The December issue of the Museums Journal looks at some of the highs and lows of 2008. Apparently among all the offerings from the big nationals two exhibitions in less high-profile museums stand out. One is Lindow Man at the Manchester Museum, which the reviewer said “gave a real sense that this is a community museum and that the community is engaged in truly public history.” Incidentally the other exhibition is Helmand: the Soldiers Stroy at the National Army Museum. It’s on page 22 if you want to have a look.
Filed under: Uncategorized
Carolanne telling a story at the Manyacs Xmas party
The Manchester Museum Young Archaeologists Club (the Manyacs for short) had their Xmas party on Saturday. Clare, Carolanne, Andy and the other helpers put on a feast of the kind Lindow Man might have enjoyed. I brought some home made spelt bread cakes along. Clare made various kinds of pancake and bread using oats, barley and wheat. Although we couldn’t serve meat for health and safety reasons. we put out cheese, onions, apples, honey and nuts too.
Clare heated up some stones to show how people in prehistory cooked stew in a cauldron without having to set it above a fire. Although it wasn’t as successful as we’d hoped, the children were surprised by how much the larger stones kept their heat. The water did get water but not warm enough to boil the eggs Clare brought along.
Carolanne told stories about the great deeds of the legendary Irish hero, Cu Culain, and how he got his name. Inspired by tales of the hero’s facial distortions in the grip of his battle rage, the kids made some truly terrifing masks. Lest anyone’s seasonal appetite be left unsatisfied we also offered chocolates and crisps at the end of the session.
Some replica stone heads originally made for the 1987 or 1991 Lindow Man exhibition came in handy as table dressings and they helped illustrate the story about Cu Culain that Carolanne told the children.
Andy with replica Iron Age stone head at the Manyacs Xmas party
Just had a phone call from Anna Bunney, Curator of Public Programmes at the Manchester Museum, asking for a picture of the mistletoe pollen from Lindow Man’s stomach. Anna said Lindsey in the Herbarium (the Manchester Museum is one of the few museums still to maintain a Herbarium with dedicated staff) had written an information sheet on mistletoe, which I’ll add to the blog. We seem to have been getting quite a few hits on this subject recently. This is what Lindsey wrote:-
More than any of the evergreens, the mistletoe has inspired fascination throughout history. Held in esteem for its medicinal and magical properties. Many traditions and customs have arisen from the beliefs in the power of the mistletoe, but the kissing origins remain obscure. Druids used the plant as an aphrodisiac and in Scandinavian tales it symbolises peace and love.
Until the arrival of Christmas trees, the kissing bough held centre stage at Christmas when a berry was plucked with each kiss until none were left.
Sprig of replica mistletoe as used in "The Verdict" schools session about Lindow Man
Viscum album is the most common mistletoe in Europe. In Britain it can be found in southern areas of England and Wales. It’s a parasitic evergreen shrub that grows high up in the branches of old trees. The plant extracts its essential mineral nutrients and water by sending out roots into the bark of the tree it grows on. The most popular host is the apple tree, although it is not unusual to find it growing in lime, ash, hawthorn and other trees with soft bark. With the gradual decline of the apple industry in England it’s becoming increasingly difficult to find home-grown mistletoe. Most of the mistletoe in shops comes from Brittany or Normandy in France.
The real stuff: mistletoe from Aymestrey gathered Christmas 1883 from the Manchester Museum Herbarium collection (Em 482884)
Lindow Man: A bog body mystery at The Manchester Museum has been shortlisted in the 2009 Design Week Awards.
Lindow Man: A bog body mystery has been shortlisted in the Temporary Exhibition Design category. Celebrating creative excellence, the award winners will be announced in March 2009. The exhibition which runs until April 2009, will be assessed against eight other finalists for the quality of its design and execution.
Stephen Booth, Curator of Temporary Exhibitions commented ‘Lindow Man: A bog body mystery challenged museum exhibition design and we are delighted that it has been shortlisted for one of the world’s most prestigious design awards.’
