Lindow Manchester

Last Saturday I came into the Museum to show the Stoke on Trent Museum Archaeological Society the Lindow Man exhibition. I also showed them  the recently discovered Roman altar from Manchester in our new Manchester Gallery. After lunch I took them to the partially reconstructed Roman fort at Castlefield.

The usual suspects: Stoke on Trent Museum Archaeological Society at Castlefield

Although this is quite old and some of the interpretation panels and mural are looking a bit worn, it is still  impressive. If the reassessment of Lindow Man’s radio-carbon dates is correct and he lived sometime in the later 1st century AD he would have been aware of the earth and timber  precursor of the stone fort. One of the Roman altars now displayed in the Mediterranean Gallery mentions a vexillation or detachment of Noricans and Raetians (from eastern central Europe) who garrisoned the fort at a later date. Aelius Victor, who set up the altar to the Mother Goddesses perhaps

Members of the Stoke on Trent Museum Archeological Society examine the Roman altar from Manchester in the newly-opened Manchester Gallery.

some time in the 2nd century AD, is likely to have been a German.  The influx of soldiers and their dependants, as well as camp followers and suppliers of services that traditionally ’soften the rigours of a harsh military life’, must have had a significant effect on native people.  Could the late 1st or early 2nd century bog bodies from Lindow Moss and Worsley Moss be part of the native people’s reaffirmation of their culture in the face of sudden change?  The key challenge is to reconcile human sacrifice (if that is what is happening) with the presence of the Roman administration, which is supposed to stamp it out.

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.

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
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