Oral History of Primatology at Cambridge
Official transcriptions from the Oral History of Primatology at
Cambridge with Dame Jane Goodall, Professor Robert Hinde, Professor William
McGrew and Professor Richard Wrangham, recorded on 28th April 2011, are now
available:
The Personal Histories Unit thank David, The Thriplow Charitable Trust, The McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, John Pickles and Thurstan Shaw.
Persecution & Survival
An exhibition at the Gallery, Oxford Town Hall & Museum, ‘Persecution and Survival: A Wartime Refugee’s Story’, from 15 January until 10 March 2012 presents of the life and times of archaeologist Paul Jacobsthal, including oral histories from other survivors who came to Oxford in the 1930s.
For additional information, please see:
- The Institute of Archaeology, Oxford University web page on the Jacobsthal Archive project: http://www.arch.ox.ac.uk/jacobsthal.html
- The Jacobsthal blog at: http://archaeologyarchivesoxford.wordpress.com/paul-jacobsthal/
Physical Research and Archaeology
HARN member, Amara Thornton (Institute of Archaeology, UCL) explores the connections between sites and seances in early twentieth century archaeology. Concentrating on the archaeologists George Horsfield and Agnes Conway but with reference to Petrie’s assistant and lecturer at UCL Margaret Murray, Dr Thornton considers how the use of mediums and psychical research was a larger phenomenon in archaeology than has generally been admitted.
Talk at the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, 19 January, 6.30-7.30pm. See http://www.ucl.ac.uk/museums/whats-on/petrie_listings for more information
Personal Histories Project: The Bone Room’s Past update
An update on the Personal Histories Project event, The Bone Room’s Past. Revolution in Palaeoeconomic Studies (see earlier post)
Photographs from the 2nd November oral-history gathering at Cambridge are now available at <http://our-event.org/UNI/Bone>. Others are available on the Personal Histories facebook page <http://www.facebook.com/pages/Personal-Histories-Project/200039440031381?ref=ts&sk=wall>.
The event also got a good write-up in the University of Cambridge research e-bulletin: <http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/features/the-bones-of-the-matter-caves-conversation-and-cup-cakes/>.
Tourism as Colonial Policy?
Tourism as Colonial Policy? The History of Heritage Tourism in British Mandate Palestine and Transjordan
9 November 2011; 10 am – 6 pm
114 Foster Court, UCL
A reception will follow at the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, UCL
During the interwar period, the League of Nations granted Britain Mandates to administer territories previously controlled by the Ottoman Empire – and so British Mandate Palestine and Transjordan were created. Regular archaeological work had been going on for over 50 years before the Mandates came into being, but under the British administration a new era for archaeology began. This one-day workshop explores the public face of archaeology – heritage tourism. From guidebooks for personal exploration to guided tours and museums, Tourism as Colonial Policy? will feature papers examining heritage tourism within this ‘colonial’ framework, illuminating the social context to archaeological work in the region, and giving us a historical view of the development of tourism as the modern Middle East emerged after the First World War. Recently digitised images and documents in the UCL Institute of Archaeology’s archives relating to the travels of archaeologists George and Agnes Horsfield will be on display.
Papers include:
- Zionist Tourism during the Mandate
Professor Michael Berkowitz
Professor of Modern Jewish History, UCL Department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies - Tents, Tours and Treks: Archaeologists, Antiquities Services and Tourism in Mandate Palestine and Transjordan
Dr Amara Thornton
Honorary Research Associate, UCL Institute of Archaeology - Austen St Barbe Harrison and the History of the Rockefeller Museum, Jerusalem
Silvia Krapiwko
Archaeologist, Israel Antiquities Authority - Collectors, Crusaders, Carers and Tourist Networks
Dr Beverley Butler
Senior Lecturer in Cultural Heritage and Museum Studies, UCL Institute of Archaeology - Harry Pirie Gordon and the Palestine Guide Books
Professor David Gill
Professor of Archaeological Heritage, University Campus Suffolk – Ipswich - Thomas Cook’s Tours and the Palestine Exploration Fund
Felicity Cobbing
Executive Secretary and Curator, Palestine Exploration Fund
This workshop is funded by a UCL Grand Challenges Collaborative Pioneer Award. It is free and open to the public. Please visit: http://tourismcolonialpolicy.eventbrite.com/ to reserve a seat. For more information, please contact Amara Thornton: tcrnaat@ucl.ac.uk.
New Histories of 19th Century ‘Archaeology’
New Histories of 19th Century ‘Archaeology’: Séance, Mummies, Seriality, Aerial Photography and Theories of ‘Man’ will be presented, in cooperation with the Cambridge undergraduate Archaeological Field Club, on Wednesday, the 26th of October, from 4.30 to 6pm in the South Lecture Room, Department of Archaeology, Downing Street, Cambridge, CB2 3DZ. Afternoon Tea served at 4pm in the North Lecture Room. Contact Pamela Jane Smith at pjs1011@cam.ac.uk.
