The Changing Landscape of Swansea Bay Stacey Owen, 21 March 2017 Standing on what felt like the top of the world and slowly regaining our breaths back, they were soon taken away again when looking at the awe inspiring landscape of Whiteford Sands in Swansea Bay.Swansea Museum is working on a project called ‘The Lost Treasures of Swansea Bay’, which is funded by the help of the ‘Saving Treasures; Telling Stories’ project. Saving Treasures is funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund which is acquiring archaeological objects for local and national collections, providing training for heritage professionals and volunteers and engaging local communities with their pasts.Last week the museum teamed up with young people from Swansea YMCA, The National Trust and The Glamorgan Gwent Archaeology Trust to hike around Whiteford Sands in the Gower area of Swansea Bay. This walk was intended to give us an understanding of the changing landscape of Swansea Bay since the Bronze Age. Young people from Swansea YMCA, The National Trust and The Glamorgan Gwent Archaeology Trust members are gearing up for a hike in the Whiteford sands area in Swansea. The LandscapeCorinne Benbow is a National Trust Ranger and she led the first half of the walk up a very steep hill in order to get the best viewpoints overlooking the beach and woodland areas.Corinne explained that what we could see was quite unspoiled, she said: “You’re looking at quite an ancient landscape and it wouldn’t have changed that much since the Bronze Age.”Pointing over towards the coastline, Corinne spoke about how the landscape has slightly changed over the years.“This piece of land is actually brand new and doesn’t belong to anyone as it has only appeared over the last twenty-five years; that’s because of the sand being washed in and building up. The new dunes get washed away and are then re-built back up; so it’s always shifting, but is basically the same as it’s been for thousands of years.” The view of the Bay from above Hidden SecretsAfter a lunch break and water painting session of the landscape, we continued our walks through the woods, over the sand dunes and onto the pebbly beach. It was here where Paul Huckfield, an archaeologist from the Glamorgan Gwent Archaeology Trust, revealed some hidden treasures found on the beach.Paul said: “We are currently stood on a prehistoric ground surface which was originally a forest. This dates back to the late Mesolithic, early Neolithic age at around 5000-4000 BC. As you can see the remains of the trees around you are still here.”At a first glance you would assume the trees were drift wood washed ashore, but they were in fact, alder trees almost 7000 years old. Paul explained how the landscape which is currently a sandy beach area would have actually been a woodland area similar to the one we walked through. Why were they a secret?Nobody knew these 7000 year old trees even existed until they were found between 2010- 2012 when the beach lost some of its sand and the trees came to light. Standing on Prehistoric ground surface. The Saving Treasures; Telling Stories Project is a partnership project between Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales, The Federation of Museums and Art Galleries of Wales (The FED) and the Portable Antiquities Scheme in Wales (PAS Cymru) promoting the portable archaeological heritage of Wales through acquiring finds made by the public. The project secured Heritage Lottery Grant funding in October 2014 through the Collecting Cultures programme and runs for five years.It will help Swansea Museum to acquire and safeguard items of portable heritage with special significance to Swansea Bay for the people of Swansea. It will also enable the museum to work with local communities to engage with and explore these treasures and to find out more about Swansea Bay
Voices from the Archives: Lambing in Pembrokeshire, 1984 Gareth Beech Senior Curator: Rural Economy, 17 March 2017 The Voices from the Archives series is based on recordings in the Oral History Archive at St Fagans National History Museum. Connected to the agricultural activities, demonstrations and displays at the Museum - they provide an insight into the lives and histories of farming people, the agricultural practices in the past, how they developed into contemporary agriculture.Lambing in Pembrokeshire, 1984March is lambing time at Llwyn-yr-eos Farm, the Museum’s working farm. Lambing in the past and present was described by Richard James, Portfield Gate, Pembrokeshire, south west Wales, in a recording made in 1984. Aged 79, he recalled lambing in an interview about his life in farming, but also described how it was being done on a farm in the area in the year of the interview. The following short clips are from the recording.Pembrokeshire born and bred, Richard James had farmed at Lambston Sutton in the south