Curation, Curation, Curation...

Story board planning used in the pitch.

Hello again all. This week began for us Heritage students with the pitching of our video ideas to Yorkshire Museum Curator of Archaeology Natalie McCaul, and also prior to that, a pitch at the Kings Manor (our base) to John Schofield the Head of the Department of Archaeology. They both gave us some constructive feedback on our plans and possible leads to follow up on for enhancing our videos.

With the pitches done our day was then focused on finishing curating the display cabinets that we had began to produce on Thursday the week before. For me this involved working in a group with Adam, a heritage student working within the other heritage video group, to create a mini exhibition of the Star Carr finds that the museum currently possessed. This consisted of an animal bone, a single barbed point, an elk mattock replica and varying flints; we also had Clarke's excavation book. This exercise was used to help give us some first hand experience of curating, and the thought processes involved in doing so.

Picture taken by Sara Perry of the Heritage Field School

As part of creating a Star Carr display cabinet we had to produce some informative labels. We wanted these to include some interesting facts to help the viewer understand the wider context for example the fact that 195 barbed points were found at Star Carr and this makes up 95% of all the known ones from the National Museum. Because we had so little artefacts to work with we used Clarke's book displayed behind de single barbed point, to emphasise just how many were found at the site and to help display the small object in an aesthetically pleasing way. We arranged the flints we were given to demonstrate the process of knapping moving in a circle from cores to microliths at the very edge. 

The next step now will be to prepare for actually going out into the field with our cameras, the gather the footage needed for the videos! 

Our display cabinet of the Star Carr artefacts.