Things have been a bit quiet lately because I’ve been off on my holidays. A week away in Ibitha to enjoy a bit of early autumn sun before we all contracted Seasonal Affective Disorder was a disastrous choice as it rained almost as much as in Manchester. But there are always compensations. A visit to the little museum in Ibitha town was a joy. The helpful staff there sent us off to another museum at Puig des Molins outside the town’s monumental defences where there were displays and an open air site - a necropolis.
There was a display of material from the religious site dedicated to the goddess Tanit at Culleram, Sant Joan de Labritja, in the north-eastern part of the island. In antiquity people had left hundreds of ceramic votives as offerings but the practice still goes on today. One of the display cases held a selection of the numerous offerings people are still leaving on the site. They include coins, pine cones, carob fruits, herbs, replicas of ancient votives and postcards. This modern observance of an ancient religious custom need not mean that visitors are worshiping Tanit any more than the offerings in the box in the Lindow Man exhibition means that all our visitors are practicing pagans but people do use this as a way of payiing their respects.
What is really interesting is that the museum at Puig des Molins thought it worthwhile to keep and display this sort of material. At the very least this provides another example of the leaving of offerings at a site or in connection with an archaeological discovery, which will be of interest when we come to write up the project early next year. Thankfully there is someone who has already expressed an interest in writing up the offerings in the exhibition.
You can see more of the images at my flickr photostream
Modern votive offerings at Puig des Molins Museum, Ibitha
Offerings Box in the Lindow Man exhibition
On 2nd September I wrote about the Offerings Box in the Lindow Man exhibition here at the Manchester Museum. The following poem was written on a card with original artwork and put in the box during the pagan ceremony to welcome Lindow Man back to Manchester back in April. It was taken out in one of our periodic reviews of the box contents to clear away comments cards, sweet wrappers, organic offerings and the like. With the permission of the writer I am now pleased to be able to share it with readers of this Blog. The card will shortly be returned to the box.
Card with original artwork and poem for Lindow Man from Gordon the Toad
Words to Lindow Man
Was the world changing,
As you went into the Moss?
Did you feel the world
shake as the Romans moved
across the land?
Were those first Christians
arriving, even then, to build
their cells, ascetic in caves,
shrivelling thier souls, unasked
on our behalf, out-talking
even the Druids?
Were the Irish kings sending
raiding prties to test the
boundaries of the sea?
Were the threads of the
familiar unravelling, fraying
into the wind the shapes of
the societies that you knew?
And had the children of
Lyr, shed their swan
feathers and, telling
thier ancient tale, at last,
withered and died by
Patrick’s feet?
Did the Holy People take
you and bind you and
feed you to the wildness
and wideness?
Or were you just waylaid
one night, fallen in with
thieves, the gold of your
status stolen and all your
promise dropped into the cold,
dark-gold, deep-mead waters?
And did sheer chance pull
you from the peat?
Or have you been sleeping,
watching and waiting for the
moment to come back and
face a changing world again?
The threat and promise of
change echo between our
centuries and I would sit
with you watching the sunset
over distant hills.
Whatever the change, the mint
still curls over the lingering
mosses and rain still falls on
the bleak hills,
Perhaps ghost and flesh we
would share the courage to
face past and future
change together.
Islands still float
in glory
beyond the edge
of the world.
Gordon the Toad
Card with poem and original artwork left as an offering to Lindow Man
This is just one a number of interesting things that have been placed in the offerings box over the last few months and we’re hoping that there will be a study of the material as part of the evaluation of the exhibition. I don’t know that this has been done before. Very often offerings in museums and on historical sites are disposed of and no record is ever made of them. I remember seeing a flower offering at the West Kennet long barrow site a few years ago. It had obviously been put there deliberately but it would have disappeared or been tidied away fairly quickly. We are photographing organic offerings that might harbour pests that might cause problems at the Museum and sending them – respectfully and with the help of Gordon – to Lindow Moss.
