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It's all fun and games - Teabreak 34
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The board is set as Matilda chats with Dr Alice Blackwell from National Museums Scotland all about the beautiful and iconic Lewis chess pieces. They’re one of the most recognisable objects at the museum, but how much do we actually know about them? Who made them and played with them? How similar was medieval chess to our modern version? And what does a modern whiskey distillery have to do with early medieval research? Listen in to find out - check mate!
Transcripts
- For rough transcripts of this episode go to https://www.archpodnet.com/teabreak/34
Links
- Lewis Chessman NMS page
- Lewis Chess Sketchfab 3D models
- Hilton of Cadboll Stone
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- Early Medieval Scotland Book
- Scotland’s Early Silver exhibition
- Society for Medieval Archaeology
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Transcript
Introduction to Tea Break Time Travel
00:00:00
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network. um You're listening to Tea Break Time Travel, where every month we look at a different archaeological object and take you on a journey into their past.
00:00:17
Speaker
Hello and welcome to episode 34 of Tea Break Time Travel. I am your host, Dr. Matilda Ziebrecht, and today I am savouring a black vanilla chai tea, which I recently picked up on holiday because, you know, I don't have enough tea at home. And joining me on my tea break today is Dr. Alice Blackwell, Senior Curator of Medieval Archaeology and History at National Museum Scotland. So welcome, Alice. Thank you for joining me. And what are you drinking on your tea break today?
00:00:45
Speaker
Thanks so much for having me. know It's a pleasure to be here. and I have got extremely boring, extremely standard English breakfast Yorkshire tea with some milk. i mean Classic, I would say. Okay, let's go classic let's go classic. It doesn't have to be fancy. I must admit, i'm just i if I have normal black tea, I have to have sugar in it. I'm one of those people that needs something a little sweet, but I fully respect the classics as well. do you Is that a standard for you to have just the classic English breakfast tea? It is. It's a standard. I also like like a wee Earl Grey from time to time. And I do like a chai sometimes in the afternoon. But and yeah, a fallback is just quite a strong sort of ah no sugar, just a bit of milk English breakfast. And we've got Yorkshire tea in the office, which is where I am today. Also a classic.
00:01:33
Speaker
I'm curious because i never use I admit, I never used to know the difference between English breakfast and Earl Grey. And now I do kind of know the difference. Do you drink milk with Earl Grey?
Journey into Archaeology
00:01:41
Speaker
Well, I do, but it's a bit controversial. Some people don't. So, Earl Grey has bergamot. It's flavoured with bergamot, which is quite a citrusy flavour. And so, some people have it black or black with a little bit of lemon to complement that. And I don't i like it black, but I also just like it as a kind of milky, lovely cup of tea. Bergamot's one of my favourite scents. so It is a good one, it is a very good one. I know Ash from Ashwood Candles uses that a lot in her archaeology related sense and it's always divine. It's yum. Okay, that's good to know because I must admit I was at a conference recently and they didn't have English breakfast option, they only had Earl Grey as the black tea and I automatically then put in a thing and put in some milk and I don't know, I was tasting it and I was just like, it's not.
00:02:23
Speaker
It's not quite the same. I don't know. It is not the same. It is a different thing. It's a lovely thing, but but it's also acceptable to have it without milk and then it's different again. Okay. Oh, there you go. So who knew? It's all good. The politics of tea was so complicated. No, no. It's all good in my mind. To each their own. With milk or without? Well, thank you again for joining me on my team break. And as I mentioned, you are a curator of medieval archaeology and history. How did you first get into that topic? Was it always that particular period? Were you in a different form of archaeology and history at the beginning?
00:02:55
Speaker
Oh, that's a great question. Well, I think my love for archaeology kind of stretches back to when I was a child actually, with my parents, when it was somebody's birthday, you would get to choose what you would like to do for the day. And often my day trips revolved around visiting like prehistoric monuments and cafes for a cream tea. It's an excellent, it's a winning, it's a standard combination.
00:03:22
Speaker
So yeah, ah so we used to go and visit lots of places like that. And I love that. I used to have a kind of secondhand copy of I think the Collins guide to archaeology in Britain. And I used to take that around with me and buy postcards and pop it in and stuff when I was quite wee. See, I love that. And then I did history at university and then kind of found it a little bit boring.
00:03:46
Speaker
listening fine don't worry it was in my defense it was all It was fairly modern history and I don't know, it just didn't it didn't light my fire. But then I did a special subject in Russian history through art, music and literature, kind of you know looking at it, but from kind of non-traditional historical sources. And that got me really interested. And then I realised that actually what I really wanted to do was archaeology and why hadn't I done that for a degree in the first place? So I did a Masters in and Archaeology at Glasgow. And as part of that, started looking at objects, particularly early medieval objects. There was a great lecturer there, Jeremy Huggett and Ewan Campbell. And they really kind of encouraged that and nurtured that. And then I went on to do a PhD on early medieval objects of kind of Anglo-Saxon origin from Scotland. And
Defining Medieval Periods
00:04:36
Speaker
I've never looked back. I just love things. I love stuff. I mean, welcome to the podcast. know So i i've I've kind of worked across like the early medieval and now I'm responsible for a central and later medieval but I also still keep my hand in with early medieval in the job that I do now so like all of the medieval it's I love it all it's like trying to choose between children but actually ultimately if it's stuff
00:05:02
Speaker
I'm kind of interested from any era. I just don't know. I just don't know about the stuff that isn't medieval stuff. But yeah, I love objects and material culture and understanding them and figuring out what they mean and what they're made of and why and how and and all of that stuff. I love it.
