By Amara Thornton, with Yasmeen El Khoudary on Gaza

Harding’s films offer us a valuable glimpse into urban spaces in British Mandate Palestine and Transjordan.  "Cityscapes" brings together Harding's footage of Amman, Jerash, Jerusalem and Gaza, documenting his encounters with each place in the  early 1930s. The information below adds a further layer of detail, drawing on complementary material from the Harding and Horsfield archives at UCL Institute of Archaeology and my own photographs from a research trip to Jordan in 2008. In addition, I'm grateful to Yasmeen El Khoudary for contributing the section on Gaza in this post, and for providing details on the Gaza section in the film, and Felicity Cobbing for providing details on the Jerusalem sequence in the film.

Amman
In the Roman era, Amman was known as Philadelphia.  Along with Jerash, it was part of a network of ten cities in the Levant - the “Decapolis”.   The remains of Roman Philadelphia are still visible today, even though Amman has expanded significantly since Harding filmed it.  The Roman theatre is in downtown Amman, and above it in the area known as the Citadel lie remains of the Roman acropolis with the ruins of a Roman temple.

When Harding filmed in Amman, it had been the capital of Transjordan for about a decade.  It had a population of over 20,000 by the mid 1930s.  Across the street from the Roman theatre was Amman’s Hotel Philadelphia, the only large hotel in the city for tourists.  Nearby were the Government offices, among them the Transjordan Department of Antiquities.  The residence of Emir Abdullah was also not far away.

Jerash
Jerash was a village north of Amman incorporating the ruins of the Decapolis city of Gerasa.   When Harding arrived on site with his camera, the Transjordan Department of Antiquities had an outpost there, in an old Ottoman-era house right in the middle of the site, just above and to the right of the Propylea of Artemis. At the time, George Horsfield lived in the house; he was Chief Curator/Inspector of the Transjordan Department of Antiquities, responsible for overseeing work carried out in Jerash.  Harding himself subsequently lived in Antiquity House, as it was called – he took up Horsfield’s post in 1936.  After Harding’s death in 1979, his ashes were interred in Jerash.

Jerusalem
In filming Jerusalem, a city significant to millions across the world and a place of religious pilgrimage, Harding focuses on the southeastern part of the Old City, and one of the most well known buildings – the Dome of the Rock – and the other buildings on the Haram esh-Sharif/Temple Mount platform. Jerusalem was also significant for archaeologists as seat of the administrative framework for archaeology in Mandate Palestine.  The Palestine Department of Antiquities and the Palestine Archaeological Museum (now Rockefeller Archaeological Museum) were both situated just outside the Old City walls near Herod’s Gate in East Jerusalem.

The street shown in LH31 used to be known as “Share’ al-Bahar,” or the “Sea Road,” until the name was changed formally to “Omar Al-Mokhtar street" in 1936 after a famous Libyan resistance leader. To the south is Al-Omari Mosque, also known as the Great Mosque of Gaza, built in the 13th century. The mosque has an interesting history; during the ancient Philistine era, the site was used for the pagan Marneion temple.  This was destroyed by Empress Eudoxia in the 5th century and replaced by a church that bore her name. During the 7th century, the church was turned into a mosque, which was destroyed by the Crusaders in the 12th century and replaced by a cathedral. Finally, the Mamluks built the mosque shown in the film, which still stands today although it sustained heavy damages during the First World War.

The striking arch shown in the film lies to the south of the Mosque.  It marks the entrance to Gaza’s famous gold market, also known as Souk al-Qissariya, which was built by the Mamluks during the 15th century. The covered market used to occupy a much larger area, most of which was destroyed by the British Army during WWI.  Harding's camera also offers a different perspective of Share’ al-Bahar/Omar al-Mokhtar Street, looking east towards the city.  This perspective shows the historic Khan al-Zeit (the Oil Quarter), which was recently replaced by a new high rise building.

Not far from the opposite end of Omar al-Mokhtar street lies one of the oldest pottery workshops in Gaza, Al-Fawakheer. Pottery and ceramics have been a staple of Gaza for thousands of years with local samples dating back to the Neolithic.  During the Hellenistic era, the "Gaza Amphorae" became a renowned symbol of excellent olive oil, wine, or brie that was produced in the city and traded with cities around the Mediterranean coast. 

