Archive Unbound

By Michael McCluskey

The Filming Antiquity project emerged from the archive of archaeologist Gerald Lankester Harding (1901-1979), Chief Curator/Director of Antiquities in Transjordan from 1936 to 1956.  Among Harding’s personal papers, photographs, diaries, and letters were over 30 films from the late 1920s and early 1930s.  Some were labelled, suggesting the possible places and events they might reveal, from 'Ajjul', an archaeological site in what was then Mandate Palestine, to 'Ski Jumping'. Others had nothing else to identify their subject other than the evidence of a life spread out before us on a table in a library of a 12th Century house in the Cotswolds.

Documents in the Harding archive in situ. Photo: A. Thornton, 2014

The house is where the ideas for the project first came together—to seek through film a means of making sense of the varied materials that constitute this particular collection, of understanding the potential of the archive in both its physical and digital manifestations, of producing knowledge through our engagement with these items.  Through the process of putting together our own archive of material evolving from the project, we hope to invite collaboration across disciplines and audiences both academic and general. The house itself might be seen as a metaphor for the foundations and additions of Filming Antiquity.  Since it is where the project began, it is where this addition/edition of the archive begins.

The current owner of the house is Michael Macdonald, a Research Associate at the Khalili Research Centre, Oxford and Lankester Harding’s executor.  Michael not only offered us access to the collection but also information that could help put the items into context and make connections between them.  The materials in the archive offer extensive information about excavations, the personal activities of those on the dig, and the relationships formed from these experiences. 

The collection includes letters, Harding’s day diaries, an unpublished typewritten biographical manuscript, and photos of Harding’s childhood in China and Singapore as well as his work at Tell Jemmeh, Tell Fara, Tell el-Ajjul and Tell ed-Duweir (British Mandate Palestine) and Transjordan, and his co-workers and personal acquaintances. Alongside the papers and photographs were the films, housed in their Baby Pathé canisters, and with limited identifying material about their contents. Michael could not help with what might be captured in the moving images but the possibilities include excavation work, on-site activities or documentation of Harding’s other interests, including perhaps his work with the Amman Dramatic Society.  

A photograph album in the Harding archive. Photo: A. Thornton, 2014.

The Harding archive offers rich material for studies not only of archaeology and its history, but also social history, anthropology, cultural geography, and film history. With this in mind, Filming Antiquity was founded to invite collaboration with others interested in working across disciplinary boundaries and helping to further our understanding of what excavation sites and archaeological digs can tell us about cultural history, production, and consumption and the networks (social, professional, economic, media) that enabled these exchanges. The project uses the films produced at these sites as the launch pad for discussions. To start, we aim to digitize the films from the Harding archive to see what they contain and what others can tell us about the people, places, and processes put on screen.

Filming Antiquity is currently funded through University College London’s Centre for Humanities Interdisciplinary Research Projects (CHIRP) Small Grants Award Scheme.  A list of the UCL staff involved in Filming Antiquity and details of projected outputs are available here.