By Amara Thornton

This month I launched the website for a project I've been working on for the past few months: Narrating the Diverse Past.  It was a joint University of Reading and British Museum partnership project, and had a number of different parts.
 
One of the parts was a digital interactive exhibition, "Mapping Collections Histories: Connecting Barbados and Britain".  This grew somewhat organically from the research I began earlier in the summer (see Colonial Archaeology in the Caribbean), but with a focus on histories of archaeological collections that connected Barbados to Britain (as the title suggests). 
 
I've explored some of the storylines in this exhibition via threads on twitter (see here, here and here), but in this post I want to talk a bit more about the illustrations that accompany my text in the exhibition.  These are the work of Michelle Keeley-Adamson, whose illustrations from historic excavation photographs I was introduced to during the summer.
 
The Mapping Collections Histories exhibition features three different maps. The base map shows Britain and Barbados "in context" as it were, with a dotted line to highlight the distance (and connection) between them.  This is loosely based on an old map of the British Empire.  Then there are separate maps of Britain and Barbados.  
 
The Barbados map shows the basic outline of the parish boundaries (the equivalent, basically, of counties in the UK), and has 5 illustrations superimposed to highlight five locations relevant to the theme of the exhibition. Each illustration is based on historic photographs or drawings that we found online.  The illustration for Farley Hill, home of Barbadian collector Thomas Graham Briggs, was based on an old postcard; the drawings for Mount Ararat Estate and Conset point were based on illustrations in an article published in 1870 by the British antiquarian Greville Chester, who explored, collected and conducted an excavation during his roughly year long residence in Barbados in the late 1860s. The illustration for Bridgetown is based on historic photographs of the city streets. The illustration for Codrington College is based on photographs from old Barbados guidebooks online. 
 
For the Britain map, again we turned to historic images found online and digitised books. One of the most exciting elements of this map for me was seeing Michelle's recreated display interiors for the Colonial and Indian Exhibition 1886, based on images from the Illustrated London News and from Frank Cundall's Reminiscences of the Colonial and Indian Exhibition. The Blackmore Collection in Salisbury image is based on old photographs and an Illustrated London News drawing of the interior of the museum, which was closed in 1930s.
 
I hope you enjoy the exhibition as much as I enjoyed creating it!

By Amara Thornton

For the past few months, I have been investigating the history of archaeology and archaeological collecting in the Caribbean island of Barbados in some detail.  This is part of my current research project called "Narrating the Diverse Past" (of which more to come!).   
 
As one of the oldest English colonies in the Caribbean, first established in the 1620s, Barbados's long historic connection to the UK pre-dates the Acts of Union which brought England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland together to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (now the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland). 
 
These connections are becoming more visible in the heritage landscape in Britain today.  Reports on historic properties and monuments connections to the Caribbean have been produced by English Heritage (2007,2013) and, most recently, the National Trust (2020) and the Colonial Countryside project. Work is ongoing in Scotland exposing the links between Scottish heritage sites and houses and slavery. The Legacies of British Slaveownership database is also an important resource for exploring links between Britain and Barbados, as it pulls together records on individuals who received compensation for the freeing of the enslaved people forced to make the Caribbean a profitable enterprise for others. 
 
These projects have drawn much attention both  to the horrors of the Transatlantic Slave Trade and to the diversity of the beneficiaries of the compensation, the debt for which the UK Treasury only paid off in 2015. But my primary area of focus has been on the period after slavery was abolished, and aspects of the continuation of the connection between Britain and Barbados during the rest of the colonial period (Barbados gained independence in 1966, and just this year the Barbados government announced it would no longer have the Queen as head of state).

One of the ways in which this post-slavery connection can be explored is through university records.  Beyond Oxford and Cambridge these records can be difficult to source, depending on how universities recorded the student body over time, and how much effort (and resource) has been devoted historically to maintaining and researching these records.  However, Oxford and Cambridge are a useful starting point, particularly because both Universities attracted students whose families had long-standing connections to Barbados (some established during the days of slavery and continued through sugar production after emancipation) and because many Oxford and Cambridge graduates were employed in various roles in administration, education, and the military, across the British Empire. 
 
Cambridge University has developed an online searchable database for its student records, and these records comprise an illuminating dataset for British-Caribbean connections (see also the Black Cantabs project). Combining biographical details from published student records produced in the early 20th century, with lists of students attending Cambridge's women's colleges (women attending Cambridge could not be full members of the University, or get Cambridge degrees, until 1948), this database is a valuable historical resource.
 