Further Reading

El-Eini, R. 2008. Mandated Landscape: British Imperial Rule in Palestine 1929-1948. London: Routledge.

Feldman, I. 2008. Governing Gaza: Beaurocracy, Authority and the Work of Rule, 1917-1967. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Horsfield, G. 1933. A Guide to Jerash - With plan. Government of Transjordan.

Kraeling, C. (Ed). 1938. Gerasa, city of the Decapolis. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Luke, H. & Keith-Roach, E. 1930. Handbook to Palestine and Transjordan. London: Macmillan & Co.

Lumby, C. 1934. Traveller's Handbook to Palestine, Syria and Iraq. 6th edn. London: Simpkin Marshall, Ltd.

St. Laurent, B. with Taşkömür, H. 2013. The Imperial Museum of Antiquities in Jerusalem, 1890-1930: An Alternate Narrative. Jerusalem Quarterly 55: 6-45.

Thornton, A. 2009. George Horsfield, conservation and the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem. Antiquity Project Gallery.

Thornton, A. 2014. The Nobody: Exploring Archaeological Identity with George Horsfield (1882-1956). Archaeology International.

Guest post by Caitlin R. O’Grady (UCL Institute of Archaeology)
 
Document, document, document.  That is the conservator’s mantra.
 
Often, documentation takes the form of before and after treatment photos, and/or staging images that describe active intervention. However, in the early decades of the profession, documentation was not a carefully followed tenant.
 
Where early records exist, they often are cursory and limited to brief paper notes. Therefore, it is the unexpected inclusion of active preservation in films digitised through Filming Antiquity which makes them extraordinary. In addition to documenting all aspects of archaeology, these films provide a snapshot of conservation and preservation of archaeological artefacts as practised in the field and laboratory between the 1930s and the 1960s.

Conservation in the field

Gerald Lankester Harding, James Leslie Starkey, Marjorie Rice and Olga Tufnell led excavations at Tell ed-Duweir as part of the Wellcome-Marston Expedition to the Near East between 1932 and 1938. During this period excavation photographer Ralph Richmond Brown produced a film, “Lachish – City of Judah”, to document the site and the process of excavation for a public audience.
 
Conservation activities including field consolidation (strengthening material by filling in pores), packing artefacts for transport and ceramic reconstruction are also recorded, highlighting the importance of preservation in archaeological enquiry. In this first sequence from “Lachish – City of Judah” a woman carefully applies molten wax to faunal remains (while smoking!) in order to preserve “these fragile bones for transport to England”.
 
Wax consolidation, a common practise in the field to aid transport of fragile archaeological remains, is well documented in early publications (e.g. Petrie 1904; Rathgen 1905; Droop 1915; Lucas 1924, Delougaz 1933; Plenderleith 1934). While invaluable during this early period, as supplies and chemicals were frequently impossible to procure in the field, wax causes staining and is difficult to remove, particularly when applied at excessively high temperatures.

Ione Gedye, founder of the Repair Department at the Institute of Archaeology (IoA), University of London, taught conservation from 1937 until her retirement in 1975. She discusses the use of wax and some of these very issues in the 1947 notes she prepared for Institute of Archaeology students on the treatment of archaeological artefacts in the field and laboratory.  
 
Gedye (1947: 10) writes, “in the field paraffin wax is often used to strengthen bones … in some cases the wax was put on too hot and penetrated so deeply that it could only be removed with difficulty”; she concludes “it is best to avoid the use of wax for bones, though an exception may be made in the case of paraffin wax bandages”. As conservators, we often find remnants of these treatments, but much more rarely can rely on photographic or written documentation describing the materials used for stabilisation.   
 
The film also documents reconstruction of ceramics recovered at Tell-ed Duweir. In the second sequence, a woman applies thick, dark adhesive to sherds allowing them to dry by propping them up and using gravity to aid tight joins – a technique I and many other conservators continue to use during fieldwork. After the vessel is completely reconstructed and adhesive dried, we see her making plaster fills to fill losses.
 