00:05:17
Speaker
And I mean, two quick questions. So first of all, when you say early medieval, middle medieval, late medieval speaking as prehistorian, what does that mean? What does that mean? Well, I mean, it's hard. So I used to be kind of on the early end. So like working maybe from around five 500 AD to up until the end of the late Roman period. In fact, we're working on a book at the moment that looks at that really interesting transition period and particularly the 5th century. So, the transition from late Roman into early medieval And I used to work up to about kind of, i I used to often try and avoid the Vikings just because there's so much and so many people working on that. So I used to do the bits of stop before the Vikings. Now I work with Martin Goldberg here and he looks after that part of the collection. I've still got a lot of research interests there, but I pick up where he leaves off. So he looks after most of the Viking collection and I pick up about around 1000 AD, something like that, up until about 1500 or sometimes a little bit later.
00:06:16
Speaker
and And that's the central and later part that I look after now, but I work across both really. And it's one of those things where this you have to choose where you break time up. you know like It's the same in the in the prehistoric period, just bigger blocks of bigger blocks of time. right And there are different ways of doing that, depending on what you think is important, whether you think change is important or continuity is important, or whether you're being led by like historical events or just what we see in the archaeological record. so like It's sort of false divisions, basically, but I work, yeah, about a thousand years from about 500 to about 1500 is where I'm comfortable. Yeah. And in terms of those divisions and things, because you are, of course, based in Scotland, I guess you do Anglo-Saxon, so UK Scottish archaeology, but are those medieval periods? Because I know that, especially for prehistory, Neolithic in Scotland is completely different to Neolithic in, I don't know, Greece or something like that most of the time. Is it the same with medieval period or is that a little more regulated?
00:07:14
Speaker
Yeah, no, I think it is. I definitely think it is. So, I mean, even how traditionally the the medieval has been defined by way of dates compared with England is is a little bit different. And and when yeah and sort of when you see, if you if you break for, we have the next um kind of curatorial section after us is renaissance and early modern. So yes, it's absolutely different even within the UK and beyond. And we use different terminology sometimes in Scotland too. So I'm using early medieval here, but some people use early historic period and other people say ultimately that there's a really long Iron Age. So we get late Iron Age being used for early medieval in Scotland too. So yeah, it's um there's a lot of sort of nuance to the terminology, but yeah, broadly 500 to 1500 is the best bit. That's an unbiased opinion and very objective. And you mentioned that so when you were a child and you would go off for your cream teas and prehistoric monuments, but then at university you went sort of more into medieval focus. And I know that we get a lot of students asking in the Archaea Book Club and and other things that I'm part of, sort of ah how do you know where to go? like I don't know which period to specify in. i mean Do you think that it was partly because of just having those lecturers who happened to be specialised in medieval, or was it something that really pulled you as soon as you started doing it?
00:08:34
Speaker
Oh, that's a really good question. Well, I guess my advice, if it was advice for somebody starting out, is just to try as many different things, places, people, periods, genres, evidence types as possible. Because and yeah, I absolutely, it wasn't a good fit for me to start with, but then I i found what I loved. And I i think it was the it was It was probably to start with a coincidence that the the people who were working on material culture that I encountered at Glasgow, they were looking at early medieval, but it was very quickly I realised that actually it
00:09:09
Speaker
particularly in Scotland is such a vibrant, interesting time because you've got lots of different groups of people with different linguistic backgrounds, different cultural backgrounds, different kind of artistic styles. You've got contact with Ireland, you've got contact with um the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms or England to the south is really interesting complex. So it started off as just a kind of way in through objects and then very quickly was like, oh no, these objects in particular are amazing. It's really,
00:09:37
Speaker
complicated and hybrid and there's so much to kind of unravel and and to look at. Okay, well, fair enough. So try and try everything. Try everything, yeah. Try everything. I like that answer. I mean, that's what I'm doing still and really, I'm way further than a lot of these people who are asking these questions,
Focus on the Lewis Chessmen
00:09:54
Speaker
so it never really stops. No, totally. And of course, today we are on a tea break, but we are also doing some time travelling.
00:10:02
Speaker
And so I ask all my guests, and I could think I can guess your answer based on just what we've talked about so far. But if you could travel back in time, where or when would you go and why? Oh, this is such a hard question. and i'm And again, like with my answer for what tea I'm drinking, I'm worried I'm either going classic or boring. I think it might be boring.
00:10:24
Speaker
So my instinct is to go back to times and places where objects I look after now were were being used, were being made, existed so that I can figure out the things I don't know about them or check the things that we think we know about them and kind of just to understand them better. so there's ah There's an example, we have a reliquary in our collection called the Money Musk reliquary and I was doing a bit of work on it lately and I think I can see two different phases in all of the mounts that adorn it. And this is new, like we hadn't we hadn't recognized this before.
00:10:58
Speaker
But I want to go back in time and be like, was I right? Was that earlier set first? Was that on that reliquary? And then did they make the other ones to match? Great. So I'd love some confirmation that we're on the right lines with some of the objects. and But beyond that, I think a great spectacle I think would have been to see the ship burial at Sutton. that would have been In all its finery and all its regalia, because I know it from books, I know it from going to see the objects in the British Museum, it's you know it's amazing. But to actually see it together and to see the drama and the sort of emotion around those objects as as a mass, I think that would be a great bang for your historical book, I think, to see that in action.
00:11:43
Speaker
Yes, no, that's a good one. we actually yeah we did it I can't remember. I'm trying to frantically remember which episode number it is, but if anyone's interested in learning more about the Sudden Hoonberry, I'll go back through the catalog because we had Natasha Bilsen on to talk about that in an amazing episode. so yeah I agree. That would also be one of the few historic spectacles that I think would be actually very cool to witness better.
00:12:02
Speaker
Well, anyway, thank you so much for joining me on my tea break today. And indeed, we're going to focus on an object because everyone here loves objects. So before we have a look at that, we're going to first journey back to the late 12th century to the island of Lewis off the northwest coast of what we now call Scotland.
00:12:18
Speaker
A storm is raging outside, but inside this thick walled rectangular building, nobody's listening to the howling wind or the distant crash of waves on the shore. Instead, all eyes are fixed on the table to the side of the roaring fire, where two figures are hunched in their seats at the long benches. The flickering flames cast tiny shadows from the small, intricately carved pieces that are being moved around on top of a large grid which is carved into the table's surface. Some of the pieces are naturally white, some are stained red, with twisting patterns, clasping hands and wide-eyed faces. Several moves later, and suddenly one of the players lets out a shout of satisfaction, a piece is thumped down with a finality that sparks a raucous cheer from the onlookers, backs are slapped, coins exchanged, hands shaken, and outside the storm continues to rage.