The records it pulls together for Barbados, for example, show that Barbados' Cambridge connections stretch back to the late 17th century. The more than 320 records of students with links to Barbados cover various relationships to the island: students who were born there, whose parents were born there, who worked there, who inherited property there, who married someone from there, who died there – and sometimes a combination of all of these.
 
For my purposes, at least two of these student records are significant in the archaeological collecting history of Barbados (though I suspect there are probably more).  Thomas Graham Briggs (1833-1887, B. A. 1856, M. A. 1862) and John Poyer Poyer (1843-1925, B. A. 1866, M. A. 1869) both exhibited artefacts from Barbados in the 1886 Colonial and Indian Exhibition. Both men had family estates in Barbados.
 
At present I know nothing about John Poyer Poyer's collection, beyond the fact that his "Carib relics" were on display in the Barbados room of the Colonial and Indian Exhibition.  Historic records and artefacts from Barbados belonging to Thomas Graham Briggs were on display in various parts of the exhibition. A selection of Briggs' artefacts is now in the British Museum, acquired a year or so after his death in London in 1887. According to the Museum's Collections Online, these are not from Barbados but rather a smattering of other Caribbean islands, including Nevis, where Briggs owned three estates in addition to his estates in Barbados.  (There will be more from me on Thomas Graham Briggs and his artefacts coming soon.)
 
These two individual stories are just the tip of the iceberg, as the saying goes, in exploring the educational connections between Britain and the Caribbean. I hope that more UK universities can put resources into investigating and publicising their institutional histories and student records to reveal these imperial connections. The University of Edinburgh has begun this work with its Uncover-Ed project; Pamela Roberts has been working at Oxford on the Black Oxford project. 
 
Codrington College in Barbados (Thomas Graham Briggs' alma mater) had a historic tie with the University of Durham from 1875 to 1955, during which students could take degrees from Durham.  In the 19th century the UK university sector expanded significantly as universities and university colleges opened in various cities and towns across England. I'd love to know how many Barbadians were able to take up opportunities to study here during that period, and what happened to them...

By Amara Thornton
​
Earlier in the summer I started an investigation of the history of archaeology in the Caribbean during the late 19th century.  When writing the post I came across references to Irish artist and author Lady Edith Blake, wife of the Governor of Jamaica, who was credited with being a local collector and promoter of archaeology on the island in the Institute of Jamaica Journal.  
 
In 1890 Edith Blake wrote an article, "The Norbrook Kitchen Midden", published in the Victoria Quarterly, a short-lived periodical associated with the island's similarly short-lived Victoria Institute. Established in 1887 in association with Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee (celebrating 50 years on the throne) the Victoria Institute was, according to the Handbook of Jamaica, devoted to "the intellectual improvement of its members and the promotion and cultivation of a taste for literature, science and art in Jamaica generally."   Judging from the tables of contents of the Victoria Institute's Quarterly (some of which have handily been put online here) it served as a general periodical for science, literature and history – the perfect venue for Blake's article.
 
At the time I wrote my initial post, I had not yet been able to access a copy of the original article, but surmised that it comprised a summary of her excavation of the site. I've now seen it, and to my surprise it reveals not only Lady Blake's association with the site, but the role of another woman as well.
 
Blake's "Kitchen Midden" is a summary of discoveries made in fields near the Shortwood Teacher Training College, and Blake's speculations on their significance, rather than an explicit presentation of work that she had directed herself.  She reported that children finding shell fragments on a site significantly far away from the shore had collected them and brought the collection to Amy Charlotte Johnson, the Principal of the Training College. Johnson had studied at Oxford, obtaining an "Associate in Arts", and had further obtained teacher training at Cambridge before she took her post in Jamaica in 1885. (Her movement from the UK to Jamaica – and, presumably, back again – is part of a larger history of education in the colonial Caribbean).
 
It appears that Johnson had some familiarity with archaeology – in 1889, four years after her arrival, she published an article titled "The History of Auvergne", in the Victoria Quarterly.  It included a summary of the archaeology of the region and its links to Etruria.  Johnson was clearly invested in building up the Jamaica's cultural resources; thanks to the digitised archives of the Jamaica Gleaner I found that she also donated a live specimen to the Institute of Jamaica Museum in 1895. She left her post in 1899, and it's not clear at the moment what happened to her thereafter.
 
By the time Edith Blake wrote "Kitchen Midden", she had already established her interest in archaeology. While her husband was Governor of the Bahamas, in the years prior to their arrival in Jamaica, she had explored caves in Rum Cay, a small island south of Nassau.  The sketches she made of petroglyphs from this cave, and her short report documenting her trip, were published in the Journal of the Bureau of Ethnology.
 
