Excavating Collections: Archaeological Finds at the Redpath Museum

Abstract

Two research projects relating to the Redpath Museum's archaeology collections are described as part of a general discussion of the value and Jicture role of such collections. One project involved the discovery at the Museum of an important piece of Meroitic art datingfrom the first century A.D. and of the cast of a companion piece, both of which had been lost track of after they wre displayed in Liverpool in 1914. The second project concerned the use of stone tools and bones in the Redpath Museum to help date and confirm the original place of discovery of a number of European Palaeolithic figurines purchased in a Montreal antique shop in 1990. These discoveries illustrate the research potential of these long neglected and little known collections. It is argued that, as ever more archaeological sites are destroyed as a result of population growth and economic development, museum collections will become an increasingly important source of infonnution about the past.