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Lecture
Creating Scotland: Assembling a Medieval Kingdom' an in-conversation event
Hamish Torrie FSAScot, The Glenmorangie Company, Dr Adrian Maldonado, National Museums Scotland, and Dr Heather Pulliam, University of Edinburgh, discuss the idea that a medieval kingdom called Scotland was not a predestined or obvious outcome of the politics of the first millennium AD. Even in the twelfth century, Britain north...Torrie, Hamish ; Maldonado, Adrián ; Pulliam, Heather
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Lecture
DNA analysis of ancient individuals found in Scotland
Dr Ange Boyle, University of Edinburgh, presents a short lecture on “DNA analysis of ancient individuals found in Scotland: part of the third great revolution in archaeology” on behalf of Dr Alison Sheridan, National Museums Scotland, and Dr Lisa Brown, Historic Environment Scotland, at the Archaeological Research in Progress (ARP...Sheridan, J A ; Brown, Lisa
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Conference paper (unpublished)
Living between walls: Northern responses to the Roman frontier
Any Wall conference needs to look at the people living in the landscape before Rome arrived. The Wall was built “to separate Romans and barbarians”, claims the only ancient reference to its role – but who were these “barbarians”? Other talks at the conference will consider the rural communities in...Hunter, Fraser
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Lecture
Re-examining the Rubers Law hoard
In 1863 a hoard of bronze vessels and other items was found on the slopes of the hillfort of Rubers Law, near Hawick. Although it crops up in the literature, it has received only cursory attention. In the course of preparing it for display in the revamped Trimontium Trust museum...Hunter, Fraser
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Lecture
Beyond Treasure: new findings from fieldwork on Scotland’s prehistoric hoards
Hoards evoke stories and generate questions: Why do people collect things, both now and in the past? How do ordinary things become treasured objects? And why do we find these discoveries so fascinating? Hoards help us imagine particular events – the moment of burial, the moment of discovery – but...Freeman, Emily ; Knight, Matthew
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Conference paper (unpublished)
Materialising Mary: challenging objects
ShBemss was established in 2020 as an opportunity for early modernists to share their research online during the challenging conditions of that year. This is an international seminar series, drawing speakers and participants from across the UK, Europe, North America, Australasia – and the network continues to grow! The series...Groundwater, Anna
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Lecture
Making sense of silver: the hacking of the Traprain Treasure
RSE Project: Narratives of Roman Scotland in the Digital Age. Organisers: Manuel Fernández-Götz, Chiara Bonacchi and Rebecca JonesHunter, Fraser
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Conference paper (unpublished)
Expert investigators: Uncovering unacknowledged Egyptian contributions to archaeology in 19th century archives
Narratives about early Egyptology have typically been framed in terms of the heroic efforts of adventurous collectors and brilliant scholars, few of whom acknowledged the debt owed to the Egyptians upon whose local knowledge and labour they relied. However, the innovative Scottish archaeologist Alexander Henry Rhind (1833–1863), in summarizing the...Maitland, Margaret
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Conference paper (unpublished)
Selective fragmentation: exploring the treatment of metalwork across time and space in Bronze Age Britain
At the end of October the department was the host of a workshop on the topic of fragmentation in archaeological context. The meeting, which was organized by the PAG (Postdoctoral Archaeological Group) at the department of Archaeology and Classical Studies, gathered about 15 participants from various parts of Europe. Postdoctoral...Knight, Matthew
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Conference paper (unpublished)
Egyptian-Nubian Cultural Connections: Reconsidering the Qurna Burial Group at National Museums Scotland
Maitland, Margaret
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Conference paper (unpublished)
Objects of Power: Australian Aboriginal breastplates and Scottish pastoralists
Clark, Ali
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Lecture
Unwrapping the Galloway Hoard
Buried at the beginning of the 10th century in Dumfries and Galloway, the Hoard lay undisturbed for a thousand years before being discovered by a metal detectorist and excavated by an archaeologist in September 2014. Four years of painstaking conservation and research has restored these rare and unique treasures to...Goldberg, Martin ; Maldonado, Adrián
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Lecture
The Galloway Hoard
Goldberg, Martin
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Conference paper (unpublished)
Did the Picts disappear? Beyond colonial approaches to the Viking Age in Scotland
Maldonado, Adrián
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Conference paper (unpublished)
Le voir, le faire et la matière : l’art celtique comme processus
Ginoux, Nathalie ; Gosden, Chris ; Hoppe, Thomas ; Hunter, Fraser ; Krausse, Dirk …
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Lecture
(Re)discovering the Gaulcross Hoard and other early medieval silver
Lecture by Alice Blackwell and Dr Martin Goldberg of National Museums Scotland and Dr Gordon Noble of the University of Aberdeen at the 2015 Archaeological Research in Progress (ARP) conference, Saturday 30 May 2015.Goldberg, D Martin ; Blackwell, Alice ; Noble, Gordon
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Conference paper (unpublished)
Brough of Birsay revisited: a new look at the Pictish workshop
Maldonado, Adrián
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Lecture
Conservation of the Galloway Hoard. The richest collection of rare and unique Viking-age objects ever found in Britain or Ireland.