Despite not being able to see her face, it is likely that this is Olive Starkey, sister of James and sister-in-law of Marjorie. Olive was responsible for much of the restoration of finds on site and in London and she is directly thanked by Olga and colleagues for her work in the “repair and reconstruction of pottery since 1933” (Tufnell et al. 1940: 12). This practice was not uncommon; many wives and other female relations of archaeologists worked at “mending”, “sticking” and “restoring” artefacts in the field during this early period. The IoA hired Olive Starkey to work in the Repair Department in December 1945. In this capacity, she and Gedye taught students how to conserve recently excavated artefacts from Tell-ed Duweir as well as other sites.

An animation in “Electrolytic Treatment of Iron Objects”, an IoA film probably created in 1954/1955*, describes the chemical process by which chlorides (responsible for active corrosion) are removed from corroded metals during electrolysis. This technique is used in conservation to reduce corrosion through the application of an electric current through an ionic solution – in this case sodium hydroxide (NaOH). The resulting reaction reduces the corroded metal from an oxide and converts it back to a metal.

The animation is followed by a clip of Ione Gedye herself demonstrating this technique on iron artefacts in the laboratory. Critically, students are advised to control the treatment process by monitoring the presence of chlorides in soak water.  

Work is conducted in an open laboratory and without personal protective equipment such as gloves. As with the Lachish films, health and safety in the handling of chemicals is not a priority. While some steps utilise harsher chemicals and tools than we may use now, the approach as demonstrated is not very different from electrolytic methods used to treat metals today. 

Conservation in action

Professional photographer Maurice Cookson, former director of the IoA Photographic Department and author of the ground-breaking Photography for Archaeologists (1954), and Sheppard Frere, Professor of Archaeology of the Roman Empire at University of London created the film “Lifting a Mosaic Pavement” in 1957 to document the removal of an in situ mosaic and its subsequent treatment.  The mosaic was recovered in Building 3 of Insula XXVII at Verulamium, a Roman site in St. Albans, Hertfordshire.

All stages of the lifting and backing process are included, with intertitles discussing aspects of the treatment. In this clip from the film, we see the application of Corvic Q44/62 (a polyvinyl chloride adhesive) and cotton facing material, which are applied to safeguard mosaic tesserae during the lifting process. Following application of these materials, we see the process of undercutting and mosaic removal from its original find spot.

The film is interesting in that it documents the reflexive practice of conservation where process is assessed in real time and modified to better influence results. This is clear in the titles state that the use of solvent in removing the PVC adhesive was not as successful as removal without solvent.

We are fortunate that the mosaic lifting and backing procedure is further described in publication (Frere 1958) with specific information regarding the intervention materials using the lifting and backing processes including cement mortar recipes.

As Frere states (158: 116), discovery of the mosaic offered those involved the opportunity to develop a new method in collaboration with chemists working in industry. Treatments of this type are very destructive, and not as commonly utilised, but remain attractive to archaeologists interested in recovering coins and pottery in order to date the mosaic, as well as stratigraphic layers from earlier occupations.

However, the technique continues to have a place in salvage and rescue archaeology. For example, conservators and archaeologists used a similar approach (though with more stable conservation materials) to recover numerous Roman mosaics from Zeugma, located near Gaziantepe, Turkey, following the construction of the Birecik Dam on the Eurphrates River (Nardi & Schneider 2013).

These films offer an extraordinary glimpse into archaeological conservation as practised in the field and laboratory from the 1930s through to the 1960s. They connect the published literature and its translation into actual practice and are amazing documents of the field’s early history.  

I hope you have found these films as incredible as I have.  I would love to hear from anyone who participated in filming during this period at the IoA, or saw these films while studying or working at the Institute.  Please get in touch to share your perspective and memories!

*The film is referenced in an IoA annual report from 1956 (IoA 1956: 7).

References/Further Reading
Delougaz, P. 1915. The Treatment of Clay Tablets in the Field. The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization, no. 7, ed. James Henry Breasted, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, pp. 39-57.

Droop, J.P. 1915. Archaeological Excavation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Frere, S. 1958. Lifting Mosaics. Antiquity 32 (126): 116-119.

Gedye, I. 1947. Notes on the Treatment of Archaeological Objects in the Field & the Laboratory. For the Use of Students of the Institute – Not For Publication. Unpublished course notes. University of London, Institute of Archaeology.

Gedye, I. 1953. Report of the Technical Department. In Ninth Annual Report. London University of London Institute of Archaeology, pp. 6.