‘The exhibition was designed and built in-house. The advantage of this as a designer, is that you can be involved throughout the whole process and work closely with different departments across the Museum.’
Lindow Man: A bog body mystery explores the mystery of Lindow Man through the voices of seven people. They offer new perspectives on his life and death, presenting a series of viewpoints and experiences which look at what he means to us today.
If a winner, the exhibition will enter the archive for all time and become part of the country’s creative heritage.
John Bradshaw visited the Lindow Man exhibition at the Manchester museum back in October and recently his comment card found its way over to me via Cat Lumb (Lead Educator Secondary Humanities). John compliments the Museum on its work: “I wish to acknowledge the Museum for being proactive in networking with a diversity of organisations, beliefs and backgrounds to give input to this exhibit, but particularly looking at the element of respect that “bodies”are due. I do hope that London Museum [the British Museum] might reconsider its decision about caring for the Lindow Man. It is very clear to me that this museum [the Manchester Museum] is just as capable as London Museum to care for people’s remains, and perhaps there is a case for returning Lindow Man, closer to where he was found?” John asked for some feedback, which I sent, and I have now received a card from John giving his permission to use his comments on the Blog. He also mentions that he and his daughter attended one of the half term science days on Lindow Man, which they thought was very enjoyable (I guess that’s one for Lauren Furness, our Widening Participation Co-ordinator) . He ends by saying he hopes the [interests? - powers that be perhaps?] consider a request for Lindow man to return northwards. With four months left to go of the exhibition it’s great still to be getting positive comments like this.
Filed under: Poetry
Maria van Daalen recently visited the Lindow Man exhibition and emailed me after talking to Chris, our Visitor Services Assistant, who was on duty in the gallery. She wanted to say how much she enjoyed the exhibition and reading the poetry section on the Blog. Maria has herself written poetry that speaks of the times when the bog people were killed. She hasn’t written anything on this topic recently, but she says she’s very much intrigued by the phenomenon. She suggested looking at the following websites http://www.bogpeople.org/ and
http://www.civilisations.ca/media/docs/fsbog01e.html for information on the five bog people found in her native Holland and the exhibition ‘Bog People’, some years ago. “I’ve often gone to visit our bog people in their museum in the province of Drente (The Netherlands)” she said. Maria believes that they were sacrificed, saying that places that are neither water nor land, are sacred: they are a natural border between this world and the Other World. I think this is very similar to what Dr Melanie Giles, who contributed to the Lindow Man exhibition, talked about in her interview and also in a paper at a Manchester Museum conference on human remains in November 2006. Maria said: “Your way of exhibiting makes meeting the Lindow Man a very intimate happening: I loved that! My compliments for the exhibition.” Maria’s website is www.mariavandaalen.nl, so people can look her up.
Maria’s kindly allowed us to reproduce her poem and she adds this note by way of introduction:-
“Here underneath you’ll find my poem from around the times of Lindow Man.
NOTE: There was something really spooky about this poem, and about writing it (winter 1986). It’s from the very first series of poems I ever wrote. I ’saw’ it happen in a vision. The names ‘Brigha’ and ‘Norbert’ came to me without me knowing anything. I had to do a lot research afterwards, before understanding, that the poem speaks of Sawhain, which I didn’t know anything about at the time, and that there really was a tribe of the Brigantes, and that ‘Brigha’ might be another name of the Goddess. I guess that my poem means to say, that there was at least one warrior named after Her, possibly Her personal warrior, who had his life sacrificed to Her. Apparently, seeing the poem, he bought the life sentence with the dead of a child. I myself always had strong moral objections against this poem. But I couldn’t write on if I didn’t publish it. So the Goddess won out in the end. As She always does, I understood — I talked with Gordon The Toad at length about Her.
I never found any ‘Norbert’. That is, there are so many, that it wasn’t conclusive.
Oh: ‘Brigha,’ when that name came to me, was spelled with a ‘-X-’, but the sounds was ‘-gh-’, just like in runes, right?
