By Amara Thornton

I've returned recently to research on artists working within archaeology, specifically women artists. This is a topic I've been gathering information on for a number of years, bolstered by my acquisition of a second-hand copy of Jessie Mothersole's Hadrian's Wall. To my surprise and delight when I opened the book for the first time I saw that it included a nearly century-old an invitation to an exhibition of her original artwork (you can read that here).
 
Winifred Brunton is another archaeological artist I've been researching. She was slightly younger than Jessie Mothersole, but was exhibiting her work at around the same time, and sometimes on the same street and in the same exhibition. I've discussed the work Brunton, Mothersole and other women artists in archaeology displayed at the Royal Academy Summer exhibitions here (thanks to the excellent resource that is chronicle250.com), but in this post I want to delve a bit more deeply into Brunton as a working artist before she came to Britain.*
 
Winifred Brunton was born Winifred Newberry in South Africa in 1880. Her father Charles was a wealthy landowner and developer who had come to South Africa from Britain and married Elizabeth Mary Daniel, the South-African born daughter of a Wesleyan missionary.  Their marriage certificate indicates that, at the time of their marriage, Charles Newberry already had acquired shares in the Kimberley Diamond Mine, tying him firmly into the colonial exploitation of the region's mineral wealth, and the people who mined there. 
 
Brunton grew up at the family estate at Prynnsberg, near Clocolan in the Orange Free State, which had been formally incorporated into the British Empire at the close of the 2nd Boer War in 1902. During her early years in South Africa, the area in which she grew up was known first as the Orange Free State, then the Orange River Colony annexed to Britain, and then incorporated, as the province of Orange Free State, into the Union of South Africa, a British dominion created in 1910. The British administration established a Land settlement scheme in 1901, which saw over 500 settlers acquire land there by the end of the scheme in 1912. 
 
Winifred Newberry married Guy Brunton in South Africa in 1906, when she was 26. Born in England, Guy Brunton had come to South Africa, presumably, for work. In 1911 it was reported that he was serving on the Board of Charles Newberry's "Newberry (Orange River) Estates Ltd", which was undertaking irrigation works in the region to make the land more agriculturally productive – and profitable. 
 
Winifred, meanwhile, living with her husband in Berea, a residential suburb of the fast-evolving city of Johannesburg (Transvaal Province), was starting to bring her art to public notice as part of the emerging South African National Union. This organisation was established to provide a platform for "South African" products, including fine and decorative art.  In 1910, she was helping to organise an Arts & Crafts exhibition, at which her miniatures were on display (and for which she won a prize).
 
A year later, her design for postage stamps for the new Union (bringing together the previously separate and independent provinces in South Africa) also received a prize.*  By the end of 1911, Winifred and Guy Brunton were in London embarking on studies in Egyptology at UCL, and Winifred continued to develop a successful career as an artist, as well as an excavator. The move to London connected the Bruntons more firmly to another part of Britain's expansive Empire – Egypt, which had been occupied by Britain in 1882 and would be annexed by the end of 1914. They remained attached to Egypt as excavators and residents for several decades before returning again to South Africa. 
 
Winifred Brunton's Egyptian paintings and excavations remain the most visible of her long career, but her beginnings in art and empire in South Africa are, I think, of equal significance.  
 
*Sadly, it appears that none of the prize-winning designs submitted for this competition actually became stamps.
 
References/Further Reading
Brown, A. Samler and Brown, George (Eds.). 1915. The Guide to South and East Africa for the use of tourists, sportsmen, invalids and settlers. (21st edn). London: Sampson Low, Marston & Co.
 
Cape Times, 1911. Orange River Irrigation. A Big Scheme. 23 Sept: 10.
 
Mafeking Mail and Protectorate Guardian, 1909. South African National Union. 30 Aug.
 
National Museum Publications, 2020. Experience ancient Egypt through the Collections of an Egyptologist. 
 
Rand Daily Mail, 1910. Arts & Crafts Exhibition. One Great Success. 29 March.
 
Rand Daily Mail, 1911. Gazette Gleanings. 1 June: 2.
 
Stevenson, Alice. 2014. Camden, Cairo and the Cape. UCL Culture blog.

