Introduction

Hadrian's Wall is one of the greatest monuments of the ancient world. It tells us as much about ourselves as about the past. We should take pride in it and help unlock its potential to teach, inform and stimulate our own and future generations. The purpose of the Interpretation Framework (Adkins and Mills 2011) is to enable us to do just that; to create a structure within which more detailed strategic planning and coordination can take place and through which each site and museum can build on its own particular strengths and opportunities to create distinctive, differentiated and complementary experiences for visitors. Realisation of these opportunities will in turn deliver wider benefits:

1. • enhance the visitor experience and visitor enjoyment for the widest possible audiences;

2. • increase visitor numbers and, more importantly, encourage visitors to stay longer and to visit more sites;

3. • improve awareness and understanding of the WHS, its significance and the need to conserve and protect it, thus supporting the objectives of the WHS Management Plan;

4. • promote UNESCO's WHS values which seek to share the heritage and experience of people around the world.

Introduction

Until very recently, Vienna's best preserved Roman remains were difficult for visitors to find. The roman ruins, as this Wien Museum site was called, are six feet below ground, directly underneath the Hoher Markt square. The remains were discovered in 1948 during work on the city sewers and comprise remnants of officers' houses. Two inconspicuous city council signs pointed the way through a restaurant to reach stairs that led down to the excavations.

Despite poor signage, approximately 15,000 visitors found their way to the museum each year. An outing to the museum is a fixed date in the schedule for Vienna's schools whenever it comes to the romans' turn in the curriculum. However, access around the remains was so narrow that a modern approach to presenting the remains of Roman Vindobona was impossible. For pupils and teachers, who account for more than half of all visitors, the absence of any visitor infrastructure (especially toilets) was a major inconvenience. Acknowledgment of this problem was a catalyst for the train of events that led to the opening of a new Roman Museum in early May 2008.

When it became known in spring 2007 that the premises above the excavations would be available to let, the Wien Museum management team seized the opportunity to modify the building and implement a state-of-the-art museum concept. Families, those interested in Vienna's history and tourists were all identified, alongside school children, as key target audiences.

Introduction

This chapter focuses on the issues surrounding reconstruction of UNESCO World Heritage properties, principally archaeological sites. It is written from the perspective of a national heritage body rather than from that of UNESCO itself, though the author has considerable experience of working with the UNESCO World Heritage Centre and the advisory bodies to the World Heritage Convention. The chapter attempts to interpret UNESCO guidance within the context of national policy and practice in the UK in particular, and of international guidance in general. Given the context in which it was originally delivered, as a paper at the 2009 Limes Congress, there is also a focus on the reconstruction of Roman military sites, which often appears to be a particular ambition of their managers.

The terminology in this field can be confusing, particularly since the same words are frequently given differing meanings by different practitioners. For the avoidance of doubt, and possibly in imitation of Humpty Dumpty, who said ‘When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less’ (Carroll 1871), this chapter uses the definitions set out in the 2001 English Heritage statement on reconstruction of archaeological sites including ruins:

Introduction

In the Dutch city of Woerden, civil servants, local authorities, developers, enthusiastic citizens and archaeologists have succeeded, by working together, in revealing to the general public the city's invisible Roman past. There are several reasons for this success. The aim of bringing the Roman past to life through visual display was an integral aspect of an archaeological heritage management programme, and served a range of purposes (social, historical, educational and commercial). The framework that was built for presenting the city's Roman history concerned not only the hardware (pictures, displays etc) but also the people who use it, such as guides and teachers. All of this amounts to a considerable advance in bringing the invisible Roman past to life and in highlighting the importance and value of archaeology to the city. This chapter looks back on the path taken to realising the vision of Roman Woerden, paying special attention to the process and to key decisions made along the way.

The Woerden – Hoochwoert Project: Development, Research and Storytelling

Work has been ongoing since the 1990s to develop a new shopping complex around a yet-to-be-constructed square by the Church of St Peter (Petruskerk) in the centre of the typical Dutch fortified city of Woerden. The development included an underground car park designed to hold 560 cars.

Introduction

It is not difficult to find images of the Romans and information about Ancient Rome in contemporary sources. There are cartoons, picture books for young children, Hollywood films, television comedies, websites, school textbooks and popular histories for the general public, children's toys and violent computer games. This chapter discusses why the Romans and their barbarian enemies have been badly or incorrectly portrayed so often and for so long. In the UK, school textbooks from the 19th century and throughout most of the 20th century have often failed to present what classical texts, archaeologists and historians have revealed. More than that, these early school resources hardly ever presented any evidence for the authors' bold statements of presumed fact. This chapter also discusses the role of information books for children and the use of cartoons in storybooks about the Romans.

