Identity Without Borders

Ahead of Refugee Week in June 2017 the Pitt Rivers Museum and the Joint Museums Outreach Team undertook numerous community and public engagement events connecting with people from refugee communities. It is a series of activities geared at transforming the museum into a platform for the voices of people who are refugees, many of whom are locally based. The run of events culminated in a free public evening event called Identity Without Borders. 

Here is a taste of some of the events and activities:

Family Day craft activity

Ahead of the numerous community events taking place at the Pitt Rivers Museum training was arranged for Pitt Rivers staff around supporting refugee and asylum seekers and understanding their experiences. It was led by our partners Asylum Welcome, one of the charities and organisations that support refugees in Oxford. The training offered a brilliant opportunity to learn a bit more about the experiences of refugees within our communities and also to think about how the museums are placed to support local refugee and asylum seeking communities to engage in new ways with the collections.

The Museum and Joint Museums Outreach team ran three family days for Oxfordshire's Syrian community and people who access Refugee Resource services. The families used the museum spaces and spent time in the galleries.

BK.LUWO crocheting

The international women's group, BK.LUWO, 'took over' the balcony, working on their current craft projects and chatting to visitors. BK.LUWO is a women's empowerment group based in East Oxford Community centre. They come together twice a week to offer peer support, share skills and just be. We invited them along and they decided to make the Pitt Rivers their home for the afternoon covering the balcony with their craft projects!

Photograph by John Wreford

A Private View was held for community members and organisations involved with the project, of two new temporary displays, Syrians Unknown and Identity Without Borders. Syrians Unknown is a photographic exhibition by John Wreford which will be on display until September 2017. Visit the Upper Gallery to encounter large scale portraits of people displaced from Syria, now surviving and thriving in Istanbul, Turkey. Each person photographed has written powerful testimonies about their experiences. The exhibition is in English and Arabic.

Identity Without Borders is a display of Pitt Rivers Museum objects and loaned objects co-curated by volunteers who came to the UK seeking asylum. The two case displays were developed with community volunteers in partnership with Refugee Resource and Asylum Welcome. Through facilitated visits to the collections volunteers have used familiar museum objects to share stories from their home countries and reflect on their identities.

Nuzhat Abbas singing at Identity Without Borders

We also co-hosted, with TORCH, an event exploring identity, memory and migration. The event was a really interesting and thought provoking session chaired by the Museum Director Dr Laura Van Broekhoven. Lots of people came along to discuss this timely topic. 

Amir Darwish, a Syrian/Kurdish poet, led two Poetry workshops at the museum. Budding and established wordsmiths were encouraged to join in.  People who took part in the workshops also had the chance to perform their poems at the Identity Without Borders event.

The Pitt Rivers Museum has also supported English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) provision for refugees. Oxford University Student Administration identified the museum as a location to teach English to refugees. The volunteer teachers delivered language lessons for women with young children, and museum provided family activities for the children, enabling parents to attend.

African Dance Oxford performing at Identity Without Borders

Identity Without Borders, was the public evening event celebrating the project, with our community partners performing dance, poetry and music in the Pitt Rivers Museum. The event was a celebration of identity and who we are - showcasing the two new exhibitions: Syrians Unknown and Identity Without Borders. Refugees make up most of the performers and this event was a culmination of activities which have spanned over the last three months.

All of these events are part of the Migration project which aims to connect people who have suffered forced migration to engage with the collections and the PRM as a space. 

Thanks go to ...

Firstly thank you to all the community members and especially Asylum Welcome and Refugee Resource for their support. Thank you to Nicola and Beth who co-managed the project. Many thanks to everyone in the museum who helped get the migration project going, especially to Al and Chris who managed to install both displays at a very busy time. I'd also like to say thank you to George who helped translate activities into Arabic - really, really helpful! 

Jozie Kettle
VERVE Programming and 
Communications Officer

The story of a shoe ...

Inuit shoe 1886.1.747 © Pitt Rivers Museum

This Inuit shoe (1886.1.747), made of sealskin, was collected by Arctic explorer George Francis Lyon during his voyages in the 1820s. Lyon commanded HMS Hecla under Sir William Parry in 1821, and HMS Griper in 1824, both voyages seeking the North West Passage. The second voyage was a failure—the anchor chains were lost in a storm which also badly damaged the masts and rigging.  Having barely made it back to England, Lyon was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Oxford in 1825, and the record for this shoe says it was presented by him to Oxford in that year.