By Amara Thornton

I came across the magazine Egypt and the Sudan while finishing up Archaeologists in Print. But it wasn't till after the book was published that I had the chance to look at a full run of the magazine, which is held at the Egypt Exploration Society.

You can find my post "A Magazine for the Season" on the Egypt Exploration Society's blog here.

By Amara Thornton

I'm delighted to have an article published in Issue 5 of Hellebore, a zine of essays and art on various gothic and folk-horror related topics, under a general theme. Issue 5's theme is "The Unearthing"; my article "The Stones of Initiation" explores how the history of archaeology in the Caribbean connects to the Caribbean folk-practice Obeah. 

By Amara Thornton

Back in 2016 a colleague tweeted a picture from the 1951 Festival of Britain. It showed an archaeological display in the Festival's Dome of Discovery. I was immediately intrigued, and even bought some vintage Festival ephemera with a plan to write a blog post about it.  

​My planned post never materialised, but luckily I have recently had the opportunity to write about archaeology at the Festival, as a response to Jacquetta Hawkes' book A Land (1951) as part of the Museum of English Rural Life's 51 Voices exhibition.

Read "Jaquetta Hawkes' Festival Lands" here.

By Amara Thornton

One (let's imagine sultry) evening in August 1943, the 6th, to be precise, over two hundred people, so the records say, turned up to the Institute of Archaeology in Regents Park. They were there to hear the opening address of a large-scale two-day conference, ambitiously titled "The Conference on the Future of Archaeology".
 
I've known about this conference for a good while now, ever since a friend of mine acquired a second-hand copy of the subsequent publication. This publication is a historian's dream, because whoever was taking notes at the conference (let's be honest it was probably one of the many women on staff there) did an outstanding job. So, the publication records not only the speakers at the conference, but also the chairs, the people who offered comments at the end of each session, and other people who later wrote in with their thoughts. 
 
Because this document gives such an amazing snapshot into the world of British archaeology (overseas and domestic) in the midst of war, I've taken it upon myself to give you the programme, arranged in such a manner (courtesy of the conference publication Table of Contents which puts the papers in the order given here) as to reflect a conference lineup, including chairs, speakers, discussants and correspondents.  The paper and session titles are as given in the Table of Contents.
 
Where possible, I have linked to Wikipedia entries for individuals (not all of them have Wikipedia entries). For some, I have found alternative online biographies. Others will have to remain link-less for the time being. Links have been provided once only - the first time a name appears in the text. Thanks to the power of Twitter, I've had help from various colleagues to ensure that nearly all of the women whose names are recorded in the publication have first and last names, making them (I hope) easier to trace in future. 
 
I have made a few changes to the names as listed in the conference publication. Frequently I have included first names (or at least the names individuals commonly used) – the programme tends only to include initials and last names for men, and titles and last names (or married names) for women. Where possible I have included maiden names (in parenthesis) for married women. I have also put affiliations as they are listed in the programme. These reflect the affiliations applicable to speakers and chairs at the time of the conference. 
 
Most of the sessions were followed by discussions. These were recorded after the end of the abridged conference papers in the publication – I have listed the names of the "Discussants" after each session where they are given. The publication also included extracts from letters from people who were unable to attend (due to war-related duties overseas, for example) so these "Correspondents" I have listed underneath discussants.
 
For more information on the conference, please see Gabriel Moshenska's article in Archaeology International.  
 
Opening Presentations
 
Charles Peers (University of London) - Opening Address 

Grahame Clark (Cambridge) -" The Contribution of Archaeology to the Post-War World" 
 
Session 1: "The Future of Discovery: Archaeology at Home"
Chair: AW Clapham (Society of Antiquaries)
 
Christopher Hawkes (British Museum) – "Prehistoric Archaeology"
Ian Richmond (Durham) –"Romano-British Archaeology"
TD Kendrick (British Museum) – "Mediaeval Archaeology"
 
Discussants: John Linton Myres, Dina (Portway) Dobson, Marjorie Venables Taylor, Mr Glendenning, EC Curwen, Mr Hockheimer, N. Bradfer Lawrence, Jacquetta (Hopkins) Hawkes, Mr Bromhead, Margaret Murray, WF Grimes, Kathleen Kenyon, Kenneth Oakley, H St George Gray, Cyril Fox
 
Correspondents: CH Desch, AHA Hogg
 
Session 2: "The Unity of Archaeology"
Chair: Gertrude Caton-Thompson (Prehistoric Society)
 
Gordon Childe (Edinburgh)
 
Session 3: "The Future of Archaeology: Archaeology Overseas"
Chair: John Winter Crowfoot (British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem)
 
John Linton Myres (Oxford/British School at Athens) – "Greek and Roman Archaeology"
Claude Schaeffer (French National Museum) – "Syrian, Palestinian and Turkish Archaeology"
Ernest Mackay (Independent Excavation Director) – "The Archaeology of Iraq, Baluchistan and India"
HAR Gibb (Oxford) – "Islamic Archaeology"
 
Discussants: Kathleen Kenyon, CFA Schaeffer, OGS Crawford, Olga Tufnell, Hilda Lorimer, Mr Bushnell, Leonard Woolley, Mr Shuttleworth, Norman Baynes, Gordon Childe, AW Lawrence, Dorothy (Simmons) Mackay
 
Correspondents: Guy Brunton, Hilda Lorimer, George Kirk
 
Session 4: "The Training of Archaeologists"
Chair: Gordon Childe (Edinburgh)
 
Kathleen Kenyon (University of London) – "Training for Field Work"
John D. Beazley (Oxford) – "University Training"
DB Harden (Ashmolean Museum) – "Training in Interpretation and Presentation"
Frederick Zeuner (University of London) – "Training in the Subsidiary Sciences"
 
Discussants: Margaret Murray, Margaret Whinney, ND Lacaille, Claude Schaeffer, Edith Stiassna [Stiassny], Sylvia Benton, Margot Eates, Alexander Keiller, Kathleen Kenyon, Aileen (Henderson) Fox
 
Correspondents: AHA Hogg
 
Session 5: "Records and Discovery – Local and National"
Chair: TD Kendrick (British Museum)
 
Cyril Fox (National Museum of Wales)
 
Discussants: H St George Gray, Agnes (Conway) Horsfield, WF Grimes, John Linton Myres, Christopher Hawkes, EC Curwen, Mr Swede, Mary (Kitson-Clark) Chitty, Cyril Fox
 
Session 6: "Planning and the Independence of Societies"
Chair: Frederick Kenyon (British Academy)
 
John Nowell Linton Myres (Oxford) – "The Need for Planning"
H St George Gray (Somerset County Museum) - "Societies Working at Home"
Alan Gardiner (Egypt Exploration Society) – "Societies Working Overseas"
 
Discussants: Grahame Clark, Margaret Whitley, Mr Turner, Phoebe Keef, Mr Faulkner, Joan du Plat Taylor, Margaret Murray, Mary (Kitson-Clark) Chitty, Claude Schaeffer, Miss M. E. Shaw, Jacquetta (Hopkins) Hawkes, Dorothy (Simmons) Mackay
 
Correspondents: CFA Schaeffer
 
Session 7: "Archaeology and the State at Home"
Chair: OGS Crawford (Ordnance Survey Department)
 
WF Grimes (Ordnance Survey Department)
 
Discussants: Claude Schaeffer, Elise (Goldschmidt) Baumgartel, Mr Dunning, Mr Glendenning, Dr Clark, Kathleen Kenyon, OGS Crawford, Peter Shinnie
 
Session 8: "Archaeology and the State Overseas"
Chair: John Linton Myres (Oxford/British School at Athens)
 
Leonard Woolley (Independent Excavations Director)
 
Discussants: JH Iliffe, AJ Arkell, Seton Lloyd, Kathleen Kenyon, Alan Gardiner, Mr Swede, Dr le May, Gertrude Caton-Thompson, CFA Schaeffer, Frederic Kenyon
 
Session 9: "Museums and the Public"
Chair: DA Allan (Liverpool Public Museums/Museums Association)
 
Christopher Hawkes (British Museum) – "National Museums"
FS Wallis (Bristol Museum and Art Gallery) – "Other Museums"
 
Discussants: Jacqueline Tyrwhitt, Norman Baynes, Fritz Saxl, WF Grimes, Mary (Kitson-Clark) Chitty
 
Correspondents: Stuart Piggott 
 
Session 10: "Archaeology and Education"
Chair: Janet Ruth Bacon (Royal Holloway)
 
