Talks and Workshops Day One – SPNHC2014

The SPNHC conference got off to a great start yesterday with a speech from the Welsh Minister for Culture and Sport. This was proceeded by quick intros from representatives of SPNHC, GCG, and our Paolo on behalf of NatSCA.

The keynote was delivered by BBC’s Ben Garrod. He talked about the important role that museum professionals play in associating context and meaning with specimens. Also that museums should be tapping into the amazing resources they already have because organisations like the BBC will go to the ends of the earth to film the right specimen and only museum professionals know where they all are. He gave us a hint of a program on bird evolution coming up (I for one will be riveted to this).

Prof Alice Roberts was next – taking umbrage with something the director general said (a sentiment shared by several): he had referred to Ben, Alice, and Rhys – the next speaker – as “presenters” and made a distinction between them and the “scientists” in the auditorium. She rightly pointed out that the presenters speaking were all scientists and experts. I suspect the blame for this visceral misconception lies with Discovery Channel and similar who portray actors as scientists in their dramatised documentaries (Mermaid: the Body Found, anyone?). Alice Roberts spoke of her recent expeditions to the arctic peninsula of Russia in search of another mummified mammoth specimen. You may recall the review I wrote about the mammoth baby Lyuba. The new mummy was an older individual and the first expedition came home empty handed. The second time, Alice’s Nenet guides tried to hold out for a better offer. The BBC didn’t take the bait and eventually the guides took her to the specimen. They may have taken their pound of flesh first though: the mammoth’s skull had been removed. The Nenet people insisted that it had been removed in antiquity. If so it will be the oldest case of such a practice being done. More likely the skull was removed to sell to ivory traders. Micro CT scans will settle the matter once and for all. Alice also told us about the tusk cross-section project she was involved with, which revealed the huge scientific treasure trove that is ivory: when you cut a tree in half you can see the rings and count them to see how old the tree is in years. The same holds for mammoth tusks, only each yearly band can be viewed under the microscope to reveal 365 DAILY rings – we can literally tell whether a mammoth had a bad day. It can also be used to count the number of offspring a female mammoth had by looking at the pattern of malnutrition in these rings.

Hot on the heels of Alice’s talk came our third BBC presenter: Dr Rhys Jones. I had just heard about mammoths with personal diaries – I didn’t think anything could top that. It did: Rhys has been working with the South Wales police to track down the origin of two rhino horns that found their way onto EBay. What started as an intellectual challenge soon became a labour of love as one of the rhinos – a hefty male named Max – was killed for a pathetic scrap of horn. Somehow the black market marketing team have managed to convince the world that rhino horn is the cure for hangovers, cancer, erectile dysfunction, loneliness, … You name it and people are falling for it. He had to develop a technique for slow drilling into horn, as the DNA cooks very easily. even at slow speeds, drilling horn smells like burnt hair. With a little help from the other museum collections containing rhino horn material, a database was put together cataloging every known rhino haplotype and where it came from. Not only was he able to state categorically that the two horns belonged to the same animal, he also could tell that it was Black rhino and that it came from Tsavo national park – a hugely impressive result!

Workshop

I sat in on most of the afternoon’s Bruker workshop. It was supposed to be led by Mike Dobby but sadly he was called away to Athens and Trevor Emmett stepped in. Looking like the illegitimate child of a 70’s stun gun and a thermos flask, The Artax is an interesting piece of kit. Its main application seems to be in chemical analysis of various substances through targeted spectroscopy. Despite Time Team making it look so easy to just point and shoot, it really does work much better fixed to a stand.

Trevor explained the safety filter and how the Artax was designed to not zap unless there’s something under its sensor. Sometimes you need to scan something that doesn’t completely cover the safety filter so we were told that a label can be stuck across it to fix this. Like the complicated password on a post-it note stuck to the computer, security and safety are only as good as the people that use it.

Other Meetings

I attended a few SPNHC open meetings after, including the Emergent Professionals Group and the Meetings Group. I’m very much looking forward to the signing of the MOU on Thursday and seeing how our three organisations can work together more closely.

A Field Trip to the Heritage Coast – SPNHC2014

Today was a day of Field trips as a precursor to the conference proper. We gathered outside the museum with all the other field trip groups watching the filming crew milling about outside. The museum was closed but they were filming Dr. Who, which was quite cool.