west of the county. It stood between the large county town of Haverfordwest a few miles to the east, and the coastline of St Bride’s Bay to the west. The lowland coastal areas, warmer climate and lower rainfall made agriculture more diverse than in many other parts of Wales, with the keeping cattle and sheep and the growing of early potatoes and cereal crops. The coastal areas could be exposed to the winds and rain from the Atlantic Ocean though, and weather conditions could strongly influence lambing, to which Richard James refers in the first clip: Richard James, Portfield Gate, Pembrokeshire When lambing was to take place was decided by when the ewes were put to the rams. Up until then the rams on the farm had to be kept separate from the sheep. It was always a concern that rams might break through a poor fence or hedge and cause lambing to start at the wrong time. Also, a ram of poorer quality or a different breed from another flock could also result in poorer quality lambs and reduced income. After mating, a ewe is pregnant for between 142 and 152 days, approximately five months or slightly shorter.In this clip, Richard James describes at what time of year lambing took place on a local farm, and how it was being done by a farmer using a former aircraft hangar. Richard James, Portfield Gate, Pembrokeshire The final clip is about working the day and night shifts: Richard James, Portfield Gate, Pembrokeshire
The Cat is Out of the Bag! Jennifer Gallichan, 17 March 2017 A New Big Cat for Amgueddfa CymruWe are very pleased to announce that we have a new arrival! Bryn the Sumatran Tiger. Bryn the Sumatran Tiger He spent his life at The Welsh Mountain Zoo in Colwyn Bay and was one of its most iconic residents. In his lifetime he gave pleasure to all of the zoo’s visitors, helping to raise the profile of the plight of his species, as Sumatran Tigers are critically endangered. He had a relaxed and amiable personality and so was a key part of The Welsh Mountain Zoo’s 'Keeper for the Day' and 'Animal Encounter' experiences. He sadly died of natural causes in August 2016 at the grand age of 17, which is pretty good for a tiger. He has been portrayed in a natural walking position as if prowling through the jungle looking for prey. He certainly gave our security staff a few frights when he arrived! Standing by him you get a real feeling of the beauty and power of these amazing animals.Sumatran Tigers only live on the Indonesian island of Sumatra and are the subject of intensive worldwide conservation efforts to save the species. Their numbers have declined drastically over recent years despite these efforts and it is estimated that less than 400-500 tigers remain in the wild. Habitat loss, illegal trade and lack of food have all contributed to this decline. Millions of acres of their forest habitat are cut down every year to make way for intense crop plantations such as palm oil and acacia. This means there is less prey for them to hunt, and that tiger populations have become fragmented, further risking the recovery of the species. The illegal trade in tiger parts is still common despite full national and international protection and tiger parts are openly sold on the island.But why have a Sumatran Tiger in a Welsh museum? Why have stuffed animals at all? This is a really common question that we are asked at the museum. Museums play an important role as storehouses for biodiversity, keeping a record of a species for posterity. For example we have extinct animals like the Tasmanian Wolf and Great Auk in our collections, we even have a Dodo skeleton. With wild Sumatran tiger numbers as low as they are, it is pertinent now more than ever, to keep a record of this species.Often museums are one of the first places that people are able to encounter wildlife up close. This puts us in a fantastic position to talk about threatened wildlife, not just abroad, but on our own doorstep. Remember, it is not just exotic species in far-flung places that are in trouble. So we use these iconic specimens to grab your attention and talk about a whole range of issues affecting wildlife around the globe. We want to make our visitors more aware of the natural world around them and to empower them to take a more active role in both enjoying and preserving it.Bryn will feature at our International Tiger Day on July 29th 2017, so you will have the opportunity to come and see this enigmatic creature up close. So come along, take part in some activities, learn more about what museums do with their collections and what you can do to help tigers like Bryn get off the endangered list!You can learn more about Sumatran Tigers and what the WWF are doing to protect them here.You can learn more about protecting British wildlife by looking on The Wildlife Trust website, and RSPB website.You can learn more about the Vertebrate collections at the museum here.