Lucas, A. 1924. Antiques - Their Restoration and Preservation. London: E. Arnold & Co.

Nardi, R. and Schneider, K. 2013. Site Conservation during the Rescue Excavations. In Excavations at Zeugma. Ed. W. Aylward. Los Altos, California: The Packard Humanities Institute, pp. 55-70.

O’Grady, C.R. expected 2017. Gentlewomen in the Field and Museum: Unacknowledged Pioneers in the Development of Conservation as both Profession and University Discipline – the London Case. In Engaging Conservation: Collaboration Across Disciplines. Eds. Lynn Grant, Julia Lawson, Nina Owczarek. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Museum.

Petrie, W.M.F. 1904.  Methods & Aims in Archaeology. London: Macmillan and Co., Limited (New York: The Macmillan Company).

Plenderleith, H.J. 1934. The Preservation of Antiquities. London: The Museums Association.

Rathgen, F. 1905. The Preservation of Antiquities – A Handbook for Curators. trans. George A. Auden and Harold A. Auden, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Tufnell, O., Inge, C.H, and Harding, L. 1940. Lachish II (Tell ed Duweir). The Fosse Temple. London: Oxford University Press.

University of London Institute of Archaeology. 1956. Report of the Photographic Department. Twelfth Annual Report. London: University of London Institute of Archaeology pp 7.

University of London Institute of Archaeology. 1959. Report of the Director for the Session 1957-58. Fifteenth Annual Report. Bulletin of the Institute of Archaeology 2: 72-84.

Guest post by Sarah Longair (University of Lincoln)

Camels are an occasional but telling presence in the Lankester Harding films: we see camels at rest, carrying supplies, and chewing in their characteristic fashion. These moments inspired me to consider the history of associations with this highly distinctive creature.

By Amara Thornton

The Pathé Baby canisters in the Harding collection have their own story to tell.  Although we’ve been focusing mainly on the contents of the footage through this project, there are valuable clues on the canisters that reveal a history of film camera equipment supplies and suppliers.
 
The film “Discovering Pathé Baby” showcases this history.  Labelling the canisters before they were sent to be digitised gave me an opportunity to examine them in more detail, and in doing this I began to uncover a few local stories tied to two cities – Jerusalem and Cairo.

Eye-catching partially damaged red labels on two of the canisters had enough text left to confirm the name Hanania Brothers. 
 
Hanania Brothers was a licensed dealer in photographic equipment established in 1928 by Tewfik and Pascal Hanania.  Their partnership was announced in the Jerusalem newspaper Palestine Bulletin in January that year.  By 1934 there were two branches – one in Jerusalem and the other in Haifa, on the Mediterranean coast.  The Jerusalem branch (most likely the one Harding used for developing his films) was on the Jaffa Road, one of the main thoroughfares leading into the heart of the Old City through the Jaffa Gate.
 
Not far from the Gate was Allenby Square, and near that was the Telegraph and Post Office. Cook’s Traveller’s Handbook to Palestine, Syria and Iraq (1934) includes an advert for Hanania Brothers indicating the shop was near the Post Office.  
 
Another printed label in the Harding film canister collection read “Dev. par Cicurel”.  Helpfully, a digitised 1925 Pathé Baby catalogue provided the crucial clue.  A list ordered by continent of official “concessionaires” for Pathé products at the beginning of the catalogue includes one in Africa - “Les Fils de M. Cicurel” at No 3 Avenue de Boulac, Cairo.  Also known as Shari Boulak this street in downtown Cairo went west from the Ezbekiyeh Gardens to the neighbourhood of Boulak (Bulaq).  It was the border between Cairo’s Ismailiyeh and Tewfekiyeh districts – Baedeker’s guidebook (1914) called Ismailiyeh “the fashionable quarter and the seat of the European trade.”

Moreno Cicurel established “Au Petit Bazar” in 1910, and this grew into a large department store, renamed “Les Grandes Magasines de Nouveautés Cicurel” with the business carried on by his sons.  Cairo was a popular stop en route to Palestine, the cosmopolitan capital had a long-standing European community and its shopkeepers were accustomed to catering for their needs.  For destinations in Southern Palestine (where Harding was first based when he started making films), arriving at or leaving from Alexandria, stopping in Cairo for supplies and museum visits and going overland via Port Said and Kantara would have been one possible (though not direct) route.
 