00:13:05
Speaker
So this, I admit, was just a fun little fiction. Who knows how true it is. But today we are looking at the Lewis Chessmen, which I'm very excited about. And we'll get into the details of that soon. But first, let's have a very quick break.
00:13:19
Speaker
Welcome back everybody. So, something that I usually like to do before we get into sort of the details of it, or I guess to help us get into the details of different objects, is to look at the most asked questions on the internet, courtesy of Google search autofill, ah to see what other people are wanting to find out, which sometimes works better than others, because sometimes the objects we're talking about are so unknown that there's actually no Google search. This one, there were a lot. So I had to sort of cut down and to sort of summarise, I guess. And I guess in summary, there were sort of three main questions so we could sort of work through them and maybe we'll come to some other points. And as we have Alice here today, who is currently working on a new exhibition, I believe, of the Lewis Chessman or a reorganisation. New display, yeah. New display in our permanent gallery. Yeah, of the Lewis Chessman that she knows everything and anything there is. Or um So, well, hopefully this one. First question.
00:14:10
Speaker
What are the Lewis Chessmen made from? Most of them are made from walrus ivories, so the tusks from walruses. um and ah You can see that in the different sizes of the chess pieces. There are some really big ones and they're made from the base of the tusk. And then the smaller pieces are made from further up the tusk as it gets narrower before it comes to a point. There are also some which seem to be made from sperm whale.
00:14:37
Speaker
but there are fewer of those. So, we have two of those amongst the 11 that are in our collection at National Museum Scotland, the rest being in the collection at the British Museum. Okay, Spam Whale, as in the... Do they have teeth, don't they? Yeah, the teeth on the bone? Yeah, the teeth, yeah. Interesting. Which, can you tell if they're... Because of course there's two sets. Can you tell if, like, would one set have been carved from one tusk? Or is that true? Well, so this is interesting. There's more than two sets. So there's at least four sets, probably, represented amongst the horde. But we don't have all of the pieces, so we can't say definitively. But no, it's a mixture, I think, of materials for any one set.
00:15:24
Speaker
And indeed, it's not immediately apparent by eye which material is which. So I'm not a specialist, I'm not a zoologist, but a specialist can look particularly at the base and understand and identify which are which are which. And once you get your eye in, you can kind of see that the sperm whale ones, particularly one of them has a bit of a grayer kind of color than and the sort of creamy color of the of the walrus tasks. But yeah, not it's not immediately obvious, I think.
00:15:53
Speaker
And you mentioned colour then, so in the this is something that I have read somewhere, so this is why I included it in my little time travel thing. Is that correct that some of them were stained red? So yeah, so there's a lot that's a little bit mysterious about the early part of the Lewis Chestpiece's life out of the ground, if you like. So even basic things about exactly where they were found, who by whom ah all all of that is is very shady. And that's also true of of details of the objects themselves. But there are early descriptions that describe some of them as red.
00:16:27
Speaker
Analytical work by the British Museum couldn't identify that red pigment anymore, but it's very likely that that some of them were stained to differentiate them from from a white set. Like we have white and black today. Indeed. indeed okay And you mentioned already the hoard. So the next question actually is how many Lewis Chess Men are there? So you mentioned already there's especially not just the two sets.
00:16:51
Speaker
Yeah, so it's easy because we call them Lewis chessmen, or I call them chess pieces, but we call them the Lewis chess pieces. It sort of evokes a chess set. It evokes a sort of standard number of pieces. But actually, this is it's a hoard. It's a hoard like a hoard of Bronze Age metalwork or a hoard of medieval coins. This was a a sum of resource that was buried. So there are 78 chess pieces. Oh wow, that many. In total, yeah. Plus another 14 circular discs, which are probably used for either tables, a bit like backgammon, or one of the tafel
Significance of the Lewis Chessmen
00:17:29
Speaker
games. Like the Scandinavian one that I avoid saying at all costs, because I've left a tafel. Sorry to any Scandinavian listening. We apologise sincerely. Well, yeah, it's it's tricky. It's a tricky one, but and used for that kind of game. So we've got the chess pieces, 78 of those, 14 other gaming pieces, flat discs. Of the 78, not all of them are the figural pieces that you bring to mind when you think about the Lewis chess pieces. There are 19 plain pawns, the kings and queens and bishops and knights and warders. And there's also actually, interestingly as well, a buckle found with the hoard. So yeah, so an ivory buckle. And that's very likely, I think, to have fastened a bag in which the other pieces were contained. So the hoard was literally just chess pieces or with the other things in there as well? as far as we know, that is what but survives. And that's what was shown the chess pieces, the other game pieces in the buckle. But we know, as I alluded to, we know that there's a lot that we don't understand about their discovery. And we also know that the horde had been split before it left Lewis before it
00:18:43
Speaker
but came to the attention of and antiquarians when it was brought to Edinburgh in 1831. We know that some pieces had already been removed because of the way sort of paths into which they entered museum collections. So it seems very likely I think that it's just it's gaming pieces but we don't know that absolutely for sure.
00:19:05
Speaker
I was going to ask actually because of course they're called the Lewis chess men or the Lewis chess pieces. But I guess that already that gives such a bias as to what we perceive them as. I mean, it was it who decided that they were chess pieces or chess?
