque, Mosul.
Aleppo
Aleppo Citadel. Photo taken 5th November 2009.
Moving on to Aleppo, again drone footage lays bare the scale of destruction. We tak a fly-over, and through, the ancient souks, part of the ‘Ancient City of Aleppo’ World Heritage Site, now severely damaged,
…and up the ramp to the Citadel.
This really brought back memories of my time there, when it looked very different.
Aleppo Citadel. Photo taken on 5th November 2009.
The walls of the Citadel have clearly sustained damage, and it looked like parts of the interior space had too, although I found it a bit difficult to orient myself in this complex site.
Leptis Magna
The section on Leptis (Lepcis) Magna was less of an agony for me. Although there has been some illegal digging and looting at the site, local residents, working in militias, have tried to stave off the worst of the lawlessness, and there hasn’t been the kind of occupation or intensive bombardment that we have seen at the other sites showcased.
The images I saw looked pretty similar to the way that it looked when I was there 10 years ago. The ancient structures are partial and the site is, largely, a ruin, albeit a very impressive one, but there weren’t obvious signs of recent extensive damage. Nevertheless, the fly-through of the macellum (marketplace) and the virtual reconstruction of the Severan Basilica was pretty impressive and provided a little respite before the final key site featured, one which I knew I would find hard to witness.
Palmyra
Temple of Bel, Palmyra. Photo taken 8th November 2009.
When I visited Palmyra, and the modern town Tadmur, in late 2009, it was an impressive, pretty well kept ancient site. The main site itself was open for visitor to wander in and look around and it was possible to wander pretty far, as it’s a very large site.
Some people in my hotel were getting up before dawn to go on a camel ride. I, being less interested in camels, got up at the same time and accompanied them for a little way on foot before heading off into the low hills on my own. These hills are the site of the necropolis of Palmyra and I was fortunate enough to have these evocative tower tombs all to myself in the silent, pink, early morning. *
Several of these tombs were destroyed and/or damaged by daesh in 2014/15.
One of the other notable instances of willful vandalism was the dynamiting of the Temple of Bel (above) and I found myself feeling particularly sad at the images of the theatre and the Temple of Baalshamin, when I found myself standing, virtually, in the rubble of the building.
This was a building in which I had stood, gazing at the beautiful decorative friezes and the carved columns, and thanking my good fortune at having the opportunity to be there.
Temple of Baalshamin, Palmyra. Photo taken 8th November 2009.
Temple of Baalshamin, Palmyra. Photo taken 8th November 2009.
But I couldn’t help but think past the structural damage and the willful and shocking destruction of the ancient temples, to the devastation wrought on the people living in the modern Palmyrene town of Tadmur. I couldn’t help thinking about the people murdered by daesh in the theatre, including Palmyra’s Head of Antiquities, Khaled al-Asaad (January 1932 – 18 August 2015).
Throughout the exhibition there are short films, talking heads and personal accounts of the effects of all of this destruction on the people living in these cities but, particularly as a visitor whose French is a bit shaky, the focus of the exhibition really is on the effects of conflict on the built environment.The images recorded by drones are largely devoid of people, the streets thst I remember as bustling and busy with the usual comings and goings of the city, are eerily empty of life.A notable exception is a short film documenting the filmmaker’s return to Aleppo to speak with the people still living there.
He meets the shopkeeper who, despite being surrounded by the dust and debris of countless explosions, still diligently cleans his stock before putting it on display. And there’s the young woman recording a video message on her phone, to send to her sister, who is not in the city.
The young woman doesn’t say anything of any importance, just chats and reads the news and laughs and hopes that she will still be alive tomorrow.
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The exhibition ‘Cités millénaires Voyage virtuel de Palmyre à Mossoul‘ is on at the Institut du Monde Arabe until 10th February 2019.
For updates on the current situations in these regions, follow: @AinSyria and @AinIraq
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*I had the tombs all to myself except for the small child who chased after me for about half a mile asking for sweets. I had no sweets with me so I gave him a pen. He seemed satisfied with this alternative. I wonder where he is now, and I hope he’s ok.
The Netherlands is home to some cracking museums; the Rijkesmuseum, Rijkesmuseum van Oudheden, Allard Pierson, the museum at Castellum Hoge Woerd and many more.
But I’ve never been to the north of the country, so I had no idea what was up there. That is, until, a Twitter post by @FollowingHadrian about an exhibition of Iranian (Persian) archaeology and artefacts at the Drents Museum in Assen. As I’m always on the lookout for exciting things of an archaeological bent to do and see, and as I was actually due to be in the Netherlands (albeit much further south) over the August Bank Holiday, I immediately set about working out how I could fit in a very quick trip north to have a look.
