Counterpoint: Essays in Archaeology and

Heritage Studies in Honour of Professor Kristian Kristiansen

Edited by

Sophie Bergerbrant Serena Sabatini

BAR International Series 2508 2013

Published by

ArchaeopressPublishers of British Archaeological ReportsGordon House276 Banbury RoadOxford OX2 7EDEnglandbar@archaeopress.comwww.archaeopress.com

BAR S2508

Counterpoint: Essays in Archaeology and Heritage Studies in Honour of Professor Kristian Kristiansen

© Archaeopress and the individual authors 2013

ISBN 978 1 4073 1126 5

Cover illustration: Gilded hilt of sword from Hallegård, Bornholm, Denmark. Published with kind permission from the National Museum of Denmark

Printed in England by Information Press, Oxford

All BAR titles are available from:

Hadrian Books Ltd122 Banbury RoadOxfordOX2 7BPEnglandwww.hadrianbooks.co.uk

The current BAR catalogue with details of all titles in print, prices and means of payment is available free from Hadrian Books or may be downloaded from www.archaeopress.com

661

visiTinG museums - a Personal sTory

Lise Bender Jørgensen

Abstract: During a dinner party at Kristian and Lotte’s some years ago, the talk turned to travel and visiting museums travelling to visit museums, the pivotal role of museums in archaeology, how archaeologists work their collections, and problems of accessibility. The participants all had opinions on this, and personal histories that reflected various types of experience. Those who had the most stories to tell were Kristian and myself, as we had both travelled extensively, carrying out museum studies while collecting data for our research, and towards the end of the meal it was suggested that the two of us should write a paper about visiting museums. Everybody thought it was an excellent idea, but we never got around to doing it. The current paper attempts to recapture and convey some of the spirit of that evening.

Keywords: Museums, Travelling, Archives, Collections and stores, Accessibility, Europe, Iron Curtain, Archaeology

Introduction

Travelling and visiting museums has a long history in archaeology, with roots going back to the antiquaries of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (Schnapp 1996: 140, 153f). Travelling was an important part of the education of the early Scandinavian archaeologists. One of the founding fathers of Scandinavian archaeology, J.J.A. Worsaae, travelled extensively as a young man, first to see antiquarian collections in Sweden and Norway, then in Germany and Austria, and in 1846-47 he went on a journey to Great Britain, Ireland and France (Worsaae 1934, Jensen 2007). At 19, Hans Hildebrandt went on a grand tour to important European museums, accompanied by his father (Baudou 2004: 159); Oscar Montelius also travelled extensively, becoming the first to investigate the prehistory of Europe on a continental scale (Klindt-Jensen 1975: 85, Trigger 2006: 224). Prominent Scandinavian scholars of the early twentieth century went on journeys that lasted several years and gave them comprehensive insights into the archaeology of Europe (Baudou 2004: 201, Høilund Nielsen & Kristoffersen 2002: 19). The World Wars and the depression of the 1930s led to a decrease in travelling. C.J. Becker, who took his degree at the University of Copenhagen in 1939, would have supplemented his education with foreign travel, but it was impossible during the war and in the years immediately after. From 1947 onwards, he travelled extensively to meet colleagues and view the material (Becker 1985: 178).1 In recent years, this type of individual travel has become less common. This makes it worthwhile to take a closer look at the phenomenon. To do so I will draw upon my own experience.

The starting point - the National Museum in Copenhagen

The collections of the National Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen were a point of departure. As a student and young scholar, I spent long hours in the storerooms there, which were then in the cellars of the main building, Prinsens Palais, in the centre of Copenhagen. The stores were organised on principles of chronology, find category and topography, i.e. finds from Bronze Age graves were kept in one section, those from various phases of Iron Age burials in other sections, rooms or cupboards. Settlement finds from different periods each had their own sections, as did specific groups of artefacts, such as organic materials. Within each category, topography was the organizing principle. Following a

