As this issue of CA comes together, it is uncertain which regions might be under additional restrictions by the time it is published – but whether museums and heritage sites continue to open up, or we find that online resources are more necessary than ever, Amy Brunskill has put together a selection of options to ensure that you can still get your heritage fix wherever you are.
Virtual visits
Many museums and heritage sites continue to expand their ability to engage with audiences online, whether through virtual versions of current exhibitions, 3D tours of museums and sites, interactive databases that you can explore at your leisure, or reconstruction videos of historical places.
MUSEUMS AND EXHIBITIONS
Precious and Rare: Islamic metalwork from the Courtauld
www.hsm.ox.ac.uk/islamicmetalwork
If you can’t get to this new exhibition at Oxford’s History of Science Museum in person, you can experience it from home instead, with content that is exclusive to the online gallery and a video tour from the curators.
Naturhistorisches Museum Wien
https://artsandculture.google.com/partner/natural-history-museum-vienna
Explore Vienna’s Natural History Museum, learning about the famous 29,500-year-old Venus of Willendorf or browsing the museum’s ‘Top 100’ artefacts in an online exhibit.
National Museum of American History, Washington DC
https://americanhistory.si.edu/exhibitions/online
Enjoy a range of online exhibitions covering subjects from the advertising used to make the case for the First World War to Americans to the life of Abraham Lincoln.
Corinium Museum, Cirencester
https://artsandculture.google.com/partner/corinium-museum?hl=en
Discover the museum’s extensive collection of artefacts from the local area, including England’s largest concentration of mosaics outside London, and an array of finds from the important Roman town of Corinium.
National Women’s History Museum, USA
www.womenshistory.org/womens-history/online-exhibits
Explore the roles that women have played in America’s history through online exhibitions covering everything from women in NASA to the history of nursing.
Canada History Hall, Gatineau
www.historymuseum.ca/history-hall/virtual-tour
Learn about the events and people that have shaped Canada’s history, from prehistory to the present day, with this interactive 3D virtual tour.
HERITAGE/ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITES
Heritage on the Edge
https://artsandculture.google.com/project/heritage-on-the-edge
Browse this Google Arts & Culture online exhibition, which looks at the ways five heritage sites around the world are dealing with the challenges posed by climate change.
Lindisfarne: before and after Viking raids
www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8-yLvosM1g
Get a glimpse of what the Holy Island of Lindisfarne would have looked like before and after the Vikings attacked, with this short video reconstruction from DigVentures.
Anne Frank House, Amsterdam
www.annefrank.org/en/museum/web-and-digital
Look around the house where Anne Frank lived – and hid – with her family, including the Secret Annexe where she wrote her diary, or visit an online exhibition about her life.
Thames Discovery Programme
www.thamesdiscovery.org/discover
Explore the Thames foreshore through a range of photos, videos, and other records, as well as by using a map showing features recorded along the river in London.
Wuzhen, China
https://artsandculture.google.com/partner/wuzhen
Discover the historic town with its canals, bridges, and buildings, and sites like the Water Theatre, the Museum of Footbinding, and the Guandi Temple.
Palace of Holyroodhouse, Edinburgh
www.royal.uk/virtual-tours-palace-holyroodhouse
Take a virtual tour of the Queen’s official residence in Scotland and learn more about the Grand Stair, Morning Drawing Room, and Royal Dining Room.
Borobudur Temple Compounds, Indonesia
https://artsandculture.google.com/entity/borobudur-templecompounds/m0805zhg?hl=en
Wander around the World Heritage Site made up of the three 8th- to 9th-century Buddhist temples ofBorobudur, Mendut, and Pawon in Central Java.
Learning in lockdown
Discover a wealth of ways to get involved in archaeology, heritage, and history from home, ranging from a new programme that uses AI to decipher hieroglyphs to podcasts discussing forgotten historical figures and Twitter hashtags highlighting a variety of content from museums around the world.
EVENTS AND EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES
Fabricius
https://artsexperiments.withgoogle.com/fabricius/en
Learn how to identify and draw ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs or create and share your own messages using this new tool from Google Arts & Culture.
Ben’s Book Club
https://benjaminfranklinhouse.org/events/
Join Benjamin Franklin House’s monthly digital book club and discover more about the Founding Father’s life, the 18th century, and American history.
Being Human Festival: New Worlds
https://beinghumanfestival.org/
Enjoy a range of digital exhibitions and online workshops, quizzes, talks, and debates as part of the UK’s national festival of humanities, running from 12 to 22 November.
Only Swords and Horses: a recent late Bronze Age hoard from Peebles (the story so far!)
www.archhighland.org.uk/calendar.asp?intent=details&eventID=4659
Sign up for this online talk on 17 November about the excavation of one of the most-significant late Bronze Age hoards ever found in Scotland, discovered in June this year.
Armchair Archaeology
www.hiddenhistory.co.uk
Sign up to Hidden History’s newsletter using the link at the bottom of their website to receive information about upcoming online lectures. Next up is ‘The Castros of Asturias’ by Emeritus Professor Gary Lock on 19 November.