Lyon was perhaps more successful as an adventurer and early anthropologist than as an explorer. He had many interactions with Inuit people on these voyages and was tattood by them. His writings on Inuit people during these voyages have proven valuable to scholars since.

Sole of shoe 1886.1.747 © Pitt Rivers Museum

This shoe once had four strips of fur on the sole for grip on snow. It is exquisitely sewn with sinew (animal tendon) and part of an outfit designed for survival in the Arctic.


Laura Peers
Curator for Americas, Pitt Rivers Museum &
Professor of Museum Anthropology, School of Anthropology


See this shoe and more footwear made of animal skin on display in the Leatherwork case (L.63.A) on the Lower Gallery.

Archaeology Displays Update

Museum staff arranging metal objects ©Pitt Rivers Museum

The new archaeology displays in the Pitt Rivers Museum will be displayed by type of material, rather than by chronology or geography.  The objects for these displays have been selected and now the time has come to layout all the objects to determine their final positions in the cases.  Prof Dan Hicks was involved with the final selection, Technicians Alistair and Adrian advised regarding the placement of objects in the cases and Conservator Miriam recommended ways to support and protect the objects.

The run of 10 archaeological cases is 17 metres in length and so it is important to see the potential layout of the cases next to each other.  The team spent three days working through the the displays which will show archaeological objects made of stone, metal, bone, glass, ceramic, wood and textile.

This case contains examples of spindle whorls © Pitt Rivers Museum

We started with the stone case.  The PRM has over 10,000 archaeological objects; most of these are stone tools so we had a lot to choose from. The carved stone piece in the centre of the photograph is a fragment of limestone (1884.138.12) excavated by Lt. Gen. Pitt-Rivers himself from Caesar’s Camp near Folkstone.

A close up of objects made of wood © Pitt Rivers Museum

Organic material is less likely to survive in the archaeological record but the museum holds some interesting examples to display in the case.  This case contains an intriguing wooden mummy face (1890.25.3) from Ancient Egypt 3rd Intermediate period excavated by Flinders Petrie and a mystery wooden object, possibly a lock, from a bog in Aghabullogue, Ireland (1884.117.1).

A close up of textiles © Pitt Rivers Museum

Archaeological textiles pose a problem for the museum conservation team.  These textiles are fragile and vulnerable to UV light, high lux light levels and to museum pests.  The conservation and technical services departments are investigating methods to control light levels and protect the textiles on display.

A close up of objects made from bone © Pitt Rivers Museum

The bone case contains examples of bone, tooth, shell and horn.  This case contains many small objects.  During the layout we took the opportunity to test the case text.  We printed mock up labels and tried placing the labels along the side edges of the cases.

The Archaeology Stone case in situ © Pitt Rivers Museum

The first display was installed on the Upper Gallery in October 2016.  Keep an eye out for more appearing soon!

Madeleine Ding and Sian Mundell
VERVE Curatorial Assistants

New techniques in soft-mount making at the Pitt Rivers Museum

Recently, in the conservation lab we have been busy preparing objects for a new display. Rank and Status in the Pacific is one of the new VERVE displays, which are being installed in the Lower Gallery. The case presents a range of items, including jewelry, clothing and ceremonial sticks, representing emblems of authority and status in the Pacific.

A large number of soft mounts, mostly consisting of padded MDF boards covered in Jersey fabric, were required to support the many neck ornaments, which feature in the display. However, two particular objects, a headband 1989.28.11 and a shell necklace 1990.22.3, offered us the opportunity to be more experimental with our mounts. We decided to create a head-and-neck 3D mount, which would display the objects as they would have been worn. This mount will be the centerpiece of the case.

To create a mount of this kind we would normally use a method called buckram, which consists of covering a mould, usually a mannequin, in layers of linen strips impregnated with starch paste which, once dry, create a cast of the mould.  Although this method is very efficient and very popular among conservators and mount makers, it can be very time-consuming, especially when many layers of linen strips are required to achieve the desired shape and strenght. Each layer in fact has to be completely dry before a new layer can be applied.

However, a new material, called Fosshape (Fosshape™), is becoming more and more popular among conservators and mount makers as an alternative to buckram for making soft mounts. Fosshape has been designed and used mostly in the millinery industry and it is a thermoplastic, non-woven, synthetic fabric, which can be molded into any desired shapes using vapour and heat. Earlier this year, I used the same material to create a hand-shaped mount for a leather glove 1911.29.85 used in the masonry industry, which is now on display in the Stonework display in the Lower Gallery.

