British Museum : Day of the Dead

We have been following the British Museum on Twitter. If you Twitter I recommend following the British Museum's Twitter. They recently have been focusing on their Day of the Dead events. There are more images up on Flicker.

Stone Tools from the British Museum

 Stone Tools on display at the British Museum

Neolithic Axes from around 4000 BC

The top ax is called a Jadeite axe-head.  There is more info on this piece at the British Museum's website.

I took these images at the British Museum for Bruce.  Bruce loves looking at stone tools and will often scour the ground around our home for anything of interest. I am always amazed at his ability to locate arrowheads (mostly pieces) and other treasures from the ground.  Or when he points to the pond and says do you see the fish? He describes the location for me to look at, and as hard as I might I just don't see them. He says look the dark shadows you can see them moving.   I can locate Moby, but that is easy, just look for the white shadow moving around on the surface.

The next two images are of the same grouping but from different views.  These are assorted ax stone tools.

  I wish I had taken a picture of the description tag.    

As usual we always tend to reference things in terms of pottery and these are inspiring in terms of form and surface.

This stone tool below is a Levallois Ax dating from around 200,000 years ago.

Wow.  When Bruce and I saw this we were in awe.  To be looking at something that is this old and beautiful makes our legs quiver.  In the book "The Atlas of Archaeology" by Mick Aston & Tim Taylor,  I read that this shape and type of tool dates back to around 1.5 million years ago when a new evolved species of human called Homo erectus spread from Africa to the rest of the world.  The earliest stone tool pictured in this book is from 1.9 million years ago and is called Oldwan Chopper.  These tools are simple in shape and are hard to distinguish them from naturally broken and cracked pebbles in the field.

Here is the Paleolithic Hand Ax that we saw at the British Museum.  This is about the only image that I did take and image of the tag.

British Museum Visit : Part II

I went through the British Museum looking through the eye of the camera.  Bruce walked through looking and reading.  At the end of the day I wondered what that would of been liked to have just relaxed, looked, and read, but then if I did that we wouldn't be looking at all of these great pots now.  When we walked through this museum we were in awe at what wonderful objects have been made throughout time.  We didn't make the time to take notes to identify any of the pieces as there was so much to see and so little time.  Disturbing to think of what wonderful objects have been lost to us through fires, wars, vandalism, everyday use, etc.

British Museum Visit : Part I

Back in 2005 Bruce and I visited London for around 12 days.  I took my camera and shot hundreds of pictures. We thought we would share some of them with you.  We had a great time there and really enjoyed ourselves in the city visiting all of the museums.  It was a lot of fun looking at all of the amazing artifacts and art together.    Our favorite museum was the British Museum.    I think we spent around 4 days working our way through the various rooms. We highlighted the rooms on our map as we left them so we would know where we had been.  We were focused and on a mission.  

I have always liked shoes.  I find the variety and variations of shoes over history intriguing.  These two images are scent bottles.  Looking at objects this old is very humbling.  Somewhere in our images I have a picture of a stone hand axe tool that is 350,000 years old.  Wow.  It is hard to fathom.