The Portable Antiquities Scheme

The British Museum has undergone some extensive work over the last year or so. One of the latest additions are British Sign Language videos which were produced by students from Frank Barnes Primary School for Deaf children. They worked with Museum staff to give their own interpretations of African masks and headdresses, the Assyrian lion hunt reliefs and the Parthenon sculptures.

You can see the videos at the links below. To activate the BSL sign language videos, you need to click on the BSL link above the description. This activates a sliding shelf to display the video. Unfortuantely, you need flash and javascript enabled to make this work.

http://www.britishmuseum.org/learning/schools_and_teachers/school_projects/bsl_project.aspx

HIGHLIGHT OBJECT VIDEOS
You can now watch BSL translations of 18 of the Museum’s highlight objects.

See the full list of videos:
http://www.britishmuseum.org/about_this_site/accessibility/bsl.aspx

Lewis chessmen
Probably made in Norway, about AD 1150-1200 -
http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/highlight_objects/pe_mla/t/the_lewis_chessmen.aspx

Rosetta stone
From Fort St Julien, Egypt Ptolemaic Period, 196 BC
Watch: http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/highlight_objects/aes/t/the_rosetta_stone.aspx

Feather bonnet of Yellow Calf
Arapaho, about AD 1927, from the American West
Watch:
http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/highlight_objects/aoa/f/feather_bonnet_of_yellow_calf.aspx

Bronze figure of Tara
Found Sri Lanka, 8th century AD
Watch:
http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/highlight_objects/asia/g/gilded_bronze_figure_of_tara.aspx

OpenCalais helped to tag this with: British Museum • Fort St Julien • Frank Barnes Primary School for Deaf • Norway • Tara Found Sri • the Parthenon

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One of our ex Finds Liaison Officers, Faye Simpson, is now pursuing a PhD at the University of Exeter and regularly presenting on Time Team. She’s asked me to publicise this free conference.

Community Archaeology in South West England
Free Conference held at Exeter University on the 21st of February 2009.

For abstract submissions and registration please see their website or contact Faye Simpson at fs216@exeter.ac.uk.

The South West of England has a plethora of innovative community archaeology projects working within the region to provide archaeological outreach to local communities. These archaeological outreach and education projects are varied in both there approaches and organisation. They range from ‘grass roots’ projects initiated and organised by interested amateurs, individuals and local societies, to ‘top down approaches’ by commercial archaeology firms and universities. Furthermore, they include a range of hands on activities such as standing building surveys, historical research, field-walking, oral history projects, excavations and finds processing, to name just a few.

As hosts, the Heritage Lottery Fund and University of Exeter’s Exploring Archaeology Project (XArch), provides the means in which the conference can act as a forum to discuss the variety of community initiatives in the South West of England, and assess how they work in practice. It will also open up communication between these different individuals, groups and organisations as to where the future lies for community archaeology in this region, and investigate the possibility of partnerships between these groups and projects.

Abstracts for papers should be no longer the 200 words in length and should be received by the 30.09.08.

OpenCalais helped to tag this with: Exeter University • Faye Simpson • Heritage Lottery

Possibly related posts: Scheme newsletters • CBA community archaeology forum launched • Archaeology and Education conference [CBA] •

The forthcoming Hadrian exhibition is now starting to generate quiet a lot of coverage in the press. The RSS feed from Yahoo! (Google has tables in their markup and that ruined my aesthethics ) incorporated into this post updates with the latest news stories relating to the exhibition. Happy reading

Last night also saw Dan Snow on BBC2 talking about Hadrian, if you missed it and you're able to use iplayer then you can watch it again. Broadcast news comments on the documentary:

BBC2's new historical documentary Hadrian was in a commanding position on Saturday with 2.2m viewers (11.1%) in an 8pm slot.

RSS feed of news articles for "Hadrian exhibition".