Dina (Portway) Dobson (Independent Scholar) – "Elementary Schools"
Philip Corder (Verulamium Museum/Society of Antiquaries) – "Secondary and Public Schools"
Henry Theodore Wade Gery (Oxford) - "Universities – Oxford" 
DS Robertson (Cambridge) – "Universities – Cambridge"
WJ Varley (Liverpool) –  "Universities – Other"
Mary (Kitson-Clark) Chitty (Yorkshire Museum/Yorkshire Archaeological Society/Hull) – "Adult Education"
 
Correspondents: Beatrice de Cardi, Stuart Piggott
 
Summing Up
Chair: Harold Claughton (University of London)
 
Cyril Fox (National Museum of Wales)

By Amara Thornton
 
I spent quite a bit of 2020 researching the history of archaeology in the Caribbean. Last month I launched a website that included digital interactive on archaeological collections histories linking Britain and Barbados. Among the locations highlighted on the map of Britain in "Mapping Collections Histories" is South Kensington, where in 1886 the Colonial and Indian Exhibition took place. 
 
I've been interested in temporary exhibitions of archaeology for years now; my initial efforts to trace the small annual temporary displays of material excavated by British archaeologists in Egypt, Sudan, Palestine and Iraq in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was published in 2015.  There were displays of archaeological material in World's Fairs, too - I've blogged about the displays of ancient Egyptian artefacts at the 1904 World's Fair in "I'll Meet You in St Louis". 
 
The Colonial and Indian Exhibition in 1886 included displays of 'archaeological' material (by which I mean artefacts that were at the time considered to be material culture from the ancient Indigenous peoples of the islands, usually called "Carib relics") from across the Caribbean, including Barbados, St Kitts, British Guiana (Guyana), Dominica, St Vincent, Jamaica, and Trinidad.  But as I've recently found out, it wasn't the first time collections of artefacts from the Caribbean were brought together. 
 
In 1879, a series of local exhibitions were instigated in British Guiana, in part to strengthen ties and encourage friendly competition between colonies in the Caribbean. A description of the 1882 exhibition was published in Timehri, the journal of the colony's Agricultural and Commercial Society. The displays were grouped into two broad categories – sugar, and everything else. The second (miscellaneous) group included manufactured products, and antiquities. The exhibition featured two collections, one of artefacts from St Vincent belonging to Edward Leycester Atkinson, and the other from St Lucia, belonging to a Mr Rousselet. 
 
The following exhibition did not take place until November 1885, on a slightly grander scale. The British Guiana and West Indian Exhibition featured displays from Guiana and beyond. It was hoped that other islands would contribute, but the Timehri report on the exhibition noted that calls for displays for the Colonial and Indian exhibition had diverted much desired material to London.  Among the islands that did respond were St Vincent, Tobago, Trinidad and Dominica. 
 
Again among the Miscellaneous group of the exhibition were collections of artefacts for display. Dr Henry A. Alford Nicholls, an English physician resident in Dominica who had an interest in zoology and horticulture, sent a collection of antiquities from that island (for which he won a prize).  These had been previously displayed at an exhibition in the Courthouse, in Roseau, Dominica's capital, held to fundraise to cover the expense of shipping items to British Guiana for exhibition.
 
Another collection on display in 1885 was uncovered in the grounds of a sugar plantation, Enmore, in British Guiana.  This plantation had been in the hands of the Porter family for over a century. It was Rashleigh Porter, great-grandson of the first Porter (Thomas) who had established the plantation, who reported the discovery of artefacts, including stone tools and "some grotesque clay figures, of a highly artistic kind", as the Editor of Timerhi Everard im Thurn reported.  Another rich seam of artefacts was uncovered when agricultural digging on the estate revealed deposits of pottery sherds and human and animal remains. 
 
Some of the details about these 'local' (to the Caribbean) exhibitions come from digitised newspapers that have recently been added to the British Library's British Newspaper Archive. In the announcement promoting these newly added resources, the British Library has signalled a commitment to incorporate more colonial papers (and thereby colonial histories). Among the lot available now are searchable papers from Dominica, Jamaica, Barbados and Belize (formerly British Honduras).  These now join other digitised searchable resources (see my post "Building Collections Histories") revealing various aspects of the history of the Caribbean in the 19th and 20th centuries. I'm looking forward to exploring these further, and to seeing the collection of available searchable material grow in the coming months!
 