The hoard was found in 2014 and an exhibition is now on tour in Scotland after extensive research and conservation work. It was a true conservation challenge having a variety of material (glass, rock crystal and other minerals, minerally preserved organics) in addition to the precious metals. The lecture will...Goldberg, Martin ; Davis, Mary
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Conference paper (unpublished)
Complex identities and the Galloway Hoard
It is ten years since the Silverdale Hoard, one of the largest Viking-age hoards ever found in England, was discovered in a field in Lancashire. To celebrate its display at the JORVIK Viking Centre throughout 2022, the Richard Hall Symposium this year focuses on hoards: their concealment, their rediscovery, and...Goldberg, D Martin
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Lecture
Ancient African Queens: New perspectives on Black history
Join our panel as they discuss how reassessing 19th and 20th century colonial attitudes can bring new perspectives to fascinating aspects of ancient Egyptian culture and its place in African history.Maitland, Margaret ; Ashby, Solange
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Lecture
War and diplomacy on the northern frontier
Fraser Hunter's talk for our branch is titled "War and Diplomacy on the Northern Frontier" and will focus on the relations between Romans and locals in this area of the Empire.Hunter, Fraser
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Lecture
The Traprain Treasure – latest research on a remarkable Roman silver hoard
The Roman Treasure from Traprain Law Excavated on Traprain Law in May 1919, this was one of the most spectacular discoveries of Roman silver ever made in Europe – and the biggest hoard found to date of ‘hacksilver’: 23kg, battered, crushed and chopped-up silver vessels. An international team of scholars...Hunter, Fraser
Late Roman Hoard, Traprain Law, East Lothian, hacksilver, elite tableware, and Silver Treasure
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Lecture
Highland Style: Fashioning Highland Dress, c.1745-1845
he period c.1745-1845 was a revolutionary chapter in the history of Highland dress. With the advent of the European Romantic movement, this once regional costume was revived and reinvented to reflect the changing times and preoccupations of its wearers. Associated with the warrior culture of Gaelic society, by the close...Waine, Rosie
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Lecture
Re-framing Mary: audience-focused collecting and display
During the life of the RSE project, and following the acquisition of the Mary Queen of Scots casket, National Museums Scotland re-framed the narrative it tells of Mary in the Chambers Street museum. This talk explores the museum’s role in mediating narratives of Mary’s life and impact, to argue that...Groundwater, Anna
casket, material culture, Mary, Queen of Scots, and museum collecting, interpretation and display
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Lecture
'The Viking-age Reuse of Insular Metalwork From Northern Britain'
The looting of Christian shrines and reliquaries in the Viking Age is so well-documented that it has been reduced to a cartoonish vision of pillaging heathens. A close look at the evidence for such ‘looting’ tells a different story – or rather a number of different stories. A recent reassessment... -
Conference paper (unpublished)
Opening up the Archive: An Approach to Volunteer-led Citizen Science in the Museum and Online
Through Communities and Crowds we aim to address two key challenges: how to open up the museum’s collection to citizen research; and how to make those objects that resonate most strongly with the everyday lives and experiences of our diverse communities easier to search for and discover.Belknap, Geoffrey ; Fitzpatrick, Alex
volunteers, discoverability, diverse communities, museum collections, and citizen research
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Abstract
Presenting a complex hoard deposit – the Galloway Hoard
The Galloway Hoard is the focus of an ongoing research project at National Museums Scotland examining a complex Viking-age deposit composed of multiple parcels, with organic preservation and a variety of materials (gold, silver, copper-alloy, glass, rock crystal, minerals, leather, wood, wool, silk, linen, and animal gut). There may be...Goldberg, Martin
Viking-age hoards, Galloway Hoard , rock crystal, minerals, wool, research project, wood, animal gut, silk, linen, gold, copper-alloy, leather, silver, and glass