Speakers:
- Archaeological Séance in the late Nineteenth Century, Amara Thornton (institute of Archaeology, UCL)
- Mummies, Pettigrew and the Institutionalisation of Nineteenth Century British Archaeology, Gabriel Moshenska (institute of Archaeology, UCL)
- Seriality and Scientific Objects in the Nineteenth Century Science, Nathan Schlanger (AREA)
- Aerovision: An Hallucinatory History of Aerial Archaeology, Helen Wickstead (Kingston)
- Geology, technology and theories on the history of ‘Man’, Allison Ksiazkiewicz (HPS, Cambridge)
For more information, contact Pamela Jane Smith at pjs1011@cam.ac.uk
Download Poster
Science in the Tropics
The International Conference, Science in the Tropics: glimpsing the past, projecting the future, will celebrate the scientific research in the Tropics, to the effect of the foundation, in 1936, of the Board for Geographic Missions and Colonial Research (JMGIC), one of the predecessors organisms of IICT – Tropical Research Institute.
The meeting will take place at the 5th, 6th and 7th of January 2012, in the Overseas Historical Archive (IICT) and CDI – Documentation and Information Centre (IICT), Lisbon, Portugal. The conference will be complemented with bibliographic and archival literature alluding to the symposium, and a guided tour to the exhibition Scientific travels and missions in the Tropics. 1883-2010.
For more information, please see the Institute’s web page:
http://www2.iict.pt/?idc=13&idi=17466
Or download conference information (English):
http://www2.iict.pt/archive/doc/INTERNATIONAL_COLLOQUIUM.pdf
Animal, Vegetable, Mineral? Mystery Object Panel Game
Wednesday 19 October 6.30 – 7.30pm
Anatomy Building, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT
What’s that object? Our panel of UCL experts Claire Thomson (Scandinavian Studies), Ryan Nichol (Physics and Astronomy), Tom Stern (Philosophy) and Sam Turvey (Institute of Zoology) hosted by Joe Flatman (Institute of Archaeology) will guess what some of the weird, wonderful and wacky objects in UCL Museums & Collections are. Compete with them on the night via twitter and paper.
UCL Museums are bringing back the classic 1950s TV show Animal, Vegetable, Mineral which launched David Attenborough’s career in television and made television icons out of various academics, including Glynn Daniels, Julian Huxley and Mortimer Wheeler. In this light-hearted recreation of the classic TV panel game, outwit the experts and come up with funnier explanations as they try to identify our mystery specimens, objects and artefacts from our fantastic collections.
Following the event join us for a free glass of wine in a private view of the Grant Museum. Admission is free and there is no need to book.
Personal Histories Project: The Bone Room’s Past
The Personal Histories Project, begun by Pamela Jane Smith, is announcing the next in the series: The Bone Room’s Past. Revolution in Palaeoeconomic Studies with Geoff Bailey, Annie Grant, Charles Hingham, Tony Legge, Derek Sturdy, Ruth Whitehouse, Graeme Barker, Iain Davidson, Robin Dennell and Andy Garrard on 2 November 2011 at the Biffen Lecture Theatre, Department of Genetics, University of Cambridge.
For more information please contact Pamela at pjs1011@cam.ac.uk or for a list of past project films available, see http://www.arch.cam.ac.uk/personal-histories/.
A Pioneer of Prehistory: Dorothy Garrod and the Caves of Mount Carmel
A display at the Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford from 26 September 2011 until 8 January 2012 presents seventeen photographs from the collection of the archaeologist Dorothy Garrod (1892–1968).
The photographs were given to the Pitt Rivers Museum by her friend and executor Suzanne Cassou de Saint Mathurin in 1986. They include portraits of Garrod’s friends and mentors, as well as the famous excavations which she directed between 1929 and 1934 at the Wadi el-Maghara (Valley of Caves), on Mount Carmel in Palestine (now in Israel). Some of the Stone Age artefacts recovered from this fieldwork are also displayed, together with signed offprints of Garrod’s writings and her administrative notebook from the 1933 excavation season. The exhibition highlights not only Garrod’s career, but also some of the influences and teamwork upon which her achievements were based.
Garrod’s publication of this site (with Dorothea Bates), entitled The Stone Age of Mount Carmel (1937), was a major landmark in its field. Two years later Garrod was appointed to the Disney Chair of Archaeology at the University of Cambridge, the first time that a woman had ever held the position of professor at either Oxford or Cambridge. In this again she was a pioneer, and her successes have been a source of inspiration for other scholars ever since.
The Pitt Rivers Museum’s Dorothy Garrod Photographic Archive can be accessed online at: http://web.prm.ox.ac.uk/garrod.
