The Bronze Age is open Friday - Sunday 11am - 5pm, 9 - 24 August.
An artist's talk is planned for Saturday 16 August at 2pm. All are welcome.
The Amesbury Archer was buried near Stonehenge in c. 2,500BC with rich burial goods. As well as gold earrings, copper knives, flint tools and wrist guards, a black cushion stone was buried with him, a vital metal working tool, that demonstrates how important metal working skills were regarded. Isotape analysis of his teeth shows that he was born far away in Central Europe.
The Uluburun shipwreck, a Bronze Age ship that was wrecked off the coast of Turkey c. 1,350BC, is remarkable evidence of travel and trade in raw materials in this era. There were 10 tonnes of copper ingots, 1 tonne of tin ingots, glass ingots, ivory, Mycenaean pottery and Baltic amber.
The more than 800 abstract rock carvings at Oppeby in Southern Sweden are uncharacteristic of Scandinavian rock art of the period. Instead of ships, chariots, animals and warriors, the carvings are abstract symbols whose meaning is undiscovered. Placed at a river mouth, a likely arrival and departure point for shipping expeditions, they would have conferred great status on the people and the leaders of this territory, linking them with other Bronze Age centres in the Mediterranean where writing was beginning to be used.
The Bronze Age Part 1: Travels is a site specific installation, an artist’s investigation into the iconography of the Bronze Age and the symbolic and transformative meanings of metal. It is a poetic engagement with the archaeological evidence in an attempt to understand a distant world.
The Bronze Age opens at Articulate project space on Friday 8 August 6-8pm and is open Friday - Sunday 11am - 5pm, 9 - 24 August.
An artist's talk is planned for Saturday 16 August at 2pm. All are welcome.