Leather glove 1911.29.85 mounted on a hand-shaped mount made of Fosshape, front (left) and back (right) 

           

In April, Jeremy Uden, Deputy Head of Conservation, and I also attended a one-day training session at the textile conservation lab at the V&A with Textile Conservation Display Specialists Rachael Lee.  At the V&A, Fosshape is used extensively. Due to its versatility, ease and speed of use, it is an ideal material to adapt mannequins and create desired silhouettes for costumes. Our day at the V&A textile lab, gave us a chance to practice further with Fosshape and improve our skills under Rachael’s direction, and to observe how versatile this material can be and what great potential it has for use in conservation and mount making.

Although it is great fun to work with Fosshape, it must be said that creating complex mounts out of it can be tricky. For our first attempts, the hand-shaped mount mentioned above and the head-and neck mount, we set our goals pretty high.

The first step was to select a suitable mannequin’s head to use as a mould on which to shape the Fosshape. Given the size of the headband, which we were making the mount for, we needed a fairly small head. Finding a mannequin of a suitable size can be difficult when only a few are available in a small lab.  Fortunately, the mannequin available to us was perfect for the job. 

Our mannequin head is covered in calico fabric, which has been cut into eight sections and sewn together to create a perfect fit for the head. We decided to use a similar pattern to cut the Fosshape into eight pieces, which we then sewed together. We chose to use Fosshape 600 grs for this project, as it creates stronger mounts than the Fosshape 300 grs, which is more suitable for smaller, lighter mounts, like the hand-mount shown above.

Sewing patterns

Once ready, the Fosshape was turned inside-out and fitted onto the mannequin head again ready to be shrunk with heat and vapour from an iron. To ensure that the mount could be removed from the mannequin, the back of the mount was stitched by hand. 

Fosshape sections sewn together and fitted onto the mannequin, front (left) and back (right)

A wet piece of calico was used as a barrier between the mount and the iron, partly to generate more vapour and partly to protect the mount from potential burns. We shrunk the Fosshape to a point where we felt comfortable that it was still flexible enough to be removed from the mannequin, while still being able to retain its shape. Once removed from the mannequin, which required a significant amount of teamwork in order to plan, pull and remove it without causing any damage to the mount or the mannequin, the Fosshape mount was stitched back together.

Jeremy shrinking the Fosshape 

Fosshape mount shrunken and ready to be removed from the mannequin, front (left) and back (right)

Although our mount at this stage was already quite strong, following advice from Rachael, we decided to add a layer of buckram for additional strength. The mount was left to dry overnight and the next day was ready to be covered in fabric. We used the same pattern created for the Fosshape to make a black Jersey cover to fit the mount. At this stage, it is impossible to stitch through the Fosshape as it is completely hardened. This meant that the Jersey had to be stretched out gradually onto the mount, using pins. Whereas the majority of the cover was machine sewn, the back of the mount was hand-stitched. At the base of the neck, the fabric was tucked inside and hot-glued to the mount. 

Fosshape mount covered with a layer of buckram 

Miriam sewing the Jersey fabric cover (left) and Jersey cover nearly completed (right) 

Ultimately, the headband mounted on Polyfelt covered in black jersey, was attached to the head using Velcro, and the necklace was fixed onto the mount using nylon monofilament wire.

Headband and necklace mounted onto the Fosshape mount, front (top center), side (bottom left), back (bottom right)

The results of our experimentation were highly pleasing. Aside from being a really useful, alternative, material for soft mounts, we were able to assess the huge potential that Fosshape has to aid the interpretation of objects in our displays. Rank and Status will be installed soon… Watch this space!

Miriam Orsini
VERVE Conservator

Tales From a Student Placement

Dominic Persinger, Archaeology student from Cardiff University, undertook a summer placement at the PRM, here he shares his experiences. 

My First Day © Pitt Rivers Museum

Elation is the only word that can be used to describe my feeling upon receiving news that I would be undergoing a placement here at the Pitt Rivers Museum. With my favoured career path set firmly in the direction of museum work, opportunities do not come much greater than gaining vital experience at my long-standing favourite museum. With a varied and diverse schedule I would gain valuable insight into the inner workings of this most charismatic museum.

Education Department

During my time at the museum I was given the chance to participate in a number of the museum's summer family friendly activities. On my first day I was able to try my hand at construction as children were tasked with building a structure that could withstand a randomly chosen environmental condition. Some straws, lollypop sticks and a whole lot of creativity later, we were left with some structures that would challenge even the contents of the 'Building and Housing' case found on the court level. 