References/Further Reading
[Exhibition] Committee, 1885. British Guiana and West Indian Exhibition, 1885. Timehri 4: 268-293
 
Dominica Dial [Advertisement for Exhibition at Courthouse] [British Newspaper Archive] 24 Oct.
 
Dominica Dial, 1885 British Guiana and West Indian Exhibition. [British Newspaper Archive] 21 Nov.
 
im Thurn, E. 1882. The British Guiana Exhibition of 1882. Timehri 1: 100-117.
 
im Thurn, E. 1884. West Indian Stone Implements; and other Indian Relics (Illustrated). Timehri 3: 103-137.

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, 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 draws inspiration from 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, drawing inspiration from sketches in the Illustrated London News and 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. The University of Glasgow, similarly, has a website for its historical international student body called International Story.
 
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 Edith, Lady 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

I first drafted this post in the summer of 2017, moved to respond to news of a poll indicating that a large majority of people in the UK felt the British Empire was a legacy to be proud of.  But I never published it. At the time, it felt too personal and there were discrepancies I couldn't satisfactorily resolve, as you will see.   A bit over three years on and the issues that had inspired me to write this post in the first place are still here; the legacy of empire remains a hotly contested topic.  But the responses to that legacy and the context of empire are now, I think, moving (if slowly) in the right direction. 
 
Lack of basic knowledge about Britain’s Empire is one of the issues that has been identified in the debates. I didn’t go through the UK school system, so I can only refer to what others have said about the absence British imperial history in the primary and secondary school curriculum.  But TV programmes such as David Olusoga’s Black and British: A Forgotten History (2016), and Olusoga's book of the same title, have begun to present that history.  Several Who Do You Think You Are episodes have exposed various celebrities’ imperial roots.* 
 
If you read this blog regularly, you’ll know that as a researcher I spend a fair amount of time finding out how British archaeologists lived and worked in countries that were, during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, informally or formally administered by Britain.  But for this post, I’m going to look at how the British empire affected one branch of my own family tree.
 
One of my great grandfathers was Joseph N. Maxwell. I’ve never seen a picture of him, but I do know a bit about his life thanks to two eighty-odd year old letters, kept in the family. Blurry photographs of photocopies of them are currently lurking in a folder on my computer.  They are petitions written by my great grandmother Rosilia Maxwell in February 1932 in order to plead with the government of Grenada for the continuation of badly needed pension funds.  Her husband Joseph had died the previous September, only four months into his retirement, after a total of 32 ½ years of public (government) service.  Rosilia was now the sole provider for several children under eleven years of age.  

​These petition letters offer a window onto a bit of Britain’s imperial history.  Grenada is a very small predominantly mountainous island in the Caribbean, near the northern coast of Venezuela.  By the 1930s, it had been a British colony (ceded by France) for nearly 150 years, and it was the headquarters of government for the Windward Islands - Grenada, St Lucia, St Vincent and the Grenadines. The letters are written from the island’s largest town,  St George’s.  
 
In order to support her case, Rosilia outlined her husband’s professional career in some detail.  He had retired as Senior Warder at Richmond Hill Prison after 22 ½ years in prison service, and he had previously worked in Grenada’s Public Works Department. While he worked at the Prison, the Maxwells had lived on a house nearby which it seems came with the job; one of the major expenses she had was paying for the construction of a new house for herself and her children to live in.
 
I know from experience that it can be very difficult to find documentation of roles beneath the top layer of Departmental officials in printed records (such as Blue Books, Handbooks, or Civil Service lists). Records of British colonial administrations are also patchy - Operation Legacy is reflective of that.** So I have no idea at present in what capacity Joseph worked for the colonial Public Works Department.  But before that, Rosilia declared, Joseph had served in HM forces, as a gunner in the St Lucia Garrison Artillery, during which time “…your Excellency’s petitioner’s late husband Joseph N. Maxwell served as a soldier in the Boer War.”
 