00:19:18
Speaker
it It was pretty recognised pretty early on. so i mean when they were exhibited that You see them in 1831 when they were exhibited to the Society of Antigrees. There are sort of descriptions of them as like little pygmies and people and miniature sculptures, but they're recognised early on as chess pieces because they they largely replicate the pieces that we use in chess today with with a few um differences that we can maybe come on to later. And there's a number of them. I think that's one of the things that makes the hoard special. When we get individual playing pieces, it's very difficult to know necessarily which game they were used for. But when you have a set, when you can see how many pieces there are in total, when you can start making sets, then you can understand the sorts of games that they were being used for. So, the the number of these and the range of pieces that matched our understanding of the pieces used in chess is what meant really early on, it was recognised as largely as containing chess sets. Okay. Which, and something you briefly mentioned there leads to the, very nicely, into the third question that came up in the Auto Search, which is, why are the Lewis Chess Men important?
00:20:27
Speaker
Well, yes, I mean, take your pick, really. I think one of the things is the number of them. As I said, ah it's very unusual to have so many playing pieces together. And that means that we and so we can use them to understand more about chess and the history of playing that game and other games. So there's that element. They are beautifully carved. They are just phenomenally intricately made. They're lovely. So they have a sort of intrinsic value as a pieces of really highly accomplished medieval art. They also give us a wealth of information about people at the time. So the clothing and particularly the weapons give us an insight into habits and customs of the time. And then also their their fine context in Lewis is really interesting and we'll we'll get onto that later, I think.
00:21:21
Speaker
but it's another form of evidence for a really tricky period historically speaking from a written source point of view. This is a tough period to work in and objects like this give us really interesting insights into connections and cultural outlook.
00:21:39
Speaker
in this case of of Lewis in the Haberties. You mentioned cultural. so I, at some point, posted, those people listening in probably know that I used to post little reels on my Instagram about different objects. and I did one about the Lewis Chessmen, one minute long reel. and Of course, you get all these comments being like, why didn't you mention this? Why didn't you say this? No, that's why. minute, guys. But anyway, one of the comments that I got, which was particularly angry, was saying, why do you call them Viking age? They are not Viking age. And I was looking up and I was going, well, I guess the timings, maybe not, but are they Viking? And so what culture are they actually attributed to?
00:22:13
Speaker
Yeah, that's a really interesting question. Yeah, it's not something I would really ever get angry about myself. Well, you'd be surprised how many comments get there. Everyone's a protect. So, yeah, so over their history, people have tried to understand where they were made, and it's generally accepted that they're probably made in Norway, possibly in Trondheim.
00:22:35
Speaker
and for for a number of reasons. But over their history, people have looked um into maybe an English origin or continental or maybe even a local kind of manufacture. They're definitely nor what I would say North period. So they're probably mid to late 12th, maybe very early 13th century. And I think probably the whole Viking thing, the reason someone's objected so strongly to that is that Yeah, that's a bit later than we would tend to use the word Viking. So by that point, Viking is one of those terms where you know it's it's a term that we use to describe the past. It's not a term that was used in the way that we use it now in the past. So in that sense, it is meaningful, but it's
00:23:16
Speaker
only meaningful to a point, right? Like Celtic, right? Like Celtic. Indeed, indeed. And so we use it to to mean that period when, in particular, people came over from Scandinavia and we associate it with raids on Ecclesiastes Goa ah new and dress customs and new ways of burying your dead and it's about a sort of arriving culture doing Viking, doing the sort of kind of attacking and and all of that. Scandinavian influence then settles down and becomes a really integral part of large swathes of Scotland and that reaches way into the Norse period and beyond. It continues today in the far north of Scotland.
00:23:58
Speaker
So, that we tend to use the Viking for the early part and then kind of Norse, I tend to use, Norse medieval for um that later period when the Scandinavian influence and culture is still very strong. So, the pieces are probably, I think probably and most likely to have been made in Norway. Trondheim, we know there's walrus workshops there. There was a fragment of a very similar queen found in Trondheim, which doesn't survive. It's only known from an illustration.
00:24:27
Speaker
And there are also very similar style carvings in wooden architecture, wooden churches from Norway as well. So, these are the reasons why that seems most likely. and Other people have suggested Iceland might be an alternative and suggestion. and Certainly, the Norwegians were exploiting walrus up around Greenland and a it developed into a a really vibrant, really financially lucrative and trade in walrus ivory back to Scandinavia but also to ah Scotland and to England and other parts of Europe too. So, that all fits for me as most likely a Norwegian origin.
00:25:11
Speaker
But the reason it's interesting is because at this time, the west of Scotland, Lewis, part of the Hebrides, part of um hundreds of islands off the west coast, there's a really kind of interesting culturally hybrid place. very I guess I would probably describe it as a Gallic Scandinavian culture, like quite hybrid. It's part of effectively a kingdom, a a rulership that draws in the Isle of Man and that reaches right the way up through the Hebrides, up to Lewis and parts of the western seaboard on the mainland too. We know that the Scandinavian influence is really strong and we know at times at Norway sought to control ah the parts of the kingdom. Yeah. So, there's a very strong Norse-Norwegian cultural influence there alongside the kind of Irish sea, garlic influence as well. So, it's a really interesting point in time and it's why it makes sense that a Norwegian origin really fits with their place in Lewis. And in that case, is it more because I'm thinking, because you mentioned Anglo-Saxon right at the beginning as well. And like I say, I'm prehistory and I'm terrible at dates and remembering what happened when.
00:26:25
Speaker
because I also remember learning about the Dain law in England, which was that whole stretch, including York and everything, which was also very Viking or Norse, depending on time period. And then Anglo-Saxons kind of came in and then that sort of left. And so it it did I guess they never really got up then to Scotland, like it continued for longer in Scotland, would you say then? or ah Who didn't get up to Scotland? So the the Anglo-Saxon sort of influence and Well, yeah, so in the pre-Viking period, Anglo-Saxon Northumbria reached right up to the 5th or 4th, so southeast Scotland was part of an Anglo-Saxon kingdom.
00:27:04
Speaker
That's one of the things my thesis looked at, actually. And that there's kind of more evidence for people trying to create an elite Anglo-Saxon identity in material terms there in southeastern Scotland. And there is actually in other parts of Northumbria, the kind of bits that we traditionally think of as Anglo-Saxon. So we need to tread carefully where we are kind of crossing modern national boundaries to make sure that we're not just implying ah applying those backwards into the past.