Although schools had existed since the early medieval period in Britain there was little opportunity for most children, and especially for girls, to be educated until parish schools became more common in the 17th century. The Education Act of 1870 created the opportunity to build secular day schools all over the country. School Boards were established in most districts and built public elementary schools, many of which still survive today as primary schools. Many children were educated at home in the 19th century and this promoted the growth of suitable textbooks for mothers or governesses to use in the home. Several history textbooks were written by women, sometimes using pen names, which demonstrated publishers' understanding of the market available to them.

Introduction

This paper was originally put together and presented by the author and Dr Sarah Tatham, Interpretation Officer for the Free Sites Project at English Heritage, at the XXIst International Limes (Roman Frontiers) Congress in Newcastle upon Tyne in August 2009. The following chapter differs somewhat from the presentation given that day, for two reasons. The first is that the original paper was largely visual and by its nature a chapter in a book is more restrictive in terms of graphics. Secondly, the author's thoughts and research on this topic have developed over the intervening two years. What follows is therefore more discursive and covers wider issues of academic accuracy, authenticity and artistic style in more depth.

Why Do We Commission Reconstruction Drawings?

Reconstruction drawings of the past are produced for a variety of purposes and audiences — for museum displays, guidebooks, graphic panels and to illustrate professional archaeological texts. All have the same objective: to put flesh on the bare bones of the past by restoring — on paper, at least — what time has taken away.

English Heritage and its predecessors, beginning with the Ministry of Works in the 1950s, have commissioned and displayed many hundreds of reconstruction artworks, largely produced to help visitors to England's historic sites in guardianship understand and relate to the past. Many of these paintings are archived in the National Monuments Record in Swindon and form a unique record of the development of the discipline (see Davison 1997 for a broad overview). Today, reconstruction drawings are regularly commissioned for guidebooks and for on-site information panels.

Introduction

The protection and presentation of archaeological structures is a century-long tradition in Vindonissa. Whereas older models and reconstructions tried to recreate the ancient situation as closely as possible, current approaches to presentation work consciously with abstraction and schematising. They invite the viewer to experience the process and methods of presentation and do not presume to offer definitive solutions. They attempt, rather, to entice the viewer into antiquity for a moment, to stimulate the imagination. Knowing the subjectivity of all history writing, the viewer is allowed, to a large extent, to create his own history of Roman Vindonissa.

The Via et Porta Praetgria Archaeological Site

At Vindonissa, a legionary fort in northern Switzerland, systematic field research began at the end of the 19th century when, in 1897, the amphitheatre was rediscovered and, shortly after, restored and presented to the public (Frei-Stolba et al 2011). The amphitheatre marks not only the beginning of systematic excavation, but also the beginning of preservation and presentation of roman ruins at this important site on the roman frontier. It is interesting to note that since the beginning of field archaeology at Vindonissa, the restored roman remains have been used for different purposes including theatrical performances and even church services.

Constructive Partnerships

The study and description of history is fundamentally a process of reconstructing the past: piecing together fragments of documents, buildings and artefacts to create a believable story or illustration of people, events and places. For heritage professionals this process and its associated debate is the stuff of history. For exhibition interpreters it is less the debate and more the conclusions that matter. For the majority of the public it is the story. Balancing these sometimes very different levels of interest has never been easy. An acceptable level of accuracy for one group can be a source of obfuscation for another. The successful combination of these different approaches is, nevertheless, essential if we are to make accessible the processes and results of historical debate to the wider public. By doing so we can hope to enrich public consciousness with accurate and accessible reconstructions of our past.

Just 15 years ago historical reconstructions were most often presented via the pages of a book — academic tome or romantic fiction. This format normally required a significant reduction and simplification of the evidence. There were constraints on word count and number of illustrations that we had all grown used to. Today, with the proliferation of digital publication and interpretation centres, the volume of information we present to the public, consciously or subconsciously, can be very large indeed. In particular 2D and now 3D visual reconstructions are often so detailed and realistic that they routinely challenge our understanding of the evidence upon which the visual reconstruction itself is based.

Introduction

The present-day territories of the villages of Stari Kostolac and Drmno, situated about 95km south-east of Belgrade, lie within the limits of the urban territory of the ancient city of Viminacium, the capital of the Roman province Moesia superior, named Moesia Prima in the late Empire. The ancient roman city and military fort (covering an area of over 450ha of the wider city region and 220ha of the inner city) are now located under cultivated fields, across which artefacts and fragments of objects from roman times are scattered. exploration of the Viminacium cemeteries was undertaken during construction of the Kostolac thermal power plant and operation of the Drmno opencast mine.