It's hard to say at this stage how much involvement in the excavation of the Norbrook Kitchen Midden either Edith Blake or Amy Charlotte Johnson had. The Institute of Jamaica Journal records that the Committee of the Institute was responsible for directing the work; but I suspect that both women were involved in some capacity, probably unofficially.  There will hopefully be more to come!
 
References/Further Reading
 
Blake, Edith, 1890. The Norbrook Kitchen Midden. Victoria Quarterly 2(4): 26-33.
 
Coburn, Patrick, 2011. The girl in the painting. Independent. 28 June: 12-13.
 
Daily Gleaner, 1889. The Victoria Quarterly Magazine. 5 August: 2.
 
Daily Gleaner, 1891. Institute of Jamaica: The Museum. 13 November: 2.
 
Daily Gleaner, 1899. The Case of Miss Johnson. 21 March: 7. 
 
Mallery, Garrick. 1893. Picture Writing of the American Indians: Bahama Islands [Edith Blake's report]. Tenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnography. Washington, D. C.: Government Printing Office. pp. 137-9.

By Amara Thornton

Archaeological reports can be enlightening resources for the history of archaeology. These come in a variety of contexts – you can see British archaeologist John Garstang's interim field reports, handwritten with captioned photographs included, in the "Egypt in Reading" exhibition. These were composed for his funders, sent to Britain from Egypt, and circulated. 
 
Flinders Petrie (and later Hilda Petrie), too, produced field reports from his excavations in Egypt (called Journals) which were circulated – the Griffith Institute has been digitising these, and you can see the lists of people to whom these reports were sent. 
 
I've been recently looking through the journal published by the Egyptian Antiquities Service – the Annales du Service des Antiquites. This journal features reports on the work of the Service and on other excavations being undertaken in Egypt in three languages: predominately French, but also English and German (depending on the author in question).* Some of the issues are (thankfully) online, and they provide important details on the work of the Service and, critically, the individuals who contributed to that work.  This includes not only the Egyptian and foreign inspectors working for the Service, but also their contacts: other officials and experts (some Egyptian); Egyptian foremen (referred to in late 19th century English and French as "rais" or "reis", in Egyptian Arabic رياس transliteration roy yas) working on excavations; independent excavators; Egyptian night guards for villages/sites (referred to in late 19th century English and French as "g[h]afir" plural "ghofera", in Egyptian Arabic غفير); and experienced porters.  
 
As an experiment, I went through the first volume of the Annales (1900) and came up with a list of individuals mentioned by name. The names and references to work yield an illuminating snapshot of the Department's activities at the end of the 19th century.  Some of these individuals are more well known than others - links, where possible, to biographies are provided, and references to specific areas of work as mentioned in the reports are given. The diversity of people listed is remarkable. A selection follows:

• Victor Loret, Director of the Antiquities Service (1897-1899)