Our excursion was sponsored by the GCG and headed up by Cindy Howells of the National Museum of Wales. Our first stop was Dunraven Bay, where the Jurassic Blue Lias strata sits upon the Carboniferous limestone. The Dunraven fault – a reverse fault – has pushed the Lower Jurassic Sutton Stone up against the Blue Lias with some amazing crumpled folding patterns. This area was mostly underwater during the Jurassic, with only the highest hills projecting above sea level as a series of island chains. As a result, the fossils are mostly aquatic species: lots of Gryphaea; a good number of ammonites; the occasional ichthyosaur and plesiosaur (we were not lucky enough to find either); scattered bits of crinoid everywhere… and no belemnites at all! Where are the belemnites, why have none ever been found in the region?

Next we drove a few miles down the coast to Ogmore by Sea, residential home to a number of mating pairs of wild ravens! As we ate the remains of our packed lunches I watched a raven repeatedly harass a big gull. The Tower of London ravens are significantly bigger than the wild ones here but the Ogmore ravens are still spectacular birds and clearly intelligent.

A few hundred yards down the road brought us into Carboniferous limestone covered by a strange type of rock, which our guides described as an “angular conglomerate” or Breccia. It looks like raw cement and was deposited in the Triassic, when Wales was an equatorial desert. The deposit indicates a cataclysmic monsoon event. I can imagine early dinosaurs hoping to find water, only to learn the old lesson: be careful what you wish for!

We saw lots more incredible geology but it was a lot to take in and alas my head was still absorbing the Triassic landscape to take it all in. The scorching heat didn’t help either. I’d very much like to return another day, there are dinosaur footprints out there.

Looking forward to tomorrow and the start of the SPNHC2014 talks. I’ll keep you updated on these too.

An Audience with Lyuba – the Mammoths come to London

What better way to spend a gloriously sunny day than to wander around a museum exhibition indoors? Doesn’t sound ideal? How about if I rephrase it: what better way to spend any day, regardless of the fickle favours of weather, than to stand in the presence of a 40 000 year-old baby mammoth! Considering she died at the tender age of one month, Lyuba has had a very eventful ‘life’: discovered by a reindeer herder; sold to a nearby shop; worried by local dogs; and now she’s travelled thousands of miles to be the centrepiece of the Natural History Museum‘s latest temporary exhibition: Mammoths – Ice Age Giants.

Taking photographs of Lyuba was prohibited, so you will have to see her. Fortunately the rest of the exhibition was a photography free-for-all. There were some lovely members of the elephant’s ancestry present, including my favourite: the shovel-faced gomphothere Platybelodon. Flora and fauna that shared their world with the mammoth also made an appearance, including a staggering reconstruction of a rearing cave bear. It is easy to see why Neandertal culture was so obsessed with them.

The whole exhibition is well worth seeing. You can tell people how big mammoths are but, until you stand under their tusks it is hard to conceptualise. The real reason to go is of course to see Lyuba. Lyuba has told us so much already: the gestation period of mammoths (22 months, similar to a modern elephant); that mammoth mothers probably fed faeces to their young, just as modern elephants do, to aid in the cultivation of digestion-assisting bacteria in the gut; that mammoths have brown fat at the back of the neck…

The Americans were not so lucky and had to make do with a model of her. The guys on the door speculated that she came here because the museum sent a specimen on loan to Russia in return – the moon rock perhaps. Whatever the circumstance, we are lucky to have her. For some of us this may be the only chance we get to see her: to gaze upon the underside of her trunk and observe just how… Elephant-like her trunk wrinkles are; to see the little tufts of hair surviving in her inner ear.

Autism and Museums

Today we have Claire Madge, museum volunteer and mum of three, who kindly agreed to let me interview her about autism and museums.

Claire Madge’s blog – Tincture of Museum

Q. How aware were you of autism before your daughter was diagnosed?

A. I wasn’t really aware of autism before my daughter was diagnosed in 2012, certainly not the way it affects individuals and the impact it has on the whole family.