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Lecture
The Galloway Hoard latest findings
Hoards evoke stories and generate questions: Why do people collect things, both now and in the past? How do ordinary things become treasured objects? And why do we find these discoveries so fascinating? Hoards help us imagine particular events – the moment of burial, the moment of discovery – but...Goldberg, Martin
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Conference paper (unpublished)
The Body Beautiful: Addressing Cultural Diversity in Museum Fashion Collections
Collecting as a practice and the collections that result from this practice are crucial for museums. Collecting and collections embody power on many different levels – providing insights and basic knowledge, illustrating specific practices of our work to the widest audiences, and forming a basis for contextualizing our world. How...Ripley, Georgina
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Conference paper (unpublished)
Confronting colonial histories and legacies in Egyptian and Sudanese collections at National Museums Scotland
Maitland, Margaret
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Lecture
Dressing the cultural imaginary: whose ‘gypsy’?
Emily Taylor and Benjamin Wild discuss the collector Charles W. Stewart.Tayor, Emily ; Wild, Benjamin Linley
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Presentation
Jacobite material culture
Vullinghs, Georgia
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Conference paper (unpublished)
Late antique Scotland: The earliest Christians in Galloway
This paper will cover the evidence for the arrival of Christianity in south-west Scotland, in particular focusing on new research on Kirkmadrine and Whithorn. It is argued that the missionary model for conversion to Christianity is insufficient, and explores other archaeological evidence for contacts between this region and the late...Maldonado, Adrián
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Lecture
Chasing threads: where next for the Galloway Hoard?
Join Dr Adrián Maldonado as he summarise the main findings from this seminar series, address some recurring audience questions, and discuss the gaps in our knowledge which still remain about the Galloway Hoard. Buried at the beginning of the 10th century in Dumfries and Galloway, the Hoard lay undisturbed for...Maldonado, Adrián
Online Community Seminars, #scotland, Online Seminars, #vikings, Online Events, #history, #heritage, and #gallowayhoard
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Abstract
Revisiting the fragmentation revolution
Fragments are commonly encountered in the archaeological record. Historically, broken things have been considered scrap or rubbish resulting from accidental processes. However, during recent decades archaeologists have come to recognise acts of deliberate fragmentation, and fragments themselves, as performing a range of important roles in the past. A key moment...Knight, Matthew G ; Chittock, Helen
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Lecture
Displaying ‘National’ Antiquities in the mid-19th century: Scotland, England and Ireland
This lecture will compare the mid-19th century classification and display strategies of the museum of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland with the British Museum and the museum of the Royal Irish Academy. Museum displays ‘perform’ meaning through labels, catalogues and physical arrangements. A comparison of such displays reveals the...Holder, Julie
classification and display strategies, Ireland, Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, England, 19th century, British Museum, Royal Irish Academy, and Scotland
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Lecture
Buying Power: Archaeologists as Dealers in Egypt and Sudan
Exhibitions and displays of Egyptian objects in museums across the world continue to inspire awe and fascination for millions of visitors. As museums tell the stories of the ancient world, they also tell their own collecting stories of how the objects came to be part of their collections. These narratives...Potter, Daniel
Dealers, Collections, Archaeology, Antiquities, Sudan, John Garstang, Edwin Ward, Charles Trick Currelly, Egypt, and William Matthew Flinders Petrie
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Lecture
The Art of Tapestry
