[First posted 18 September 2023; edited 21 November 2023]
Our call for submissions closed at midnight, end of day Monday 20 November.
You can find an archive version of the artist brief via this Google doc.But please note that we will not be accepting further submissions.
To sign up to notifications regarding more Archaeology and Heritage Creative opportunities, fill out the form here: https://forms.gle/goFr4yNpFG7uYz487 The email volume is low, maximum 5-10 emails every six months.
Colleen and Fran
Creative Process Timescale
September 2023: Artist Brief Circulated
30 October 2023, 09:00-10:00 GMT: Online information session for interested applicants: a brief introduction to the Avebury archive and an opportunity to ask questions to the team. Please email Dr Colleen Morgan for the Zoom link.
20 November 2023: Deadline for artist proposals. Submissions due by midnight GMT, no late submissions may be accepted.
8 December 2023: Shortlist of artists will be contacted for interviews [UPDATE 23 November: due to a high volume of submissions, we anticipate contacting a shortlist later in December. Thank you for your patience, we cannot give a more certain date at present].
8 – 16 January 2024: Artists will be interviewed (online, via Zoom)
19 January 2024: Commissioned artists will be notified and briefing sessions will be arranged
January 2024 – October 2024: Commissioned artists work with the archive
October 2024 – April 2025: Commissioned artists share work with the Avebury Papers team, and discuss steps for archiving and exhibition
Header image: Denis Grant King’s diary, Accession Number 1732623-002.
In the ‘archive scoping’ blog post I talked about our ambitions for the archive, and how we hope to embed reminders that, behind the digital files we create, there are real objects.
We’ve now been photographing for 4 months, and making good progress. Our wonderful volunteers have been tackling flat papers, photographic prints, and books which require ‘v-scanning’ (the books rest partially open in a cradle, and we use a setting in Tocosa to ‘flatten’ or ‘open up’ the pages). Each different kind of item demands a slightly different approach, whether that’s selecting lighting settings, using a cradle for conservation purposes, and whether we make use of auto crop or rotate, or do one or both adjustments manually.
Below are some of the photographs taken so far, which show a few of the strategies and decisions we’ve made.
Denis Grant King – Journal of my visit to Avebury, 1983
Denis Grant King’s diary, Accession Number 1732623-002.
King was an archaeologist and artist, and he spent many years at Avebury, eventually working with Isabel Smith as she prepared her vitally important synthesis of the 1930s excavations (which she published in 1965 as Windmill Hill and Avebury. Excavations by Alexander Keiller, 1925–1939).
King’s diaries are lavishly illustrated and contain reflections on the personal dynamics of the group as much as the archaeology.
For this diary, we used the v-scan function in Tocosa, as it ‘flattens’ out the ‘v’ shape of the diary. We haven’t done this for all manuscripts, but there were compelling reasons for this one: 1. the double-page spread illustrations, and illustrations throughout, look better with square(ish) edges; 2. The handwriting is clear enough for us to use OCR (Optical Character Recognition) software to semi-automate the transcription process, and straighter lines of text help the OCR along. But more on OCR another time!
This map page is so beautiful I couldn’t resist uploading a version already to King’s existing Wikipedia page. We’ll be doing some more uploading to Wikipedia later in the project, as it’s a great way to get Avebury materials out there in front of many eyes!
Alexander Keiller’s 1934 excavation diary
Keiller kept diaries for each of his excavations. This is the first one for our project: covering the 1934 activity at West Kennet Avenue.
We photograph the fronts of all book-type objects in order to give more of an impression of the physical object.
Keiller’s 1934 diary, accession number 78510467 – front cover.
And here’s a preview of the title page, which gives a hint at Keiller’s handwriting (which is presenting a challenge to our transcription volunteers – more on that in another post!).
Unlike Denis Grant King’s Diary, for these diaries we are not using v-scan correction, so you get those angles edges from where the book is resting in the cradle. It was not so important to have square edges for these diaries, as there are no illustrations and the handwriting is almost impossible for OCR. Keeping these sloping edges keeps that reminder of the physical object properties.
Keiller’s 1934 diary, accession number 78510467 – inside cover page.
Retaining imperfection
Accession number 20004005-002.
Sometimes, letters might be a little creased as we find them in their storage boxes. So long as the crease doesn’t obscure the text, we are not smoothing out all texture. Again, this is to preserve more of an impression of the ‘real’ archive – which I hope will perhaps encourage people to come and see it for themselves. It also, I think, gives more of a sense of these objects as things which have been used – they’re not just digital files that have appeared on the internet, they have their own histories.
This letter is a reply from the museum curator regarding a query about the ‘Mary Tudor’ weight found at Avebury.
When photography goes wrong
And finally… just an example of the kind of human error that can sneak into the photography studio! Below you see the first image which was taken of item 88051525-064. Notice the ghostly hand blurring across the image! Luckily, we noticed this error and the photograph has now been re-taken, hands free.
Ooops… Item 88051525-064 is photographed a little too quickly.All fixed! 88051525-064 is ready for the archive.