• Gaston Maspero, Director of the Antiquities Service (1899-1914)
• Mohammed Effedi Chaban, Inspector at Rodah for the Service, who supervised Farag Ismail and Yassa Tadros's excavations at Deir el Aizam (see below)
• Georges Daressy, working for the Egyptian Museum
• Georges Legrain, designated conservator for the Antiquities Service at Karnak
• George Willoughby Fraser, engineer working for the Egypt Exploration Fund
• Percy Newberry, excavator for the Egypt Exploration Fund
• Claudius Labib, expert in Coptic history and language
• Alessandro Barsanti, Conservator/Restorer for the Antiquities Service at Saqqara
• Jacques de Morgan
• Mohammed Dohair, working with Daressy and Barsanti for the Museum at excavations of the necropolis at Meir and continued the excavations after Daressy and Barsanti left
• Ali a El Sabah, ghafir غفير at Meir who reports on tombs
• Fouli Abd el Kafi, رياس roy yas for the tomb of Pepi-Ankh excavations, Meir, with Daressy leading excavations during a painted wooden statue of Pepi-Ankh and other figurines were discovered
• Eugene Grebaut
• Mohammad Chain, Inspector of Antiquities who worked at Dendereh in 1897
• Farag Ismail
• Yassa Tadros, Tadros and Ismail applied to the Service to excavate necropolis at Deir el Aizam, near Asyut. Ismail stopped after a short time, Tadros continued without him.
• Sobbi Effendi Artif, translator into French of Chaban's Arabic-language report on excavations at Deir El Aizam
• Mahmoud Bey Fahmy, engineer of Luxor district, reporting on the 3 October 1899 disaster at Karnak, during which columns at the temple of Amun collapsed
• Ch. Nicour Bey, Engineer in Chief to Egyptian State Railways, appointed by the Minister to survey the scene at Karnak.
• Youssef Ahmed, supervisor at Karnak who was at the scene of the disaster
• Ahmed Suleiman, ghafir غفير at Karnak who was at the scene of the disaster
• Mohammed Ahmed Abd-el-Rassoul, Valley of the Kings 'whistleblower' ("denonciateur"), Luxor
• Howard Carter, Inspector General in the Antiquities Service
• Jusef Ahmed El-Neggar, reporting to Carter the discovery of remains of granite statues in construction work on his house in Luxor (Carter's report on the matter indicates that payment was made to El-Negger for the destruction of the walls of his house during excavation to remove the statues).
• [William Compton, 5th] Marquis of Northampton, given authority to make soundings at Kom el-Ahmar, 1899
• Richard Chauvin, "European supervisor", working with Legrain on Karnak after 3 Oct 1899 disaster
• Baskharoune Abou Awad, chief porter ("chef portefaix") for above work
• Hassan Abbati, chief digger ("chef terrassier") for above work
• Mohammed Marzouk, writer ("écrivain") for above work
• Ibrahim Ismain, writer ("écrivain") for above work
• Alfonso Maniscalco Bey, architect in chief, Ministry of Public Works, advising on Karnak 
• [George] Somers Clarke, advising on Karnak 
• Perry, director general of civil buildings, advising on Karnak
• F. Ehrlich, German engineer working on Assuan barrage construction, advising on Karnak 
• Khalifa, رياس roy yas working with Barsanti at Saqqara
• Khalil Mohammed,رياس roy yas working with Barsanti at Saqqara
• Roubi, رياس roy yas working with Barsanti at Saqqara
• Mahmoud, son of رياس roy yas Khalifa, working with Barsanti at Saqqara
• Alfred Lucas, chemist for the Antiquities Service

 
Several projects are now focused on making the role of Egyptians in archaeological excavations more visible. The Abydos Temple Archive project is currently cataloguing and digitising a large cache of important records of the Egyptian Antiquities Service between the mid-19th and mid-20th centuries.  These highlight the roles of a number of Egyptian inspectors, guards and rais who worked for the Service, who are (for the most part) totally unrepresented in 'Western' histories of Egyptology.  Many of these records are Arabic, which is another hurdle for researchers (like me) who can't read Arabic (the project is – thankfully – translating the records into English).  
 
Two other recent projects are engaging actively, in different ways, with the history of Egyptians in Egyptian archaeology. In "Hands that Excavated a Civilization" The Place and the People project has published several Facebook posts (in both Arabic and English) profiling Egyptians who excavated with foreign archaeologists.**  The Egypt's Dispersed Heritage project is working with Egyptian comic artists to create new interpretations of the colonial legacies of archaeology in Egypt. These are being produced as vibrant comics in Egyptian Arabic drawing on and from modern Egyptian popular culture and aimed at Egyptians.***  
 
A special thank you to Heba Abd El Gawad for contributing the Egyptian Arabic terms incorporated into this piece!
 
Further Reading/References
Bierbrier, Morris. 2019. Who Was Who in Egyptology. (5th edn) London: Bloomsbury.

Doyon, Wendy, 2015. On Archaeological Labor in Modern Egypt. In William Carruthers (ed). Histories of Egyptology: Interdisciplinary Measures. (pp. 141-156). Routledge: New York and Abingdon.

Ministry of Public Works. 1900. ANNALES DU SERVICE DES ANTIQUITÉS DE L'EGYPTE (Vol 1). Cairo:  Institut français d'archéologie orientale du Caire. 

Petrie, W. M. Flinders. 1892. Addenda to Baedeker's Vocabulary. Ten Years Digging in Egypt. London: Religious Tract Society.

Reid, Donald. 2002. Whose Pharaohs? Archaeology, Museums and Egyptian National Identity from Napoleon to World War 1. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.


* I must acknowledge Google Translate here; without it this would have been a much more tricky task!
** see the recent recorded lecture
*** see also the recent recorded lecture

By Amara Thornton

In the past month I've finally been able to return to the British Library.  I'd had a number of things I'd been wanting to see, including two issues of the Victoria Quarterly, a Jamaica-based literary journal published in the 1890s.  Having  first learned about the journal in the course of researching last month's post "Colonial Archaeology in the Caribbean", I was hoping to see the issue in which Lady Edith Blake published the article on her excavations on a kitchen midden at Norbrook (Northbrook), near Kingston.  
 