Counterfeit Coins Rhianydd Biebrach, 16 March 2017 The last execution for forgery took place in 1830 and Victorian forgers were punished by transportation, imprisonment and hard labour. The punishment for counterfeiting today is several years’ imprisonment. Have you ever been guilty of passing fake coins? A forged Charles I half-crown. The corroded base metal core can clearly be seen through the thin silver plating. Your answer will hopefully be, “no, of course not!”, but would you be able to spot one if you saw one? According to the Royal Mint, just over 2.5% of the £1 coins circulating in 2015 were counterfeit, so how many of us have unwittingly broken the law by handling fake money? But far from being a modern problem, you may be surprised to learn that counterfeit coins have been causing headaches for the authorities for thousands of years – for as long as we have been using money, in fact. Occasionally, metal detectorists who unearth coins and report them to the Portable Antiquities Scheme in Wales (PAS Cymru), are told that what they have found is not what it seems to be – it is in fact a fake. In 2015, out of 679 coins reported, seven were judged by experts at Amgueddfa Cymru-National Museum Wales to be contemporary counterfeits. Many more were described as ‘irregular’ and therefore also produced under suspicious circumstances. One of the fakes was a Charles I half crown, discovered by Mr Nick Mensikov at Miskin, Rhondda Cynon Taf. A half crown is a silver coin, but Mr Mensikov’s example gave itself away as a fake because corrosion revealed it to have only a thin coating of silver over a copper alloy core. In ‘mint’ condition it would have looked sound enough to the untrained eye, but its real value would have been well below the two shillings and sixpence (or one-eighth of a pound) that the half crown represented. Twelve fake coins from the reign of Charles I found in Wales have been reported to PAS Cymru since 2009, far outweighing those of any other monarch, but the great majority are much older than this and date from the period of Roman occupation, from the first to the early fifth century AD. One of these Charles I half-crowns is also a fake. Can you tell which one? Who made counterfeits, and why? Counterfeit coins were made for several reasons in the past. Sometimes, when supplies of the smaller denomination coins were inadequate, unofficial production took place to make up the shortfall. In Roman Britain this happened to such an extent that at some periods there may have been as many fake coins in circulation as real ones. After Claudius’s invasion in AD 43 the Roman army itself may have been responsible for much of this ‘irregular’ coinage, which was sometimes tolerated by governments as being something of a necessary evil. In other cases, people forged coins purely and simply for monetary gain. Of course, this was not an easy process. It required access to supplies of metals, a furnace or crucible, and various other bits and pieces of equipment, including dies or moulds on which had been engraved a passable copy of the coin to be reproduced. This meant that forgery operations generally involved more than one person, as well as some initial financial outlay, and so they were not the last resort of a poor man or woman with no other way of getting cash. Some ‘coiners’, as forgers were sometimes called, were already wealthy individuals. In 1603 a coining operation was uncovered at Duncannon Fort in Ireland. Moulds, pieces of brass, crucibles, as well as chemicals and charcoal, were discovered in the desk of the fort’s commander, Sir John Brockett. Sir John had been producing counterfeit English and Spanish coins, for which he was put on trial for treason. Some forgeries were never intended for use as cash, however. As early as the sixteenth century antiquaries and collectors began to be interested in old coins, and consequently some unscrupulous individuals went into business supplying fakes to tempt the unsuspecting or naïve. In early Victorian London, one Edward Emery was responsible for passing a possible 5-700 fake medieval and Tudor coins onto the collectors’ market. Roman coins were also highly collectable, and a modern era replica of one was found by a Mr Rogers in Usk in 2007. Made of a white base metal alloy designed to look like silver, was it thrown away in disgust by its owner when he realised what he had bought? How were counterfeit coins made? There were two main methods of producing fake coins – striking them from stolen or forged dies, or casting them in moulds. A coining operation in Ireland in 1601 used metal and chalk dies to strike the coins, which were made of an alloy which included enough tin to create the necessary silver colour, although the coins, of course, contained no precious metal. This was obviously a noisy activity and so coining dens were often located either in busy areas such as town centres where the noise and activity would be masked by the hustle and bustle of the streets, or in out-of-the-way places where people were unlikely to go. The latter option was chosen by the Roman forgers at work in the lead mine at Draethen, near Caerphilly. Discovered here were coins, the ‘flans’, or blanks, from which the false coins were struck, as well as the metal rods from which the flans were cut. These items were found around a hearth, and we can only guess at the hot, unpleasant and dangerous atmosphere that this subterranean forging operation would have created. Casting was a different process, but it still required access to a powerful heat source as molten metal was required. An impression of both sides of a genuine coin was made in clay, wax or ashes. The hardened moulds were then fixed together and filled with molten metal alloy. Some cast coins are given away by the tell-tale remains of the channel through which the metal was poured and which wasn’t properly broken off or filed down. There has been plenty of evidence for this forging method from Roman London, consisting