In the archive, we have several photo albums for the 1934 to 1939 excavations at Avebury. Each album shows us how Alexander Keiller and his team carefully excavated and lifted the stones in the outer circle and down West Kennet Avenue.
Page 70 in photo album B (78510301_070)
Alexander Keiller was very particular about which photo prints he used in the albums so we have a lot of loose spare prints that did not make the cut.
This means that we have to individually check each print to see if it is a duplicate or an original. To do this we have a quick and easy process.
First, we start by dividing the prints into piles. We separate the prints by their film reel number, which Alexander Keiller wrote in the bottom right corner of the print.
Loose prints for photo album G sorted by film reel
Once sorted we search our excel catalogue to check if any of the prints are already in the album.
searching film numbers on the spreadsheet
Occasionally we will find that one of the loose prints is already in the album. In this case, we open the photo album to check if the image is the same in the print as it is in the album.
Loose print and Photo Album G (78510306)
Loose prints that are identical to the photo album are separated out from those that are not. This is because we only want to photograph prints that are not already in the albums.
Once a box is sorted into photos already in the album and those that are not it is put back on the shelf to be photographed later.
A flat lay of various items from the Alexander Keiller Museum archive, Avebury.
What comes to mind when you think of a ‘digitisation project’? For me, it’s a vision of a beautiful photography studio, with soft raking light, a camera poised above, the gentle ‘click’ of the foot pedal, and a hard-drive whirring away keeping digital files secure.
However, the reality is that digitisation begins far from any camera, with extremely analogue tasks!
I joined the Avebury Papers project team in July 2022. One of my first jobs was to scope out the paper archive: to work out what materials we are dealing with, how much, and whether there any preservation needs. All of this would inform what kind of studio set up to go for.
What’s in the collection?
The bulk of paper materials at the Alexander Keiller Museum relate to excavations supervised by Alexander Keiller himself in the 1930s. There are also documents and photographs from Harold St George Gray, who excavated at Avebury in the early 20th century, and later documents including preparatory notes by Isobel Smith and Denis Grant King made as they brought together and analysed findings from the 1930s work, commissioned by Gabrielle Keiller.
The National Trust has a catalogue of items in its collection (this link shows you everything at Avebury – not just the paper items). However, many of the paper items are accessioned (organised) into bundles or groups – which is quite normal for a collection of this type. So my first task was to conduct a manual quick count of all paper materials.
For facts and figures fans, here’s an overview:
2700 items in the paper collection, including:
Photographic prints (loose, mounted, or pasted into albums)
Letters
Notebooks and diaries
Plans and drawings
Printed books
Photographic slides (glass and cellulose)
1 roll of cine film
Two CDs, 16 video tape, and 3 cassette tape
From these 2700 items, we will be creating 13,500 unique digital objects. This number accounts for individual pages of multi-page items.
In addition to the paper items held at the Alexander Keiller Museum, we’ve also identified relevant letters, diaries, and scrapbooks at the Wiltshire Museum, Devizes. There may also be materials to draw in from the Historic England archive. I’ll share more about these holdings in future posts!
Challenges
The variety in item size and type directed my search for the ideal photographic studio set up: we needed equipment that can cope with a range of documents and bound books, handwriting, print, and drawings, as smoothly as possible.
216 items (8% of 2700) are larger than A2, with 50 items larger than A0. So, we’re currently scoping out the best way to deal with these outsized (and often oddly-shaped!) papers.
The fact that 70% of the collection is hand written also presents a challenge for transcription (creating digital, searchable documents). Whereas typed documents may quickly and easily be run through OCR (optical character recognition) software which automatically turns analogue writing into digital type, Alexander Keiller’s handwriting especially needs human eyes – and patience!
A double page spread of the 1934 excavation diary kept by Alexander Keiller – with some entries by Stuart Piggott. The spread shows entries for Monday 7 and Tuesday 8 May 1934, and a list of gear on loan from ‘O of W’. Keiller’s handwriting is cursive and difficult to read! Accession number: 78510467.
Decisions
Scoping out the collection raised a bunch of questions as well as challenges. Now we know what we have, how exactly would we like people to be able to see and interact with digitised items on their screens at home? Because the collection is so varied, we need to ask this question for each item type.
This question is also guided by what sort of experience we’d like digital archive users to have in the future. This is not a decision that the core project team will make alone – we are planning various workshops in the coming months to find out what users want to see, and how they’d like to use the collection.
I’m also particularly inspired by elements of the Courtauld’s approach to digitising their art and architecture photographic collection. As Tom Bilson explains, they look to facilitate:
“An appreciation that every image presented online has a physical counterpart that still sits in a library box – a set of visual cues pointing to the personalities and voices enmeshed within our collections, and the recognition that appearance online is absolutely not their year zero, but another milestone in their malleable history”
For instance, take the Keiller-era photo albums held at Avebury. These consist of photographic prints pasted onto pages that are bound together, sometimes with more than one print per page. One approach to digitisation would be to focus on the prints only, and crop out the mount and album details. However, we’re leaning towards capturing the entire page, so that archive users can get a real feel for the photographs as physical objects with varied contexts.
There are many more decisions to be made about how we photograph and add detail to the collection. Let us know your thoughts and questions below!