Artefacts in the exhibition were on loan from the excellent National Museum of Iran, which I visited when I was in Tehran in 2015, so I was very keen to get another look at them. As well as artefacts that I remember seeing, there were ones that were either not on display, or which I just didn’t see or notice, so there were plenty of ‘new to me’ things to see.
The Drents Museum was purpose-built as a museum in 1854, but the exhibition was in the newer extension, opened in 2011. The exhibition space, downstairs, is quite large, although not huge, open and nicely lit and there seemed to be a good number of people visiting the exhibition, including groups, although it was not packed (this was a Monday* lunchtime, so I wouldn’t have expected it to be really packed).
The exhibition, Iran: Cradle of Civilisation, takes in a really broad sweep of Iranian/Persian history, including prehistoric artefacts dating from as early as 7000BCE right into the Islamic period, ending in about 1700CE.
Prehistoric culture is represented by some really beautiful and delicate pieces. I was particularly struck by this small stone bowl (it’s about 4-5 cm in diameter). It’s carved out of a piece of the darker-coloured stone in which there are lighter bush-coral inclusions.
2600-2400BCE, Shahdad, National Museum of Iran, Tehran
This terracotta bowl is decorated with a painted frieze of dancing figures. Perhaps commemorating a particular occasion or a festival of some sort.
4800BCE, Chogha Sabz, National Museum of Iran, Tehran
4800BCE, Chogha Sabz, National Museum of Iran, Tehran
I was particularly fascinated by this clay ball, as it brought to mind the stone balls seen in collections in the north of Britain (have a look at the Huntarian Collection in Glasgow for some examples).
Clay Bulla, 3200BC, Susa, National Museum of Iran, Tehran.
It isn’t really known what the balls found in Britain were for but the accompanying film explained this Persian ball. It’s a seal!
The ball is covered with figures of human and animals.
I stood in front of the screen filming the whole video because it really explained this artefact very well. You can see the video here: Clay Bulla (message to anyone from the Drents Museum: If you would prefer it if I took this video down, please let me know and I’ll do so).
The two objects below, although not particularly fancy looking, are evidence for the technological development of the region. The first a rather mucky-looking footed-dish, is actually a crucible in which copper was smelted.
Clay crucible 4000-3700BC, Tappeh Qabrestan, National Museum of Iran, Tehran. When copper ore is heated to a temperature above 1084c it will melt and can then be poured into moulds. At first only pure copper was melted, but the coppersmiths gradually started to mix it with other metals. One of those experiments lead to the discovery of bronze (copper and tin).
The second, a mould for casting a copper axe-head. Found at the site of Tappeh Ghabrestan, northwest of Tehran, which is known for its finds associated with copper-working, with furnaces and moulds dug into the ground as well as these smaller, terracotta moulds.
Terracotta mould, 3500-310BCE, Tappeh Ghabrestan, National Museum of Iran, Tehran
Although these not the fanciest exhibits in the exhibition, they are hard evidence of technological development and expertise in the region.
So what are the fanciest artefacts?
From the third millennium BCE, comes a gorgeous selection of carved soapstone vases, pots, cups and bowls. Soapstone is soft and relatively easy to carve, so it lends itself to these kinds of intricate, detailed designs. The imagery include real and imagined creatures, demons, deities, scroll-work and complex, interlocking geometric designs. I spent a long time admiring these wonderful artefacts and wanting so badly to be able to touch them.
Soapstone pot, 2600-2400BCE, Jiroft, National Museum of Iran, Tehran
2600-2400BCE, Jiroft, National Museum of Iran, Tehran
2600-2400BCE, Jiroft, National Museum of Iran, Tehran
Soapstone vase, 2600-2400BCE, Jiroft, National Museum of Iran, Tehran
Soapstone dish with an image of a ‘scorpion-man’, 2600-2400BCE, Jiroft, National Museum of Iran, Tehran
2600-2400BCE, Jiroft, National Museum of Iran, Tehran
2600-2400BCE, Jiroft, National Museum of Iran, Tehran
Soapstone weight, 2600-2400BCE, Jiroft, National Museum of Iran, Tehran
From the 6th until the 3rd centuries BCE, the first Persian empire, the Achaemenids, founded by Cyrus the Great, dominated this part of the world. This dynasty, which included the other Persian ‘Greats’, Darius, and Xerxes, is notable for, among other things, its fine gold work. Examples in the exhibition also include beautiful vases and drinking horns (rhyton).
Gold cow, 559-331BC, Hamadan, National Museum of Iran, Tehran.
Gold rhyton, 559-331BC, Hamadan, National Museum of Iran, Tehran.