To discover more about his Boer War service, some years ago my mother went to the National Archives in Kew.  There, in WO97 files (War Office discharge papers)  she found a likely candidate.  A “Joseph Maxwell”, born in 1870, a British subject in Barbados. This Caribbean island had been a British colony since the 17th century. This Joseph worked as a groom, probably in St George parish where his parents lived, until 1892.  In August that year he joined the Royal Artillery’s St Lucia Company as a gunner.  He signed his name on the recruitment form clearly and legibly, declaring his intention to serve in the Artillery for the next twelve years of his life. A 5 foot 7 inch man with a dark brown eyes and black hair. Complexion: black. He was 22.  
 
Barbados was the headquarters for Britain’s military forces in the Caribbean. The first few years of Joseph’s military service were, shall we say, chequered.  His record indicates that about six months after he joined up he was in civil custody, eventually he was tried and imprisoned for a hefty nine months for lashing out at the civil police.  He returned to duty in January 1894, only to be put on trial toward the end of 1895 and imprisoned again (with hard labour this time) for nearly three months.  No charge was recorded for the second imprisonment.
 
But, this wasn’t enough for him to be kicked out of the Artillery.  By February 1896 he was back on duty.  Perhaps he decided prison sentences weren’t getting him anywhere.  In fact, his service record indicates that before he was finally discharged in 1901 as “medically unfit for further service” he had been granted “GC [good conduct] pay” twice, in October 1899 and October 1901.  What could have occasioned this change?
 
Joseph’s first lot of “GC pay” came just four days before war between Britain and the South African Boers was officially declared on 11 October 1899.  I have no idea whether Joseph actually went to South Africa, or what he might have been doing there if he did.  On the form listing his “Service at Home or Abroad” the column for “countries” only says Barbados.  I’m not a military historian, so perhaps there’s more that can be inferred from these records that I’m not aware of.  (If you know more do get in touch!)
 
However, troops from the Caribbean were involved in the Boer War, as my great grandmother's letter attests.  Interestingly (given my great grandfather's post-war profession) one of the roles these Caribbean soldiers had was guarding prisoners of war. Boer prisoners were held in British run concentration camps in South Africa; but they weren't only held there. POW camps were established in a variety of places including St Helena (where Napoleon had been held earlier in the century), Ceylon (Sri Lanka), India and in the Caribbean at Bermuda (newspapers reported plans to house prisoners in other islands, including Barbados, were later abandoned because the war ended).
 
History works best, I think, and is most effectively communicated when it’s human – by which I mean the messy, confusing, wonderful, depressing stories of everyday life. Those stories cut across every stereotype and assumption about class, race, gender, nationality.   People are people no matter where they’re from or what they look like.  Now, there’s only so much you can do as a historian with what’s left, but you can have a go at building up a history.  So here’s my attempt.  Fragments of one man and one woman’s story to illuminate a small bit of Britain’s imperial history.  Maybe it’ll resonate with other people.  If it does, my job is done. For now. 
 
References/Further Reading
 
Benbow, Colin, 1982. Boer Prisoners of War in Bermuda. Bermuda College.
 
Boer, Nienke, 2017. Exploring British India: South African prisoners of war as imperial travel writers, 1899-1902. Journal of Commonwealth Literature: 1-15.

Derby Daily Telegraph, 1902. The Boer Prisoners at Barbados. [British Newspaper Archive]. 23 May.

Olusoga, David, 2016. Black and British: A Forgotten History. London: Pan Macmillan.

Royle, Stephen. St Helena as a Boer prisoner of war camp, 1900-2: information from the Alice Stopford Green papers. Journal of Historical Geography 24 (1): 53-68.

Sheffield Evening Telegraph 1902. West Indies and Boer Prisoners. [British Newspaper Archive], 3 July.

The National Archives. Service Record: Joseph Maxwell. TNA WO97/5488.

* These include (for the Caribbean islands), Moira Stuart (2004, Antigua & Dominica); Colin Jackson (2006, Jamaica); Ainsley Harriott (2008, Jamaica & Barbados); Gwyneth Paltrow (2011, Barbados); John Barnes (2012, Jamaica); Liz Bonnin (2016, Trinidad & Martinique); Noel Clarke (2017, Trinidad, Grenada & Carriacou); Marvin Humes (2018, Jamaica); Naomie Harris (2019, Grenada & Jamaica).

** See Dr Mandy Banton's excellent talk about colonial administrative records here. The Museum of British Colonialism has also been doing excellent work drawing attention to Operation Legacy.