But it was not to be – the British Library's two issues were not the ones in which Blake's article appeared. But all was not lost – in flipping through one issue, from July 1892, I came across Mrs Spencer Heaven's story "My Family Mummy". 
 
The plot summary is as follows: a party of young cousins are in the ancestral family home over the Christmas holidays. The one 'grown up' around – Aunt Bessie – leaves them to their own devices and only communicates with them through (affectionate) notes.  As boredom descends upon the young folks, one of them remarks that the family has a mummy stored away in the attic, a 'relic' of a long-dead ancestor's travels in Egypt. All the others are determined to see the mummy and so they make a pilgrimage to the attic.  One of the girls, Maud, sees the mummy for what it is – a human being – and tells the others that respect should be paid to it. Eventually she convinces everyone that the mummy, nicknamed "Miss Pharaoh" should be reburied. After some discussion, during which it is determined that no suitable ground could be found for the reburial, Maud decides that cremation would be best. A day is chosen, the fire built and "Miss Pharaoh" burned. The cousins abandon the fire to the care of servants and go to town, but it transpires that eventually the servants are arrested for murder; the police have found a burning corpse in thier charge.  The young folks are both horrified and convinced that "Miss Pharaoh" is seeking revenge. However, the story ends tidily with them rescuing the servants from probable hanging by explaining the situation in court. 
 
The story is presented as being an anonymised re-telling of events that actually happened – whether or not that is true I'm not sure! But it's certainly fictionalised, if not fiction. Having literally just listened to an excellent panel on ancient Egyptian human remains ("Your Mummies Their Ancestors") this 19th century story reflects a discussion about how 'mummies' are viewed, displayed and interpreted that is still continuing today. 

[Originally from Devon, Selina Frances Smyly married De Bonniot Spencer Heaven of "The Rambles" and "Whitfield Hall" Jamaica in 1864. She lived in Jamaica for many years before returning to Britain, where she died in 1911. She was a musician and botanist as well as a writer.] 
 
References/Further Reading
 
Colonies and India. 1893 [News]. [British Newspaper Archive]. 4 Feb: 11. 
 
Exeter and Plymouth Gazette. 1864. Abbotsham. Wedding Festivities. [British Newspaper Archive]. 11 Nov: 6. 
 
Heaven, Mrs Spencer (Selina). 1892. My Family Mummy. Victoria Quarterly 4 (2): 16-26.
Stienne, Angela (Ed). Mummy Stories[Blog] 
 
Western Daily Press, 1911. Deaths. [British Newspaper Archive]. 26 June: 10
 
Hartland and West Country Chronicle. 1911. [News] [British Newspaper Archive]. 15 June: 9.

By Amara Thornton

I've been researching the history of archaeology for over a decade now, concentrating on excavations done in the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East.  That's due entirely to the fact that my PhD research began with the archive of two British archaeologists who worked in Jordan; this and my subsequent research has focused in various ways on the network of British archaeologists they were a part of.  The countries this network was active in – Egypt and Sudan, Mandate Palestine, Transjordan and Iraq – were tied to the British Empire in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in one way or another.  But there is another part of the British Empire that I've neglected in research terms, and it's a lot closer to 'home'.  That part is the Caribbean, and its where half of my own heritage lies.

​Lately, I've been taking a closer look at the history of archaeology in the Caribbean.  Now, I'm not an expert on Caribbean history. Having grown up in the US, it's not something I learned in school (though had I grown up in Britain, I wouldn't have learned about it in school either). That's partly why I'm writing this post.  But I'm also intrigued to find out how the history of archaeology and development of (for want of a better term) archaeological 'heritage' infrastructure in the British Caribbean compares with the British-occupied countries I've spent so long researching. ​

Antiquities from the Caribbean were being actively collected and displayed in Britain by the 19th century, including at the Blackmore Museum in Salisbury, and in large-scale exhibitions such as the 1886 Colonial and Indian Exhibition in South Kensington. In the Caribbean (as far I understand at the moment) the island with the most formally organised archaeological infrastructure at that time was Jamaica, the largest island in the British Caribbean, and the island with the largest population.  
 
English forces captured Jamaica in 1655; it became a colony in 1670. By the mid-19th century it had two 'scientific' societies – the General Agricultural Society of Jamaica and the Society of Arts.  These two organisations merged in 1864, and from this foundation the Institute of Jamaica came into being in 1879. The maintenance of a library, reading-room and museum and the provision of programmes of lectures were part of the Institute's charter.  Members were elected, and had to pay membership fees.
 