And one of the many highlights of this exhibition, this wonderfully weird pottery jug. Fashioned in the form of a man tending his bird-beaked pot-beast 😀
Pottery jug 850-550BCE, Kaluraz, National Museum of Iran, Tehran. This jug appears to have a spout in the shape of some kind of beak. Such beaked jugs were used for special wine ceremonies at burials. The Kaluraz cemetery is well known for its beautiful pottery vessels. This is the finest example – functional and yet artistic.
And there were even some reliefs from the imperial city of Persepolis.
Relief, 559-331BC, Persepolis, National Museum of Iran, Tehran.
Relief, 559-331BC, Persepolis, National Museum of Iran, Tehran.
Many reliefs at Persepolis show representatives of the 23 peoples of the empire, who came to the imperial city to pay tribute to King Darius. on the left, a gift-bearer climbing the stairs and on the right, a ma presenting a gift of arms to the King.
A whole wall of the exhibition space was transformed into a famous and spectacular monument, the original of which is situated at the World heritage Site of Behistun in north-west Iran (there are several spellings of this: Bisotun, Bistun or Bisutun).
The life-sized figure holding a bow, as a sign of kingship, is Darius the Great, beneath his foot is a figure, possibly the pretender to the throne, Gaumata. Behind him are two attendants and facing him are bound captives representing the conquered peoples. The symbol above the scene is the Faravahar the central symbol of the Zoroastrian religion.
The text, is written in three ancient languages; written in three different cuneiform script languages: Old Persian, Elamite, and Babylonian (an Akkadian dialect) and it provided the key to the decipherment of cuneiform, in much the same way the The Rosetta Stone was the key that unlocked Egyptian hieroglyphs. The inscription begins with the biography of Darius the Great, for whom the monument was created, and the history of the empire following the death of its founder Cyrus the Great. It describes the battles fought and won, and the rebellions put down by Darius and the generals subjugated.
This life-sized replica, measuring 15 x 6 metres, was created especially for this exhibition and installed at the same height as the original would be viewed. This gives a good idea of how the original in-situ would be seen, although, obviously, in a very different location.
When I was looking at visiting this exhibition, one of my burning questions was how on earth it had come about. I assumed that there must be some professional connections between curators in Assen and Tehran that had enabled the Drents Museum to secure such an amazing array of loans. Handily, the exhibition included a film answering this, and other questions, and the curatorial connections between the museum services has resulted in this exhibition and a return exhibition of Dutch art and archaeology now on display in Tehran. You can watch a mini-doc about the exhibition here: https://drentsmuseum.nl/en/exhibitions/iran
Gold applique, 2200-1700BC, Tappeh Hissar, National Museum of Iran, Tehran.
This is certainly one of my exhibitions of the year and I would love to visit again, but I doubt that I’ll be able to get to Assen again before the exhibition closes on 18th November. However, I think I’m going to have to plan a return visit to the Drents Museum in the not-too-distant future, for the next exhibition, ‘Nubia – Land of the Black Pharaohs‘ I just wish that exhibition catalogue was available in English. If it had been, I would have snapped it up.
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*I should say that the Drents Museum, just like pretty well every other museum in the Netherlands, isn’t generally open on Mondays. I was lucky in that I was visiting at the end of the school holidays and it happened to be open on the day that I was able to get there.
I’ve been looking forward to the snazzy new Roman museum in Nimes for as long as I’ve known it was going to be a thing. It opened in early June so on my latest little trip, to Arles, I made a point of heading to Nimes to take a look.
The French rail company SNCF earned my everlasting enmity by cancelling my train, meaning that I arrived in Nimes a full 2 hours later than I should have, so my time was a bit more restricted than I would have liked and I actually ended up having to charge round the last bit in order to get back to the station in time to catch my train back to Arles (of which, more later).
Anyway, here’s the new Musee de la Romanite in all its glory.
I read that the design, by architect Elizabeth de Portzamparc, was, in part inspired by the idea of the fabric of the toga, with ripples and folds of glass panels reflecting the light and the shade, and bringing movement and interest to what could be a boring, bland glass-box exterior.
From the inside, these panels act as frames for the views,
including the highlight view of Nimes’ 20,000 seat Amphitheatre.
I enjoy the visible engineering on the inside (see also the Institute du Monde Arabe in Paris).
A the entrance, the museum begins with a spiral up to the pre-Roman Gaul collection.
The museum has lots of small-ish spaces and several bigger spaces and I must admit that I found it a little bit confusing trying to work out which space to go into next in order to follow the galleries more or less chronologically.
Maybe it doesn’t really matter, it’s just that I did have a few “where next?” moments, although these might just have been on account of my eagerness to see the things that I was glimpsing through the entrance-ways between the rooms. I can’t say that that spoiled the visit but I did have to hurry at the end when I discovered that I’d missed out a whole gallery! Luckily it was a small gallery so I just about had time to have a look before running off.