PODCASTS AND RADIO
Talking Tudors
https://talkingtudors.podbean.com
Discover more about the world of the Tudors with this podcast, featuring a range of guests and topics from widowhood in the 16th century to Anne Boleyn’s coronation procession.
The Partial Historians
https://partialhistorians.com
Enjoy this podcast covering different aspects of the Roman world, from the life of Spartacus to the role of women in ancient society.
The Almost Forgotten
http://almostforgotten.squarespace.com
Learn more about the lives of historical figures who have slipped through the cracks of our collective memory and discover a wealth of stories that are not usually given the attention they deserve.
The History of Egypt Podcast
www.egyptianhistorypodcast.com
Discover ancient Egypt through the words of its inhabitants in this podcast hosted by Dominic Perry, which uses ancient texts, archaeology, and social history to explore the civilisation.
The Ancient World
https://ancientworldpodcast.com
Listen to this podcast, which covers a range of stories from across the ancient world, looking at early human achievements and the events that shaped civilisations.
BLOGS AND SOCIAL MEDIA
Time Team Teatime
www.youtube.com/user/timeteamdigital/featured
Join the individuals behind Time Team as they revisit old episodes, discuss their favourite memories, and answer your questions.
#museumgames
https://twitter.com/hashtag/museumgames
Enjoy a range of online games and activities from different museums, shared on Twitter under this hashtag.
The Archaeology of Blean
https://ukcbleandig.wordpress.com
Follow the University of Kent’s excavations at Blean village, Kent. The field diary on their blog is updated daily through the project.
#museumjigsaws
https://twitter.com/hashtag/museumjigsaws
Find a selection of puzzles from museums all over the world, posted under this hashtag on Twitter.
#museumalphabet
https://twitter.com/hashtag/MuseumAlphabet
Discover a huge variety of objects with this hashtag on Twitter, which museums are using to highlight favourite artefacts from their collections, from A to Z.
National Museums Liverpool: Stories
www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/stories
Visit the National Museums Liverpool blog to find a variety of short articles, images, videos, and podcasts telling the stories behind their collections and Liverpool’s history more broadly.
Family fun
Get the whole family involved in a wide range of games and activities, or settle down to watch a selection of fascinating TV shows and documentaries, old and new. Play board games enjoyed by people thousands of years ago, learn about the skeletons giving us an insight into Britain’s past, or take a journey to the Chauvet cave with its famous Palaeolithic paintings.
CRAFTS AND ACTIVITIES
Google Arts & Culture
https://experiments.withgoogle.com/collection/play-with-arts
Try out five new activities from Google Arts & Culture, including visual crosswords, a colouring book of famous paintings, and a game of ‘what came first?’, comparing cultural monuments in time.
Young Archaeologists’ Club
www.yac-uk.org/session-resources-and-ideas
Discover a collection of resources designed to engage children who are interested in archaeology, from archaeological I-Spy to instructions on how to safely package artefacts.
Ancient Games
www.dur.ac.uk/4schools/learningonline/primaryonline/ancientgames/
Download and play a variety of games enjoyed by ancient civilisations, including ancient Greek Pente Grammai (‘five lines’), or Tudor favourite The Game of the Goose.
Museum of London: Victorian Walk
www.museumoflondon.org.uk/families/fun-home/virtual-tour-victorian-walk
Explore this 3D model of the museum’s recreation of a street in 19th-century London and complete six challenges to learn more about Victorian life.
Archaeology Activities for Home
https://archaeologymuseum.ca/archaeology-activities-home
Use these ideas from the Museum of Ontario Archaeology to develop your skills using objects in your kitchen, including stratigraphy in empty water bottles and cookie excavation.
American Museum of Natural History
www.amnh.org/explore/ology/archaeology
Choose from a selection of archaeology-themed activities and resources, from an online quiz to instructions for decorating, shattering, and restoring your own pottery artefact.
TV SHOWS
Bone Detectives: Britain’s Buried Secrets
www.channel4.com/programmes/bone-detectives-britains-buried-secrets
Delve into the new season of Bone Detectives, in which Tori Herridge and a team of scientists discover the stories that can be pieced together from human remains discovered around the country.
Alison Hammond: Back to School
www.itv.com/hub/alison-hammond-back-to-school/10a0623a0001
Join Alison Hammond on her historical journey across Britain and discover more about black lives that have been hidden from the country’s history.
Inside Culture with Mary Beard
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000mz1w
Enjoy this topical arts series in which Mary Beard meets leading creative voices, visits Stonehenge, and discusses the future of museums post-lockdown with a trip to the British Museum.
Secrets of the Saqqara Tomb
www.netflix.com/gb/title/81064069
Discover the history of a rich Egyptian tomb belonging to a high-ranking official, which was unearthed at Saqqara after 4,400 years, in this new Netflix documentary.
Inside the Tower of London
www.channel5.com/show/inside-the-tower-of-london
Explore the history, secrets, and people of the Tower of London in the third season of this series, which goes inside the famous landmark.
The Final Passage
www.missingmatter.info/tara-expo
Travel through the Palaeolithic painted Chauvet cave in France and experience the rock-art and the atmosphere for yourself in this cinematic journey through time and space.
This article appeared in CA 369. To find out more about subscribing to the magazine, click here.