WOLF PIT
At night I go down
to the dark pit and stand.
They approach in groups of eight, of four,
clad in the gray skins,
half-heads over their own.
Who’s carrying the sacrifice? Brigha.
Norbert the knife, me the goblets.
Before it bleeds it is prayed for
to the cold goddess beside the stone,
waiting, demanding in the moonlight
of November, time of the beginning.
A single cry is muffled away.
It is freezing when we turn
our backs to the pine forest. Bespattered. Substantiated.
*Poem ‘WOLF PIT’ from the poetry volume ‘RAVESLAG’ (Ed. Querido, Amsterdam, 1989). Poet MARIA VAN DAALEN.
**Translation by Ms. Wanda Boeke (1996).”
Thank you to Maria for allowing us to reproduce the poem.
Filed under: Lindow Moss Exhibition
In this exhibition of photographs of Lindow Moss Stephen Vaughn has captured the stillness and apparently timeless quality of the peat bog. Working in black and white and colour he has taken a series of photographs of the trackways running across the surface of the moss and of the peat rooms on either side that seem to pull in the viewer. The parallel silvery threads of the tracks of the bog railway disappear into the distance; and a breathtaking large format landscape view shows a drainage channel cutting through the rich black peat whilst mist rises along the tree line that skirts the moss. A number of triptychs of the moss surface punctuate the displays. The roots of dead trees are like so many sgraffito squiggles incised into the surface of the photograph itself. One of the studies of tree roots has captured what looks like a water sprite frozen in the action of leaving the surface of the water, the curve of legs and arms and even a distorted face, bleached by the acidic chemistry of the bog. If these photographs of the moss in its current exploited state have a slightly unnerving quality today we can only imagine the effect on the people of the Iron Age and early Roman period. But the stillness and tranquillity of the photographs belies the fact that the moss is rapidly disappearing because of intensive exploitation of the peat. Indeed Stephen Vaughn’s photographs are impelled by his sense of urgency to record the site whilst there is still something left to see. As he makes clear in a quotation from the work of the German “Man of Letters” and literary critic, Walter Benjamin (1892-1940), in the introduction to the exhibition, “it is to cheat oneself of the richest prize” to content oneself with recording unearthed discoveries: the “dark joy of the place of finding itself” is just as important. Looking at these photographs I wonder what future generations will think of us for having trashed such a beautiful place for the sake of temporary gain.
Filed under: Lindow Man Exhibition
Lindow Man a bog body mystery has been shortlisted in the 2009 Deign Week Awards, one of the world’s most prestigious annual design prizes, through which creative excellence is celebrated. Anyone winning an award or shortlisted for a prize has their designs published in the Design Week Awards supplements. They enter the archive for all time and the work becomes part of the creative heritage. Lindow Man a bog body mystery has been entered in the category Temporary Exhibition Design. This is great news and Jeff Horsley, Head of Exhibitions and Presentation and Stephen Booth Curator of Temporary and Touring Exhibitions at the Manchester Museum are to be congratulated.
Filed under: Lindow Moss Exhibition
A new photography exhibition Lindow Moss: A Place of Finding by Stephen Vaughan, opens at The Manchester Museum on 13 December 2008. The exhibition documents the landscape at Lindow Moss, the mysterious place where the preserved body of Lindow Man was found.
Over a period of more than four years, through the changing seasons, the photographer regularly returned to Lindow Moss in order to photograph the trackway that runs through the centre of the peat bog, as well as the ‘peat-rooms’ that sub-divide the landscape on either side.
At the centre of the bog, and on its periphery, the photographs focus on the slow passage of time in the landscape – from small changes in the contemporary surface, to the revealed layers of distant centuries.
Stephen Vaughan has said: ‘for me, the vivid representation of the ‘place of finding’ is vital in order to connect the body to its original resting place. My photographs aim to provide a definitive and rich record of the landscape of Lindow Man’s deposit and discovery.’