It took a year from first asking for help to receiving a diagnosis. For many years I just thought my daughter was ‘difficult’ and I was a ‘bad mother’ for struggling to cope. She is my eldest, so I had nothing to compare her to, I certainly wasn’t aware of the signs. I remember buying many books like ‘How to raise a happy toddler’, desperately trying to find out what I was doing wrong.

Q. She has Aspergers is that right? How does this differ from other forms of autism?

A. She officially has a diagnosis of Autistic Spectrum Disorder or ASD, sometimes this is also referred to as Autistic Spectrum Condition or ASC. It is a lifelong developmental disability that affects how she communicates and relates to other people, it also impacts on how she makes sense of the world. Because it is a spectrum condition it affects individuals in very different ways. They can be non-verbal with profound learning disabilities needing full time care, whilst some can lead relatively independent lives.

Aspergers is a form of autism, individuals can have average or above average intelligence with no delay in language development but may struggle with social communication, interaction and social imagination.

Q. What sort of challenges does a parent of an autistic child face when taking them out for the day?

A. Autistic children take comfort from routine and familiar surroundings. Going anywhere new, or changing that routine can be challenging and cause anxiety. If we are going out to a museum we haven’t visited before, if we are going on holiday or anything different we have to prepare my daughter by talking about what we will be doing and, where possible, showing her pictures of where we are going and what we will see when we get there.

Autistic children often have sensory sensitivities including sounds, sights and smells, this can also make getting out and about very difficult and stressful.

It can be hard to anticipate problems, which can make planning a successful day out really hard. We took a trip to a museum that had a faint tweeting bird song sound track, my daughter started screaming that it was hurting her ears, and she had a panic attack. We hadn’t really experienced anything like that with her before and it was very frightening.

Sometimes if she is anxious it seems to heighten these sensory sensitivities, which can makes life very unpredictable.

Q. You have said in the past that most museums often don’t cater for the needs of autistic visitors. Is that specifically children or do you feel that they are not catering for adults with autism either?

A. Museums in general don’t really cater for adults with autism. There may be the occasional specialist event or programme, but not a consistent approach, even within museums that run these events. Autism is a lifelong condition, children will not grow out of autism, they become adults with autism who need support, help and opportunities to live their lives to the full. According to a recent study, over 600,000 people are in the UK are living with autism, more than 1% of the population and they are not being catered for in museums¹.

Q. What could museums be doing better for these visitors?

A. Basic, simple steps can make a massive difference for autistic visitors, so awareness and understanding of how autism affects the visitors to your museum is a great first step. It is not about radically changing your gallery spaces and the programmes that you run. It is about preparing autistic visitors with visual stories on your website, warning visitors if exhibitions have bright lights or loud noises. Providing quiet spaces with minimal sensory stimulation.

It is not just about autistic visitors, but volunteers too. Only 15% of people with autism are in full time employment, despite the fact that 79% of people with autism who are on out of work benefits want to work². Welcoming autistic volunteers is one way museums can help, providing fantastic opportunities for individuals to get work experience in a supportive environment.

People with autism often have obsessions. Common examples include: computers; trains; cars; historical events; dates; and science. Obsessions often provide order, structure and predictability, they can be a route to relaxation and a conversation starter that aids social interaction. Ultimately I would like to see museums thinking creatively about using their collections to actively engage with autistic visitors who will often know more about collections than the curators!

Q. Which museums, if any, are getting it right?

A. There were a number of museums mentioned recently in the Museums Association Journal article³ who are running great programmes to engage autistic visitors and volunteers, including the Mary Rose Museum, the Museum of London and the Museum of Oxford.

From my own experience the Science Museum run a fantastic ‘Early Birds’ programme, where they open up the museum at 8.30am, exclusively for autistic children and their families. Many families are visiting the Science Museum for the first time because of the Early Birds events, they are reaching families who are isolated and feel they can’t visit museums during normal opening hours. We went together as a family and it was the first time we had all been to the Science Museum, it was a wonderful, memorable morning that my children won’t forget.

I have spent time talking to staff who run and work the Early Birds events and what impresses me is that they want autistic visitors to feel welcome and relaxed in the museum environment. It is not an event that ends and families have to leave, they are encouraged to stay, as the museum opens to the public, if they want to. It is a truly inclusive approach that I really admire.