1 See Ørsnes 1986 for an account of a visit to war-scarred Poland in 1948.

place name system, numbering every county, district and parish in Denmark, finds were packed and stored so that the visitor, starting with county 01, district 01, parish 01, could embark on a virtual archaeological journey through Denmark (Voss & Ørsnes 1961). For each parish, a further recording system (the sognebeskrivelse) lists and describes every archaeological find made since the dawn of archaeology in Denmark and is linked to detailed maps. This meant that it was – and still is – possible to catalogue any archaeological data from Denmark in a predetermined order, greatly facilitating comparisons across all kinds of studies.2 Other ways to access the collections were through the boxes of index cards for different find categories that listed museum number and exact location (room, cupboard and shelf), the topographical archive and the museum ledgers. The archive and ledgers also supplied information on the context of each find, including when, how and where the object in question had been found, and by whom. Those days were long before the advent of computers, databases and other aspects of the digital world which today are taken for granted. Data were stored on paper, in the form of text, drawings and photographs, and as physical artefacts or samples. If you were looking for something that had not been noticed previously and entered in the index cards, the only way to find it was to look for yourself, rummaging through the storerooms, or laboriously working your way through archive and ledgers. Unlike the situation today, where you are expected to present a list of the artefacts you wish to study, complete with museum numbers, that was no problem. Even as students, we were trusted with the collections and to a great extent left to our own devices in storerooms and archives, equipped with rings of keys that unlocked almost every door in the Prehistoric Department, apart from places like the gold room where you had to be accompanied and watched by a curator. The keys, however, had to be checked out each morning, and handed back before the end of office hours. If anybody forgot, he/she was called back and reprimanded. Most of us had been introduced to archives and storerooms early in our studies while unpacking, cleaning and sorting artefacts brought back from excavations, and had acquired a basic knowledge of how they were organised, and how to conduct oneself when working there. As students, we were perceived and treated as junior colleagues, acting as assistants to the museum staff. In

2 For an example of its use see Aner and Kersten 1973-. Danish finds are listed according to the placename system. The same applies to reports on activities in Danish Archaeology, published in Arkæologiske udgravninger i Danmark 1984-2005, accessible on http://www.kulturarv.dk/publikationer/publikation/artikel/arkaeologiske-udgravninger-i-danmark/

Counterpoint: Essays in Archaeology and Heritage Studies

662

many ways this was an informal but efficient apprenticeship, transmitting museum practices. However, curators usually kept a watchful eye on new faces.

The informal, trusting attitude made it possible to get acquainted with the archaeological record in a way that few are able to do today. In my own case, it meant that I was able to search for remains of textiles that had been overlooked or disregarded by those who had described and recorded the items found in connection with them. It also meant that we had the chance to become deeply familiar with the artefacts, getting a physical sense of their appearance, proportions, feel, sheen, weight, and other aspects, both tangible and intangible. We were also able to detect subtle shifts and changes that indicated regional differences while working our way through the shelves, moving in a figurative sense from one end of the county to another or from one period to the next.

Going abroad

Growing up as an archaeologist in archives and stores of the National Museum instilled in us the expectation that this was the way all museums were organised, and that other countries, like Denmark, had National Museums with collections that were representative for the whole country, and a number of local museums. Those of us who ventured abroad quickly discovered that this was not necessarily so. My own first journeys were to Sweden and Norway. The situation in Sweden of the early 1980s resembled that of Denmark, with the Statens Historiska Museum in Stockholm in the role of National Museum. A limited number of regional museums had small collections, but it was not necessary to visit them to get a sustainable overview. In Norway, however, archaeological collections are distributed in five regional museums and it is necessary to visit all of them to get a representative overview. Neither country had a placename system for archaeological sites comparable to that in Denmark, so I had to find my own logic for the cataloguing of finds,3 but then they had something that Denmark did not: printed versions of the museum catalogues that meant that most of the costly time abroad could be spent in the storerooms, studying artefacts, rather than scrutinizing ledgers in archives.4 Later, further countries followed, with new challenges as to the principles of distribution and organisation of archaeological collections, including language difficulties. Reading ledgers or documents (especially when handwritten) proved a much greater challenge than I had envisaged, and I often had to rely on published works on the sites in question. During the years 1982-87 I visited almost 100 museums in 16 European countries.5 Wherever I went, the general attitude