00:27:32
Speaker
Right. So the the whole England-Scotland border is irrelevant at this point. and Yes. Then the Dain law. And then things get interesting and we have, it's more kind of a Norwegian influence in Scotland from back from the sort of Viking period, back from the the early attacks on the monasteries of Lindisfarne and Iona that we hear about in historical sources. And then, as I said earlier, like a kind of into interaction, intermarriage, settling, a kind of development of of a hybrid culture.
00:28:02
Speaker
all the way around, particularly Western Scotland, but also up in tokney into Orkney, and of course into the Shetlands. two So yeah, different trajectories. Yeah, which yeah so complicated. It's complicated, is I guess, the sort of answer for the for the cultural background. So going yes go back to the Lewis Chess Men. Sorry, I got distracted. So in terms of the Lewis Chessmen, the idea is potentially that they originated materially in Norway in Trondheim. Is the idea then that perhaps they were kind of traded over? Would they have been brought over with someone? Would they have been actual actively by people? Like would someone have used them or played with them? Well, so ultimately we we don't really know and people have suggested a couple of different theories
Chess in Medieval Times
00:28:43
Speaker
in the past. So Often it's said that they might have been brought over by a merchant and he may have just stopped off in Lewis on his way somewhere else. Maybe that raging storm you alluded to in our opening, maybe that kept him in Lewis longer than he hoped and maybe he was heading somewhere else and he had to kind of leave these for safekeeping.
00:29:07
Speaker
That's been quite a sort of popular theory and it makes sense in some ways because we have multiple sets represented, right? It's not it's not one set, it doesn't seem to be one person's single cherished set. So I can see that makes sense. I take issue I think with the idea that this person may have just been passing through on the way somewhere else because Lewis is it's really key it's part of this really key Norse Gaelic culture. these are it's an ah Lewis is absolutely the right place for these pieces to be to be being given maybe as or in the process of being given or intended to be given as kind of diplomatic gifts if you like or to or potentially to be brought by a trader or potentially even somebody from the church.
00:29:56
Speaker
We needn't see these as sort of accidentally in Lewis, I think is what I'm going to, or accidentally in the Hebrides. If they were brought as part of a kind of trade attempt gone wrong, but just because the guy didn't come and get them again, then that fits. It fits with our understanding of the connections between this part of the world.
00:30:17
Speaker
And we I talked actually with, I guess, one of your colleagues, Adrian Maldonado, in a previous episode about the Galway horde and the idea of a horde and the whole concept of that, which, again, long story short, it's complicated. what So you have this horde of chess pieces. Do you have other similar hordes? like Is there any idea? I guess you mentioned that it's sort of difficult to know exactly about the excavation of these objects and how they were originally in place, but is there anything known about what potentially they were deposited for or why they might have been deposited?
00:30:47
Speaker
Not really. And it's a bit frustrating it's it' because of the sort of mists that shroud their original discovery. So even the sort of close, fine spot is is a little bit unclear. There is a couple of different places suggested. And so that kind we've lost that As with so many antiquarian finds, right we've lost that immediate archaeological context. We know that they were found in Lewis. We know that they were found together. We know that they were found with this buckle. We know that there are very likely to be pieces missing. Beyond that, it's very we're into speculation, which is fine, and you know insofar as we can, based on what we know. There's no comparable hordes from the UK of of playing pieces like this from this period. So, particularly from Scotland, the other playing pieces that we have are single finds by and large, and some antiquarian finds, some from excavations. and We have many playing boards, also from excavations. So, by looking at other assemblages and other sites, we can understand more about
00:31:52
Speaker
who might be playing these sorts of games and why and when. But yes, the chess pieces, there's so much that we don't that we don't know just because of the the kind of myths that surround their discovery and the hands that they pass through in order to arrive in in Edinburgh. Yeah, which although, so you mentioned you can at least say a little bit about who would have been playing these kinds of games. so I mean chess, for example.
00:32:15
Speaker
Like is it it, was it a common game? Would everyone have played it? Would it have just been elite? Or I guess if they're so beautifully carved, I can't imagine just ah a sort of simple farmer going, oh yes, I'm going to have a game of chess with my fancy carved chess pieces now. or Yeah. Well, its it's really interesting. So, I mean, we see these today, the Lewis chess pieces as, as really quite elite objects. They are beautifully carved. And and so I think these are objects that would have been intended for an elite audience, for kings or their important people. And there's a sense then that chess in particular is more, in that social milieu, is more than just a game. it's Yes, it's a way of playing and it's a way of socialising and kind of strengthening those bonds between a group of people. But it's also an opportunity to learn tactical thinking, strategic thinking,
00:33:10
Speaker
and also to demonstrate that tactical thinking in amongst your peers and potentially amongst people who are visiting you but maybe not necessarily your kind of immediate friendly group. you know so kind like I'm smarter than you, I could be you in a party if you need me. Exactly, so there are there are later sources, some of the sagas have descriptions of of people playing chess and the kinds of pickles that people get into, the sort of social etiquette of not wanting to refuse an invitation to play, but not wanting to beat your host and what do you do, and the game goes on for days. But you're not good at chess, I know that feeling I'm at here. yeah And then it also gets tied up with like kind of morality as well, because the but to begin with, the church wasn't super happy about people playing games, particularly games of chance. But there's definitely a point when chess becomes a bit more acceptable and you see it being used actually as a sort of teaching methods. And it definitely sort of transitions into something's a bit more acceptable because it's recognized more as a game of skill than as as a game of chance. So there's definitely a sense that
00:34:23
Speaker
chess sits really well in that elite martial society that these Lewis chess pieces clearly were intended to because they are so beautifully carved. We also have simpler chess pieces. There's an example from Cordingham in South Eastern Scotland. It's not a figural piece, it's a sort of geometric piece, but we know it's a chess piece.
