Week 7

During Week 7, our seminar was led by Dr. Liz Stewart, the Curator of Archaeology and the Historic Environment at the new Museum of Liverpool. This was an excellent opportunity to learn more about the process of planning and building a completely new museum. The Museum of Liverpool has used four main themes to tell the story of Liverpool; the museum space is divided into Port City, Global City, Creative City and People's City, and also contains Little Liverpool (a gallery for children) and the History Detectives. Archaeology is used in all of the galleries as the aim was for each gallery to contain a mix of collection types. All of the galleries also use a mix of permanent and temporary exhibitions and have a space for community exhibitions.

In order to build the museum, it was necessary to excavate part of the Manchester Dock, which was shown on a special episode of Time Team. The National Museums Liverpool's archaeology team undertook the excavation, and finds from the site are used in the gallery (such as an incised masonry block used in an alphabet wall in the Little Liverpool Gallery). Dr Stewart discussed the issues that can arise from using archaeology in display, and emphasised the importance of thinking creatively.

The Museum of Liverpool opens in phases from Spring 2011 but, if you can't wait until then, you can follow the museum's progress on Twitter:

http://twitter.com/the_new_museum

or on the National Museums Liverpool website:

http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/about/capitalprojects/mol/index.aspx

Also this week, our group finalised all of the objects that are to be included in the catalogue, the text and content of which was standardised by three group members. This week's tasks have also included working on the presentation of the catalogue, the portfolio and the presentation. We will be meeting to practice our presentation before the official event on Tuesday. Wish us luck!

(Written by Catherine Downey)

More Object Photographs

Just some more from the upcoming catalogue!

Photographing Coins

The Greek coins showed to us by Keith Sugden


Photographing coins with a scale bar



Hannah M and Erika photographing coin

Week 6

This week the group have been pulling together the photographs and research which we have been collating in preperation for our Archaeological Catalogue. We have been producing a range of written material for the catalogue such as introductory material, information about our gods/goddesses and research about our individual objects. The group have been accessing KE Emu to obtain existing information about the objects which will then be supplemented by additional research we have conducted. We have set ourselves a deadline of Monday to have all of our 'Object Pages' completed for the catalogue, which will then be proof-read by three members of the group that same day. We have also started work on our Group Project Portfolio and hope to continue working on this next week along with compiling our Project Presentation, so it is sure to be busy!

Addtional to our project, the Museums and Archaeology group visited the World Museum Liverpool on Tuesday for this week's topic of study 'Egypt in Museums'. Our day visit comprised of a tour of the recently redeveloped Ancient Egypt Gallery and two talks, one by Ashley Cook (Curator of Egypt and the Near East and also Head of Antiquities) and an equally interesting talk by the Regional Finds Liason Officer, Vanessa Oakden, whom spoke to us about the initiatives and challenges of the Portable Antiquities Scheme.

Portable Antiquities Scheme Website:
http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/mol/archaeology/pas/

(Written by Hannah White)

Week 5

Yesterday was week 5 of our project. Our plan was to view a selection of objects for each Greek god/goddess or characters we had chosen to put in our catalogue. However, unfortuneately we weren't able to do this yesterday due to slight communication issues!



It was not all bad news though as we did have a selection of coins to photograph as posted by Erika! This allowed us to at least assign some of our chosen gods/goddesses and other characters to some objects and as a result we had quite a productive day!



More good news followed with some of our group visiting the archaeology store today in order to select and photograph the remainder of the objects. This means that by next week we should have all of our objects selected and photographed.



We also had a small chat about other research everyone had been doing. We all decided that an introduction to archaeology and the ancient Greeks was vital in the catalogue and so Hannah is sending around what she has written already for us all to add to where we feel it is necessary! I am doing the same with regards to a glossary which we think is essential for children to understand some of the terminology we are using. It is a great way to succinctly explain what we mean by things like accession numbers, artefacts, conservation etc.

This will be created by any words we feel need explaining in the catalogue being outlined in bold which will then refer the reader to the glossary and the definitions of the words at the back.

We also decided on a visual diagram of a museum object to add to the catalogue which will label the accession number, the material, the dimensions etc. This will set the reader up with what these things mean with regards to the rest of the objects in the catalogue.



We also discussed the need to be interpretative in our introductions and explanations within the catalogue. It is important we go beyond explaining what different things mean to explaining why these things are there. Why is it important to have an accesstion number? why are the objects in the museum? why did the ancient Greeks have images of gods and goddesses on coins or pottery? what do the depictions mean?



Finally we all agreed to come up with one activity to add to the catalogue for next weeks meeting! This should be interesting to see what we come up with! It could range from word searches to toga making! Maybe we should try them out!

(written by Louise Thomas)

Object Photographs

Below are some of the objects that are being considered for our project. I've picked the best shots since we took about 60...



We'll be photographing more next week and I will post those as well.

-Erika