There are a few signs that seem to be par for the course with newly opened exhibition spaces. That sense of things being not quite finished in time for the scheduled opening. Some of the labels were clearly temporary.
There may have been the odd balustrade missing. Certainly, a proper rail would be better than ropes here.
Some of the spaces between furniture are too narrow. I saw a man with a pretty normal-sized pushchair unable to get past a bench. There was an alternative way around but I do think that, in a brand new building, either the gap should be wide enough (for a wheelchair actually) or there should be no gap at all and we all just go the other way. TBH, if they just moved the bench, that’s problem solved.
The staircase down to the lower ground floor temporary exhibition gallery is pretty bleak, like those staircases you have to go down when you’re boarding a flight, grey, lifeless, empty. It could do with a few images or something, to liven it up a bit.
But that’s the niggles out of the way and I think that all of these things are just tweaks to be made as the new museum beds in. Now for some of the cool stuff.
The building.
As I said above, I do like the design. It’s modern but not lary or obnoxious. Due to the evil fiends at SNCF, I really didn’t have enough time to investigate all of the spaces; there is a garden somewhere (on the roof?) and the expected cafes and a shop. This isn’t a disaster for me as it gives me more aspects of the museum to discover when I revisit. I will be revisiting.
Models.
Some people apparently think that models in museums are cheesy. I am not one of those people. There were models of the landscape, of the city, of individual structures, of types of artefacts.
I like this landscape model onto which the development of the city and its changing layout are projected. It’s not a complicated idea but it really helps to see the Roman city in its landscape context.
Interactive stuff 😀
Museums are, inevitably, full of stuff that must not be touched, but I’m fond of museums that also incorporate some stuff that you can touch to your heart’s delight.
Best one? For me, unsurprisingly, Roman games 😀😀
Click the link and you can see me winning with walnuts. The Nut Game
Films 😀
The museum has a range of films about aspects of the collection and about the conservation of particular objects. My favourite was the one about quarrying 😀, which demonstrated how Roman quarrymen (often slave or convict labour) removed blocks of stone from the quarry face using hand tools and wedges.
Context. 😀
There’s a definite emphasis on placing objects and architectural elements into their proper contexts. Where did they come from? Where were they found? Which buildings are they associated with? How were they used? The models and films really help with this, moving the artefacts from being just stuff in display cases to actually being part of everyday life in the Roman town.
Despite being big and expensive-looking, the Musee de la Romanite feels like a local museum. I got the impression that quite a few of the visitors were locals, as I kept hearing exclamations of recognition from people looking at artefacts, particularly in relation to key local landmarks like Maison Carrée and the Temple of Diana. People did seem genuinely interested. There were a lot of people watching that quarrying film, maybe, in part, because it related directly to the restoration of the Maison Carrée.
What else? Oh yeah, artefacts 😀
This post is getting too long so you’ll have to wait until the next one for the artefacts but I’ll just whet your appetite with a few. Suffice it to say that the museum takes in a wide range of object types; building material; pottery; metalwork; statues; glassware; mosaics; the lot.
Yasss 😀
So, yeah, SNCF.
Having charged round the last bits of the museum and, literally, run to the station, I found that my train back to Arles was delayed by an hour.
*shakes fist and calls down the curses of the gods*.
Last weekend, me and my fellow explorer Craig, visited an exhibition that we’ve been looking forward to for a while. At the Museum of London Docklands, ‘Roman Dead‘.
This exhibition tells the stories of some of the people of Roman London, as seen through the evidence of their mortal remains, and of the funerary practices and methods of commemoration used by Roman Londoners. Literary evidence tells us that the ancient burial grounds of Londinium began to be discovered at least as early as the 1570s as John Stowe writes, in his A Survey of London in 1598, that as the ground around Spitalfields was being broken up for clay, the workers discovered cinerary urns (pots used to hold the ashes of people who were cremated), the cremated bones and other remains of earlier Londoners.
This burial group, dating to 60-200CE, was found at Bishopsgate. The large glass jar would have held the cremated remains (in the tray in front), with a samian cup used as a lid.
The smaller glass jars may have been used to hold oils and perfumes used in the funerary rites or offerings to the gods.
I was interested to see the map of known burial grounds around Londinium (in red), particularly the two on the Southwark islands.
The burial grounds were situated just outside the city limits to avoid the pollution of the living by the dead and archaeologists have unearthed evidence of a wide range of funerary practices carried out by the people of London. The exhibitions includes evidence of cremations and inhumations (burials), a range of grave goods, buried with the deceased, and evidence of some more unusual practices. For example, the skeletal remains of a woman whose skull was removed, after death and possibly much later, after the body had decomposed, and placed on top of her pelvis.
