The Museum of London

July 14, 2008
http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/English/

Jonathan Cotton, the senior curator of the prehistory section of the museum, was kind enough to speak with us about his collection and let us explore the museum.

The current building which houses the Museum of London was built in the 1960's and 1970's, so it is a fairly new building, although it is already too small. This museum deals exclusively with the history of London. The institution is part of an older series of institutions - it was put together from the Guild Hall Museum, which dates from around 1825 and was set up by the library committee of the time, and the London Museum (a private institution in the Kensington Palace dating from 1911). They came together on the present site in the mid 1970's. Since 2000, they have opened a second site called Dockland which deals with the city as a port (the earliest part of that museum starts with the Romans and goes through the sugar and slave trade and Jack the Ripper). They also have a third site, the LAARC, in which archaeological archives are stored. That building houses 5,000 sets of site records.

The Museum of London is the world's largest urban history museum. Although the museum starts its galleries with a prehistory exhibit, most people think of the city's history as dating from the Romans. Mr. Cotton thinks this is due in part to the National Curriculum, which starts with the invaders and settlers (the Romans, Saxons, and Vikings) and leaves out prehistory.

Mr. Cotton explained how they try to customize the museum to fit the visitor demographic. The museum receives 400,000 visitors a year. Fifty percent of those are Londoners and schoolchildren, 10% are British non-Londoners, and 40% are foreign tourists, the majority of which are from English-speaking nations (former British colonies). For this reason (in addition to saving space and wanting to have less text), there is no non-English labeling or panels in the museum. He also explained that there are three reasons that most people visit the museum. The first are those who want to learn about 19th century or Victorian London. The second are those who are studying Tudor and Stuart London (16th and 17th century), and the third are those interested in Roman Londinium.

Since no one usually comes to the museum thinking about prehistory, they did a survey asking people what prehistory means. Thirty percent answered 'dinosaurs'. Others thought of the Flintstones or the Anglo-Saxons. Only five percent said the answer that they were looking for - that prehistory was the time before written records. (That makes prehistory a relative term. In Britain, prehistory is before the Romans, whereas in Australia, it would be before the arrival of Captain Cook.) Mr. Cotton wanted visitors to his gallery to think of prehistoric people as adaptable, sensitive, and ingenious people. They don't have any preserved bodies, but they do have a couple of skeletons, so to recreate the people, they had to look at objects instead. Mr. Cotton showed us the example of a clay pot decorated with thumbnail prints from around 3000 B.C. that was found in the Thames river. In holes in the neck of the pot, they found imprints of the tip of a finger and nail. It was likely the little finger of a woman, as women were responsible for pottery in many early societies, and her nails were very well kept. Unlike our traditional mental picture of prehistoric people as short, squatting types, Mr. Cotton believes they were more likely tall, wiry, and muscular - about our size, but perhaps slightly differently proportioned. He said that stunted growth was much more likely in the horrid workshop conditions of the Victorian era.

Mr. Cotton also discussed the power of place and landscape to move and effect humans. He showed a photograph of a huge man-made earth mound that makes a major statement in the landscape and was obviously sacred. He mentioned the problems with sites like Stonehenge and Seahenge (a circle of wooden posts in the water surrounding an upturned oak tree in the middle) - many people still see these sites as sacred and are not very keen on archaeologists trying to preserve or excavate those sites. Even excavating only reveals the mechanics of how the sites were created, not the reasons why they were made. Of course, many historic sites that have been excavated can't be on display in the Museum because they are currently under office buildings. This is true of the Rose Theatre.

The obvious London landmark is the Thames River, which was most likely a sacred river. They have dredged up all kinds of materials that have been thrown into it, most likely as funerary rites but perhaps for other reasons. People have once again began throwing things into the river in recent years - they have found Hindu deities and other religious icons in the waters (perhaps local Hindus are using the river as a substitute for the Ganges).

Mr. Cotton then told us of the changes that his prehistory gallery had undergone. Starting in the 1970's, they displayed flint tools, a section of recreated architecture, and sections on the Thames. They redid the exhibit in 1994 to put more focus on the people who lived during that time. A panel confronting misconceptions of prehistoric people dominated the exhibit. The exhibit had quite a lot of text as well as full-on displays that evoked a spot like an entrance to a roundhouse. It was also more hands-on, allowing visitors to touch some objects. In 2002, two new galleries were commissioned. One was the World City gallery (Victorian), and the other was the London before London gallery (prehistory). He and the other curators had to work with the designers that they had hired (retail designers, oddly enough) to create the space. They decided to predominately cover four messages: climate, the river, people, and legacy. Mr. Cotton said that it was at first problematic to work around the straight lines that the architects wanted, but they ended up liking the effect. They have a landscape external wall, freestanding plinths that tell the architectural story, and a river wall on the other side, which is what they feel people are most likely to remember. It displays objects that have been dredged out of the Thames River. For the landscape wall, they tried to recreate what people might have been thinking by delving into creation myths. They have samples of texts and poetry on the walls in addition to objects (more than one by Mr. Cotton himself). Mr. Cotton says that the text has drawn mixed reactions from visitors. Some like the poems, while others think that they are pretentious.

It was very enjoyable to look around the prehistory section of the museum and see some of the things that he had discussed. I think it would be very hard to organize and display a collection with such a magnitude of historical significance. They seem to have managed very effectively. I also explored the other open areas of the museum - Romans, Medieval, and the London Fire. The exhibits were supplemented in many places by room recreations, audio sound clips, and videos, which I found enhanced the galleries.

Old Roman wall right outside the Museum: