Connecting Communities and their Maritime Heritage: Cornwall and the Sea in the Bronze Age

The NMMC has been awarded, amongst many other honors, Cornwall Best Visitor Attraction and the Sandford Award for Excellence in Education. The NMMC now aspires to build on these successes, and connect communities with their more ancient maritime heritage by extending its exhibitions further back in time to reveal the long-standing nature of Cornwall's and British relationship with the sea, and develop its research capacity so that it can re-position itself as a center of maritime research excellence. This knowledge transfer project, a joint collaboration between the NMMC and University researchers, unlocks the expertise necessary for these aspirations to come to fruition. The academic archaeologists bring to this project their internationally recognized expertise in Bronze Age seafaring, the European Bronze Age, maritime archaeology and experimental archaeology; they are joined by a geo-engineer with specialist knowledge of 3D laser scanning and a media researcher with expertise in the creation of digital artefacts documenting transient events.

This project takes its inspiration from two maritime museums on the Continent (the Viking ship museum in Roskilde, Denmark, and the Batavia Wharf in Lelystad, Netherlands) that have at their core the 'live' construction of historical vessels. Both these organizations have attracted large numbers of visitors, and are recognized as contributors to their local economies and undertaking experimental research at the highest quality level.

This project has at its center the construction of a type of craft that is unique to the British Bronze Age (c. 2500-800 BC), and has direct relevance to local, regional and national audiences: the sewn-plank boat. The sewn-plank boat is the oldest archaeologically known seafaring craft in Europe. This type of craft played a key role in reconnecting communities in Britain with continental Europe and Ireland during the early phases of emerging trade and exchange in metals. The position of Cornwall in the exchange networks of the Bronze Age is undoubted. As an area with abundant copper and tin ores, Cornwall was of critical importance in the early bronze manufacture in northwestern Europe, and this notion was recently reinforced with the discoveries of Bronze Age tin ingots, off the coast of Salcombe.

The construction of a sewn-plank boat using Bronze Age technology and replica tools provides an opportunity to celebrate British prehistoric innovations in ship building and Cornwall's role in European integration, and to (re-)connect communities with their ancient maritime heritage. Visitors will be able to participate in its construction (thereto supervised by the Project Officer), discovering prehistoric technology for themselves. The construction of this craft offers a platform for building the research capacity of the NMMC, and this will be achieved through the recording of the emerging sewn-plank boat in both conventional and innovative ways, including using high-resolution 3D laser scanning and the creation of a digital artefact that documents the transient and dynamic nature of the project.

The boat will form the centerpiece of the temporary exhibition 'Cornwall and the Sea in the Bronze Age', that will offer the latest academic thinking on prehistoric maritime heritage and connections between Cornwall and Europe, and will exhibit key items from the collection of the Royal Cornwall Museum. Formal and informal education programmes of curriculum enrichment workshops, linking the exhibition to key learning outcomes in the National Curriculum for England, and a conference following testing of the sewn-plank boat, will be held in the museum. Crucially, this will provide the NMMC and other maritime museums with an innovative and transformational concept that can be replicated in the future for different types of craft, and dissemination of the concept of 'live' martime exhibitions will include two papers co-authored by the partners.

The project's outcomes are designed to transform the experiences and attitudes of a range of different audiences. The beneficiaries of the project, in addition to the academic beneficiaries detailed in the previous section, include:

1. The NMMC itself, its staff and volunteers, will be direct beneficiaries of the project, and this will take several forms. During the lifetime of the project, the exhibition and the 'live' reconstruction of a prehistoric craft at the NMMC is expected to attract more visitors to the NMMC than would otherwise be the case because of the very different nature of the exhibition and news stories on the project following the planned press releases, thereby contributing to the economic sustainability of the NMMC, transforming its capacity to (re-)connect communities with their more ancient maritime heritage, and building its research capacity and research reputation. Importantly, the NMMC will be provided with the experience of an innovative exhibition concept (that is the 'live' experimental construction of a boat) that can be repeated in future years for different types of craft, and this is expected to have a transformational impact on the NMMC and a lasting relationship with academic researchers;

2. During the project, an estimated 125,000 members of the community of Cornwall and tourists in the southwest during the summer of 2012 will benefit from the project as visitors to the exhibition, gaining information on the earliest British seafaring innovation and early connectedness within Europe, that has remained largely the preserve of the academic community. Celebrating these aspects of Cornwall's and Britain's past enhances the cultural well-being of the visitors, and enhances Cornwall's status as a high quality tourist destination. The general public that can not visit the NMMC will be able to share these benefits through information provided on the NMMC website and publicized in the local, regional, national and international press;

3. Museum volunteers, students and some 1000 visitors are expected to participate in the construction of the craft, thereto supervised by the Project Officer, gaining transferable skills in working with ancient technology, within a team, whilst engaging with the public. This will have a lasting impact on their understanding of their maritime heritage;

4. An estimated 1500 children from primary schools and colleges within Cornwall will take part in a range of formal education programmes that will include specially designed learning activities linking aspects of permanent collections to the exhibition in the context of the National Curriculum (e.g. Design and Technology, History, Science). Informal education will also be delivered to adult visitors, including the attendees to the lunch-time 'Discovery Talks' presented by the Knowledge Transfer Fellows. These aspects are designed to (re-)connect local communities with their maritime heritage and support the development of the knowledge economy in Cornwall;

5. The NMMC exhibition will include suggestions for exploring 'Bronze Age Cornwall', and heritage tourists attractions in Cornwall, notably to the Royal Cornwall Museum that will provide key items for the exhibition. It, and other organizations will benefit from additional visitors numbers, supporting their financial sustainability and cultural outreach;

6. The commercial private sector in Falmouth will benefit from additional spending by visitors to the exhibition, and the project will strengthen Falmouth's vibrancy as a high-quality tourist destination;

7. This project provides a case-study to the wider constituency of maritime museums in the UK as an example of how audiences can be reached, and how research capacity can be developed, in maritime museum contexts. The publication in the Museum Journal will ensure that the pertinent information is wid