By Ian Carroll and Amara Thornton

We have been marking the film canisters in the Harding collection in preparation for taking the film footage to be digitised.  There are in total 46 metal canisters holding film stock in the collection, ranging in size from 68.4 mm to 51 mm.  Once empty of film, each original canister will be kept.

Marking the original canisters will allow us to retain the association between the information on the film canister and the digitised film.  This contextual information will be added as metadata in the archive's record.

Once the paraloid was dry, we used white Rotring ink so that the numbers would show up on the surface of the black canisters.  Then a second coat of paraloid was applied on top of the white painted number.  In line with conservation technique, this process is reversible so the markings can be removed at any point if necessary. 

We put canisters into rough groupings, partially guided by references in the archive.  Canisters with site names on the labels were kept together, and any numbers were put in sequence where possible.  Although not all the canisters were labelled, some that were had information on the where the films were developed. 

Labels on some of the films suggest that a few canisters may contain films bought for home viewing.  In one case we found a partial film title peeking out from beneath a developers label.

Marking the film canisters enabled us to reflect on the range of material on the films in this collection.  While some of it is certainly archaeological, there may be unexpected surprises in store.  We’re looking forward to seeing the digitised footage and finding out whether the information we currently have is actually reflected on screen.  In other words: do the films do what they say on the tin?

Guest post by Angela Saward (Curator of Moving Image and Sound, the Wellcome Library)

One of the gems within the Wellcome Library’s Moving Image & Sound Collection is the footage taken on Wellcome's second expedition to the Sudan at Gebel Moya. The expedition was well documented at the time and many related papers are held within the Wellcome Library's Archives and Manuscripts department. In fact revisiting these documents turned out to be a forensic exercise in detection.

Wellcome and his archive

Henry Solomon Wellcome (1853-1936), American by birth, entrepreneur, wealthy philanthropist and archaeologist, resourced his expeditions with care, engaging the best men for the job. The craft of cinematic production was very much in its infancy but all three Sudanese expeditions (1911-12, 1912-13 and 1913-14), engaged a stills photographer.  On the first expedition this was R. C. Ryan, the second and third were attended by two: A. G. Barrett and C. H. Horton. No mention of the cinematic material was made in the published findings of the expedition, Frank Addison's The Wellcome excavations in the Sudan, which post-deceased HSW by 15 years.

The archives reveal the extent of the completed cinematic films to be:

• Set A 14 tins of original film labelled A-H Barrett, 1-6 Ryan
• Set B 14 tins of duplicate positive film labelled as above
• Set C 15 tins labelled original positive film

Care was taken in the preservation and storage of this material; in total there were 9823 feet shot by Barrett and an unspecified amount by Ryan.  A document dated 8th March 1921 notes that: 

Arthur George Barrett was born in 1885 and in the 1911 census he listed his occupation as Press Photographer. He was married to Nancy Barrett and lived in Camberwell, South-East London. He was engaged by Wellcome on the 18th September 1912 for ‘artistic work’ and to go out to the Sudan; his salary was £3 10 Shillings a week (increasing to £4 10 shillings for the expedition for the following season). 

When there was work available, he worked for Wellcome from 1912-1916 after which he joined the Royal Naval Air Service. He was then re-engaged in 1925. In the archive there are numerous letters sent by Barrett to the organisation whilst he was an employee, one of which was a request to HSW to personally recommend him in his application to be a member of the Royal Photographic Society for his photographic work at Gebel Moya – this was duly carried out. 

Barrett achieved recognition for his invention of the kite camera to capture aerial photography over the excavations – as can be seen, it looks to be both ingenious and a somewhat Heath Robinson affair. 

By Ken Walton

At the end of April, Filming Antiquity screened two different excavation films at the Petrie Museum for the “Capturing Light” event.  These two films, of Henry Wellcome’s excavations at Jebel Moya, Sudan (1912/13) and Egypt Exploration Society (EES) excavations at Amarna, Egypt (1930-1933), were made at very different periods. The Wellcome film is more or less “Edwardian” and the EES film very much of the inter-war era. Between the two periods there had been many advances in film and filmmaking including the invention of clockwork camera motors yet we still see Hillary Waddington using a hand-cranked camera in his 1930s Amarna film.

