My Day of Archaeology...

I posted a blog for a Day of Archaeology 2013:


http://www.dayofarchaeology.com/archaeology-in-london/

The Tempest at the Globe

On Sunday 11^th August the folks and I went to see the Tempest at the Globe. Now usually I can’t speak highly enough of the Globe, it has such a high standard of performances, and I’ve seen some amazing plays there. All this made Sunday’s performance very disappointing. The actor playing Sebastian came on at the beginning, and told us that Colin Morgan who was playing Ariel was sick. Now I’ve never watched Merlin on the Beeb, but it’s obviously quite popular, and there were a lot of youngsters who I think had turned up to see him. The actor then joked and asked whether anyone knew the part of Ariel, and that Matthew Raymond would be reading the part. Reading was the key word there. The play started well, but in the first scene involving Ariel all became clear. The ‘understudy’ came plodding on clutching the script, and read the lines out. There was no acting involved. Roger Allam tried to make light of the situation by pretending to check his line over Ariel’s shoulder, but all in all it was very awkward. I just felt embarrassed and bad for the stand in actor, and it was not comfortable. I was so glad that we’d had a long lunch with plenty of wine. Having an actor on stage reading from a script just destroys all the magic of the performance, and it was ironic that it was the part of Ariel that’s meant to have the most magic.

The worst (or most hilarious) part came at the end, when a young chap appeared on stage shaking and clutching a small piece of paper, and then read out from it. It was like watching a school performance; we were all willing him to get through his speech. I have no idea what he said, I was on the edge of my seat hoping he’d be okay (and trying not to giggle).

 I read the reviews of the play afterwards online, and we obviously missed out big time. It’s rated highly and is described as ‘magical’ and ‘enchanting’. I don’t think the play itself helped, I found it clunky, and drawn out, but having scripts on stage definitely broke the allusion of the play. I’ve bought the dvd of the Tempest by Julie Taymor, so I’m going to give that a watch, and see how I feel after that. I do hope the Globe change their policy of no understudies though (apparently it’s due to funding) as I really don’t ever want to see that again!

 Interestingly my parents were going to see a play at the Donmar last Saturday, but one of the actors was ill. The Donmar phoned to let them know the performance was cancelled, and they would be getting a refund. So is it better to struggle on through the Tempest, or to admit defeat and cancel? Personally, I prefer the latter.

Day Tripping

So the last few weeks have been pretty hectic, as I went on a bit on an adventure around the country. I had five interviews for a community archaeology placement, which unfortunately I didn't get, and I've been pretty gutted about it. On the plus side I did get to see these amazing places, (Wales was my favourite!) and I met some wonderful people on the way:

Aberystwyth Castle

Bainbridge, North Yorkshire

Powis Castle, Welshpool

Arbeia Roman Fort and Museum, South Shields

Watergate Bay, Cornwall (interview was in Truro!)

The long way home.....the view from Garsdale Station

I would recommend a visit to any of these places- a word of warning though, I don't recommend doing them as a day trip!

Life on the North Bank

People always talk about the south bank of the river thames, and quite rightly so, it’s a great place. But I’d like to give a special mention to the North Bank, along which I walk to work every day, and have become familiar with the goings on. It has its own wildlife and inhabitants, here’s a description of some:

Ipod tramp. Now I haven’t seen this chap in quite a while, hopefully he’s been picked up and placed in a more comfortable home, but I used to see him every day. He was usually asleep on the bench in the morning, but more awake in the afternoon. He looked like he slept rough in every way, apart from the ipod. I always wondered how he charged it, and how he loaded music on it – It was one of life’s great mysteries.

Camping man. Now I don’t think camping man is homeless, as he has a proper nice tent, and a bike. I think he just lives next to Blackfriars bridge at night in a tent. I’ve failed to get a photograph so far, but next time.....

The two elders. I love these guys, they make me feel like I’m in a little village in France. They are usually found on the North Bank when it’s a nice sunny afternoon, by the lavender beds. There will be a radio on with the cricket playing, and they have flasks of coffee and a picnic. The two of them are usually reading the paper, and not acknowledging each other at all, completely chilled out in each other’s presence.

The boxers. These two are morning people, and can be found just underneath the millennium bridge, hitting each other with boxing gloves. I believe they’re training, and not trying to kill each other.

And lastly the Ducks. The ducks love the North bank, and are often found sunbathing in the morning on the river wall.

I really like the North bank of the Thames, and despite the trashing it regularly gets, someone really looks after it. There’s lavender planted all the way round, and a park area with seating has recently opened (Sadly it’s often littered with empty bottles and cans). I really recommend a wander down the North Bank sometime.

Carving Mammoth Tusk

I felt really nervous going into this workshop.

1) it was a whole day workshop, what if I couldn’t do it!

2) mammoth tusk is really old (only 40,000 years old!) I really didn’t want to destroy something that old.

 Well when I first went into the room my fears were not helped. There was about 10 of us attending, and many of these people had come with a plan of how they were going to work. I had no idea, apart from what I’d seen previously in the exhibition, and I was pretty sure I was not up to that standard.  My fears were quickly taken away though when our teacher for the day, Wulf Hein, began to teach us about the background to these beautiful archaeological finds. First he passed round pieces he’d made himself, copies of original prehistoric art. They were beautiful, and what really struck me was how the pieces sat in your hand. The curves and the texture, you could imagine having a piece in your pocket, or just holding it, there was something pleasurable about the feel to them. I like to think of them as some kind of prehistoric stress ball, possibly spiritual, something to reassure the owner of the piece. Maybe like a prehistoric rosary. The last piece that was passed round was the copy of the famous lion man. The amount of time was spent carving the piece does suggest that this was valued and special to the carver, although maybe this person was just more patient and artistic than usual!