On day 1 you will hear from experts in the field and find out more about the Burrell Collection tapestries and Medieval and Renaissance Tapestries in general. We will also document and discuss the artistic value, nature, and identity of 21st century tapestry as a distinctive Scottish art form with...Wyld, Helen
Renaissance , Medieval , and European Tapestries
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Presentation
Details on the Textiles in St John's Collection
Taking inspiration from the college's unique gallery of stunning medieval vestments, this conference will feature two day's worth of speakers and presenters. These presentations will be enriched by displays from both the college and Bodleian Library archives as well as a dynamic exhibition of works created during the conference workshops.Wyld, Helen ; Brooks, Mary
textiles, medieval, and church vestments
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Presentation
Scottish Weapons: crafting and collecting identity
Join our conversation on the issues of provenance, repatriation, collections, and collecting practices, explored through the lens of material culture. This roundtable brings together researchers to discuss these topics as they pertain to the theme of object biographies from the experience of their various professional backgroundsRobertson, Calum
arms and armour , Scottish Weapons, crafting and collecting identity, national collections, and National War Museum Scotland
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Presentation
Egypt’s Dispersed Heritage
Join us to hear about the project ‘Egypt’s Dispersed Heritage: Views from Egypt’ from our visiting Egyptian collaborators, researcher Heba Abd el Gawad and webcomic artist Mohammed Nasser, in conversation with curator Margaret Maitland.Maitland, Margaret
museum, storytelling, Egyptian archaeology, Egyptian heritage, comics, and Decolonization
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Presentation
Ni’isjoohl memorial pole repatriation – an international panel discussion
The Nisga’a delegation, alongside staff from National Museums Scotland will participate in the first public panel discussion on the Ni’isjoohl Memorial Pole re-p/matriation. The discussion will be moderated by Barbara Fillion, Programme Officer for Culture with the Canadian Commission for UNESCO. Among the topics addressed, the panel will discuss the...Giblin, John ; St Clair Inglis, Chante
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Lecture
Costume Society of America Roundtable: Tackling Tokenism and Diversity in our Museum Collections
Collecting and exhibiting fashion in Western museums has traditionally centered around wealthy, able-bodied, mainstream, Eurocentric ideals. Likewise, those working with costume collections have often fit this same mold. As we know, this is not representative of the diverse communities and cultures that these museums serve. The panelists spoke about how...Sklar, Monica ; Way, Elizabeth ; Lisby, Darnell-Jamal ; Neill, Susan ; Ripley, Georgina …
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Lecture
Neolithic Scotland: changing perceptions, new approaches, plethora of data, and contested narratives
Our narrative of the past has been, and continues to be, the subject of intense debate, not least in regard to when, how and why the novel way of life appeared and became established in Scotland, and what happened to Scotland’s hunter-fisher-forager communities. This first lecture reviews our understanding, and...Sheridan, J A
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Lecture
The big picture and regional narratives
Understanding what happened across the Scottish landscape between c.4,000-2,500 BC requires us to adopt multiple scales of enquiry, from the international to the local. This lecture explores the main developments and highlights the diversity in the regional trajectories of social and economic change by focusing on two contrasting and often...Sheridan, J A
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Lecture
Not just a load of old balls: Late Neolithic developments and the creation of a new world order in Orkney
The remarkable complex of large structures at Ness of Brodgar in Orkney has justly attracted worldwide attention, and has led to some contentious claims on popular TV programmes. This lecture investigates the emergence of the competitive, adventurous, innovative elite in Orkney who were responsible for building Ness of Brodgar and...Sheridan, J A
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Lecture
An everyday story of country folk?
