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What's in a Label?

1/9/2015

 
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.
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Ian Carroll practices marking using a special ink dip pen (detail image to the right) and white ink. Photos: A. Thornton, I. Carroll, 2015.
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Marking the film canisters was a three-stage process.  First, paraloid was applied to the surface of the canister in an appropriate space, roughly the same place on each object.   Many of the canisters had labels around the sides so we opted to mark the canisters on the top.
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The marked canisters. Photo: I. Carroll, 2015.
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. 
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One of a few canisters with a developer label; this label indicates that the developer was based in Jerusalem. Handwritten annotations on the printed label are clearly visible. Photo: A. Thornton, 2015.
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.

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This film canister's developer label is partially destroyed, revealing another label beneath it with a partial title in French. Photo: A. Thornton, 2015.
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?

A Cinematographic Record: A Day at Jebel Moya, 1912-13

3/8/2015

 
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: 
On reaching Dartford the matter upon each label should be written by hand in permanent paint upon the tins themselves, so that there may be no doubt as to the contents or likelihood of the labels becoming detached.

The sets above marked A. and C. which are respectively, the original negative film and the original set of selected positives made under Mr. Barrett’s direction, may be stored together in one fire-proof and dry chamber  …  It has cost over £100 to produce, and it is obvious from this expenditure would not be justified unless it was stored separately from the other film and at such a distance that there could be no possibility if the same accident by fire, water or other cause, happening to both at the same time.

The Cameraman
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Arthur Barrett stands in the centre of this photograph, taken in Sudan, wearing pith helmet (M0013047). Courtesy of Wellcome Library, London.
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. 
Also, in the guise of press photographer he is credited with capturing two historic moments: the notorious murderer Dr Hawley Harvey Crippen in 1911 and suffragette Emily Davison trampled under the King’s Horse at the Derby on 6th June 1913. 
The Footage
"A Day at Gebel Moya" never appears to have been publically screened. HSW hosted a number of formal events when some of the objects and artefacts from the expeditions were on display; copies of these invitations exist in the Wellcome Library. During Wellcome’s life-time, the 35mm nitrate film (negatives and positives) could not legally be screened at the Wellcome Institute as the venue was unlicensed to permit this. The flammability of nitrate film was well-documented and appropriate storage provision was organised for all the film materials held by the organisation. 

A private screening which appears to have been solely for Wellcome and a few colleagues was organised at the Royal Society of Medicine which had a licence to screen nitrate film. Although the footage captured at Gebel Moya is shot-listed in detail, there’s no information about the creation of intertitles or a narrative structure so it seems possible that the sequences were an edited compilation of material with no narrative or chronology. The lack of an ‘official’ film which could be recognised as a creative piece of work with a unifying artistic integrity led directly to the demise of much of the material later on.
As part of their work to secure the legacy of Wellcome, the Trustees of Sir Henry Wellcome commissioned an inspection of the Jebel Moya films 17 years after they were last viewed and some 26 years after they were created. In a letter dated 8th July 1938 it was observed:
Tin No. 31, a positive of some 500 feet seems to be totally ruined while a few rolls in other tins show signs of starting disintegration. The store room  seems to lack ventilation while I understand that it gets over hot when the boilers are in use. Moreover the life of film is estimated to be about 25 years. ...

On March 9/1921 each tin had a typed label corresponding with the titles in the index, the same wording being also painted on the tin itself, but owing to the vicissitudes these containers have gone through, this arrangement no longer exists.
Whilst reviewing the costs, some dithering ensued. The Trustees sought advice regarding the historical value of the material based on the new shot-list created by an editor they engaged for this work. It was decided that the archaeological digs were satisfactorily captured photographically and due to the poor condition of the material, only a small number of sequences of archaeological interest could be retained. There were only two which were considered significant – the high angle extreme long-shot of the encampment and the excavations in the cemetery. 
Fortunately, someone thought it appropriate to retain the rare surviving footage of HSW himself. However, lost are the first motor car in the Sudan (a Ford), more material of Wellcome carrying out inspections, walking around the camp and on a camel, a fire in the village and the evacuation of the villagers with their belongings, village views, views taken from a motor launch from Sennar to Abegeli, a trip with visitors up the Blue Nile and farewell scenes.

Afterlife

In 1955, a short sequence from the Gebel Moya footage which was transferred with a sepia tone was inserted into the Wellcome Foundation Film The Story of the Wellcome Foundation (1955) between 00:21:12:13 and 00:25:14:17. In the late 1960s, the Wellcome Trust’s stores were searched for nitrate material - no doubt largely as a result of insurance premiums. The remaining nitrate material was transferred to 35mm safety film and the originals were destroyed. These days even shrunk and damaged material can be scanned frame-by-frame. In the 1970s/80s, the remaining scenes were made into a ¾” Umatic and library access was via this material which was also on VHS. In the 1990s the material also features on a library compilation on Laser Disk which was screened on a television monitor outside the library.

By 2006, four cans of 35mm negative survived (some material is duplicated) and one 10 minute 35mm negative compilation master was discovered to be acetic (effected by vinegar syndrome).  All the material is now digitised to tape and file based media. The acetic material is duped to polyester film. The film material should last 100+ years in the correct environmental conditions. The digital files are held within the Wellcome Library’s digital asset management system – they will be digitally migrated when required. All the digital material is backed up and mirrored on two sites.

It’s been an illuminating experience exploring the archive material about the excavations in the Sudan. One of my starting points in the research was the Wellcome Library catalogue which I used to unearth all the various official and unofficial documentation about the excavations (the latter proving the most interesting). The library has an institutional membership of the online resource Ancestry, which proved invaluable in finding out more about Barrett, the photographer. 