3 See Bender Jørgensen 1986: 232ff. The catalogues of Swedish and Norwegian finds are as far as possible organised according to the same principles are the Danish placename system, i.e. according to counties, districts and parishes. For Sweden, this is done alphabetically. For Norway, a number system of counties and municipalities was available. Starting in the south (Østfold) and ending in the north (Finnmark) it made it possible to establish a topographical logic similar to that of the Danish placename system. 4 Until about 1970 lists of acquisitions were printed in Statens Historiska Museum och Myntkabinettet. Samlingarnas Tillväkst. Stockholm, and in periodicals published by the five regional museums in Norway. For an overview of the latter, see Gjessing and Fett 1980. Today, this information is available in digital format. See http://mis.historiska.se/mis/sok/sok.asp (Statens Historiska Museum) and for Norway http://www.unimus.no/arkeologi5 Denmark, Sweden, Norway, United Kingdom, Ireland, the Netherlands, the Federal Republic of Germany, the Democratic Republic of Germany (DDR), Poland, Finland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium and France. Catalogues and lists of museums visited are published in Bender Jørgensen 1986 and 1992. A planned third volume based on textile finds from Central Europe was never completed; for a catalogue of the (Pre-Roman) Iron Age textiles see Bender Jørgensen 2005. A database of European Bronze Age textiles based partly on this work has been compiled within the framework of the HERA JPR funded project Creativity in Craft Production in Middle and Late Bronze Age Europe (CinBA) and will be made accessible online.

to visiting scholars was more or less the same as in Denmark. Curators were welcoming and helpful, and at most places I was given full access to the stores, where I could scour the shelves for remains of textiles; at one museum I was even given the key to the building, and told to let myself out, and in, as I wished. Only once was I refused access.

Writing to Museums

Planning a study journey abroad included deciding which museum collections to visit, and writing letters to inform them of my plans, what I wanted to see, and when I intended to come. In the days before the internet, this meant consulting handbooks on museums in Europe, as well as colleagues who had travelled and had international networks. What I was looking for was national and regional museums. I wanted to establish an overview of textile finds in Northern Europe from the beginning to the end of the first millennium AD, and needed to investigate collections that were representative for larger areas.

Letter-writing was a bit of a challenge, especially when planning a trip outside Scandinavia. Formal letters to institutions such as national or regional museums is a genre, complicated by the fact that different languages also imply different cultural traditions. These mainly have to do with salutations, i.e. how to begin and conclude a letter. Within Scandinavia, I usually could direct my letter to an individual, beginning ‘Kære [NN]’ and end it ‘med venlig hilsen’, comparable to ‘Dear Sir/Madam’ and ‘yours sincerely’ in English. In German it is ‘Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren’ and ‘Hochachtungsvoll’, in French ‘Monsieur le Conservateur’ and– to a Scandinavian – the rather flowerily ‘Je vous prie d’accepter, Monsieur le Conservateur, l’expression de mes sentiments les plus distingués’. The body of the contents remained the same: that I planned to visit the museum in the near future, a brief introduction of my project and research questions, and a description of the type of data I was looking for and in which context I expected to find them. I also emphasized that I had already found several thousands of such textile remains in other museums. This was followed by the suggestion of the precise dates I wished to visit the museum, asking if that would suit the receiver. For the German letter, I enlisted help from a German friend; for the French, an entire class of Advanced French I attended was put to work.

Letters usually went out six to eight weeks before the start of a journey. A period of anxious waiting for replies followed. Usually, at least one museum did not reply in time. Non-replies were mostly those at the end of the journey, something that made me realize that curators looked at the suggested dates and assumed there was no rush. Accordingly I began to state the date of my departure from Denmark in the letters. I was not too keen to make phone calls to unknown people in foreign languages, and found that the best solution was to ask the curator in the first museum of a new country to contact any non-replying colleagues and ask if my letter had arrived. Only once the first museum on a journey had not replied when the day of departure grew near, and I had to call them to make sure they were expecting me. It was in the DDR, the Democratic Republic of Germany, at the time of the Iron Curtain, and several clicks could be heard on the line before a very surprised secretary answered the phone. Luckily, they had received my letter and all was well.

