Collection: Garstang Museum of Archaeology

Collection-level records:

• Collection history (Collection development policy)

  The origins of the museum lie with the creation, in 1904, of the Liverpool Institute of Archaeology, which was then affiliated to the University of Liverpool. The Institute comprised a number of departments, usually consisting of a single member of staff, which undertook a combination of research, fieldwork and some teaching. At that time the Institute was largely funded and supported by a number of benefactors, drawn mainly from the Liverpool mercantile community, many of them serving on its General Committee. From the outset the Institute possessed its own library and museum, both intended to support the work of the staff and the instruction of its students.

  The Institute’s management also comprised a number of excavation committees, which at various times funded the fieldwork of the Institute’s staff. At the start of the Institute such committees were not integral to it. Later some of them were affiliated to it. Such excavation committees were made up of some of the same individuals who supported the Institute and served on its General Committee. As a rule, members of the excavation committees usually funded the fieldwork of that committee, almost as ‘shareholder investors’, and as a consequence could expect, after agreement had been reached with the various national antiquities services concerned, to receive a proportion of the artefacts recovered by that particular excavation. Institute staff, usually John Garstang, whom the museum is named after, would also receive a proportion of the material sent back to Liverpool and which they might dispose of as they saw fit. Garstang, for example, was generous in dispersing his finds among different museums and collectors in the United Kingdom and overseas as well as advertising for applications to receive objects. Some of the ‘shareholder’s’ material might be displayed as loans in the Institute, and later be gifted, bequeathed or sold to it or removed and sold on. It is for these reasons why much of Garstang’s discoveries are now so widely dispersed in other museum and private collections.

  In 1941, like much of the city, Liverpool University was bombed. In one raid the Institute’s Archaeology Museum was damaged leading to the temporary dispersal of parts of the collection to safer locations in the city under the management of Liverpool Public Museums, later Mersey County Museums (1974) and then, in 1986, as part of the National Museums & Galleries on Merseyside. After the War, some of that material was subsequently returned, while others parts have since been transferred permanently to what is now National Museums Liverpool.

  In 1948 the original Institute of Archaeology was merged with the University’s School of Oriental Studies to become the School of Archaeological & Oriental Studies (SAOS). In 1990 SAOS and the School of Classics & Ancient History were combined to create the School of Archaeology, Classics & Oriental Studies (SACOS) and which was subsequently renamed, in 2003, SACE. In 2004 what was then simply the SACE Museum was officially renamed the Garstang Museum of Archaeology in recognition of the centenary of the introduction of the systematic study of archaeology in the University of Liverpool.

  The various collections that are now curated in the Garstang Museum are derived from the following sources:

  • Material deposited by Institute staff as a consequence of their fieldwork, principally that of Garstang and including some of his pre-1904 Institute work (e.g. that undertaken on behalf of Flinders Petrie’s Egypt Research Account, and his own other non-affiliated work), and deposited mainly up to the time of the Second World War.
  • Material donated by the ‘benefactors’ and ‘shareholders’ on the various Institute excavation committees.
  • Non-Institute fieldwork material donated by others or else received because the University, Institute or School had funded the work that generated it.
  • Material, either originals or copies, purchased by the Institute or on its behalf by its staff and benefactors.

  Source: Collection development policy

  Date: 2020

  Licence: CC BY-NC

• Collection overview (Collection development policy)

  The Garstang Museum consists of two overlapping collections: its various collections of objects derived from archaeology fieldwork; and the paper and photographic archive which in the main relates to much of that fieldwork. There is also an extensive archive of material pertinent to the origins and history of the Institute of Archaeology.

  Egypt and Nubian Sites

  The greater part of the Egyptian collections comes from the excavations of John Garstang, and those of Sir Robert Mond conducted in the name of the former Liverpool Institute of Archaeology. The principal sites excavated by Garstang, which have contributed significantly to the Garstang Museum’s holdings are Abydos, Beni Hasan, Hierakonpolis, Naqada, Esna and Meroë (Sudan). The collections have been subsequently enhanced by a number of gifts, most notably of the Grant (Bey) material, the James Smith Collection (acquired in 1927 and consisting of material from Garstang excavations) and of material from the excavations of the Egypt Exploration Society.

  The Egyptian and Sudanese material comprises over 10,000 objects/object groups.

  Also held in the Garstang Museum is over 4,000 photographic negatives and prints relating to John Garstang and Aylward Blackman’s excavations in Egypt and Sudan.

  Near Eastern Sites (The Levant and Anatolia)

  There are a significant number of objects from Garstang’s work at Jericho in the 1930s and from the excavations conducted by Kathleen Kenyon on behalf of the British School of Archaeology at Jerusalem and with the support of this University. An important group of Near Eastern seals was donated by R.W. Hutchinson (1894-1970, Lecturer in Classical Archaeology at the University from 1948).

  The Near Eastern Collection numbers 700 objects/object groups.

  Also held in the Garstang Museum is over 850 photographic negatives and prints relating to John Garstang excavations in the Levant and Anatolia.

  Classical and other Mediterranean material

  The classical material consists of mainly pot sherds along with lead votive objects, clay sculpture, glass and stelae plus some casts which were purchased in the years before the First World War.

  Most of this material consists of gifts of (parts of the) personal collections of the professors R.C. Bosanquet (1871-1935) and J. Droop (1882-1963), successively the Institute’s Professors of Classical Archaeology (1906-1920 and 1921-1948) and of Mr RW Hutchinson. Bosanquet’s and especially Hutchinson’s collections form the core of the Aegean antiquities.

  The Classical and Mediterranean collection numbers 1000 objects/object groups.

  Prehistoric and Roman sites in Britain

  At various times the Institute and later on the University have been involved in fieldwork in the United Kingdom. The Garstang Museum therefore holds small collections of material related to prehistoric and Roman sites from Britain. This is in addition to objects obtained as purchases or gifts from other non-Liverpool affiliated projects.

  The Prehistoric collection numbers 660 objects/object groups, while the Roman Britain collection is not currently fully catalogued.

  Ethnographic Material

  Winifrid Blackman (1872-1950), undertook in the 1920s and 1930s research into Egyptian peasant society. Held in the Garstang Museum is over 3,500 of her photographic negatives and prints and a large quantity of her correspondence, objects and notebooks relating to her travels, Egyptian folklore, magic and charms as well as catalogues of tattoo designs.

  The Ethnographic collection numbers over 3,700 objects/object groups.

  The Coin Collection

  The Institute of Archaeology’s original Department of Numismatics was created in 1908 and remained active until 1935. The bulk of the collection was acquired up to this time and especially at the start of the Institute when several Liverpool notables donated their private collections. The coins consists of chiefly Celtic British, Greek, Hellenistic, Roman Republican and Imperial, and Parthian/Sassanian.

  The coin collection numbers around 1500 coins.

  Source: Collection development policy

  Date: 2020

  Licence: CC BY-NC