Projects landing page

[[{"fid":"10147","view_mode":"medium","fields":{"format":"medium","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":"Colour photo of a white bird rattle from the Petrie Collection ","field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":"","field_caption_heading[und][0][title]":"","field_caption_heading[und][0][url]":"","field_caption[und][0][value]":"","field_float_left_right[und]":"right","field_file_image_decorative[und]":"0"},"link_text":null,"type":"media","field_deltas":{"1":{"format":"medium","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":"Colour photo of a white bird rattle from the Petrie Collection ","field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":"","field_caption_heading[und][0][title]":"","field_caption_heading[und][0][url]":"","field_caption[und][0][value]":"","field_float_left_right[und]":"right","field_file_image_decorative[und]":"0"}},"attributes":{"height":"1094","width":"1458","class":"media-element file-medium"}}]]Using everyday artefacts from the Petrie Museum including bells, whistles, shoes and toys, this research aims to transform our understanding of social experience, social relations, and cultural interactions, among the populations of Egypt in this period.A project team comprising Dr Ellen Swift, Dr April Pudsey, and Dr Jo Stoner, is studying artefacts from the Petrie collection to explore what daily life at this time might have felt and sounded like. In 2019, they are presenting some of their findings in a free exhibition at the Petrie Museum at UCL. The Petrie Museum has one of the largest and best-documented collections of Roman artefacts in the UK. It contains more than 8,000 objects from this period. This project examines the features of artefacts, the materials they were made from, and evidence of modification that shows how they were used and re-used in daily life. In association with the study of papyrus texts, the team is investigating social behaviour and experience to shed new light on daily life in Roman and Late Antique Egypt. [[{"fid":"10151","view_mode":"medium","fields":{"height":"1608","width":"1206","class":"media-element file-medium","format":"medium","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":"Colour photo of a technician scanning objects in the Petrie Museum ","field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":"","field_caption_heading[und][0][title]":"","field_caption_heading[und][0][url]":"","field_caption[und][0][value]":"","field_float_left_right[und]":"left","field_file_image_decorative[und]":"0"},"link_text":null,"type":"media","field_deltas":{"1":{"height":"1608","width":"1206","class":"media-element file-medium","format":"medium","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":"Colour photo of a technician scanning objects in the Petrie Museum ","field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":"","field_caption_heading[und][0][title]":"","field_caption_heading[und][0][url]":"","field_caption[und][0][value]":"","field_float_left_right[und]":"left","field_file_image_decorative[und]":"0"}},"attributes":{"height":"1608","width":"1206","class":"media-element file-medium"}}]]The research brings together specialists in the interpretation of ancient Egyptian texts on papyrus, and archaeological artefacts, drawing on new methodologies and interpretative approaches, including the experimental recreation of objects. The researchers are investigating how experiences may have differed between children, adults, slaves, women, men, and people of different social and ethnic groups. Evidence of wear and repair will reveal both aspects of practical daily use, and personal and sentimental meanings that may have been attached to objects such as dress accessories, shoes, toys, and simple musical instruments. To keep up to date with the project’s progress and research activities, please visit the blog.Also on the blog there are soundscapes that you can listen to. New information about the objects in the Petrie’s collection discovered through this ongoing research will be made available through the museum’s online catalogue. Please note the catalogue is currently being updated and will be fully restored in spring 2019.   Images on this page: Project ceramic replica of a Roman bird rattle from the Petrie Museum (UC34972) © Lloyd Bosworth; University of Kent archaeology technician laser scans Roman objects in the Petrie Museum © Jo Stoner 

Timekeeper in ResidenceWhat does time look like to you? As soon as we try to picture time the irony is that we transform it into space, which means it's no longer time. What’s more, the images and objects we use to comprehend time shape our attitude to the past, our sense of what is to come, and perhaps even what it is to be human. A Storm is Blowing by artist-curator Cathy Haynes is an improvised 3D diagram that strings together 35 different historical pictures and models of time, some found (above) and some made for the installation. They include an ancient Egyptian game of life in the form of a coiled snake, a miniature multi-dimensional trapeze act, the future figured as a many-horned goat, a 5-metre chart of history as a stream, an astronomical wormhole, an 18th-century parent of the Facebook timeline, and its knotty antithesis. The installation is accompanied by A Report on Progress, a take-away booklet with text and drawings by Petrie’s Timekeeper.This installation is part of a creative research project at The Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, University College London. Supported with a new award from the Arts Humanities Research Council, artist-curator Cathy Haynes as Timekeeper in Residence has been exploring how time is mapped, measured, modeled and lived. Museums have traditionally used linear time concepts, such as chronological timelines, as a way of organizing their collections. Over the last few months this has been challenged in a series of public conversations between the Timekeeper as researcher and a variety of experts from astronomy to psychology, evolutionary genetics, theology, art history and philosophy. The project as a whole is a collaborative exploration of the alternatives to the museum timeline.Visit astormisblowing.org for more details and podcasts from the Timekeeper events.The timekeeper projectWhat does the museum timeline have to do with the novel Tristram Shandy? Why does Botox make time go faster? Is evolution really a march of progress? Why did the Ancients think the future is behind them? And why doesn’t the universe all tick to the same clock?These are just some of the questions to be explored in a new creative research project at The Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology based at University College London. Supported with a new award from the Arts Humanities Research Council, artist-curator Cathy Haynes as Timekeeper in Residence will explore how time is mapped, measured, modeled and lived. Museums have traditionally used linear time concepts, such as chronological timelines, as a way of organizing their collections. This will be challenged in a series of public conversations between the Timekeeper as researcher and a variety of experts from astronomy to psychology, evolutionary genetics, theology, art history and philosophy. Each conversation focuses on objects that give different experiences of time, from an ancient shadow clock in the Petrie’s collection to Facebook’s timeline format to a newspaper horoscope, encouraging debate on how competing time concepts can be used in museum presentation to present different philosophies, beliefs, realities and ideas. This in turn will challenge the way museums display their collections and offer new paths to explore.Listen to an interview with artist-curator Cathy Haynes, Timekeeper in Residence, on The Monocle Weekly. Visit the A Storm Is Blowing website for more details and podcasts from the Timekeeper events.