Behind the Iron Curtain

Travelling behind the Iron Curtain was a challenge, and one that

Lise Bender Jørgensen: Visiting Museums

663

must be difficult to imagine for those who have not experienced it. Everything had to be planned, visas applied for, and hotels booked and paid for in western currency well in advance of a journey. It was impossible to change anything, and refunds were out of the question. Departing for places like the DDR, Poland, Hungary or what was then Czechoslovakia was like setting out on an expedition. Crossing borders was scary, and reportedly could take hours. Would police and customs search me and my little car, confiscating any printed material? What about my microscope, a vital piece of equipment and a main reason for travelling by car? How about the box with spare parts for the car, or the one with coffee, chocolates and other delicacies intended as gifts for the curators and others I was to meet on my way? Before setting off for Poland in the summer of 1984, I was told by Danish colleagues that it would be wise to bring food, as that was in short demand and I might need it both as gifts and for my own consumption. Solidarność, the Polish social movement led by Lech Wałęsa, had been forbidden by martial law in 1981, but was very much alive under the surface at the time of my visit. Several of the Polish colleagues I met were involved in it, and gave me small presents of pins and other symbols of growing resistance against Communist rule.

In some ways travelling behind the Iron Curtain was like going back in time, to the Denmark of the 1950s when coal was the main type of fuel for heating, cars were rare and horse-drawn carts and ploughs were still used in the countryside. Buildings as well as roads were very run-down and the traveller from the West was left with the distinct feeling that nobody had bothered to do any maintenance work since 1945. It was also very lonely. Most of the colleagues I met in the DDR were expressly forbidden to have any dealings with me outside office hours, and the atmosphere of oppression was quite suffocating. The situation in the other

countries was more relaxed; here the lack of a common language was the main barrier, and in both Poland and Czechoslovakia I was invited by colleagues for meals in their homes.

As travel accommodation was booked through the official travel bureau of the country in question, hotels were always those compulsory for westerners. I was also more or less obliged to take my meals in their restaurants. This was quite tiring, and certainly no picnic – at the end of one such journey I went directly to my local supermarket and bought as much fruit and vegetables I could carry. After six weeks of pommes frites and cabbage I was starved of vitamin C. It was also difficult to keep abreast of what was happening in the world as the only newspapers available were Communist. After the fall of the Iron Curtain I revisited some of the towns and museums I had seen in the 1980s. It has been a great pleasure to see how they have changed.

Arriving in a museum

On arrival in the town where a museum is to be visited, the first thing to do is to locate the museum, and find out how to get to it on foot or by public transport. This is best done on a Sunday as weekends are futile days for the travelling scholar, best used for moving from one place to another. In most countries, museums are open to the public on Sundays (even if things are quiet behind the scenes), so it is the perfect time to investigate, and in many cases also the best chance to see the exhibitions as most of the following work days will be spent in storerooms. It is also an opportunity to locate the staff door, which is rarely the same as that of the visiting public.

Monday morning at 9AM was my preferred time to arrive at the staff door, and ask for the person who had replied to my letter.

Fig. 1: The author visiting Polish colleague Jerzy Maik and his excavation team in Kalisz, 1984.

Counterpoint: Essays in Archaeology and Heritage Studies

664

Behind the Iron Curtain this was always the Director, which meant I was ushered to his office, offered coffee and interviewed before I was handed on to the curator who was to be in charge of me. The latter usually took me directly to the storerooms. This caused a practical problem as it meant that I had to dress in a way that made me appear respectable to the director, and suited for my rather dusty work among the shelves, boxes and artefacts in the cellar. A beige polyester pantsuit with indestructible knife-edge creases proved the best solution. Things were more relaxed in Western Europe, but the ritual of coffee and interview was standard there as well. This is part courtesy, partly a way of assessing if the visitor is a serious scholar, to be trusted in the storerooms. It is also an important way of establishing networks.

My wish to search for textile remains was unusual, and I was often told, “sorry but we do not have any textiles” or “we have just one or two”. To counter that I told them that this was more or less what the Danish specialist in the Roman Iron Age said when I asked if she had noted any textile remains in the collections of the National Museum in Denmark. Her answer was: “perhaps one” – I found four hundred. I also brought distribution maps of different types of textiles, to demonstrate that textiles were archaeological artefacts just like fibulas, pottery etc. Both helped to persuade directors and curators to let me look for myself, usually with good results. On my return from a series of museum visits I wrote out lists describing the textiles found in each museum and sent them to the curator with my thanks.