I can’t explain how important it is to be able to go out as a family and visit a museum. It seems like a simple thing, but to have a day out together, in a supportive environment, is important not just for my 10 year old autistic daughter but for my 6 year old and my 3 year old too who so often miss out on the kind of experiences that other families take for granted.

Science Museum by Christine Matthews, 2008

Q. What do you think is the biggest obstacle to making improvements in this area?

A. The mistaken belief that it will cost a lot of money to welcome autism into your museum. The Science Museum do receive funding to run their Early Birds programme but not all museums are as busy as the Science Museum. Sometimes it can be as simple as putting up on the museum website when the quiet times are or which are the quieter galleries.

Putting a visual story on your website is not an expensive exercise but can really benefit autistic visitors. Some good examples are listed below⁴.

Ultimately there seems to be a fear of the unknown – autism is a wide spectrum and it can be hard to tailor events to cater for everyone. The reality is that you can’t cater for everyone with one event. You can only consult with local autism groups, listen to what they need, see what you can do. If you do run events, evaluation is absolutely crucial and the best way to see what works and what doesn’t.

If you just share with your staff information about what autism is and how it affects individuals, the problems they can face when visiting your museum, then that is a massive step forward. Awareness really helps, a bit of understanding goes a long way and costs absolutely nothing.

I’d like to thank Claire for taking the time to talk to us about this subject. I highly recommend her blog for more on this and her museum volunteering adventures. I’d also really like to hear from you all: does your museum have any interesting autism-related projects that we should know about?

References

Vikings: Life and Legend – a Review

This post will be accompanied by LEGO illustrations as we were not permitted to take photographs inside the exhibition.

When it comes to archaeology / anthropology exhibits I’m not the easiest audience to please. Unless the people in question had some serious interaction with the local wildlife I lose interest fast. Fortunately the Scandinavian people do not disappoint in this regard. As soon as you enter the first room you are greeted by a pair of walrus tusks, representing the primary source of Viking ivory, which they carved into all manner of things from game pieces and dice to religious objects and scabbard decorations. They traded ivory, pretty stones such as Jet, and furs – across Europe, the Middle East, and North America. There were some lovely black fox skins available for stroking. One can only imagine how quickly these will be reduced to a sticky mess. Their tools were often fashioned from animal parts too: the whale baculum (penis bone) was used as an axe handle.

We normally associate the Vikings as loud, war-obsessed drunks but their culture seems to have abhorred loud, idiotic behaviour. They did have a proud warrior tradition, in which it was noble to die in battle and shameful to die in bed. A child would be given an unsheathed sword from his father and told that his sole inheritance was whatever he could gain with this sword. Most of our English mediæval ancestors would have associated with the Vikings as raiders – even the word means “raider” or “pirate”.

They were by no means invincible: in Weybridge there were found some 30-35 Viking men, buried unceremoniously together. Carbon dating puts them near 1000 AD and it seems these men were the entire crew of a Viking raiding party that lost. Some of the bones are on display in the exhibition – including one hyper-arctic adapted chap with a very robust femur compared to his friends. According to written accounts of Vikings going to battle, they were often accompanied by ravens, which they referred to as the “wound-grouse” (fantastic name). The ravens got food in abundance from this arrangement but I wonder what was in it for the Vikings.

The centrepiece of the exhibit is of course the large longship Roskilde 6, according to some sources the largest Viking vessel of its kind. The norm seems to be 16 pairs of oars and shields, which is why I depicted this in my illustration, rather than almost double that, aka Roskilde 6. She’s an impressive ship. The Vikings made lightweight ships that could be carried over small obstacles, row into shallow water down to a metre deep, and can be reversed easily by simply rowing in the opposite direction, as the stern cut the water just as easily as the bow. It seems modern ships have made a commitment to going one way and turning is a much more difficult enterprise than it used to be. I have a question for any maritime engineering experts we may have reading this: what have we gained in sacrificing these benefits? I’m assuming there’s a trade-off there somewhere.

If I had criticisms, they would be the flow of traffic round the first room, and the use of microphones on the fire alarm which, in some areas, was barely comprehendable due to vocal distortion plus echo from the building acoustics. In conclusion, if you haven’t got yourself down to the British Museum and seen it yourself yet I would recommend it. It’s finishing on the 22nd of this month so do head down there sooner rather than later.

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