of both the cast coins themselves (often in a silvery-looking alloy of bronze and tin) as well as hundreds of moulds. The appearance of precious metal necessary to pass off a fake coin was not only achieved by cunning uses of alloys (some of which included arsenic for a whitening effect!). Some coins – like the Charles I half-crown mentioned earlier – were made from base metals which were then plated with a thin coating of silver or gold to achieve the desired effect. Medieval forgeries often used a technique called fire gilding. A base metal blank was rubbed with a mixture of gold and mercury which was then heated. The mercury was evaporated and the gold was bonded to the surface. The coin could then be struck between the dies. This process obviously required some technical skill, and there is evidence that forgers were experimenting with methods that would later be used for more legitimate purposes. A counterfeit coin of William III (1689–1702) was found to have been made by an early example of the Sheffield plating technique. A copper plate was rolled or hammered between two thin sheets of silver from which blank coins were then cut out. The edges were covered with a copper and silver alloy and the blanks were then struck with official dies smuggled out of the London mint. The gold and silver necessary for the plating were sourced by clipping real coins (an offence in itself) as well as melting down pieces of plate or other coins. Punishments The severity of the punishments for counterfeiting have reflected both the seriousness of the crime but also the difficulty of detecting those responsible. Like many penalties of the pre-modern era, they were physical in nature. In ancient Rome it was a capital offence, equated with treason, and could be punished by banishment or slavery if you were lucky, or crucifixion if you weren’t. In the early 4th century, Emperor Constantine – who is more famous for making Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire – introduced burning for forgers. In 10th-century England, under King Athelstan (927–939), the forger would lose a hand, but one of his Norman successors, Henry I (1100–1135), went one better. Suspecting his official mint workers of producing irregular coinage on the side and unhappy with the standard of the regular issues, he summoned them to a Christmas gathering at Winchester where he took the right hand and both testicles from each of them. Under Edward I and later kings, death by hanging was the usual punishment for men, with burning and strangulation reserved for women. Three unfortunate 16th century Edinburgh women suffered this appalling punishment, while in 1560 Robert Jacke, a Dundee merchant, was hanged and quartered merely for importing forgeries. Nineteen executions for counterfeiting took place in 1697 when Sir Isaac Newton was Warden of the Royal Mint.
It just keeps coming back: dust Christian Baars, 13 March 2017 We wrote of dust before, for example here and here. The museum is like your home, dust gathers everywhere. Unlike my own house though, the museum is very, very big. The museum's dust problems are correspondingly large.Last year a student from Cardiff University, Stefan Jarvis, undertook a dust monitoring project in the museum. Stefan was studying for an MSc in Care of Collections, which is a subject very close to my heart. Stefan is also the author of one of our guest blogs. Stefan placed a large number of dust traps around the museum building: in stores and exhibition galleries. You may be familiar with some of the galleries he investigated: our Geology gallery with the dinosaurs, the current “Wriggle” exhibition on worms, the Whale gallery and the Organ gallery where we display some of the largest paintings in the museum.Collecting dust is really easy: prepare a sampler. Leave it out in a suitable location. Wait. For. Four. Weeks.Once Stefan had gathered some dust he analysed the samples: he identified each particle under the microscope and determined where they all came from. This is where things started getting really interesting. For while undertaking scientific investigations are often laborious and involves much routine work, the results are often extremely illuminating.This is what Stefan found: More dust accumulates in areas of high traffic (i.e., many people walking past). More dust accumulates at low levels (the closer you get to floor level the more dust you will find). Dust composition differs between spaces. For example, most dust fibres in a library store are paper fibres, while most fibres in public galleries are textile fibres, hair and skin. We found biscuit crumbs on the dust samplers in two galleries. This indicates that food was being consumed in these galleries. Now, we love having people in the museum. In fact we undertake some of our collection care work during museum opening hours so that you can see what we are up to a lot of the time. Therefore, we are happy to accept that visitors always leave us a little reminder that they have been, in the form of a few dust particles. You can feel a ‘but’ coming on: but we do not encourage the eating of biscuits (or any other foodstuffs) in our galleries. Eating food in our galleries bears the risk of small amounts of food ending up on the floor, in displays, behind cupboards - or, as part of dust. Food encourages the spread of pest insects which, once they have eaten all the available biscuit crumbs, then start munching our collections. This is not something we endorse, because we try to preserve our collections for you to enjoy.This means you can actually help us preserve the collections - by not eating in the galleries. We will be doing more work on this in the near future, by encouraging visitors to consume food in our fabulous restaurant or cosy cafe, not in galleries. In the meantime, we really do appreciate your cooperation and understanding for our no-food-in-galleries policy.Find out more about Care of Collections at Amgueddfa Cymru - National Museum Wales here.