I received a Diploma in professional film production at the London Film School, and then worked at the London Film School in the editing department before coming to study Archaeology at UCL.  While research into the archives relating to these films is ongoing, I will offer some insights into the kinds of equipment and techniques used during these eras to capture these fascinating moving images.

The Cameras

Frank Addison makes no mention of the filming in his 1949 site report on Jebel Moya, but recent research by Angela Saward, the Wellcome Library's Curator of Moving Image and Sound, suggests the cameraman was expedition photographer Arthur Barrett (more on him in a future post!) 

At present it is unclear what kind of movie camera was used to film the 1912/13 Jebel Moya season, but at this early stage in filmmaking, it was the French and British that led the field.  There are a number of candidates for the camera used, including British made movie cameras such as the Williamson or the Moy and Bastie.  Although it was not imported to Britain until 1914 the French made ‘Debrie Parvo’ (‘Parvo’ meaning ‘compact’) invented in 1908, was widely used by the time of the Jebel Moya excavations.  Wellcome, a wealthy man and someone who might want the best and could afford it, could still have privately imported the advanced Debrie. 

There was no 16mm film in the early 1900s and the Jebel Moya film was shot on 35mm film.  The Debrie Parvo would have held 390ft of film which was hand-cranked and would have lasted 6 minutes at 16 frames per second. It was encased in a wooden box but it had an inner metal case and workings of metal. This would be an advantage in places like Africa where mould and insects had been known to attack wood and leather. 

Filming

Being hand-crank cameras, both the Jebel Moya and the EES Amarna cameras would have had to be tripod mounted. The Cine-Kodak Model A was also 16 frames per-second - it was really an amateur camera compared with the earlier Debrie Parvo, which was considered ‘professional’.

The Debrie allowed the camera operator to focus through the 'taking lens' - the lens the film was exposed with.  This was achieved by having a 'ruby window' (red filter) in the viewfinder.  Because the film was more or less 'orthochromatic' (only sensitive to the blue and green light of the spectrum) the red filter enabled the operator to view through the taking lens without affecting the exposure of the film.  As I understand it, the film could be moved to the side and the image viewed directly, or on a ground glass; the image was upright.  Once focused the 'ruby window' viewfinder could be closed and the operator would then use the side-finder for normal filming.  Another plus for the Debrie was the ability to alter the shutter speed.

All this was quite a contrast to the later amateur Cine Kodak Model A Waddington used at Amarna.  This camera had a 'fixed focus' standard lens (25mm, being a 16mm camera) with the camera operator having to use the built-in finder that did not see through the taking lens and gave an upside down image. It was not in fact until the 1940s that the German company ‘Arriflex’ invented the rotating mirror shutter mechanism that camera operators could see a high quality image through the lens whilst filming. There were sophisticated side finders and prism finders before this like the ‘Mitchell’ but the Arriflex device was the great breakthrough. 

Exposure might have been difficult for the Debrie with no exposure meters at the time, but the operator could have relied on charts suggesting the right f-stop - the lens aperture opening - for various lighting conditions. Exposure meters were just coming in when Waddington began filming in the 1930s. The f-stop and film stock light absorbing speed, its American Standards Association rating, were the only variables as far as exposure was concerned because the shutter speed was fixed on the Cine Kodak Model A. Stock would have been cheaper for Waddington to buy because whereas 35mm comes out as 16 frames per foot the new 16mm was 40 frames per foot.

With hand-cranking, any variation in the cranking speed could have resulted in a change of exposure. Slightly slower cranking would lead to more light on the film and overexposure. This may account for fluctuations in the filmed image when the film sometimes becomes lighter or darker. This fluctuation does not happen with motorised cameras that keep to speed.

Waddington achieves slow motion in part of the EES Amarna film. To accomplish this effect Waddington would have had to increase his hand cranking and at the same time open his aperture to compensate for less light reaching the film. Alternatively, he could have printed each or every other frame twice which would have had the same effect for the audience. We would need to see the film-frames to know for certain how it was done, or look at the digitised version frame by frame.