Following the exhibition of antiquities in Jamaica's 1891 International Exhibition, the Institute's work in the mid-1890s began to focus more particularly on archaeology and history. Two consecutive lecture series (costing 5 shillings a ticket, half price for members) given during this time were "Greek Life and Literature" and "The History of Jamaica". William Cowper, later principal of Wolmer Free School, delivered both series.  In addition, the Institute's journal began publishing reports on archaeological discoveries made on the island.  These chronicle the work of Jamaican residents (some of whom were descendants of slave-holding plantation owning families) in uncovering the remains of the island's ancient inhabitants. Where possible, links have been integrated in what follows to the Legacies of British Slave-ownership Database.
 
In 1894, James Edwin Duerden, a British zoologist, was appointed Curator of the Museum. While the original focus of the collections had been natural history specimens, under his aegis in the summer of 1895 a circular was sent out for collections of Jamaican antiquities to be loaned for exhibition.  This circular was inspired in part by discoveries made by Irish artist and naturalist Lady Edith Blake (resident in Jamaica at the time with her husband Henry Arthur Blake, the colonial Governor of Jamaica). She had written up her work formally in an article in the Victoria Quarterly, a journal of the Victoria Institute, a Jamaica-based learned society. She also wrote a general history of Jamaica's ancient inhabitants for Appleton's Popular Science Magazine.  At the moment, I can't find a copy of her  Victoria Quarterly article online, but the American traveller and author Frederick A. Ober quoted her description of the excavations she directed at Northbrook (Norbrook) in St Andrews parish near Kingston in his 1895 article "Aborigines of the West Indies".  
 
Exhibitors in the 1895-6 Institute of Jamaica museum display included Lady Blake and "Miss Moulton Barrett", daughter of Charles John Moulton-Barrett who was poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning's brother (stay tuned for more on "Miss Moulton Barrett" in due course).  Duerden followed up on various leads identified in the reports gathered from residents, and his 1897 publication "Aboriginal Indian Remains in Jamaica" (Vol II No 4 of the Institute's Journal) gives a fascinating insight into the community of 'amateur archaeologists' on the island.  
 
In fact, it's clear from this that the Institute of Jamaica seems to have been rather a hub for the archaeology of the Caribbean.  The exhibition featured artefacts found not only in Jamaica but also in Grenada and Barbados (sent by a Rev. T. W. Bindley of Barbados) and British Guiana (now Guyana), and communications on antiquities were received from Dr C. W. Branch in St Kitts.  
 
With the end of the exhibition the artefacts displayed were scattered far beyond Jamaica. In his 1915 book Historic Jamaica, Institute of Jamaica Secretary Frank Cundall noted (in a prescient observation given current repatriation debates): 

At least some of the objects from Jamaica (like these artefacts attributed to Lady Edith Blake as owner) are now held by the National Museum of the American Indian, part of the Smithsonian Institution in the United States.
 
The two islands that have the greatest familial significance for me are Grenada and Barbados.  As far as I know from family history research, the majority of my Caribbean ancestors lived for at least a century in Barbados (a colony from 1627) until they emigrated to Grenada (a colony from 1763) at the turn of the 20th century.  My grandparents subsequently moved from Grenada to Trinidad (a  colony from 1797, where members of the government started plans to create a museum in the 1880s).
 
Guidebooks from the early 20th century noted that those interested in antiquities in Grenada could take themselves to Mount Rich, on the grounds of a former sugar plantation in St Patrick's parish on the north of the island, where ancient petroglyphs could be seen carved on the surface of the rock. An English minister and resident in nearby St Vincent, Thomas Huckerby, wrote a paper on these petroglyphs in 1921. Antiquities from Grenada were also displayed in the 1905 Colonial and Indian Exhibition, held at the Crystal Palace.
 
In Barbados, meanwhile, by the late 19th century a collection of antiquities, described by a visitor as "a litter of Carib curiosities", could be seen at Farley Hill Mansion in St Peter's parish, the home of Sir (Thomas) Graham Briggs.  In St John's parish near Codrington College (the only institution of higher education on the island) could be found more remains of the ancient indigenous population.  These were described briefly by British antiquarian Rev. Greville Chester in his 1869 travelogue Transatlantic Sketches. Chester noted the work of one Barbados-based antiquarian and school teacher W. A. Culpeper, whom he met in Barbados during his 1867 trip to the Caribbean. Subsequently Chester donated artefacts from Codrington to the British Museum (though these are not on display). By the early 1890s in his History and Guide to Barbados James H. Stark wrote a plea for an antiquities museum to be established on the island.  Eventually, a "cabinet of antiquities" could be seen at Codrington College.
 