Mirror.co.uk's Monday gossip round-up - today's top showbiz (Daily Mirror)
Monday morning and we here are Mirror.co.uk’s Showbiz Towers are pondering on how we can never quite escape the cult of celebrity, even over a weekend when we’re seemingly a million miles from the glitzy world of fame.
All roads lead to... (BBC News)
What the Romans did for us - gave us the congestion charge
What the Romans did for us: No great buildings but language (BBC News)
Roads, obviously. Sanitation. But no great buildings from their time in Britain. But the greatest legacy is how we use language to persuade, says Lisa Jardine.
You write the reviews: Hadrian: Empire And Conflict, British Museum, London (Independent)
Hadrian: Empire and Conflict, the second of four major exhibitions at the British Museum on rulers who shaped the world in which we now live, presents us with a problem. What are we to make of an admirer of Greek culture who, shortly after taking office, withdrew Roman troops from Mesopotamia, commissioned innovative and beautiful buildings and honoured his male lover with evocative statues, ...
Hadrian: Empire And Conflict (RainbowNetwork.com)
The British Museum's latest blockbuster show, Hadrian: Empire and Conflict , has a lot to live up to.
Hadrian and the limits of empire (Socialist Worker)
Insurrection in the cities of Iraq. Mass resistance across Palestine. Foreign troops bogged down and facing defeat. A crisis for western imperialism in the Middle East.
The artful ticket-dodger (Guardian Unlimited)
Times are tough. The opera don't come for free. Can Stephen Moss survive a week of intensive arts-going armed with just £50, a Thermos and a packed lunch?
The artful ticket-dodger (Guardian Unlimited)
Culture: Can Stephen Moss survive a week of arts-going with just £50, a Thermos and a packed lunch?
My Week In Media: Saree Makdisi (Independent)
Last week I watched... Hadrian on BBC2. I love that type of historical documentary, and I'm going to the exhibition at the British Museum. He had such a big impact on Britain, both because of the wall and his imperial policy.
Hadrian, British Museum, London (Independent)
A few words of scene-setting might be handy, especially for those who spent the periods devoted to post-Augustan Rome staring out of the classroom window. The Emperor Hadrian – more formally, Publius Aelius Hadrianus (born AD76; ruled from 117 until his death in AD138) – has had a pretty good press across the centuries, except from historians of the Jews, who remember his savage crushing of a ...

OpenCalais helped to tag this with: British Museum • Dan Snow • Google • hadrian • http://tinyurl.com/5ruupl • Yahoo!

Possibly related posts: Hadrian on TV • Hadrian MP4 trailer • Hadrian exhibition at the British Museum •

This just came through in our office notices and might be of interest to those with a Romanist stance.

'Hadrian' - Saturday 19th July, BBC2, 20:00

As the British Museum prepares to launch its spectacular exhibition on the emperor Hadrian, Dan Snow takes us on a journey around Hadrian's vast empire. As he does so, he uncovers the genius and the darker side of the man: peace-maker, frontier-builder, star-crossed lover, architect - and ruthless oppressor of the Jews. But still, says Dan, "One of the greatest of all Roman Emperors."

OpenCalais helped to tag this with: British Museum • Dan Snow • Roman Emperors

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I just saw this on the Britarch list, in amongst the ire being directed at the awful Bonekickers series. In a roundabout way, we're sort of connected to this.....

The 1st September will see the deadline for this year's Young Archaeologist of the Year Award 2008 entries. This competition is organised by the Young Archaeologists' Club (YAC) and is open to young people in the UK, Channel Islands and the Isle of Man between the ages of 8 and 16 years old (there are three categories; 8-11, 12-16, and groups). Every year the challenge has a different theme, this year's being archaeological illustration.
YAC are thrilled to announce that the individual category (both age groups) will be judged by Time Team illustrator Victor Ambrus. Victor had this to say about the award, "I am very much looking forward to seeing the entries submitted for the Young Archaeologist of the Year Award competition. Young Archaeologists frequently turn up on Time Team digs and get really involved in the trenches. These young people are the next generation of archaeologists and I hope that some of them will be the next generation of illustrators as well!"

The group category will be judged by Roger Bland, Head of Portable Antiquities and Treasure at the British Museum.

The winners of the Individual categories will be given their awards at the British Archaeological Award ceremony on the 10th November which is being held at the British Museum. This all expenses paid trip to the award ceremony is part of the winners' prize in addition to other goodies and behind the scenes activities at the museum. The winners of the group award will win a range of goodies as well as an all-expenses paid, behind-the-scenes visit to a nearby property owned by National Trust if in England or Wales, The National Trust for Scotland or Historic Scotland if in Scotland, a similar organisation if on the Channel Islands and Manx Heritage on the Isle of Man.

The entries for this annual competition are always of a very high standard and we are sure that this year will be no different. We look forward to announcing the winners mid September.

OpenCalais helped to tag this with: British Museum • Channel Islands • Isle of Man • Roger Bland • Scotland • The National Trust • United Kingdom • Victor Ambrus • Wales • Young Archaeologists' Club

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