00:34:46
Speaker
Whether or not that's intended for somebody kind of less elite than these pieces is ah is ah is a bit of a moot point, really, because the earlier traditions of chess piece design weren't figural. So they weren't as elaborate, they they weren't as detailed, they weren't depictions of people. And so it may just be that this piece is drawing on that tradition. So we have to be a bit careful about making as we always do, we have to be a bit careful about making assumptions based on yeah kind of how fancy things are, yeah if you like, because there are other things at play here. But we also have maybe not... So I said the thing about the Lewis Pieces as unusual is because the volume of them, we know that we can demonstrate that they are chess pieces and there are these other tables pieces or these um drafts like pieces in that hoard. We have lots of those.
Evolution of Chess
00:35:37
Speaker
So there are individual finds of that kind of disc, some very elaborately carved. There's one carved with a mermaid, there's one carved with a really cute little rabbit. There are others that are very plain, some with just sort of ring and dot decoration. And those give us a sense that probably those kinds of board games, if you like, were being played more widely. The number of gaming board sort of checker boards that we have scratched onto stone and recovered from excavation assemblages suggests that board games were being played more widely. But when we get these individual pieces, it's difficult to know whether it's tables like this sort of backgammon like game or one of the Tafel games, which are different again, because they involve one side with fewer pieces and the other opponent has double the number of pieces. So you're like uneven forces. Exactly. So when you only have one piece, it's difficult to know which games being used, but there is a sense that games more broadly are being played more widely. Yeah. And yeah, like you say, I guess there's sort of different variations. So would it have necessarily been the chess that we know today or would it likely have been?
00:36:46
Speaker
Yeah, it's a really interesting question. So I'm not a chess expert. I did play a little bit, but... I mean, you said at the beginning of this podcast that you're not an expert on the Lewis chess man, but you've been able to answer every single question in very detail. No, no, no. i can I can play chess, but my 11-year-old son routinely beats me, so... Well, he is a master, so, you know, it's back. So, yeah, as far as we understand, the origins of chess probably lie in around the sixth century, in probably in India.
00:37:17
Speaker
possibly in other parts of the world too, but but clearly in India, where it then spreads to Persia and then it spreads throughout the Islamic world and is brought ah gains rapid popularity in the from around the 9th century ah across medieval Europe.
00:37:33
Speaker
and the so we don't have So we have um Arabic sources, written sources about rules of chess, so the the Islamic sources. and And we can see a transition that I alluded to a minute ago from different shapes of um chess pieces. So, for instance, in the Lewis chess pieces, what we might call the rook or the warder, which today is the castle piece. It's usually in the shape of a castle.
00:38:04
Speaker
the The rook or the warder are foot soldiers in um the Lewis chest pieces, including some that bite their shields. Those are the ones that have been identified as the berserkers. But the word rook comes from a word for chariot. So originally that piece would have looked very different. The other pieces originally were elephants because They reflected the different elements of, effectively, I suppose, Indian army. And elephants were an important part of that. So some of you can see the form and the identity of the pieces changing, even if their names haven't. So rukh comes from rukh. It still comes from the Persian Arabic word for chariot.
00:38:51
Speaker
So there are there are continuities as well as some changes in, yes, in the form of the pieces. And so it seems like there is a development in the in the rules as well. I think there's quite a lot of sources, as far as I understand, that complain about how long chess takes. Like it just goes on for ages, right? I mean, when I play, it seems to be over very quickly. I know, me too. Me too. But maybe people were better at it. I don't know. yeah yeah So there were there were sort of ways suggested to speed up the game and some of those included, as we do today, allowing a pawn to jump two spaces from their first move rather than one and so a rule change to allow the king the the Queen sorry to move multiple spaces rather than one.
00:39:31
Speaker
So i think it would be I think it would be recognizable as chess, but yeah potentially slightly different rules and yes, slightly different pieces. But most of the pieces are those pieces that we play with today. So we have the kings, we have the queens, we have knights, and we have bishops.
Alice's Career Path
00:39:49
Speaker
Okay. Well, then I think I'll still, though, I'll not challenge the you know yarl of ah Lewis to Lewis to the chess matchup.
00:39:58
Speaker
either we need that just Just because of that. you know I don't want to embarrass myself with not knowing the rules. you know okay Well, we're going to have another very quick break now so that those listening could have an opportunity to top up their tea, although it's probably gone cold. It was so fascinating. I forgot to drink my tea during that. We'll be back very soon.
00:40:16
Speaker
Welcome back, everyone. I hope that the teacups are now fuller and the biscuit jar is emptier. So we did already introduce sort of your background a little bit in the first section of the episode in terms of your sort of area of interest and topic and everything. But I find it really fascinating. We've talked so much in this podcast about how ah the problems of kind of working out where objects came from and what their history is and how to interpret them and all that kind of thing. And and yes, you are also interested in objects and you are specifically but a senior curator with National Museum of Scotland.
00:40:47
Speaker
So, perhaps we could go into a bit of detail. How does that work in terms of your everyday workday? I guess, what's maybe let's start from the beginning. What road led you to that position in particular? because Yeah, from research. Yeah. Well, so, ah yeah, I mentioned earlier I did a PhD at Glasgow working with Anglo-Saxon material culture from Scotland. and That led me to spend quite a lot of time working with National Museum Scotland's collection because we hold the the majority of the material that I was interested in. Not all of it, but the majority of the material that I was working in.
00:41:20
Speaker
So that gave me ah a really great introduction to the department here, to the staff here, to the collection, to understanding its history and how that affects how you have to go about researching it as a researcher today. And it kind of, yeah, it got me a foot in the door, I suppose. So that was the starting point. Then I managed to get the possibly the best job title I will ever have in my life. If you like whisky, you will have heard of um a whisky called Glamorangie. Glamorangie redesigned their bottles and they used a design from an amazing and iconic piece of sculpture from Hilton of Cabo in North East Scotland.