The 1925 Pathé Baby catalogue helps illuminate the accoutrement of amateur filmmaking during this period, and provides an anatomical guide to the cameras and projectors through a meticulous list of all the spare parts needed to keep the mechanisms going as well as a range of optional “extras”. 
 
Leatherette or aluminium carrying cases were available for cameras and projectors; empty canisters could be held (100 at a time) in a small attaché-style case with special grooves sized to fit the small metal cylinders.  Twenty-four inch or one metre wide silver screens (the latter with a collapsible frame) emblazoned with “Pathé Baby” at the top, were also available for purchase.  The “Babycolour” projector enabled filmmakers to add colour tints over black and white footage.  With a “Babygraph” attachment intertitles could be filmed.  If desired, a special green velvet lined Camera case was available with individual compartments for camera, tripod and film cassettes – a filmmaker’s paradise in one bag.
 
We don’t have Harding’s camera or any other equipment in the collection, but by looking more closely at the canisters I’ve gained some insights into the practicalities, logistics and geographies of Harding’s filmmaking experience.  
 
References/Further Reading
Lumby, C. (Ed.). 1934. Cook's Traveller's Handbook to Palestine, Syria and Iraq. London: Simpkin Marshall.

Pathé Cinema. 1925. Pathé-Baby Catalogue Général des Appareils & Accessoires. Paris: Pathé Freres.
 
Palestine Bulletin, 1928. Palestine from Day to Day: Registration of Partnerships. Palestine Bulletin [Online at National Library of Israel]. 4 January. p. 3.

Reynolds, N. A City Consumed: Urban Commerce, the Cairo Fire, and the Politics of Decolonization in Egypt. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Sparks, R. 2013. Flinders Petrie: An Adventure in Transcription. UCL Museums and Collections blog [Online].

By Ken Walton
​
Continued from Part 1. 

Small 9.5mm ‘Pathe Baby’ movie cameras had been available since 1923. At first they were hand cranked but from 1926 the possibility of an attached clockwork motor ‘Motrix’ was introduced. Then in 1931 (tying in quite well with the Lankester Harding films) came the 'Pathe Motocamera' and then the ‘World B’ model, which both had built-in motors. We don’t know exactly what camera Lankester Harding was using for filming but we can be pretty certain that it was one of the new motorised cameras because there is a classic 'giveaway' shot: we see the view point of the camera on a tripod filming a wall and in a couple of seconds Lankester Harding walks into shot and poses on the wall for the camera. He then exits but the camera remains rolling, whilst he would have made his way back to turn it off. This is exactly the kind of thing people with a motorised camera do when the want to be in a film but are by themselves at the time.

As far as exposure was concerned, Lankester Harding might well have used the Pathe ‘Posograph’,  a chart/calculator made of card that gave some guidance on the correct exposure for certain conditions. However, a relatively new invention was the ‘Extinction meter’, like the ‘Drem Justophot’. The extinction meter relied on a series of numbers or letters seen through a viewer like a small telescope. The letter or number just in view was the correct exposure.  On the barrel of the device a table of settings for the camera could be used to adjust shutter speed and aperture, rather like a modern 'spot meter’.

Having been invented in 1924 the ‘Drem Cinophot’, designed specifically for movie making, linked more to a fixed shutter speed.  It was improved in 1928 to make it more sensitive; just a few years before Lankester Harding was to make his films. It is very likely that Lankester Harding used an extinction meter because that was the latest most practical technology. There was a photoelectric meter in 1931 called the ‘Electrophot’ sold by J. Thomas Rhamstine, of Detroit, Michigan - but it weighed 1.5 lbs. and was not very portable like the modern light meters.

Around Europe the market for 9.5mm cameras and projectors grew with the Swiss producing the ‘Pailliard Bolex’ brand and the Austrians the ‘Eumig’. In the UK makes such as: ‘Campro’, ‘Midas’, ‘Coronet’, ‘Binoscope’, ‘Dekko’ (which might well have come from the British army bringing back the word ‘Dekho’ (‘Look’ in Hindi) from India, hence the old British phrase ‘Have a dekko’ (‘Have a look’). The best British make of projector was the ‘Specto’ made by Specto Ltd of Windsor. The Specto Company was founded by a Czech, J. Danek.