Another feature of all films, hand-cranked or motorised, is the ‘flash-frame’. This is a portion of overexposed film just at the start and finish of a ‘take’ and is due to the camera running slow at these times. A classic sign of un-edited ‘rushes’ (the first ungraded or ‘one-light print’ of a film for viewing by the director and editor) is the inclusion of flash-frames.  Flash-frames would normally be removed by the editor in a finished film.  Interestingly, in the sequence showing the “division” of artefacts in the 1930s Amarna footage what look like flash-frames appear.  The footage also includes film information boards describing the shots. Normally these boards are only used by the editor and would be removed from the finished film. All this suggests at least some of the Amarna footage that was digitised was unedited.

Survival

We know John Pendlebury gave some film shows of the EES Amarna work (e.g. at the Society of Antiquaries) so there may be a finished film still surviving somewhere. The EES Amarna films that were scanned onto VHS (and then unfortunately disposed of in the 1980s) look like they might have been just the unedited ‘rushes’ and not the finished film.

The Jebel Moya film was ‘Nitrate stock’ and prone to dangerous deterioration, while Waddington’s film was Cellulose Diacetate safety stock invented in 1923 and used to make the early 16mm films. Movie film nitrate stock was only ever produced in 35mm and done away with in 1951. The Jebel Moya film stock eventually deteriorated and was destroyed, but the Waddington film stock survived. Both films would have had negatives - the Jebel Moya negative is lost to us, but could the Amarna negative have survived?   

Futher Reading

Raimondo-Souto, M. 2006. Motion Picture Photography: A History. Mc Farland Co. Inc.

Salt, B. 2009.  Film Style and Technology: History and Analysis. (3rd edn.). Starword.

Amara and I were asked to speak at a special event organised by the Petrie Museum. As part of their public programme on 'The Light Project', we looked at the role of photography and film in early twentieth-century archaeology. Amara unearthed some fascinating images of Flinders Petrie and a stunning image that showed how an Egyptian tomb was wired with electric light to impress the tourists. I discussed films from the 1912-13 excavation at Gebel Moya funded by Henry Wellcome and 1930s footage from the excavation at Tell el-Amarna sponsored by the Egypt Exploration Society. The Wellcome films are wonderful images of the disciplined work site and scenes of amusement including a white-suited bicyclist drawing the attention of local children. The Amarna films, in contrast, show a more playful side to the excavation team as the group of seemingly bright young things are captured joking together in Fair Isle jumpers. A special thank you to Angela Saward from the Wellcome Library for allowing us to screen the film footage and for offering some helpful information during the discussion that followed our presentation. Thanks also to the EES for providing access to the Amarna films and to Helen Pike of the Petrie Museum for planning this event and the entire Light Project programme. And a final thank you to Louise Atherton for taking this photo of the event.

This brief entry in Lankester Harding's 1933 day-diary may seem insignificant - but it isn't.  By the 1930s annual archaeological excavations were a routine event during the summer Season in London.  

Harding visited an annual exhibition for the first time in July 1924. The Egypt Exploration Society's exhibition of objects from its season at Amarna was on at the Society of Antiquaries. Harding saw an ad in the newspaper about it and went along.  There he was introduced to the archaeological network and followed his visit with another – this time to Flinders Petrie’s exhibition of antiquities from Qau, Egypt at University College London.  Two years later, Petrie engaged Harding as an assistant on his excavations in Palestine. 

Petrie had been holding exhibitions in London since 1884 to showcase excavations he (and eventually his students) conducted in Egypt.   These temporary displays were arranged in the aftermath of excavation, once excavated objects had reached Britain. 

Antiquities discovered during the excavation season (c. November to May) were placed on tables and shelves distributed into one or two rooms with plans, maps, paintings and photographs of the site and surrounding region on the walls.  These events were open to the public with hours of admission that often extended into the evening after businesses had closed.  

As a member of the Wellcome Archaeological Expedition to the Near East in the early 1930s, Harding became more intimately involved in the public presentation of research.  In a letter in Harding’s archive, expedition director James Leslie Starkey emphasised Harding’s role in organising the Expedition’s exhibitions.  