Much of the publication of Caribbean archaeology (in this case meaning indigenous native American) during the early 20th century was done by men funded in the United States.  Jesse Walter Fewkes and Theodoor de Booy were financed by American banker and collector George Gustav Heye, whose collection was originally shown in his own museum in New York before he set up National Museum of the American Indian in 1916. Their reports were published in American scientific journals, and reprinted in the National Museum's later series. 
 
It's critical to note, however, that many of the people coming across the remnants of the lives of the ancient inhabitants of these islands were enslaved or the descendants of enslaved people. They were employed in plowing fields and cutting or digging holes for planting sugar cane. They would also have been the people actually labouring on the excavations conducted.  In one of Chester's excavations at a cave on the Mount Ararat Estate in St Michael's parish, Barbados, they were convicts, loaned by the Governor for the purpose.  Their names are not mentioned in informal or formal published reports. In one heartbreaking case reported in the Institute Journal, on the grounds of the former sugar plantation Wales Estate (Trelawney, Jamaica) the remains of ancient indigenous habitation were mixed in with the material remains of enslaved people whose then-abandoned home had been built on top. 
 
Such moments of discovery were also reported through memories, which were then written into archaeological reports to provide context for collections. Following his trip to Barbados in 1912-13, Jesse Fewkes noted 

Nearly half a century earlier, West India Regiment Lieutenant Alwin S. Bell wrote in a letter from Falmouth, Jamaica (later read out at a meeting of the British Archaeological Association)  that 

One could argue, then, that the enslaved and formerly enslaved people were the original explorers, excavators and collectors in the Caribbean.

​References/Further Reading
 
1922.Thirty-Fourth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology. Washington: Government Printing Office. 
 
Allsworth-Jones, Philip. 2008. Pre-Columbian Jamaica. Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press.
 
Atkinson, Lesley-Gail. 2006. The Earliest Inhabitants: The Dynamics of the Jamaican Taino. University of West Indies Press.
 
Blake, Lady Edith. 1890. The Norbrook Kitchen Midden. Victoria Quarterly (October). 
 
Blake, Lady Edith. 1897/8. Aborigines of the West Indies. Appleton's Popular Science Monthly 52: 373-487.
 
Chester, Greville J. 1870. The Shell-Implements and Other Antiquities of Barbados. Archaeological Journal27: 43-53.
 
Chester, Greville J. 1869. Transatlantic Sketches in the West Indies, South America, Canada, and the United States.London: Smith, Elder & Co.
 
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By Amara Thornton

In mid-May, a series of films were put online at the British School at Athens website.  It was the product of my collaboration with the School's staff on an exciting journey through the archives, looking for hidden histories of women at the School.  

​Rather than focus on BSA students, our collaboration centred on the lives of wives and daughters of the School's early Directors. This was inspired, in part, by the School's decision to put the diary of Emily Penrose, classical scholar and daughter of the BSA's first Director Francis Cranmer Penrose, online.

To Emily Penrose's story, told over two films (here and here), were added the stories of Mary Gardner, a writer married to the School's second Director Ernest Gardner (here), and Ellen Sophia Bosanquet, who was also a writer, married to the School's fifth Director Robert Carr Bosanquet (here).  

I published my work on Mary Gardner and Ellen Sophia Bosanquet's books in Archaeologists in Print, but it was great to be able to return to these fascinating women for this series.  

Early this month, I published a blog post on "Ure Routes" which draws on another set of records, held at the University of Reading.  These records tell the still very hidden history of minority students at the University in the early 20th century.  The evidence I found for this history was fascinating, and I'm glad to have the chance to make a bit more visible through the blog.  I only scratched the surface, but as campaigns for a more inclusive curriculum continue, I firmly believe it's imperative that these records are made more accessible for research.  Read "An Understudied History" here.

By Amara Thornton

This month's post is over on "Ure Routes", where I discuss a 1943 painting of Hadrian's Wall which is now part of the University of Reading's Art Collections. Having found two letters relating to this artwork in the Classics Department archive some months ago, I was prompted to write up the bits of research I'd done, quoting rather liberally from the letters, after seeing a recent tweet of the painting.  
 
Find out more about this work and Faith Ashford, the artist who created it, "Miss Asford's Painting". 

By Amara Thornton

We recently launched a new digital exhibition on "Ure Routes", an online version of our previous "Hidden Women in the Archive: Collectors, Curators and Cataloguers" exhibition.  Essentially, the handlist has been replicated online, with the addition of some fabulous short films, one for each of the ten women represented in the exhibition.
 