By Amara Thornton

I’ve spent hours going through Lankester Harding’s footage since we received the digitised version earlier this year.  The digital file we received was all the individual films sequentially rolled into one, making up about an hour and a half of ‘raw’ footage.  There were short breaks where the ‘leaders’ attached to each canister’s roll indicated the reference number we had assigned it – LH1 and so on.  So one of my first tasks was to separate the digitised files into each canister’s film using the leader breaks as a guide.  I was able to do this relatively easily in iMovie, and since then I’ve been experimenting with creating bespoke films using the footage and related digitised archive material in order to draw out different facets of the film and the archive.  Each time I watch it I see something new, which is pretty exciting!
 
I made this short film for the Institute’s recent World Archaeology Festival event on 11 June this year.  Having the Harding footage in a digital format makes it pretty flexible in the creation of new narratives.   Being able to manipulate the total film in iMovie allows me to view the footage almost frame by frame, bringing a new focus to my own viewing experience.  And, it’s leading to the creation of new ‘archive’ of films – thematic ones.  
 
The film embedded below features sequences from eighteen of Lankester Harding’s films.  You will see the film canister reference numbers on the top left hand corner of the footage sequences.  Harding’s photograph albums were also very useful in illustrating Harding’s initial experiences as an archaeologist in Mandate Palestine and his relationship with some of the workers on site.  The photograph of Hilda Petrie was in one of his albums, as were the group photographs of local families.  These might be particularly useful in future in helping to identify some of the workers featured on film. Thanks are also due to Alice Stevenson (Petrie Museum) and Robert Winckworth (UCL Records) for permission to include digitised images from each source.
 
I hope you enjoy this first ‘narrative’ film – there will be more to come!

35mm film had been established for many years as the gauge for the distribution of cinema films. 35mm was very good for this but some saw that there might well be a market for home cinema viewing, much as we today buy DVDs of cinema releases. Selling copies of 35mm film for home viewing was impractical; not only would the film rolls be cumbersome but also a 35mm projector would be needed - a piece of equipment that was far too large for most domestic living spaces. 

In 1912, Thomas Edison had come up with a 22mm wide film with three sets of pictures, used in his ‘Home Kinetoscope’.  This system proved impractical and was restricted to what the Edison Company decided to release. The Edison system proved not to be popular enough and was dropped. Meanwhile, the French (Pathé Freres) launched, in the same year the ‘KOK’, or ‘COQ’ projector that used a 28mm film gauge. This format proved very successful and became widely distributed. Pathéscope Ltd opened an office in London at 64 Regent Street for the distribution of the films. Many of the 28mm releases were documentaries with titles such as: Ice Breaking in Finland and Prayer Time at the Great Mosque, Delhi. There were also moralizing films, including the title In the Grip of Alcohol. Lighter, comedy films of European performers such as Charles Prince and “Little Moritz” proved popular. 

In 1914 Pathé  tried to make inroads into the US film market and there was some success but the war intervened and things slowed down. Then an American inventor, Willard Beach Cook, came out with his own design of equipment in competition with the Pathé machine. After the war, Cook expanded his business in the US with films of more popular appeal. There were Hollywood releases such as Chaplin farces, Douglas Fairbanks action films and westerns, starring William S. Hart. The Pathéscope offerings were, by comparison, rather less exciting - Mr Smith’s Small Feet andThe Pork Butchers Nightmare among them.​

...the first publicly accessible snapshot of the Harding footage!  Thanks to Tim Emblem-English and his team's efforts, we have now received the digital files of Harding's films.  We've put together a short preview film with clips from a few of the canisters, available to view on YouTube.

On the top of each clip you will see our reference number for the footage's original canister.  In this short film we have selected clips from four canisters - LH2, LH4, LH15 and LH23.  

The first clip, from canister LH2, shows a picnic scene at an unknown location.  While most of the picnickers are unknown to us, one person we were able to identify in this clip is the archaeologist Olga Tufnell.  Tufnell worked with Lankester Harding on several sites, and eventually was responsible for the publication of much of the Tell-Duweir excavations.

The clips were chosen to show the different sorts of activities Harding captured with his camera. While clips from LH15 and LH23 show excavation in progress, LH4 shows a more mundane (but necessary) factor of everyday life in the field - dental hygiene.  