Recent contributions of poetry relating to Lindow Man seem to have struck a chord. Earlier this week I had a letter from the writer and artist, Eve Coxeter, who tells me she bumped into Joan Poulson and heard about the Lindow Man exhibition. Like Joan, Eve was inspired by the bog body phenomenon to do something creative and she has written a novel about Tollund Man. Eve visited Silkeborg some years ago to see his body and actually met P.V.Glob, who wrote the seminal work, The Bog People, with its beautiful black and white photographs of bog bodies and associated discoveries. Joan writes that Prof.Glob was elderly but still used his own plane to fly up to his farm near Silkeborg every weekend. There were even burial mounds on his property, she says. Eve’s novel was intended to bring Torlund (the medieval name) to life. Although it remains unpublished, the script can be accessed via Eve’s website, www.evecoxeter.com, and anyone interested can see the novel under ‘Novels:Torlund?’ . Eve has also kindly allowed me to post a copy of her poem on the Blog and reproduce her drawing and a sculpture of Tollund Man. So thanks a lot to Eve for that. What a talented person to be able to sketch, sculpt and write poetry!
TORLUND
THE MAN GOD
By
Eve Coxeter
Torlund
how sunken are you?
Dredged from the peat
where you have slept
through autumn mists.
fog sweep your soul
yet rise so whole
in face and foot
not man made flesh
but gods returned
your incomplete reality.
How past gives back
presents your face to man
in all but breath.
You speak
through humic acids
no words commune
unconscious host
fen sacrifice noosed
for a lost goddess
your sacred seed
germinating the archaic
silence in us all,
Convey, tell that which
human knowledge would compel
our hoped communication
divided from you at last
by the glass case
only of time.
Which reminds me that there is a copy of a novel Lindow End by local writer Christine Pemberton in Susan Chadwick’s section of the Lindow Man exhibition. This contemporary thriller involves ancient bog body DNA and a test tube baby. I don’t want to give anything away but I haven’t been able to look Christine in the eye since reading her book.
Filed under: Uncategorized
Tim Manley, who is Head of Marketing at the Manchester Museum, has shared some data from a report on the Morris Hargreaves McIntyre visitor survey work here for the first quarter (April-June) of this year 2008/2009. The findings are very interesting in relation to the impact of Lindow Man.
Compared to the first quarter of last year more visitors aged 0-16 are visiting the Museum (36% cf. 21% in Q1 2007-8 and 26% for 2007-8 overall).
There seems to be a significantly higher percentage (37%) of visitors who have little or no prior knowledge of the subject areas covered in this first quarter compared to the first quarter of 2007-8 (16%) and the year overall (19%).
75% of visitors say they are very likely to make a return visit (cf. 59% in Q1 2007-8) and 79% say they are very likely to recommend a visit to the Manchester Museum, compared to 57% in the first quarter of 2007-8 and 72% in that year overall. There also seems to be a significantly higher number of long term “lapsed” visitors, i.e. people who haven’t visited for five years or more: 17% in the first quarter of this year compared to 8% in Q1 of 2007-8 and 10% in that year overall.
45% of visitors are visiting in order to see a specific exhibition (Lindow Man) compared to 15% in the first quarter of 2007-8, which is a significant increase. 72% of visitors (35,000 people) had been to see the Lindow Man exhibition – normally this would be about 50%.
There have been 48,126 independent visits to the Manchester Museum during the period April-June 2008 compared to 43,750 visits in the same quarter for 2007-8, an increase of 4,376 or 10%.
A higher proportion of women are visiting: 57% in the first quarter of 2007-8 compared to 51% in Q1 2007-8 and 52% in that year overall.
A smaller proportion of our visitors come from Manchester (27% in the first quarter of this year compared to 41% in Q1 2007-8 and 44% in that year overall). The percentage of visitors coming from Greater Manchester are about the same (33% compared to 34%).
Conversely a higher proportion of our visitors come from elsewhere in the UK (22% in the first quarter compared to 11% in Q1 2007-8 and 12% that year overall).