Audiences enjoying the pop-up puppet show © Pitt Rivers Museum

The following week I was lucky enough to sit in on the increasingly popular pop-up puppet show. I, like the rest of the audience, was blown away by the beauty and intricacy of the Indonesian shadow puppets. Manned by a pair of the museum's many enthusiastic volunteers that I would meet during my stay, the puppets played out the Ramayana, a traditional Hindu epic.

Projects and Popcorn

Over the course of my placement I would help out with the research, planning and organisation of the museum's forthcoming community and outreach projects. This swiftly became perhaps the most rewarding part of my experience. Having input into the upcoming LGBTQ+ museum-wide trail and the refugee and asylum seeker engagement project, I felt as though I was a part of something very special. One day we welcomed After 18 to the museum, a Leicester based group consisting of unaccompanied refugee and asylum seeking young people. While we hunted through the museum's dense displays to locate objects from their respective native countries, it was a privilege to observe the visitors interact and engage with the collections, as clearly beloved memories and stories were triggered throughout. Witnessing such engagement projects first hand reassured me how important the work carried out by the culture and heritage sector really is; after all, in my opinion, people should be at the heart of everything a museum does. Coming from an archaeological background it was particularly interesting to be able to oversee the complete process of an object being discovered, displayed and finally engaged with. 

Crowds lounging around watching Star Wars © Pitt Rivers Museum

In the time leading up to my placement I would never have guessed that at any point I would be sat watching Star Wars whilst the sun was setting over the picturesque museum lawn. But alas, deck chairs and beanbags were scattered across the grass as Cult Screens brought three days of outdoor cinema-viewing pleasure to the Oxford public. Hearing the imperial march echo through the 19th century grounds was a distinct highlight of mine.

Collections Department

As a part of the VERVE project, new archaeology displays are destined for the Upper Gallery and I was lucky enough to experience the processes involved with planning, selecting and organising these new display cases. Seeing up close and personal both the artefacts that made the cut and those that did not was a real treat. I will never look at a display the same again now that I know of the precision and patience that goes into getting the contents and aesthetics just right.

The very same day we visited the museum's Osney store. Upon meeting the team conducting a two and a half year project packaging the store's contents ready for transportation to a new location, the extreme scale of their task became apparent. The store is currently home to around 100,000 objects, so naturally I jumped at the chance to be granted this behind-the-scenes access and experience some of them for myself. If you too would like to explore some of the store's many items, do check out the recent Pitt Rivers Stores twitter account (@Pitt_Stores) for frequent updates on the newest discoveries.

Front of House 

One Monday I spent the day with the museum's front of house staff, it was my chance to adorn the red tie. I soon realised that I would spend most of the day answering one infamous question- "where are the shrunken heads?". When talking with the front of house guys, I was incredibly impressed by the whole team's extensive knowledge of the collections - they really did know the museum inside out.  I relished at the chance to spend some time with the displays myself, forever discovering something new as I strolled through the galleries.

Making fire the good ol' fashioned way © Pitt Rivers Museum

Pitt Fest

The focal point of my placement would be preparing for the museum's fourth annual Pitt Fest. Fittingly the theme for this year's fest was archaeology, giving me the opportunity to really sink my teeth into the event's organisation. After weeks of long and hard preparation, the big day came along and greeted us with substantial rain and blistering winds. However, the weather conditions did not dampen the spirits of the crowds who descended onto the museum lawn. Visitors explored the world of archaeology through free drop-in demonstrations, workshops, object handling, activities, performances and talks. I spent the first half of my day dissecting ancient poo (that's right, I said poo!); many a laugh was shared as festival goers dismembered fake coprolites in order to determine what part of history they would have came from, be it Roman, Viking or Tudor.

Fancy a story? © Pitt Rivers Museum

My nerves grew throughout the day as I was due to close the new soapbox talk series. Sharing a platform with experienced museum professionals and Oxford University professors was a daunting thought. As a result of the relentless rain my audience was confined to those who could cram into the soapbox tent, making for an easing and intimate atmosphere. I delivered the talk on one of my particular areas of interest, the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in Europe. I discussed the debates that surround how the transition from from a hunter-gatherer way of life to a farming one played out, with particular focus on the recent developments of exciting scientific methods that we can use within archaeology, such as strontium isotope analysis and aDNA studies. In all I was pleased with how my talk went and with the interest it sparked with those listening. It was however nice to unwind afterwards by eating some gorgeous world street food and dancing around to the infectious sounds of the Seby Ntege Band.

