Weymouth’s burial & bypass exhibition at Pavilion
( exhibition on until Tuesday at Weymouth Pavilion )So expectations were high ( for Weymouth ) as the archeological find of a lifetime turns up, under the proposed bypass that was eventually forced through – which personally I think is all about jobs myself – as lets face it, you can get much more traffic in – but how the hell is it going to get to Portland and the Olympics – which is ultimately what its all about. This being pertinent as obviously the archeology has to be seen to be handled well because any adverse PR would reflect badly on a very shaky new build.
Sexy dig finds come in two basic varieties – ones with treasure like the Sussex cup and ones where someone or something has been brutally murdered in a dark ages style – points added for garroting, cracked skulls and in this particular case anything ritual. Pretty sensational – fifty beheaded vikings placed in a pit bodies one place, skulls in another.
The proposed venue? the Pavillion. Ok, not the most appropriate place but it would have to do at short notice. Forgiving the council all that unfortunately I think Im not alone in saying that it was pretty poorly thought through. I also have to say that there were council team members on hand to talk to people but I didn’t see any actual archeologists to explain the significance of the find. The remains of the bodies were placed on simple tables with a cloth placed over them and a wooden box placed over the top with a perspex lid. Small bits of paper were placed on the top with please do not touch looking for all the world as if they had been printed on an office computer five minutes before. All in all it looked very amateur.
It strikes me that this would only be for two reasons – one that the important stuff was kept well out of arms reach of the idiots or two the organisers are incompetent. I sincerely hope it was the former, although its very sad to think they feel its necessary to do this as everyone locally has the right to go and see it as long as they are not going to wreck it for anyone else. I did get to speak to one of the organisers and apparently over six hundred crates of finds had been made and would be handed to the county museum. None of the bodies / skulls or viking were on display disappointingly. This may be because they are still in the custody of whatever academic group still has them or again because they do not want the more “exciting” finds on display until they are buried behind six inches of perspex.
The rest of the exhibition comprised of various bits from the dig, again rather disappointingly all housed under very basic makeshift boxes. They had also created a series of colour stands around the room to convey the most basic of information regarding the dig, like where, how etc. The main stage was taken up with a looped projection that showed static images ( no audio ) of the dig in progress, broad strokes of what was going on.
Overall I was expecting something more like a professional display of finds and information. Certainly something better than a basic wooden box on a cloth covered table for the main exhibits, which felt almost disrespectful to the deceased. It would have been much better to have a qualified archeologist backed up with slides, do fixed talks to the crowd I feel. Lets hope the exhibition at the County Museum will do the find justice.
Tags: Archeology, Bypass, Dorset, Vikings, Weymouth
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