00:42:08
Speaker
at very, that was found very near their distillery. They use that as their brand logo. They call it the Cigna. It's a spiral based pattern. So it's Triscales, but arranged into ah a sort of panel that in which there's a kind of hidden cross because the Hilton of Cabo monument is ah is an early Christian cross lab. So they were inspired by this and they came to the museum to talk to them about it. And my incredibly enlightened first boss, a keeper of archaeology at the time, David Clark,
00:42:35
Speaker
realised that there was an opportunity to work with them and develop a research project to find out more about the period that produced this logo for them. And so he managed to negotiate a three-year research project with a full-time academic researcher called the Glenmorangie.
00:42:54
Speaker
research officer and I got that job. I got that job I think because I already had material culture expertise, I already had specific experience of working with the collection here and my PhD was on ah and a sort of an aligned topic and so that was amazing. It was a great opportunity, brilliant time, three years. It was so successful and we did so well and they loved it so much that they renewed So I had another three years and we wrote a book, Early Medieval Scotland, which is designed for interested people, maybe people just starting out at university wanting a kind of material culture focused way in into the period.
00:43:36
Speaker
It's called Early Medieval Scotland, Individuals, Communities and Ideas. and so It's not kind of chronological, it's not historical. It takes objects first and then looks at the stories about individual people or communities or bigger ideas that we can tell through them. so we ah As part of a team, we co-wrote that and published that and it was really great. We did lots of fun things in that project. They renewed it again. so i had Work with whisky distilleries is what I'm hearing. I know, it was amazing. so Nine years worth of that research, a post effectively, based here. and We did another book called Scotland's Early Silver that looked at the first thousand years of silver from its introduction in the Roman period, right way through to the start of the Viking Age. We did an exhibition on that and that was an amazing highlight to do. And then they renewed for another three years. but My colleague who you alluded to, Adrian Maldonado, excellent, excellent colleague, he took over the Glenmorangie reigns at that point and I um got a permanent job here looking after and the later section of the collection we spoke about earlier, so the central and a later medieval collection. um So then i sort of kept I have kept one foot in the early medieval whilst working on the late medieval too So, yeah, it's been a, it's been a slight, maybe slightly unusual trajectory. I just kind of, I started, I loved it. I just realised that this was actually, absolutely, I don't want to do anything else. I don't want to be anywhere else. I want to do this stuff here. was very lucky. That was purely research-focused. You mentioned that you did some exhibitions as well. so Was the exhibition sort of curation tied up with the research, or were they separate? Absolutely. yeah no it was so All of the nine years as this the research post, I wasn't curatorily responsible for things, and but I researched them. so Research is a really big part of a curator's job, and it's a really big part of my job now.
00:45:29
Speaker
So, I did that part of curation and we worked on a special exhibition yup together as well and actually another temporary display of um craft recreations that we made of things that don't survive or don't survive very well. We worked with craft makers today to understand why they might have been made and how they might have been made.
00:45:48
Speaker
So we had a display of those recreated objects as well. So I got to do the research side and the exhibition side and the publication side of being a curator. I also got to do an awful lot of speaking to the public. I did a lot of public talks and lectures, all with an eye partly to help raise the profile of the research project and to credit our sponsors. So it was very public facing. So I did a lot of what a curator post involves during those nine years. But the shift now into full-time curator means that I get to do a little bit less
00:46:26
Speaker
of the public facing stuff, I still get to do it and I'm looking forward to doing a talk later this month. But it's not as a huge a part of what I do now. There's a lot more other things. So, I'm responsible for acquiring objects, for selecting objects to acquire, whether that's excavation assemblages or a single chance finds that have gone through our treasure system, as well as registration and collections care,
00:46:51
Speaker
and research and exhibitions and they're responsible for the permanent galleries where where um our objects
Curatorial Responsibilities
00:46:59
Speaker
feature as well. So one of the things I'm doing at the moment, as we alluded to earlier, is updating the permanent display of our 11 Lewis chess pieces in our Kingdom of the Scots gallery at the moment, which is super fun. And you say re redesigning. what's Is it fancy new? Is it a storm, a virtual storm that you're walking into? Well, no, it's not. but in the future when So our galleries opened in 1998. So they've been open quite a while now. And when we do come to relook at ah the whole of the space, we will be looking at really fun, interactive and innovative ways.
00:47:35
Speaker
to engage people with the collection. At the moment, it's more a tweaking, but i we're moving them into a nice prominent space. But the most exciting thing is that at the moment, they were adjacent to another case, so you couldn't walk around a case. And there was a backboard in the case that gave you some interesting information, but it meant you couldn't see the backs of the pieces properly.
00:47:55
Speaker
And the thing about the Lewis chess pieces is we all know them, or if you know them, you know them for their faces. Their faces are amazing. But the backs are stupendous. The um thrones that the pieces sit in are all intricate, elaborately carved, all different. and They're amazing. So the best thing about this is that we're moving them so that you'll be able to get a proper 360 view in the round for the first time. It's very exciting.
00:48:24
Speaker
Very, very cool. And hopefully, I think by the time this releases, it'll have been open, I think. So that's right. Hopefully we'll have some pictures as well to show or indeed go visit. Yes. That's a better thing to do indeed. but That's really fascinating. And you, I mean, as we've talked about, I sort of joked last time, but it's true, you know, you've managed to talk about the Lewis Chessmen as if you've been researching them your whole career. But as you just mentioned, you haven't been Is it something, you know do you know now a lot about lots of things? Do you have to sort of get very good at quickly researching the most essentials of different things? How does that work? Yeah, so you do. It's a bit of both. So there are things that we individually are researching and generating novel information on at at the moment. and And me and my colleagues all do that all of the time. But we have to be quite selective, right? We we all curate.