Late last year, a number of staff and students in the Classics Department and the Ure Museum were roped into providing voice overs for these films, bringing the artefacts and archives included in the display to life.  It was thrilling for me to hear extracts from the archives read aloud, a compelling reminder of the humans behind museum collections.  I hope you think so to.
 
Explore "Hidden Women Digital" here.

By Amara Thornton

This month we installed a new exhibition at the Ure Museum.  "Egypt in Reading" explores the colonial context of archaeology in Egypt in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  The exhibition storyline focuses on the excavations conducted under the direction of British archaeologist John Garstang. He also happens to be one of five archaeologists whose lives and social networks I researched for my PhD.  
 
Garstang's work in Egypt wasn't an area I had previously researched much, however – I had focused more on his time in Sudan (1909-14).  But the Ure Museum's collection of Egyptian antiquities is drawn from an earlier period in Garstang's life, when he was in his late 20s and early 30s.  

​The exhibition storyline doesn't just concentrate on Garstang.  My underlying ethos in putting the display together was to emphasise multiple perspectives and (as far as I could) present multiple 'voices', to go beyond profiling a male British director-of-dig. So you will find references to a few of the Egyptian men who worked with Garstang – particularly his chief foreman Saleh Abd El Nebi.  There are also some fantastic business cards once belonging to various Egyptian dragomans – these come from Professor Rachel Mairs' personal collection.  In the digital version of the exhibition you can watch her explaining three of the cards now featured in the exhibition.
 
You'll also find references to a few women in the display. These include artist and University College Reading alumna Henrietta Lawes, who as a volunteer with Flinders and Hilda Petrie had gone to Egypt in 1898; Garstang's wife Marie, who would become a noted (though unofficial) conservator; and Meta Williams, Secretary of the Institute of Archaeology at Liverpool who helped facilitate the acquisition of these Egyptian artefacts in the early 1920s.
 
We could not have put this exhibition together in the way that we did without access to the archives in the Garstang Museum in Liverpool, and the help of its curator Dr Gina Criscenzo-Laycock. While the Ure Museum archive has letters relating to the acquisition of the Liverpool collection in the early 1920s, it does not have material related to the original excavation of the artefacts.  That information is in Liverpool, where John Garstang was based. Gina has been incredibly generous in sharing digital images of Garstang's excavation reports, photograph albums and various ephemera relating to Garstang's exhibitions in London. Chief among these latter items is the visitors book to the 1903 and 1904 exhibitions; for a network-lover like myself, this was an absolute gold mine. 
 
Ure Museum Assistant Curator Jayne Holly and I went to Liverpool last month to find materials we could use for the display. I was looking particularly for any references to individual workmen, so I was thrilled to find among the periodic reports Garstang sent to the small Committees providing the funds for excavation his chief foreman Saleh's signature and seal.  A reproduced image of this is now on display in the Ure Museum.  
 
Two other photographic highlights (reproduced for display) came from Garstang's photograph albums.  The images in question show Garstang's British assistant, an artist called Harold Jones, painting portraits inside the rock-tomb site office at Beni Hasan.  I knew from my PhD research that Jones's paintings were shown during the exhibitions held at the end of the season – but I never expected to see the works-in-progress!  
 
I also wanted to profile a few local (to Reading) links to Egypt.  These include Caversham-born Henrietta Lawes, mentioned already. In the course of the planning of the exhibition it became clear that beyond her bequest of Egyptian antiquities to her alma mater, she also gave a number of books on Egypt. These went into the Library, and thanks to the hard work of several people in University of Reading Library and Special Collections the full list of her book bequest was found. We present one of Henrietta Lawes's books, a copy of the 5th edition Baedeker's guide to Egypt, bearing a plate acknowledging her bequest. 
 
Another important Egypt-Reading link I wanted particularly to highlight was the presence of Egyptian students at University College Reading during the time that John Garstang was working in Egypt.  Over the course of my time at Reading I've been looking through various items in the University History Collection, including reports of Faculty and other administrative records.  These have revealed that there were Egyptian students at the College from at least 1908. But the item on display is a copy of the University College Reading Review from autumn 1915.  This notes three Egyptian alumni of the College sending a supportive address to their former colleagues and classmates, as Egypt moved from a country occupied by Britain to a British Protectorate, and war raged across Europe and the Middle East.   
 
I could say a lot more about this exhibition, which has really been a labour of love and an attempt to integrate the complex and rich history of archaeology into a museum display case, privileging archives and other historic materials as much as ancient artefacts. But I hope you will go and see it yourselves – and/or visit the exhibition website for the full handlist, lots of images, and some exciting extra content!