As it is today, so it was in Roman London. We see people from all over the Roman world; from Britain and all parts of mainland Europe, the Middle-East and North Africa, and they all came to, or travelled through Londinium. Some of them died here. Some of these different funerary practices may have been influenced by people’s different areas of origin, by changing tastes and even by changing religions, but some perhaps also by the desire to ‘do what Granddad would have wanted’, possibly harking back to older tribal or cultural traditions not current in Roman Britain but which, in the face of death, felt to surviving family members or friends like the right thing to do.
The objects in the exhibition work around the people in the exhibition. Well, the remains of the people anyway. As well as cremated remains, on display are the skeletal remains of 28 individuals. With funerary collections, I particularly like to see the whole assemblege, or as much as possible of it, displayed together, if possible reassembled as it was in the ground. I think that seeing all of the objects together with the remains can tell us something about the people themselves, but also about their loved ones, their friends, the people who arranged and carried out the funeral rites. We can’t see the remains exactly as those people saw them at the point of burial, but it’s the closest that we can get.
So here are a few of the grave goods found:
Gold finger ring with an engraved intaglio showing two mice. Possibly referencing the story of the town mouse and the country mouse.
Jet Medusa brooch.
Coloured mosaic glass dish
Coloured mosaic glass dish
Finger ring with an engraved intaglio.
Tiny glass jar, possibly for unguent.
Rattles used in funerary rites.
The centrepiece of exhibition is this well preserved stone sarcophagus found last year near Harper Road in Southwark.
Stone sarcophagi are rare in London, this is only the third one found, so it’s a big deal. Most people buried in Roman London would have been buried in wooden caskets or possibly just laid in the ground wrapped in a shroud, so the lady interred here, and her family, must have been quite wealthy to be able to afford such a burial. This is the first time that the sarcophagus has been shown and I was struck by how big it is. It’s not overly wide, but it did look really long.
In the accompanying film archaeologists, conservation experts and one of the curators talk us through the discovery, recovery, investigation and conservation of the sarcophagus. When it was discovered, the archaeologists could see that it was badly cracked so it wasn’t excavated onsite. Instead a wooden frame was constructed around it, holding it firmly together and allowing it to be lifted out of the ground by crane, still filled with earth that had accumulated in it, and taken to the lab to be excavated in more controlled conditions. The breaks int he stone are very visible, even after conservation.
In the lab the remains of the occupant and a few fragments of the grave goods were found, already disturbed by grave robbers. There’s no way to know all of the objects that the lady was buried with, but the few pieces that remain include an engraved intaglio, probably from a finger-ring, and a tiny fragment of gold, possibly the remains of an earring.
The object that I think amazed me the most was this:
It may not look like much at first, just a rough plank of wood. And so it is, but it has been reused as the base of a wooden coffin. Close inspection reveals some marks left on the wood. The imprints left by the body.
The marks left by the knees.
And by the ribs.
This, for me, was the object that really made me go “Wow!”. The dead really do leave a lasting impression.
The Roman Dead exhibition is at Museum of London Docklands until 28th October 2018 and it’s free to visit. Yes! Free!
It was the Easter holidays and I had a few days off work so I decided to take myself off for a short trip to France. Staying in Caen for a couple of days gave me an opportunity to visit the nearby site of Vieux La Romaine.
According to the Tabula Peutingeriana, the Romans knew this site as Aregenua and it was the capital of the Viducasses tribe.
My journey to the site will be familiar to anyone who has ever had to try to travel in rural France, or rural anywhere for that matter, without a car, and started with a bus that had to be booked in advance. Thank goodness that they had an online booking system for that, as my French really isn’t up to telephone conversations. In my mind’s eye I see those poor French people wincing when they hear me murdering their beautiful language with my gawd-blimey norf-Laandaan accent.
Anyway, the bus from Caen took me to the village of Esquay-Notre-Dame, which is about 2 miles from Vieux, where the Roman site is, then I walked. This is fine, it’s only 2 miles. However, on the day of my visit, the rains fell… and fell… and fell, meaning that I arrived at the museum a little soggy.
No matter. The site more than made up for the weather.
As well as the museum, the viewable site consists of a section of the forum, which is currently under excavation;
‘Ma Maison a La Cour an “u” ‘ (the house with the U-shaped courtyard),
and ‘La Maison au Grand Perisyle’ (the grand peristyle house);
Unsurprisingly, I spent quite a bit of the time in the museum, which tells the story of the town of Aregenua and the people who lived there. Aregenua was sited at a crossroads of Roman routes so it provided an important staging post and, although it wasn’t particularly big and was never walled, the town had all the usual amenities; temples, baths, forum, and aqueduct.
We can see some fragments of the buildings, and the elements on display include these columns, probably from a temple, which are intricately decorated with Bacchic scenes, and the tendrils and foliage of plants.