The necropolis of Viminacium was explored during the last three decades of the 20th century and over 13,500 graves discovered, along with more than 30,000 archaeological artefacts. excavation of the southern part of the Viminacium cemetery offered valuable data about burial rites from the fourth century BC (Jovanovic 1984; 1985), over the whole roman period, through the first to the fourth centuries AD (Zotović and Jordović 1990; Korać et al 2009) to the period of the Great Migration (Zotović 1980; Ivanišević et al 2006). The finds were displayed at the national museum in Požarevac, a town situated 12km from the site itself. With nothing visible at the site, visitors were unable to obtain a real impression of the necropolis, the city or the military fort.

Borders and boundaries are a natural part of every society. We place ourselves behind walls to separate ourselves from others as part of the creation of our identity. These borders can be physical or metaphorical. The most extreme form of border is one where the person looking out from behind the wall assumes a position of superiority over those on the outside. But not all borders have to take this form. Borders which are not physically manifest or only virtual may have a more neutral flavour. Physical proximity is often seen as a threat whereas detached observation at a distance neutralises any threat. Those on the outside then appear as merely exotic rather than as a potential enemy.

Borders were extremely important for the Roman Empire. The later Empire especially was defined by its sense of difference, and superiority, from those on the outside of its borders. In the modern world, our engagement with ancient Rome is as outsiders, beyond the borders now of time. The engagement we have with Rome is complex, since Rome finds its place not only in academic culture but also in the popular arts.

‘But Dad, history is boring and the Romans are the most boring bit of it all.’ I may have paraphrased my son's attempted justification for not doing homework but the essence of his argument is, and was, very plain. A similar argument was deployed always when discussing going to visit one of the site museums on Hadrian's Wall; and yet a walk along the Wall where ‘British war parties’ (children), waiting in ambush for Roman supply columns (parents), were routinely ‘flushed-out’ by Roman scouts (the dog) but rallied to win the ensuing battle, were, for a time, one of the most attractive of weekend activities.

Where have we, as teachers, academics and interpreters gone so badly wrong? How have we managed to make the Romans such a hated topic? Readers may think I overreact but on a very brief and totally unsystematic survey (conducted in the last few minutes with two of my children and eight of their friends, home for lunch from school), the result was almost unanimous: the Romans are the most boring part of history — with one dissenter identifying ‘Medicine Through Time’ (although, when pressed by his peers, he acknowledged that the worst bit of this was ‘The Romans and the beginning of public health’ as there was no gruesome dissection or surgery to talk of …).

Introduction

This chapter explores the use of designs found on fibulae as evidence of the architectural appearance (design, features, scale, dimensions, proportions) of Roman fort gates. The evidence suggests that the gateways were higher and grander in scale than previously thought. This conclusion has important implications both for our understanding of the role of gateways as monumental architecture expressing the power of the roman Empire and for reconstructions of these gateways for public presentation. Many existing reconstructions are too low and convey a misleading impression to visitors.

The Evidence

In 1990 a fibula (Fig 4.1) showing a three-storey gateway building with arched windows was discovered (Flügel 2007; Flügel and Obmann 2009) during the excavation of a villa rustica at Chieming in the district of Traunstein in Bavaria. In roman times this area was part of the province of Noricum. The different storeys over the rounded gateway are separated by clearly marked quarter-round dividing cornices, as is often the case in roman architecture (eg Trier, Porta Nigra). The fact that this real-world feature was depicted as a key visual element on a small-scale reproduction leads to the conclusion that the producer of our fibula had a clear picture in mind of how a Roman gateway looked. Using this symbolic citation (Zanker 1987), the fibula's designer wanted to convey this idea to the potential user of his product.

Purpose and Discussion

The aim of this book is to explore and address a number of perceived issues in the public presentation of the archaeology of Hadrian's Wall and of the Frontiers of the Roman Empire. It is relevant also to wider issues of public presentation of the roman world in Britain and elsewhere and to the application of principles of good interpretation to periods of the past in which archaeology is a major source of evidence. The issues can be summarised as follows:

1. Public presentation is generally very academic, focusing on the imparting of knowledge from academics and professionals to visitors rather than responding to the interests and questions of the visitors (and potential visitors) themselves.

2. Public presentation has tended to focus on the display of objects for their own sake, avoiding and excluding approaches which seek to use objects to illustrate themes and narratives.

3. Academic and professional archaeologists are often very conservative in their understanding of how archaeological evidence might be used for public presentation.

4. There is generally a poor understanding of the basic principles of good interpretation in the academic and museums world, with a perception that anything beyond straightforward presentation of objects and well-authenticated reconstruction implies ‘Disneyfication’, ‘dumbing down’ or ‘marketing’. Use of the word storytelling by interpreters tends to equate with the word fairytales in the minds of many academic and professional archaeologists and curators.

5. Public presentation of the Roman Frontiers has a tendency to focus on the Roman army and its military infrastructure and to avoid broader political, economic and social issues.

6. […]