We're still researching the films to identify people and sites, so if anything in these clips looks familiar to you let us know!

Guest post by Tim Emblem-English, formerly Archive Telecine Specialist at BBC Studios and Post Production Digital Media Services, now running his own company, The Flying Spot

​Friday 14 August 2015, and Amara and Ian from UCL visit BBC S&PP DMS at our base in South Ruislip with four neatly tied boxes containing Gerald Lankester Harding's 9.5mm film collection which we have been commissioned to digitise. After introductions and over mugs of tea we discuss the subject of the films, the equipment and processes involved in their digitisation, and the form of the deliverables at the end of the process. 

Shortly afterwards, I settle down to begin my inspection and preparation of the Harding films to make them ready to run on our Cintel Mk3 flying-spot Digiscan telecine, specially modified in-house to handle 9.5mm film. 

The Harding films are contained in the usual 9.5mm Pathe cartridges which come in two sizes holding either 10 or 20 metres of film. My first task is to sort them into numerical order following the markings that Ian has previously applied. Then it’s a case of attaching a length of new white spacing film with a CIR adhesive tape splicer to the start of the first film 'LH1' and gently winding it out of its cartridge and on to a large 1200ft capacity film spool. 

​As I wind the film through my fingers I feel for any splices or damage such as torn perforations. Splices in films of this age from the 1930s almost always need attention; any that I find I check for correct registration and reinforce with the CIR tape splicer. After 80-odd years the original film cement becomes brittle and the action of the telecine machine, although much more gentle than a projector, will certainly find the weak splices. Similarly, any tears or damaged perforations are patched with splicing tape. A quick squint through a lupe eyeglass to check that the images are the correct way round and then I reach the end of the first cartridge.

​I either cut or detach the end of the film from the spindle and the usual problem with 9.5mm films that have been stored in their original cartridges for many years becomes apparent – the inner turns have been wound up tightly on such a small diameter spindle for so long that they have the curliness of a watchspring and just want to coil up in a tangle. Having sorted out the tangle I manage to attach a short length of white spacing film to the end which calms things down a bit and move on to the next cartridge and repeat the process, adding successive films with white spacing between until the large spool is full. Onto each length of spacing I write the next film’s reference number so that they can all be identified to avoid any confusion. Another length of white spacing on the end and films 'LH1' to 'LH18' are joined up and ready for cleaning. 

Cleansing of films such as these is done by hand and involves winding the film slowly through a folded Selvyt cloth moistened with Isopropanol.  A pause every so often to remoisten the cloth and see how much dirt has been removed and if it looks spectacularly filthy I give the reel a second pass - which turns out to be required for the Harding films.  Once the large first reel is cleaned I start on the remainder of the cartridges.  In due course, taking time to refocus my eyes, films 'LH19' to 'LH46' are duly inspected, mended and cleaned.

​Although I haven’t studied the images closely at this point, during all the winding and inspection it became apparent that the collection is the result of several different cameras and some of the individual cartridges are compilations edited together from different sources on different film stocks, although all in black-and-white. Two of the cartridges turn out to be commercial printed films – the “home entertainment” of the 1920s and 30s. These incorporate Pathe’s “notched titles” feature, where a notch cut in the edge of the film would cause the projector’s transport to stop for a few seconds before moving on. Used for freezing static shots or titles and captions this was a cunning way of extending the screen time of films which otherwise might only run for 1½ minutes from a small 10-metre cartridge. With time, as projectors got brighter and lamps got hotter the system had to be dropped since the risk of burning stationary film in the gate became too great.

In a perfect world, once cleaned it is best practice to leave 9.5mm material like this which has come out of its original cartridges wound up tightly on a large-diameter spool or film core for as long as possible to “rest” and persuade the extreme curliness to relax. Not doing so can cause loss of focus during transfer towards the end of individual films when the curl is so strong that the film refuses to lie flat in the telecine gate. This time to rest is a luxury we don’t always have when jobs come in with tight deadlines but in this case Amara and Ian are in no hurry and I am able to leave the Harding films wound up on two large reels safely stored in cans in our secure and temperature-controlled vault, waiting for the next stage of the process – the telecine transfer itself. 

To be continued…

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.