There are some very nice fragments of painted wall plaster.
Statues, mostly fragmentary, including the titular goddess of the town.
and other fragmentary pieces, some statuary, some sculptural.
Fragmentary sculpture, possibly Marsayus.
One interesting thing about the museum is the lengths that they have gone to to encourage touching.
Not touching everything, obviously, but certain objects actually have ‘please touch’ signs to encourage a more tactile visit than is often the case with museums.
As it was clear that many school groups visit the site (I saw about 4 different groups in the time that I was there), catering to the desire to interact very directly with objects seemed like a good way to go.
So, here are a few favourite objects on display…
A tiny glass pot, possibly for eye ointment.
Roman knives with carved bone handles.
The mouthpiece of a Roman horn.
I also really liked the Roman key exhibit. It included the usual case full of Roman keys in all shapes and sizes, but it can sometimes be hard, when looking at keys as inanimate objects, to work out how they actually worked, so there’s a model to try out. Which I did.
There is a whole display of Roman gaming equipment, including a, fragmentary, gaming board and a type-2 die with rather fancy pips.
And there is a whole case devoted to bone-working. The Romans used animal bone to make a wide range of objects, from dice to combs, hairpins to knife handles. This case actually contains unfinished pieces and the offcuts and detritus left behind when things are carved out of animal bone. This is about the process rather than the finished articles.
But here are a couple of the finished pieces, knives with carved bone handles.
Roman knives with carved bone handles.
And I particularly liked this:
This is archaeological stratigraphy explained, and it’s an attempt to show how jumbled up and confusing archaeology in the ground can be. There are all sorts of different phases of building and land use, walls, floors, demolition and collapse, burials, later features cutting through earlier ones. I think that it’s great that the curators at the museum have actually gone to some lengths to explain how tricky archaeology can be to unpick and how archaeologists working on-site, and in the labs, work out what the remains are telling us about the site and its people.
I spent ages in the museum and at the sites outside, and had a little play with the ‘Roman’ games near the grand peristyle house.
Then, with another pre-booked bus to catch back to Caen, I set off, still in the rain, back to Esquay-Notre-Dame. A good, if soggy and a bit muddy, day out.
In a dimly-lit room in the University of Caen is an expression of one man’s obsession. Le Plan de Rome, built by the French Architect Paul Bigot.
The Plan de Rome is model, an 11x6m three-dimensional terrain-map of the city of Rome in the 4th century, the time of the Emperor Constantine. Made from painted plaster, the model is, in fact, made up of 104 individual models at 1/400 scale.
Bigot began his model in the early 20th century, as a 3D plan of the Circus Maximums and then, in order to provide scale for his initial model, he began modelling the surrounding urban area, eventually building a model of about 3/5ths of the city.
The Caen model was shown at the Universal Exhibition of 1937 and was subsequently used for teaching and for public talks, but it gradually suffered due to neglect. Interest in the model was revived during the 1980s and it was conserved and redisplayed at the Université de Caen Normandie in the 1990s.
My visit to Caen coincided with the Student’s Carnival, so scenes of mayhem, carnage and passed-out-drunk-in-the-street Pikachus were the order of the day, but I was able to slip into Building F of Campus 1 to take a look at the Plan. Although it is possible to see it from the ground floor, the best view is from the first floor landing.
During his life, Bigot actually built four versions of the Plan but only two survive. Of the other two models, one previously located in the Sorbonne in Paris was damaged during the second world war and subsequently destroyed during the student riots of May 1968. The other model, made for a 1913 exhibition in Philadelphia has disappeared. The other surviving model is in the Cinquantenaire Museum in Brussels. It has a little more colour that the Caen model.
A more recent development has been the development, by the University, of a virtual model of the Plan, allowing visitors to experience a 3d fly thought of the streets of the 4th century city.
Site models can sometimes seem a bit cheesy and old-fashioned, especially when pitted against modern virtual reality, but I actually like a good model. The Plan de Rome gives a fly-over view of the ancient city and we can get a sense of the narrow, crowded streets filled with buildings; and the juxtapositions of the mundane side-by-side with the monumental. I wasn’t able to see that when I was there, as it’s only on certain days, but there are bits of it online here and there and it looks good. An opportunity to move from the bird’s eye down to street level.
The Plan is available to view from the upper corridor whenever the building is open (I guess) but it’d be worth looking out for a ‘tour’ and virtual fly-through if you happen to be in Caen. Details and dates are on the website.
I love Eurostar. I love being able to just hop on a train in town at St. Pancras and then, a couple of hours later, hop off the train somewhere with different currency. No boring schleps to and from airports, just a quick train ride. It’s so civilized.