00:49:17
Speaker
thousands of objects so we can't do that for everything. We have to choose our moments and sometimes that's based on clear need if there's things that we just can see are dying calling out for work or it might be generated by the need to update a display or it might be generated through other reasons things if objects are maybe degrading, we might try and look at a generating research project to try and understand why and that sort of thing with our colleagues in conservation. So, there are lots of different reasons why we might start um doing research on any one part of the collection. So, at the moment, I'm bringing a book to fruition on silver and and that's a kind of academic end of that Glenmorangie first thousand years of silver, but it's the really difficult
00:50:06
Speaker
100, 150 years, the transition between late Roman into early medieval bit, so bringing that to fruition at the moment. But at other times, we need to just be able to communicate and tell people about a huge amount of the collection. So yes, it's it's understanding what has been done before, looking critically at it, assembling it quickly, and then being able to talk about it in an enthusiastic way.
Supporting the Archaeology Community
00:50:32
Speaker
much as I would love to give all of my collection some and novel research time. yeah it's We have to be quite selective, but I've got things on the go on late medieval seal matrices that I'm getting really excited about at the moment. There's always a potential to do new projects even on some of our really iconic objects. so Things like the money musk relicry that I spoke about at the beginning or the Hunterston brooch, which is an amazing early medieval brooch. It's the largest one in our in our collection. These are really iconic objects that for some reason sometimes slip through the cracks. I think and people assume that they're iconic and we know everything about them, but actually you often find that nobody has looked at them nobody looked at them closely. Even if you've looked at them like the Lewis Chess Man, we still don't really know anything about them. Yeah, that there's always new things to be done. and so yep ah Great. well so yeah so okay We've mentioned the research part, the curation part. However, I also saw when I had a brief look at your bio that you're also the grants and awards officer for the Society for Medieval Archaeology and part of two supervisory teams for their AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Awards. so How does that work compared to your work as a curator?
00:51:41
Speaker
Yeah, so I think the work of a curator is really interesting because it's so diverse and there are so many different facets and obviously the collection is at the core but we also have a role and a responsibility to advocate for our period, for our discipline and to support other people doing that and so both of those things that you alluded to are roles where I'm trying to support other people's development So, I've done the Grants and Awards Officer for Medieval Archaeology for a few years now and it means that I get to assess all the grant applications that come in. I get to and find other people on the council to do that with me. I also get to read and submitted undergraduate and postgraduate theses in order to choose and prize winners. The Society for Medieval Archaeology has prizes for both of those types of dissertations and that's a really rewarding
00:52:36
Speaker
thing to do. to Yeah, to feel like you're kind of giving something back a bit more generally to the people who are ah working or aspiring to work on this period. and So that's great. And yeah, the HRC Collaborative Doctoral Awards, well we co-supervise PhD students in the museum with universities. So I have a student who is just doing their corrections actually, having passed at the University of York, thank you, and another one who's imminently about to submit at the University of Durham. And this scheme has been amazing because it's... So I came in, as I said, to the museum as a PhD researcher and I was working on my own project.
00:53:18
Speaker
This allows us to help generate the projects that students come in to work on, so we don't just facilitate access to the collection, we help identify, working with the universities, where the research gaps are, whether it's thematic or whether it's materially focused. so The project that's just going to come to an end later this year is on medieval dress accessories and I developed that with the university because I could see there's a huge need as part of my day job looking after the collection and growing the collection to understand this group of material better. I could see there was a massive gap in research. So they are in a way like extra things that we do, but in many ways they are integral to doing the rest of our job well, I think.
00:54:02
Speaker
Yeah. Which I think is the case with so many different things, right? You always find that link and there's a reason why you do all the different things is there's usually some link to something you like. so ah Exactly. yeah Well, final question that i that I always ask is, if you could sort of go back to your younger self and say, you know, give some advice that you wish you'd known then, or, you know, if you would give a piece of advice to someone else, like a doctoral student or anyone who wants to kind of follow a similar path or get into a similar field, what advice would that be?
00:54:31
Speaker
Well, I think when it comes to working with museums, I think trying to make those connections, come in and use the collection, spend some time with curators, understanding not just the objects that you're looking at, but kind of the history of the collection as well, because every museum collection has a different past and requires different skills to navigate it. And once you start developing those skills, yes, about about objects,
00:54:57
Speaker
ah sort generally, but then also specifically about a museum's own collection and past, you suddenly become really useful to the institution. So you make those connections, spend time getting to know the collection and the history, and really don't be afraid to show your enthusiasm actually for
Advice for Aspiring Museum Professionals
00:55:16
Speaker
the collection. so If you're applying for jobs in this kind of sector, there's lots of people who might have relevant kind of period experience or you know have a PhD on a topic or that's relevant, but if you can show engagement and enthusiasm for the material culture specifically and even better, that institution's material culture and collection, that's really, really important and it goes a long way to kind of making the connections that you need to kind of get started in this kind of job. but
00:55:47
Speaker
good Good advice. Also drink whisky, I think is what we've discovered. yeah Responsibly. Save the whisky. Great. Well, thank you so much for sharing all of your insight and information. That marks the end of our tea break. It sounds like you've got a lot to do, so I should let you go if you're about to work. But thank you so, so much for joining me. It was really great to yeah to hear everything and get so many insights. That was wonderful. Thanks very much for having me, Matilda. And if anyone wants to find out more about Alice's work, the National Museum of Scotland, the Lewis Chessman, check the show notes on the podcast homepage. I'll put as many links as possible in there. I hope that you all enjoyed our journey today. If, as always, you want to help support this show and all of the other amazing series that form the Archaeology Podcast Network,
00:56:30
Speaker
You can follow, like, subscribe, etc. Leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts, or if you want to help us more in a financial sense, you can also become a member, which will help us create even more amazing, free to listen to content. You also have exclusive access to ad-free episodes, early access to episodes and bonus content. So for more information on that, check out the homepage at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com.
00:56:53
Speaker
I hope that you enjoyed our journey today. If you did, make sure to like, follow, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, and I'll see you next month for another episode of Tea Break Time Travel.
00:57:04
Speaker
This episode was produced by Chris Webster from his ah RV traveling the United States, Tristan Boyle in Scotland, DigTech LLC, Cultural Media, and the Archaeology Podcast Network, and was edited by Rachel Rodin. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archapodnet.com. Contact us at chrisatarchaeologypodcastnetwork.com.