Although the Museum’s Data group has yet to meet and discuss this report, it is clear from these excerpts that it shows some interesting data in relation to LM. There is a demonstrable “Lindow Man effect”. More people are visiting and they are coming primarily to see Lindow Man. There are more non-specialists, i.e. non-”connoisseur” or non-”afficionado”, visitors and more young people and women are visiting. Why have our attempts to open up the subject to a wider audience attracted these groups in particular? If the number of visitors from Manchester and Greater Manchester has fallen or stayed the same, the Museum is attracting larger numbers from the rest of the UK. At a time when a number of the Museum’s projects are receiving Regional Development grant aid in order to help promote Manchester as a key cultural and leisure destination, the information from the Morris Hargreaves McIntyre visitor survey is very encouraging.
Filed under: Lindow Man Exhibition
Guinevere, Tom and Bryan at the Lindow Man Exhibition
Filed under: Lindow Man Exhibition
One of the exhibits in the Lindow Man exhibition is a bittern, a shy and reclusive bird, which once lived in the mosses of the North West. Dr Melonie Giles, who lectures in landscape archaeology here at the University of Manchester, emphasises the importance of wetland habitats in prehistory in her section of the Lindow Man exhibition. A bittern specimen, a beaver skull and various beetles typical of peat bogs (all from the Museum’s natural sciences collections) support the conclusion that wetlands were important ecologically and valuable to prehistoric people in all sorts of ways. The bittern attracted some interest at the exhibition preview back in April and one of our guests mentioned that the bird had recolonised parts of Lancashire. It became extinct in the Victorian period because of the draining of wetlands and pollution. Attempts have been made to encourage the bird to recolonise regions where it has become extinct by providing funding to recreate and manage reed beds. For example, the bittern has been heard at Wigan where the reed beds or flashes have been improved. This indicates that birds are advertising for a mate, and hopefully breeding successfully. In the Daily Telegraph (August 29th) it was reported that there has been a 47% increase in numbers of the male birds, which have to be counted on the basis of their distinctive booming call (it is nicknamed the boombird) because they are otherwise extremely hard to localise. Apparently the very wet summer has been good for the birds, providing them with plentiful food and good breeding conditions. It is good to know that museums are not the only ones to have benefited from the inclement weather. The Manchester Museum’s visitors are up by a number of thousands over the summer as parents look for somewhere sheltered to take children during the summer holidays. We are seeing a steady stream of visitors to the Lindow Man exhibition, where, of course, one of the exhibits is the beautiful bittern.
Bittern in the Lindow Man exhibition
Filed under: Lindow Man Exhibition
As part of the exhibition we arranged for a box in which people could leave special offerings to show their respect for Lindow Man. We talked at some length during the development of the project about how we would deal with the material that was left by visitors. What if it was organic in nature and it harboured pests that could represent a threat to the collections? What if a sharp blade was left and other visitors cut themselves?
The last four months of running the exhibition has shown that some visitors have misunderstood what the offerings box is for. They sometimes place completed comments cards in the box or money or things that appear to be rubbish, like a sweet wrapper. Sometimes the material is more intriguing, such as origami paper figures, a carefully folded £5 note, a copy of a poem, a card with a poem and illustrations that express what Lindow Man means to that visitor.
There were also some botanical offerings. Yesterday Leander Wolstenholme, Curator of Botany at the Manchester Museum, looked at the plant remains. He identified them as leaves from a Euonymus that grows in the courtyard outside the Museum, a cone from a Douglas fir and the fruit from a London plane tree. Plane trees grow around the campus but the Douglas fir is not as common and someone must have made an effort to collect it and bring it to the Museum as an offering for Lindow Man.
This material is potentially of research interest. It is yet another way for people to interact with human remains in museums. It reminds me of the offerings left by visitors by the commemorative plaque at Ground Zero in honour of the members of the New York Fire Brigade who lost their lives when the Twin Towers were destroyed. Sometimes only a very personal statement or offering can express adequately a visitor’s feelings at a deeply moving site like Ground Zero or in the presence of human remains such as Lindow Man. There is a very real sense in the United States that Ground Zero, the African Slave Cemetery on Broadway and American Civil War battlefield sites like Gettysburg constitute “hallowed ground” and that a certain behaviour is appropriate there. Lindow Man clearly evokes those sorts of feelings in some of our visitors. Should we regard Lindow Moss as “hallowed ground”?