I love the fact that if there’s something interesting happening in, say, Brussels, actually going over there is no more of a kerfuffle than going to Leeds or Bristol. So what interesting things are happening at the moment? Well, in Brussels, at the Brussels Stock Exchange, is the exhibition Pompeii, the immortal city.
Any exhibition about Pompeii comes with the possibility of a certain amount of baggage. It’s a big blockbuster story of a city frozen in time by a natural disaster, and just invites cliches. This exhibition walked what could be a fine line, as it utilized quite a lot of blockbuster effects but, overall, I think that it told a good story and it certainly had a lot of interesting things to have a look at.
The exhibition starts with a story. The story of an ordinary Pompeian family. Of Caius, the only one of that family who survived. Once we’d met the characters, we went into a rotunda for our ‘immersive experience’. Signs made it clear that this was an artistic reimagining and not a scientifically correct rendition of events in AD 79. There’s a lot of lava.
I can’t always be bothered with these sorts of ‘experiences’, especially if they’re used a a cover for ‘not much actual material’ but this was good and I stayed to watch it a couple of times.
I needn’t have worried that there wouldn’t be anything substantial to back up the pyrotechnics, as there was plenty. I’m just adding a couple of favourites here.
One feature of Pompeian archaeology that is always impressive is the range and quality of painted wall plaster that has survived. The images produced are often mythological or idealised but there are also realistic depictions of scenes of daily life and the ordinary objects that Pompeians had and used on a daily basis. At Pompeii, because there is so much well-preserved material, we have the opportunity to compare the pictures with the real things. A favourite is the loaf of bread, carbonized by the heat from the eruption.
The bread was formed into circular loaves and pre-scored into portions before baking. Often, the loaves were stamped with the name of the producer. Pompeian advertising. Images of this kind of bread can been seen in frescos depicting feasts and sumptuous table settings, and showing shops with the bakers doling out loaves from tall stacks.
Another, rather unusual object on display was this large, squat pot, found at Herculaneum. It has holes in it, so isn’t made to contain a liquid.
Inside there are ledges running all around the pot at different heights.
This is a glirarium. When I work at outreach events, I sometimes ask visitors “what did Romans eat?” If there are children around, they will inevitably answer “dormice”.
During the Roman period, edible dormice (Glis glis) were a delicacy, but only for the well off. The wild dormice were caught in the autumn and kept in these pots to be fattened up on walnuts, chestnuts, and acorns, and then turned into a savoury treat for the well to do. Recipes by Apicius include dormouse stuffed with pork and seasoned with pepper, nuts and laser and then roasted in the oven or boiled in broth. For a savoury/sweet twist, the dormouse was dipped in honey and sprinkled with poppy seeds.
Yum*.
Alongside the artefacts from Pompeii, on loan from various Italian museums, there are reconstructions and working models, showing how things looked and how things worked. I actually quite liked these as they were firmly in the ‘How Stuff Works’ camp. Just as an example, here the ‘odometer’, used for measuring distances like the mileage clock on a car.
The ratchet is attached to the wheels of a cart and for every Roman mile travelled, a little stone drops into the box. In an expanding empire (in both the Republican and Imperial periods), being able to measure distances was really important for travel and trade, and for moving armies and their supplies. Milestones marked the distances between places. Odometers measured those distances.
There was also this reconstruction of a screw-press for producing olive oil.
I was slightly confused by this reconstruction. It didn’t seem to say that this was a scale model, but it looks extremely small for an olive oil press. The stone pressing bed is only about 50cm square.
If it was this size, it’d only be able to manage relatively small quantities of olives for pressing at any one time. Maybe it’s for domestic use? I’m not sure either, if a stone like the one here has been found at Pompeii or if this was just intended to be an illustration of a screw-press in a more general way, as there is olive oil production associated with the Pompeii hinterland.
Moving on…
With Pompeii exhibitions, the people themselves are often the star attractions. Casts of the imprints left by the people who died and were entombed in volcanic ash are a poignant reminder of the human cost of natural disasters. This exhibition has two of the casts.
I liked the way that they were displayed, inside their own circular room with the the falling ash provided by av. It was quite atmospheric. It was possible to get quite close-up and see details of the casts; the lady’s ‘Livia’ hairstyle and the fact that she wore a shawl.
One of the other famed, but less often seen victims of the Vesuvian eruption was Pliny the Elder. The eyewitness account written by his nephew Pliny the Younger in a letter to Tacitus, describes the lead-up to the eruption, the events on the day of the main onslaught, the desperate rescue efforts and the report of the death of his uncle.
In the early 20th century, an engineer by the name of Gennaro Matrone began excavating in the area around Stabiae. Among the ~70 skeletons that he excavated, was one which was found wearing a gold chain around the neck, bracelets and a short sword. Matrone’s interpretation of this find was that these must be the remains of Pliny the Elder. Archaeologists at the time rejected this identification on the grounds that a Roman commander would not be wearing such jewellery.
