BURIED
When Civilizations fall, what happens to their material culture?
More often than not it's buried underground, along with the meaning and value the attributed to it. Even if the object is found, is it possible to restore the object's original meaning?
Assyrian Saucer Lamp
Excavators of Fort Shalmaneser, the ancient Assyrian site at which this lamp was found, dated its time of production to around the year 612 BC, the year in which Assyria was raided and looted by invading armies and its cities destroyed. This means that the lamp is likely to constitute one of the last items produced by the Assyrian empire.
Yet the lamp shows no evidence of having been lit, its rim (around which burn marks would have been expected to be present) being intact. What can this tell us about its original significance? A possibility, given its excavation from an area of the fort apparently used as for storage, is that it was produced, stored but never in fact used. Although a minor detail, further exploration of this may throw light on aspects of the social and material culture of Assyria.
Predynastic Egyptian Pot
Our Predynastic Egyptian Pot was buried in tomb 173 at the Gerzeh Burial site to the south west of the Nile basin. Burying objects with family members and friends was common practice in the history of many cultures, particularly Egypt - although Tutankhamun's reign occurred much later in time, just consider the finds of his tomb. This took our pot out of known history for nearly 5000 years, during which time the Roman Empire rose and fell, Henry VIII married all 6 of his wives and the British Empire had nearly managed to reach its apogee. Often burial goods accompanied the dead because they had significant meaning to the individual or their kith and kin. This object is perhaps unique among this collection due to the fact that it was lost for many years because of its contextual significance: not in spite of it.
DISCARDED
Are the things we throw away 'rubbish'?
Objects can be lost by through being deliberately thrown away. Some of our objects have been discarded as uninteresting or irrelevant at some point in their lives.
Death Mask
During the 1990s the Slade School of Fine Art threw many of their materials away, including the death mask, NOEL42, and the rest of the Noël Collection. Prior to this, the significance of the death mask had been lost, knowledge of its history forgotten and its value to historians not realised.
Hans Gruneberg's Mice Skeletons
These mice skeletons belonged to Hans Grüneberg (1907-1982), a German geneticist who worked at University College from 1933 to 1974. He used these specimens in the 1950's to show the effects of specific mutations on skeletal development to his students.
Shortly before his death in 1982, Grüneberg donated most of his research material to the Natural History Museum. The mice skeletons at hand were left in Wolfson House - the university building where Grüneberg worked - until 2011.
One could think of a range of reasons why this item was never placed in the Natural History Museum. The most likely explanation is that Grüneberg had dozens of similar mice skeletons, ad thus did not regard these as significant.
INSIGNIFICANT
Have you ever felt lost in a crowd?
Some objects are considered insignificant because there are, or were, so many of them. It might seem pointless to investigate its specific biography, or to even keep it around.
Predynastic Egyptian Pot
The Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology at UCL houses around 80,000 objects excavated from Egypt. Our pot is part of an exhibit which demonstrates Petrie's method of Relative Dating, and is therefore one of hundreds of pots on display in a room of the museum. Until now, no research has been performed into the biography of our pot, with researchers choosing instead to study it as part of the Gerzeh burial site or as an example of colonial rule through archaeological excavation. This object is lost as part of a group perhaps because people actively believe it to be insignificant or because of a general lack of interest.
Crookes' Tube
Crookes' Tubes like this one at UCL have been mass-produced since the 19th century and there are specimens in a vast amount of schools and museums all over the world. For this reason they are often seen as a mass-produced commodity and therefore less interesting. If you google 'Crookes' Tube' it is easy to find out about Crookes' Tubes in general, however the UCL Crookes' tube has very little information recorded about it. This shows that each individual tube is considered to be of little interest; they gain their identity as one of many.
MISUNDERSTOOD
Can you tell what an object is just by looking at it?
Some objects were not accessioned to a particular collection because they were not considered valuable, or they appeared to be something they were not.
Death Mask
At an unknown date during the 20th century, the Noël Collection, including this death mask, NOEL42, was transferred to the Slade School of Fine Art. It is not known why this occurred, but as a result (or perhaps because) knowledge of the Collection's history and what it is was lost.
The death mask was kept openly on a shelf in the Slade for many years, most likely used for teaching of cast-making or sketching. Throughout this time it is unlikely that anybody truly understood the biography of the death mask, the circumstances in which it was made and reasons for its existence.
'The Brown Dog Affair' Papers
‘The Brown Dog Affair’ documents are part of UCL’s own records. They were created by the Secretary of the Provost in 1955, and transferred to what was the Records Department and is now the Records Office. The Records Office and its holdings are not part of UCL Special Collections, although they both belong to the Library Services as of 2011. Thus, the object is not open to the public and has not been used in previous research.
Leonard Bayliss' written account of the affair has been catalogued by UCL Special Collections and is part of the College Collection. Other documents can be found in the UCL Special Collections regarding ‘The Brown Dog Affair’, such as the Bayliss Papers. However, the letters exchanged between Bayliss and the Provost Ifor Evans are not referred to, nor included in the collection.
Assyrian Saucer Lamp
This lamp was brought to London from Nimrud some time between 1958 and 1970 along with the majority of the Fort Shalmaneser finds; however, when transferred to the collection of UCL’s Institute of Archaeology, it was never formally accessioned, and as such carries no accession number. The only concrete information which the Institute could provide about it was its city of origin, Nimrud - as evidenced by the reference number written on its underside, ND6668.
It could be suggested that the refusal to add this object to the accession record reflects its perceived unimportance in relation to other finds made at Nimrud, a judgement that is arguably unfounded. A study of the role played by this lamp in the context of an Assyrian military fortress, and its use post-612 BC, could help to illuminate the more general history of the site, which is not yet comprehensively understood.