Storeroom organisation

My visits to European museums 1982-1987 meant encountering many ways of organising storerooms. Most followed basic principles of chronology combined with find or artefact categories. Those were the ones I liked best, as they suited my way of working, allowing me to concentrate on periods and find groups where it was most likely that textile remains had survived. Some museums organised their stores according to the date or number of accession, mingling artefacts of all periods. These I found difficult, and extremely time consuming, as it meant I had to open every single box on the shelves. With the advent of digital catalogues and databases this type of storage system has become more accessible, but only if someone has noted the feature you are looking for and entered it in the database. If not, it does not exist, and cannot be found.

Storage boxes for archaeological artefacts may take many forms. In some museums they are of uniform design, in others matchboxes, shoeboxes and any other kind of container has had to serve. Some have lids, others are, or were, open. Both have their advantages and disadvantages. Closed boxes protect the artefacts against dust and rough handling, but – unless contents are clearly indicated - they have to be opened to see what is inside. This takes time. Still, at many museums it was the only way, and over time I developed considerable skills in the noble art of opening boxes. Transparent lids were a rare blessing. For my purposes, open boxes were best, as they allowed a quick look to decide whether textile remains were to be seen or not, and if not go on to the next. Open boxes allow dust to settle on the artefacts. In some museums the layer of dust was quite thick; in one case it was mainly coal dust, causing the hands, face and clothes of the visitor to become absolutely black after a couple of hours work. In several museums the Second World War still casts a shadow in the form of missing finds and records, or disorder caused by bombs.

Local habits and holidays

As a travelling scholar it is important to be aware of local habits, especially local holidays and meal times. Almost every European country has holidays that are specific either to that country, or to the prevalent version of Christianity. Norway’s National Day, for example, is 17 May; Sweden’s is 6 June; Denmark has a movable holiday, St. Bededay, placed on a Friday in late April or May. The United Kingdom has Bank Holidays; 1 May is a holiday in many countries, but not all; Catholic countries celebrate days that do not hold any meaning for Protestants, and vice versa. This makes it complicated to plan a series of museum visits abroad, as a local holiday means a lost working day. Today, my calendar contains a list of holidays in most European countries. In the 1980s, things were less advanced, and I discovered unexpected holidays the hard way. Once, however, visiting a museum in Poland, I was spared the loss of a valuable day by the one member of staff who was a member of the Communist Party and therefore did not observe religious holidays.

Meal times and working hours are other cultural variables. In some countries, lunch is a quick snack, in others it is a serious meal. Accordingly, lunch breaks last anything from 20 minutes to several hours. Working hours also vary. In most of Europe north of the Alps, office hours usually start at 8 AM or at the latest 9 AM and last until 4 or 5 PM, with lunch breaks between noon and 1 PM; this makes it a safe bet to turn up at 9 AM on the first day. Museums in the UK tend to discourage visitors before 10 AM; lunch is at 1 PM rather than noon, and office hours often go on till 6 PM. In France, the lunch break may be as long as two hours; working hours resume at 2 PM and, like in Britain, continue all afternoon. In Poland, lunch is also a serious meal, but taken at home after working hours. Instead, the mid-morning tea break serves as a stop-gap. For the travelling scholar, it is important to have a general idea of this, to avoid social gaffes but also to know when, how and where to get something to eat, especially if the traveller’s regular habits do not concur with those of the host country. I was caught out several times, e.g. in Poland because there was no lunch break. Once, locked into the storeroom in an Austrian museum, the curator forgot to think of me at lunch time. Through the window I could see the museum staff having lunch in the garden, but couldn’t call out to them, and had to suffer the pangs of hunger until they rescued me at the end of the day.

Experiencing Europe

My need for a microscope made it necessary to travel by car; driving through Europe taught me invaluable lessons of distances, landscapes and waterways. My first major journey in 1982 took me across Scandinavia at its widest point, from Stockholm to Bergen. This taught me the difference between relatively flat Sweden with wide, fast roads, and the mountains of Norway with narrow, winding roads and deep fjords that could only be crossed by ferry. Driving through the UK in the early summer of 1983 brought further contrasts. My initial fear of driving on the left side of the road soon dissipated; I even managed to drive into London and park right outside my hotel. Crossing to Ireland by ferry taught me never to arrive on a Monday morning. I slept badly, had to spend valuable time in the morning finding the hotel and a place to park, and was thoroughly exhausted when I finally arrived at the Dublin museum.

Further journeys in 1983 and 1984 took me from the Low Countries across the two Germanies to Poland, and on to Finland. When I resumed travelling in 1987, venturing into Central

Lise Bender Jørgensen: Visiting Museums

665

Europe, the concept of the North European Lowlands was put into perspective. It took two days to go from my home in Denmark to my various goals – Prague, Mainz, Zurich or Nancy, and just as long to get back, from Szombathely, Vienna, Munich or Paris. On each journey I saw the landscape change between flat and mountainous.

Experiencing Archaeology

Museums are the Keepers of Archaeology, the stored records and evidence of the work of archaeologists throughout the history of the discipline. Visiting museums offers insights into much more than the research questions of the visitor. Buildings, exhibitions, organization of storerooms and records, and the composition and attitudes of the staff all have stories to tell. They reflect political history, changing attitudes to the past, academic hierarchies and perceptions of how archaeology should be carried out and communicated. The artefacts and records in their keeping are our main sources. Getting to know the material intimately, at first hand, is an essential part of the archaeologist’s work. That is why the founding fathers of archaeology went on grand tours of European museums, and later generations followed. Much has changed since the time of Worsaae, Hildebrandt and Montelius, but visiting museums is still an important way of experiencing archaeology.

Lise Bender Jørgensen: lise.bender@ntnu.no

References

ANER, E. and K. KERSTEN, 1973- . Die Funde der älteren Bronzezeit des nordischen Kreises in Dänemark, Schleswig-Holstein und Niedersachsen. Neumünster: Wachholtz Verlag.

BAUDOU, E., 2004. Den nordiska arkeologin – historia och tolkningar. Stockholm: Kungl. Vitterhets Historie och Antikvitets Akademien.

BECKER, C. J., 1985. Archaeological retrospect 8. Antiquity LIX:174-182.

BENDER JØRGENSEN, L., 1986. Forhistoriske textiler i Skandinavien. Prehistoric Scandinavian Textiles. Copenhagen: Det Kgl. Nordiske Oldskriftselskab (Nordiske Fortidsminder Ser. B. 9).

BENDER JØRGENSEN, L., 1992. North European Textiles until AD 1000. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press.

BENDER JØRGENSEN, L., 2005. Hallstatt and La Tène Textiles from the Archives of Central Europe. In P. Bichler, K. Grömer, R. Hofmann-de Keijzer, A. Kern and H. Reschreiter (eds.), 2005. Hallstatt Textiles. Technical Analysis, Scientific Investigation and Experiment on Iron Age Textiles: 133-150. Oxford: Archaeopress (British Archaeological Reports International Series 1351).

GJESSING, H. and P. FETT, 1980. Register over trykte tilvekster av norske oldsaker. Bergen: Historisk Museum Bergen.

HØILUND NIELSEN, K. and S. KRISTOFFERSEN, 2002. Germansk dyrestil (Salins stil I-III). Et historisk perspektiv. Hikuin 29:15-74.

JENSEN, J., 2007. Et archæologisk Vikingetog. J.J.A. Worsaaes rejse til England, Skotland og Irland 1846-47. Copenhagen: Nationalmuseet.

KLINDT-JENSEN, O., 1975. A History of Scandinavian Archaeology. London: Thames and Hudson.

SCHNAPP, A. 1996, The Discovery of the Past. London: British Museum Press.

ØRSNES, M., 1986. Arkæologistuderende i efterkrigstiden. In H.J. Madsen and J. Vellev (eds): Arkæologiske krøniker. Højbjerg: Moesgård.

VOSS, O. and M. ØRSNES, 1961. Stednummerfortegnelse. Copenhagen: Nationalmuseets 1. afdeling, Statens Lokalmuseumstilsyn.

TRIGGER, B., 2006. A History of Archaeological Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

WORSAAE, J. J. A., 1934. En oldgrandskers erindringer 1821-1847. Copenhagen: Gyldendal.