More recently, researchers have agreed that the description of the jewellery found with the skeleton does seem to be compatible with decorations worn by military commanders of the 1st century. Further, the skull is that of a man in his mid-fifties, the age at which Pliny died.
Sadly Matrone sold the jewellery and reburied the skeleton, keeping only the skull and the remains of the short sword, so the identification of these remains as Pliny the Elder is still uncertain. But tests have been ongoing, so it’s not impossible.
I enjoyed this exhibition and thought that it was a good mix of crowd-pleasing special effects and satisfyingly interesting archaeological artefacts. The exhibition makes extensive use of av devices. Visitors are issued with a headset on arrival and can follow the narrative of the Pompeian family, which links many of the objects. I had a bit of trouble with the headset, which kept cutting out, so I didn’t get to hear all the bits of linking storyline, but I’m not sure that I really needed it. I was happy to just have a look at the displays and there was some written information available too.
*I’ve never actually eaten a dormouse so I have no idea what one tastes like. Also, I’m vegetarian, so the chances of me ever finding out what a dormouse tastes like are slim to none.
No, this post isn’t about the Prodigy, it’s about muck.
In 2017 a monstrous fiend was discovered lurking in the sewers beneath the streets of Whitechapel. The ghost of Jack the Ripper? No. The FATBERG *screams*
Sewers are good, and necessary, and help to reduce outbreaks of cholera in heavily populated areas like London. Sewers are also a bit smelly and dirty and full of things we never wanted to see again.
The term ‘fatberg’ was first used by London sewer workers to describe the accumulations of oil and grease and ‘stuff’ that build up in sewers, and which have to be cleared out regularly in order to keep the channels flowing. It’s a real word now because it entered the Oxford English Dictionary in 2015 but in September 2017, the mother of all fatbergs was found in the Whitechapel sewer.
It was big. Weighing ~130 tonnes and stretching along the sewer for over 250 metres, so it had to go. The difficulty was its sheer mass and solidity. The usual method of removal is to blast it with jets of water to break it up, and then suck it out through pipes into tankers for disposal. Unfortunately, the Whitechapel Fatberg was, in places, so rock solid that blasting it with jets of water couldn’t break it up, so the only alternative was for the sewer workers to hack it to pieces with picks and hand-shovels. Over the course of nine weeks, eight waste engineers, working nine hours a day rid the sewer of the fatberg.
The workers had to wear protective clothing and masks in order to avoid being poisoned by the toxic waste or infected with diseases, which can be breathed in or even absorbed into your system through your skin.
Even though they were only handling a small sample, the conservators at the Museum were also kitted out with similar protective gear. During the process of preservation mould grew on the samples and flies hatched out of them. The samples were x-rayed to see what was inside (and to check for hazards like sharps), then they were dried out, reducing the risk of contamination, and enclosed in three boxes, one inside another inside another. They are now displayed in sealed units. That Fatberg bites.
And here it is.
I was initially (madly) expecting the chunks to be huge, sofa-sized pieces but, having seen what was involved in preserving them and the hazards they posed, I can see why that could never be.
So why on earth has such a piece of grimness ended up on display in a museum?
Well, the Whitechapel Fatberg’s ‘celebrity’ presented the Museum of London, and the ‘Curator of Fatberg!’, Vyki Sparkes, with an opportunity to tell the story of something that is common and everyday in our city, as in all cities, waste. The enormous volume of waste generated by a big city is a constant problem that has to be monitored and managed but which we don’t all necessarily consider very often. Putting a piece of it in the museum that tells the story of London helps us to consider it. On display, we’re only seeing a tiny piece of a huge problem but it’s a way to have the conversation about how we can all help to reduce that problem, just a little bit.
We can all think about what we’re flushing down the loo. Flushable wet wipes may be marketed as easy to dispose of, but they don’t biodegrade so flushing them is just shifting the problem to somewhere else. The Fatberg, as it’s name suggests, is made up of a base of fat; oil, cooking fat and fats found in product such as hair conditioner. Some of this, at least, doesn’t have to end up down the drain. We can all make decisions about how we dispose of our waste and also make decisions about what we purchase and how that can help to reduce waste a bit.
You can read about the rationale and process for bringing the Fatberg to the museum on the museum’s own blog.
The good news is that the fat content of the fatberg is actually recyclable. It can be recycled and reused as biodiesel fuel, powering the buses. Other elements have been recycled to make fertilizer.
The Fatberg has just gone on display at The Museum of London and will be there to visit, for free, until the 1st July as part of the ‘City Now City Future’ season.
p.s. Is that a Double-Decker wrapper sticking out of the Fatberg?
moose and hobbes 