The Seby Ntege Band closing the day's festivities © Pitt Rivers Museum

To conclude I would like to say a huge thank you to all of the staff at the Pitt Rivers Museum, in particular the VERVE team, for making me feel so welcome and a part of the group. The work you do is truly inspiring and Im sure I will be seeing you all again very soon.

Dominic Persinger
University of Cardiff Placement Student

Picking pots: an archaeology display layout

One of the first in the run of display cases of archaeology will focus on objects made of pottery from a variety of different cultures and historical periods.

The 80 or so longlisted objects, many retrieved from an off-site store, are catalogued by myself and Sian. We use a Filemaker collections database to add new information such as descriptions, measurements and photographs, and we physically assign accession numbers to objects where necessary.

Example of a database entry page for an object. Here, a Roman votive hand PRM 1896.15.28

Having photographs and measurements of objects is great, but the physical selection and layout process is crucial for helping to determine the organising schema of a display and to see if certain combinations of objects 'work' together - intellectually and visually. We brought around 80 objects to the session that included Project Curator Helen Adams, Curator for Archaeology Prof Dan Hicks, Curator for Americas Prof Laura Peers, and Heather Richardson, Head of Conservation, who checked that the objects were in a stable enough condition for display.

Museum staff select objects for the new pottery display © Pitt Rivers Museum

A mock-up of the display case measuring 100 cm x 50cm with a maximum height of 10 cm was created. Once all the pieces were discussed and the final pieces chosen, we positioned the pottery within the case to look at meaningful groupings and optimum positioning.

A mock-up case frame to help us think about layouts and groupings © Pitt Rivers Museum

It could be easy for archaeology displays to be, dare we say it, a little dull but we are really enthused by the variety of colour, shapes, cultures and techniques demonstrated in this selection. Prioritising complete objects over sherds and shards will hopefully enable the objects to speak for themselves and visitors will be able to appreciate both their form and function. Since the collections are concerned with world archaeology, not just European classical archaeology, we hope to be able to tell some new and unfamiliar stories, such as that of the Moche or Mochica civilisation of Peru (AD 100 - 800). Here is a Moche stirrup-spout jar in the form of a skeleton playing panpipes.

Ceramic stirrup-spout jar in form of a skeleton playing panpipes; 1947.7.14 © Pitt Rivers Museum

Now the Conservation team will work on the 36 pottery pieces to clean, stabilise and conserve them. Finally the Technical team will look at the pieces to see how they should be displayed in the case and create mounts to support them. Look out for the new display in the Upper Gallery later this year.


Helen Adams (VERVE Project Curator) and Madeleine Ding (VERVE Curatorial Assistant)

A Visit to the Store, the Museum's own 'Pottery Barn'

Sian and I recently visited the Museum's off-site store to identify objects for the new world archaeology displays. We had a longlist of interesting objects to search for since the run of cases will most likely be displayed by type of material, rather than by chronology or geography to maintain the Museum's typological approach to arrangements.

We started looking for pottery objects first as most of our pottery reserve collections are in the store, which will soon be undergoing a major move.

© Pitt Rivers Museum

'Angel Inn' mug, 1887.1.409
© Pitt Rivers Museum

The Museum's pottery collections (objects made from fired clay) include Egyptian faience ushabti figures, pottery tiles from India, Japanese wheel-turned stoneware, and – from closer to home – a glazed beer tankard from the Angel Inn on Oxford's High Street, now the University of Oxford's Examination Schools (left). 



Below is a terracotta 'plank' figurine, one of four such figurines from the excavations of Dr Heinrich Schliemann (1822-1890) at Mycenae, Greece in the 1870s. It is thought to date to the Archaic period during the Iron Age (700-600 BC). You can read more about the Schliemann collections at the Pitt Rivers Museum here (Chapter 15.2.4).



 

'Plank' figurine, Mycenae, Greece PRM 1887.20.57 © Pitt Rivers Museum

The selected objects will be transported back to the Museum for inspection by the project team including Project Curator Helen Adams, Curator for Archaeology Prof Dan Hicks, and Interim Director and Curator for Americas Prof Laura Peers.

Packed 'bakers' trays ready for transporting © Pitt Rivers Museum

Madeleine Ding

VERVE Curatorial Assistant