What was the nature of the farming way of life, and how did it vary over time and space? How well do we understand the range of resources that were being used and the changing environment in which people lived their lives? How did society operate, and where did people...Sheridan, J A
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Lecture
Making sense of funerary monuments and funerary practices
Megalithic chamber tombs – of widely varying shape and size – loom large in the visible traces of Scotland’s Neolithic, but they formed just one element in a diverse range of practices concerned with dealing with, relating to, and commemorating the dead. This lecture explores this diversity and draws out...Sheridan, J A
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Lecture
An evening with Mary Queen of Scots
History Scotland welcomed Dr Anna Groundwater for a special event focusing on Mary Queen of Scots treasures at National Museum of Scotland. Read on for a link to the video, plus Dr Groundwater's suggestions for further reading and study. On 8 December, the evening of Mary Queen of Scots' birthday,...Groundwater, Anna
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Lecture
David Stewart of Garth, Scott’s “Highlander of the Old Stamp”
Stuart’s title features David Stewart of Garth as Scott’s ‘Highlander of the Old Stamp’, which I believe is a quotation from a letter of Scott’s to J. G. Lockhart of 14 July 1828. The name rings a particularly sharp bell for me personally, since later that year Stewart, on the...Allan, Stuart
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Lecture
The Viking Age in the Borders: an archaeology of the 9-11th centuries
A recent reconsideration of old and new finds in the collections of National Museums Scotland has revealed an important seam of evidence for the Viking Age (9-11th centuries) from the Scottish borderlands. The Tweed may seem a world away from the boat burials of the Northern and Western Isles, but...Maldonado , Adrián
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Lecture
Rediscovering Viking-age Scotland with Michael Wood
Acclaimed historian and broadcaster Michael Wood joins Dr Adrián Maldonado, Glenmorangie Research Fellow, to discuss Adrián’s new book, Crucible of Nations: Viking Age to Medieval Scotland. The book reassesses the museum’s 9—12th century collections, uncovering an exciting new vision of Scotland’s diverse and creative past. Join Adrián and Michael as...Wood, Michael ; Maldonado , Adrián
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Lecture
An Egyptian Luxury in Roman Scotland
Discover how research and collecting at National Museums Scotland is reshaping understandings of Scotland's past as we take a closer look at a very special Roman object with surprising Egyptian origins.Hughes, Bettany ; Hunter, Fraser ; Potter, Dan
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Conference paper (unpublished)
Our friends in the north: Stanwick, Traprain Law, and the encroaching Roman world
Over his career, Colin has worked on and around two of the major Iron Age centres of central Britain – Stanwick in North Yorkshire and Traprain Law in East Lothian. Both are unusual within their regional contexts in scale, activities, and their extensive contacts with the Roman world. In comparing...Hunter, Fraser
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Lecture
The Minch torc and its place in Bronze Age Britain and Ireland
In 1991, fishermen pulled up a Bronze Age gold torc while dredging for scallops in the Minch, off the Shiant Isles in the Hebrides. Matt Knight, Senior Curator of Prehistory at National Museums Scotland, explores the significance of the Minch torc and sets it in the wider context of other...Knight, Matthew
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Lecture
The Galloway Hoard: Dr Martin Goldberg in conversation with Michael Hirst
Curator Dr Martin Goldberg joins Vikings writer and producer Michael Hirst to delve into the mysteries of the incredible Galloway Hoard.Goldberg, D Martin ; Hirst, Michael
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Lecture
Dr Fraser Hunter: War and Diplomacy on Rome's Northern Frontier
The story of Roman Scotland often gets told from the Roman point of view, with a focus on the army and its actions. But the legions did not simply march into an empty landscape. The Iron Age peoples of Scotland reacted to this invasion in many different ways, from outright...Hunter, Fraser
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Conference paper (unpublished)
Feasting with Latinus: Whithorn as the seat of a Late Antique regulus
The excavations led by the late Peter Hill at Whithorn, Dumfries and Galloway are widely understood as revealing one of the earliest monasteries in Britain. While the early Christian site is undoubtedly significant, new analysis and dating evidence is forcing a rethink of the earliest phases of the sequence. A...Maldonado, Adrián
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Lecture
Celebrating Black Fashion
How are progressive changes within the fashion industry being documented through exhibitions and contemporary collecting? Join model and broadcaster Eunice Olumide as she shares her experience of a transforming industry with museum curator Georgina Ripley. Eunice and Georgina will also discuss Eunice’s recent book How To Get Into Fashion, focussing...Olumide , Eunice ; Ripley, Georgina ; Burkinshaw, Mal
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Lecture
“Piece Offerings”: the Destruction and Deposition of Metalwork in Bronze Age Britain?