One of the legacies of the expedition is the quality of the remaining footage shot by Barrett which I believe has a great appeal to a contemporary audience.  It captures so wonderfully the scale of the works and the interaction between the workers. Barrett had a good eye - the depth of field in the material is excellent and the material was shot in very challenging conditions in the heat and the dust. Henry Wellcome would have been very cross indeed to discover that only a small part of this cinematic record remains.

Two Excavations, Two Films

12/7/2015

 
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. 
In this image in the EES archive from Amarna in the early 1930s we see Hilary Waddington using a hand-crank cine camera which was in fact a ‘Cine-Kodak Model A’. Originally known as just the Cine-Kodak, it was invented in 1923 to work with the new 16mm film. Within just two years Kodak had developed a Cine-Kodak with a clockwork motor. They called this the Cine-Kodak Model B, and so it was from 1925 that the first hand-cranked Cine-Kodak became known as the Model A. This means that there were alternative, clockwork cameras like the Model B that Waddington could have used at Amarna.  It makes one wonder why he chose to use what was by then an old fashioned camera; maybe it was cheaper to purchase?
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Hilary Waddington filming in Amarna. Courtesy of the Egypt Exploration Society.
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.

Capturing Light

2/7/2015

 
By Michael McCluskey
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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.

Screening Archaeology: films and 'exhibition season'

1/4/2015

 
By Amara Thornton
17 July "Exhibition opens"
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.  
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A detail of the Wellcome Expedition's letterhead, showing their postal and camp addresses in Palestine. Courtesy of the UCL Institute of Archaeology Collections.
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.

Excavating Amateur Films

17/2/2015

 
By Michael McCluskey

Filming Antiquity is a project about amateur films of excavations. So what, exactly, are ‘amateur films’ and why study them?

Amateur films are films made by someone working outside of a major studio or film unit, usually self-taught, and often not paid for the films they produce. They include what are commonly called ‘home movies’—those films made by a member of a family or close group of friends to record an event and replay it exclusively for this private audience—but they also include films intended for a wider audience, unknown to the filmmaker. These might be films of community life, national celebrations, historic events, or ‘causes’ that the filmmaker wants to raise awareness about. They might also be films to raise funds to support such a cause or to help the work of a small organisation. Amateur filmmaking is perhaps best described as the work of an enthusiast; this is someone who, without pay, wants to make films and chooses to film a particular event. It is this intertwining of two enthusiasms that makes amateur films crucial documents for the study of both media history and social history. They are records of an act of filmmaking at a particular moment in time and of an event deemed for some reason worthy of filming. By digitising films from the Harding archive Filming Antiquity seeks to find out more about Lankester Harding himself and about the places and people he filmed in 1930s.

This period saw an explosion in amateur filmmaking in both the UK and the US.  As Patricia Zimmerman explains in Reel Families: A Social History of Amateur Film (1995), the spike in amateur filmmaking came as a result of changes in technology that made cameras and projection systems more affordable.  By the late 1920s Eastman Kodak and Bell and Howell were selling these systems to mostly middle-class customers who could develop their knowledge of filmmaking through the amateur cinema magazines such as Amateur Cine World andThe Amateur Film Maker that also appeared at this time.  Britain's regional media archives hold in their collections hundreds of films from the 1920s and 30s about local events and trips around Britain and abroad.  Filming Antiquity will contribute to this material with its films of British Mandate Palestine.

These films, then, can be studied by those interested in archaeology, interwar social history, the history of the Middle East, and the history of cinema. In particular, they can help us to think about amateur film as social practice and cultural artefact, a subject Filming Antiquity recently explored at its launch event with footage from the work of the Egypt Exploration Society (EES) at Tell el-Amarna as case study.
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Hilary Waddington filming at Tell el-Amarna. Photo courtesy of the EES.
The EES films were made between 1931 and 1933 by Hilary Waddington and Stephen Sherman.  At the launch, I discussed what they can tell us about several complex and overlapping interactions: between archaeologists and artefacts, British subjects and local cultures, modernity and antiquity. More broadly, I argued for the inclusion of excavation footage in ongoing studies of amateur film, an expanding field that until now has not included this rich material.  The EES footage features as its star the director of the dig John Pendlebury. Pendlebury guides workers in the movement of objects and directs them in leisure activities during a Christmas fantasia. He encourages some group bonding among the British members of the dig team in a private moment of friendly competition as the camera captures a high-jump contest.

And he hams it up dressed as a disgruntled local worker. These social sequences make the films a fruitful resource for studies beyond archaeology and Egyptology, though the footage contains several scenes of the particulars of the dig and rare shots of the process of 'division' (where finds were divided between excavators and government authorities) at the Cairo Museum.

Follow the Filming Antiquity project to find out what the Harding films will share and what they can tell us about interwar excavations and the wider interests of Gerald Harding, amateur filmmaker.
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John Pendlebury dressed as a local worker in the film footage from Tell el-Amarna. Film still courtesy of the EES.

Taking Custody Seriously is Never Simple

27/11/2014

 
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.
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A selection of the Harding films. Photo: I. Carroll, 2014.
It seems ‘simple’, but taking custody seriously means that entering into digitisation projects can actually raise many more question than it answers. For example, how can we take steps to ensure that the digitisation process does not damage the original film? Can the digitised copy be as ‘original’ as the original film? Will anything be lost in the process of transformation, and if so, what, and if so, does it matter? How can we ensure that the links between the digital copy and the original film, and the original film and its creator and context of creation are not lost? The list goes on, and it goes on even further because, in creating digital copies of the films, we are actually creating even more things for which we have to take custody seriously, and these things are now digital ones.
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 

Archive Unbound

25/9/2014

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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.
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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.  
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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.
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