During this period, film screenings were a new addition to ‘exhibition season’.  Hilary Waddington’s films of EES excavations at Amarna were the subject of the Filming Antiquity launch event – one of these films was screened in London in 1931 to complement the EES’s exhibition during its opening week.  Although this screening was targeted at EES subscribers free tickets were also offered to the public.

In 1935, notices appeared that a film of the Wellcome Expedition's excavations at Tell ed-Duweir (Lachish) would be screened twice a day at the exhibition, held at the Wellcome Museum on Euston Road. Film screenings of excavations in progress were also incorporated into the 1937 and 1938 Lachish exhibitions. 

There’s still a lot we don’t know about the creation and initial screening of these Lachish films; in the course of the Filming Antiquity project we hope to find out more about them to contribute to our understanding of the films in Harding's archive.  

The growing number of excavation films emerging from the shadows and the context of their initial display enables us to see histories of excavation and archaeology’s public impact in a whole new light.  The legacy of the Lachish films continues into more contemporary times; clips from the footage were shown at the British Museum in 1990 in the Archaeology and the Bible exhibition.* I'd love to know what the 51,000 odd visitors to this exhibition thought of the vintage scenes!

References/Further Reading

Harding, G. L. 1933. Diary Entry.  [manuscript]. 17 July. Harding Archive: UCL Institute of Archaeology.

Director [Starkey, J. L.]. 1936. [Statement of recommendation]. Harding Archive: UCL Institute of Archaeology.

Naunton, C. 2010. The Film Record of the Egypt Exploration Society’s Excavations at Tell el-Amarna.  KMT 21: 45-53.

Thornton, A 2015. Exhibition Season: Annual Archaeological Exhibitions in London, 1880s-1930s. Bulletin of the History of Archaeology 25(1):2, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5334/bha.252

The Times. 1931. Egypt Exploration Society. Times Digital Archive, 7 Sep P 13.

Anon. 1938.  J. L. Starkey. Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer. British Newspaper Archive, 12 January.


*Thanks to Jonathan Tubb for this information.

By Jenny Bunn

When people ask me what I do as an archivist, I never really know what to say. Do I go for the safe but dull option ‘I look after old records and make them available to others’, or do I go for the more bombastic ‘I ensure society does not suffer from collective amnesia, provide the means to hold individuals and organisations to account and protect basic human rights’. The fact is that, as an archivist, I do many things (including getting involved in projects such as Filming Antiquity) and I have to do many things because taking custody seriously is not a simple proposition.

Take for example, the films from the archive of Gerald Lankester Harding that form the focus of this project. These films are now being housed at the UCL Institute of Archaeology, undergoing appraisal for formal acquisition by the collections. Taking care of such an important archive is a big responsibility, but also an exciting challenge: it is recognised that the invaluable information these films contain can inform knowledge of archaeology, and myriad other fields, both now and in the future.  For this to happen, however, we need to be able to watch the films and digitisation will provide this vital access.

Looking after digital things is not something we have had to do until relatively recently. Consequently, what is involved in doing so is not yet completely understood. Having a back-up is certainly a good start, but how many of us can say that we periodically check our back-ups to make sure that what has been backed-up is still accessible and has not become corrupted or otherwise unreadable? Then again, how many of us are aware of the issue of obsolesence and take active steps to counter it, by, for example, choosing our file formats and storage media with care? Sadly I suspect the answer is, not many, but those of us who have taken on a responsibility to look after other people’s stuff for the good of all, also have to take the problem of digital preservation very seriously indeed.

In future blog posts, we will seek to outline our considerations in digitising these films in greater detail, but for now I hope that I have done enough to explain why taking custody seriously means that nothing is ever simple and that digitisation is not the answer to everything.

Further information/links on digital preservation

Digital Preservation Coalition     

Digital Preservation Management: Implementing Short-Term Strategies for Long-Term Solutions, online tutorial developed for the Digital Preservation Management workshop, developed and maintained by Cornell University Library, 2003-2006; extended and maintained by ICPSR, 2007-2012; and now extended and maintained by MIT Libraries, 2012-on.

Library of Congress, Personal Archiving

The National Archives, Preserving digital records: Guidance 

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.  

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.