Wulf Hein is a fantastic teacher, and very patient thankfully too. Throughout the day he walked round the class giving us tips, and making us new flints to work with. We were given a burin flint for the carving, and a sharper flint for cutting and for carving details. I decided that I wanted to recreate the curves in my carving, and chose to go for a relief type carving, like the famous reindeer carving (although nothing as detailed and beautiful!). The flint tools are so sharp you have to wrap leather around the tool to hold it, or you will cut yourself.

Here's a picture of the tools, with the piece of mammoth tuck on the right, the leather at the top, and the burin flint in the centre.

Carving isn't as hard as it looks, you wet the mammoth tusk then scrape down the piece with the burin, the flint comes away in shavings. The tusk does has a strange smell when it's wet though, I thought it had a stale urine smell, ugh! As you can see, it's a pretty messy hobby.

Half way through the piece. As you can see there was a break half way down the piece of tusk, which I decided to encorporate into the final piece. I really love the way in cave art the artist used the shape of the rock to inspire and add to the drawing, so I wanted to mimic this. In this case I used the break as the top shoulder of the horse, hoping that this would give the effect that it was running forwards. I also positioned the lines of the mane to add to this effect. The top of the mammoth tusk still had the outer layer on, I left this attached as it looked like part of the horse's mane.

So here's the finished piece. I'm pretty proud of it, and I really enjoyed doing the class. It was a very peaceful and thought provoking workshop. We all sat quietly throughout the day, lost in our own thoughts and working on our carvings. I would love to do it again, but I'm not sure mammoth tusk is that easy to come by!

I'd also like to recommend Werner Herzog's film 'Cave of Forgotten Dreams', in which Wulf Hein stars in. It is a documentary about Chauvet Cave in the South of France. Here's a picture of Werner Herzog and Wulf Hein on location to tempt you!



Ice Age Art at the British Museum

This is a wonderfully Intimate exhibition, I’ve already been round it four times and I expect I’ll go round again, there’s so much to take in. Firstly the shear age of the artefacts, it really blows my mind, and I find it hard to really get my head round the dates. It’s just such a long time ago. To me the art confirmed that these people thousands of years ago were thinking and creating objects the way we do today. These people were as intellectually and as creatively developed as us. People don’t change, just the technology around them. It shows what mankind is capable of creating. That’s why the modern art had been placed next to the prehistoric pieces, but I felt this didn’t really work.  It was an unnecessary extra, and I didn’t pay much attention to it (something which I’d normally get excited about). The ice age pieces really spoke for themselves, and the craftsmanship and beauty was enough for me.

Sadly the famous lion man statuette is a replica in this exhibition, however as they’ve recently found more parts in Stadel Cave in Germany, I feel this is much more exciting. I look forward to one day seeing Lion Man as a whole.

 The exhibition space is the area in the top of the reading room, it’s very small, which is fine as the pieces themselves are small, and would be drowned in a larger area. However it was hard to see some of the pieces at times as there were so many visitors, the main difficulty being to see the detail of the art you have to get very close, blocking others views. I guess this is always going to be a tricky issue for such a popular exhibition, but I always seem to struggle with viewing artefacts at the British Museum exhibitions.

The room where they’ve projected the cave art onto the walls didn’t work for me, it would have been better to make this section bigger, and project on more walls, possibly with a winding effect as you’re walking in, as if you’re squeezing through into a cave. There was an exhibition a few years ago at the Hayward gallery where the artist had built tunnels out of cardboard, and that’s the kind of thing I imagined. Conveying the claustrophobic and narrow spaces, and sense of quietness. 

I’d encourage anyone to go visit this exhibition. As the British Museum website states ‘An exhibition 40,000 years in the making’. Definitely worth the wait.

World Book Night Preparations

So I was lucky enough to be chosen again to be a World Book Night Giver, and again got my first choice - Treasure Island! I was so excited, I love this book, pirates, adventure, treasure... and most importantly, a map at the beginning of the book. All the best books have a map at the beginning, and I spent hours as a small child exploring maps. So I picked up my books last week from the Royal Festival Hall, ran back to the flat and frantically tore open the box, and smelt that new book smell. ahhh. The books had their back to me, teasing me, so I flipped one over. There it was, my first sighting of the front cover of my books. I flicked through it. Hang on. I flicked through it again. Confused, I flicked through it again. No map. I text dad, he confirmed my confusion - Treasure Island always has a map. So that led to tonight's activities. The creation of the map. It was messy. Now I cheated a little and printed out copies of the map first. I was just going to fold them then seal them with wax, when Celine suggested I do a bit of tea staining for authenticity. My room was then transformed into a pirate map factory, with the smell of tea. I also created bookmarks to place in the books, with the list of this year's books, and a brief explanation about why I loved Treasure Island (because of the map!)

The All important Treasure Map. No self respecting pirate would leave home without this. And a parrot. 

The bookmarks

Maps tea stained and folded, ready for adventures.

All ready to go for world book night!

     I fear it may take a long time to get my room back to normal, and wax and tea free, but I feel it was completely worth it. I'm really looking forward to handing these out, and setting others off on the adventure.