The destruction and deposition of Bronze Age metalwork took many forms. Weapons were decommissioned and thrown into rivers; axes were fragmented and piled in hoards; and ornaments were crushed, contorted and placed in certain landscapes. There are many such examples from south-west Britain. But what did these practices mean to...Knight, Matthew G
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Lecture
The Gold Cups of Eternal Stability and the Celebration of the Chinese New Year
The Gold Cups of Eternal Stability are among the most extraordinary objects in the Wallace Collection. The Qianlong Emperor ordered them especially for the First Stroke Ceremony, performed on the New Year’s Day in the Forbidden City in Beijing. Their surface is covered with kingfisher feathers, a technique also used...Cao, Qin ; de Wit, Ada
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Lecture
Textiles of the Galloway Hoard
Join Dr Susanna Harris and Dr Alexandra Makin, as they call in to Kirkcudbright Galleries to tell us all about the new, fascinating discoveries from the Galloway Hoard. Buried at the beginning of the 10th century in Dumfries and Galloway, the Hoard lay undisturbed for a thousand years before being...Harris, Susanna ; Makin, Alexandra
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Lecture
Unnwrapping the Galloway Hoard: first research update
Join Dr Martin Goldberg, Principal Curator of Medieval Archaeology & History at the National Museum of Scotland, as he calls in to Kirkcudbright Galleries to tell you all about the new, fascinating discoveries from the Galloway Hoard. Buried at the beginning of the 10th century in Dumfries and Galloway, the...Goldberg, Martin
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Lecture
A new Late Bronze Age sword from Swettenham, Cheshire, and its wider context Swettenham
This lecture was delivered by Matt Knight, Senior Curator of Prehistory, National Museums of Scotland, with Vanessa Oakden, Oakden In 2018 five fragments of an almost complete late Bronze Age copper-alloy sword were recovered during metal detecting at Swettenham, Cheshire. The sword falls within the ‘transitional’ group of carp’s-tongue swords...Knight, Matthew ; Oakden, Vanessa ; Jones, Ben ; Brandherm, Dirk
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Lecture
The Ballachulish Goddess
Come along to Glencoe Folk Museum to learn about the mysterious Ballachulish Goddess from an expert in the field.Hunter, Fraser
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Presentation
Ancient African Queens: New Perspectives on Black History
See our panel discuss how reassessing 19th and 20th century colonial attitudes can bring new perspectives to fascinating aspects of ancient Egyptian culture and its place in African history. In the 19th and 20th centuries European and American Egyptologists appropriated ancient Egypt into an idea of ‘Western civilisation’ and set... -
Presentation
Loyal Exchange: the material and visual culture of Jacobite exile, c.1716 - c.1760
‘Exile’ was fundamental to shaping the experience of Jacobitism – loyalty to the Stuart dynasty – during the eighteenth century. This talk considers how the Stuarts and their supporters used material and visual culture to negotiate exile and absence. Expanding on the work of Edward Corp, it explores the physical...Vullinghs, Georgia
exile, network of exchange, Stuarts , Jacobitism, and material culture
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Lecture
Viking Panic? Looking for the 9-12th centuries in Argyll
The story of early medieval Argyll is told through overarching narratives: the arrival of the Scots of Dál Riata; incoming missionaries in the age of saints; and the invasions of the Vikings. A recent reassessment of the National Museums Scotland collections from this period emphasises how material culture tells a... -
Lecture
Sacrifice, scrap or something else? Practices of metalwork deposition in Late Bronze Age Britain and Ireland
Throughout the Bronze Age, large quantities of metal artefacts were deposited across Europe. Interpretations often centre around whether these deposits may have been sacrificial offerings to deities or else discarded scrap metal intended for recycling. These grand ideas mask the individual decisions local communities made when depositing their objects, such...Knight, Matthew
recycle, archaeology, Bronze Age Europe, metal depositpion, worship, and sacrificial objects
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Lecture
Feasting with Latinus: the earliest Christians of Whithorn
The excavations led by the late Peter Hill at Whithorn, Dumfries and Galloway are widely understood as revealing one of the earliest monasteries in Britain. New analysis and dating evidence by the Cold Case Whithorn project is forcing a rethink of the earliest phases of the sequence. A poorly-understood late...