The digging of peat has taken place on Lindow Moss for many years. It is being excavated so intensively that the landscape is rapidly disappearing. The primary purpose of Vaughan’s photographs arises from an urgent desire to record this ‘place of finding’, before it is completely emptied and destroyed.
Stephen Vaughan has exhibited in galleries and museums both in the UK and internationally. His most recent work Ultima Thule – is currently on display at Impressions Gallery, Bradford. As well as being a photographic image-maker Vaughan also lectures in Photography at the University of Plymouth. Earlier this year he was awarded an Arts Council England Individual Artist Award.
Lindow Moss: A Place of Finding was nominated for the Santa Fe Prize for Photography in 2005.
The Manchester Museum was Highly Commended in the Large Visitor Attraction category of the Manchester Tourism Awards 2008
The Manchester Museum
Open: Tuesday – Saturday 10am – 5pm, Sunday, Monday and Bank Holidays 11am – 4pm with FREE ENTRY
The University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester, M13 9PL
T: (0)161 275 2634 F: (0)161 275 2676 www.manchester.ac.uk/museum
An interesting link with the Lindow Man exhibition emerged recently on the subject of mistletoe. Conflicting reports about the future of the plant appeared in some newspapers last weekend. The Mail on Sunday (7/12/08 p.51) is looking forward to a bumper native crop of mistletoe because of the combination of last year’s mild winter and the recent cool, wet summer. In previous years the mistletoe has had to be imported from France.
Louise Gray in The Daily Telegraph Weekend (6/12/08 p22) is less optimistic. Although the plant is safe this year because of the favourable climatic conditions, longer term the plant is at risk of dying out because of changes in farming practice over the last fifty years. Over half of the apple orchards where the plant has thrived in the past have been uprooted. The cutting of female plants, which carry the berries, has not affected the poisonous male plants, which continue growing and eventually kill their hosts. Some of the male plants should be cut as well. It’s a question of reviving lost techniques in order to ensure the future of this fascinating plant. Jonathan Briggs, ecologist and mistletoe expert, who was interviewed in the Telegraph, said that home-grown mistletoe could disappear in 25 years. Mistletoe is strongly associated with a sense of local identity and is an important part of the economy of Ross-on-Wye, Herefordshire and Tenbury Wells, Worcestershire. The latter is the home of the annual mistletoe festival. Mistletoe is part of our culture and we should not allow it to die out, said Briggs.
This reminded me that J.D.Hill, who I interviewed at the British Museum last summer as part of the Lindow Man project, talked about the archaeological significance of mistletoe in the Lindow Man discovery. Several grains of mistletoe pollen were found in Lindow Man’s digestive tract when his body was examined at the British Museum in the 1980s.
Grains of mistletoe pollen found in Lindow Man's intestine
J.D. said that unlike tree or grass pollen, which is spread by the wind, mistletoe pollen is picked up by birds and other animals and transferred to other plants to fertilise them. For pollen to be in Lindow Man’s stomach it must mean that part of the mistletoe plant was in the meal he was given shortly before his death. Does this imply that this took place late in the autumn/early winter when there are berries or the early spring when the plant has its flowers? J.D. argued it can’t have been accidental. He also told me that since the discovery of Lindow Man a complete mistletoe plant has been discovered still attached to an oak trunk at a site called Wardey Hill, in the fens of Cambridgeshire. When this was first found, the plant specialist thought it was just accidental but the plant was found at the entrance in the ditch of this Iron Age site. This is a place where we would expect to find ritual deposits and in fact this seems to be confirmed by the fact that there are human remains around the entrance to this site as well. This is another example of mistletoe for prehistoric Britain and arguably it’s from a ritual context said J.D.Hill.
Visitors to the Lindow Man exhibition at the Manchester Museum can see a late 16th century Herbal in Emma Restall Orr’s section. The book is open at the pages dealing with mistletoe and visitors can read about mistletoe’s properties. It would be sad to think that the 2000 year old tradition of using mistletoe might disappear because native plants are not being managed sustainably.
