Lost dreams

Roe deer orbit

  Lost Dreams 

Buxton Museum and Art Gallery,

Thursday 9th Jan 2020

I have a bit of thing for bones – more than fossils, ancient bones still remember the lives that once filled them. This piece came out of sitting looking at the bones in Buxton Museum and pondering….

Cave Bear skull, Buxton Museum

This is bone,

Not fossil,

Not stone,

But honest-to-goodness,

Ten thousand year old,

Bone.

A branch, a bough,

A giant’s club,

A woolly rhinoceros thigh.

There was marrow inside once,

Bony jelly,

A carnivore’s feast,

The pulse of life,

Wrapped in muscle and sinew and skin.

This skull,

The bone bowl of an ancient brain.

These were teeth that bit,

Jaws that gripped,

Eyes that saw,

And ears that heard.

The folded scrolls of these nostrils

Tasted a thousand scents,

Traced a thousand stories.

There is a richness of life beneath my hands,

A legacy of lost dreams.

Growing, waking,

Broad head, strong jaws,

Round ears twitch.

My hand on the hairy hump

Of a bear’s shoulders,

A dark mass heaving into movement.

Forest pools, deep and dark and still,

Eyes opening,

And I sinking,

So deep I cannot feel

Which eyes are mine

And which the bear’s...

Fox:whose bones would inspire you?

Skulls, bones and stones

African wilds 

and ancient caves

hand axe

hyena tooth

Then there were bones and stones and teeth. Small hands carefully handling, turning over a flint axe, fresh flaked by James Dilley* in a wonder of precision, laying bone needles on a delicate palm, and wrapping a friend in reindeer hide**  and sitting him down with a wooden bowl and a stone knife and deciding that Stone Age school uniforms look more exciting than contemporary ones

Stone Age Days, Bone Detectives, an avalanche of ancient stories and excitable Reception children. “is it snowing rain or is it raining snow?” They posed the question (Colne-Primet Primary gets its pupils thinking!). None of us could answer it, but we mapped our adventure with snowflakes melting onto card, mud from the squelchy puddle, mud from the plant pots, mud from our boots, muddy wool from our gloves and the wind that whirled the rainy snow around the playground and the wind that threw the snowy rain full into our cold faces….This was a week that ended in snow but began in Africa - at least Africa in Chester with Overleigh St Mary’s Primary school and shaping stories, taking tales and retelling them, adding new detail and extra hyenas, or lions, or whales or sharks or crocodiles….

Buxton Junior School, slid into some stone age work with ease: telling us of their adventures with cave bears and wolves, unfolding Stone age Toolkits. With Bone Detetcives we became more analytical: asking questions, turning over mysterious skulls and trying to deduce their identities - or just lifestyles and challenging each other with our trickiest finds.

flint blade

Rewarding days and 450 children later at the weekend we found the Treasures of the peaks with the Knights of the Chapel. But that is another story.

a well-furnished cave with stone tools, fire platform and 

a cheerful family

* James Dilley: archaeologist and person of excitement! James will be back with Buxton Museum and Art Gallery in March for a weekend of Bronze Casting. if you would like more information on joining this workshop, drop me an email and i will send you information when details are finalised in the next few weeks: creepingtoad@btinternet.com


** relax, it was fake

The end of the bones

Bone Detectives 

for 

British Science Week, 

12 - 20th March 2016

There were bones, and teeth, there were skulls and even the fragmented paw of a cave lion. And there was time to look, to handle , turn over, touch, test a fingertip against a crocodile’s tooth.

Time to talk, wonder, ask and ask again and say, “No!” and “What’s a hyrax?” and

“This is a porpoise?”

“Where is the elephant’s trunk?”

“Can I pick this up? Oh. Can I pick that up? Good”

There were beautiful replica skulls for the slightly squeamish and gloves for the bolder – or for anyone who just wanted to look sort-of-scientific like they were on some police procedural drama

For British Science Week, in a collaboration between Stone and Water, Buxton Museum’s Collections in the Landscape project and Creeping Toad, we ran a series of “Bone Detectives” workshops. These set out to introduce people to some basic skull features to look for and understand the clues they can give us about the original animal. The thought was that this would encourage people to look – to really open their eyes when they are out or maybe even to set off and do the hopeful walk they wouldn’t have done before

Skulls, skeletons or bits often turn up on walks over the moors of the Peak District, or perhaps are found by someone strolling in a casually acquisitive manner along a beach. We were looking for the questions (and their answers) that would set some inspired investigation in motion. We concentrated mostly on British mammal skulls – given time and the scope of vertebrate anatomy we had to draw some lines somewhere. But there were extension opportunities and as confidence grew, participants could move onto British bird skulls, a few exotic extras – a crocodile, assorted horns, replica hyrax, lynx and wallaby* and a wide selection of shells including a spread of annoying cone shells (this one? That one? No, the other one? Why would you call something a geographical cone, for goodness sake”. There was even a d-i-y snake spine

The workshops were a delight: from keenly questioning WATCH members to the surprise of casual visitors, workshops invite participation and challenged preconceptions. “But it’s so small! “ (same comment applied to rabbit, rat and squirrel skulls). People brought their own puzzles with them: beautfully delicate mouse and hedgehog skulls, a mysterious jaw bone (probably sheep), the museum added some mind-boggling teeth: woolly rhino and hyena.

The very bold in the museum went off to find the cave bear skull

We were pleased: these were sessions that maybe didn’t get quite the quiet, dedicated concentration we had imagined but they were sessions that got people handling material, talking, asking questions, feeling more confident.

Sources:

Just to be clear, the skulls and shells we sued were all found materials or were already in established collections. Nothing was killed for the sake of this project

Reproduction skulls came from a wonderful online shop: CrimsonRichDesire

* and, yes, we know we had a small population of feral wallabies until recently in the Roaches. Sadly missed

Bone Detectives

Our Bone Detectives workshops have been galloping along with much excitement and(as yet) no casualties…we have encountered the sharp teeth of lynx and crocodiles, we’ve wondered about the impact of a buffalo charge and the strength of bite of badgers…

Wallabies and hyrax skulls have caused much confusion and a white-tailed sea-eagle wonder

And our visitors have enjoyed themselves....

As I want to be a vet as a job I found it a very good learning experience

It was really fun and interesting, wish they would do something like it again

  (both from Whistlestop Watch group)

investigation

So far, we’ve seen 60 visitors at Buxton Museum and Art Gallery, 32 with Derbyshire Wildlife Trust’s Whistlestop Watch and 23 with the 1^st Taxal Cubs

There is one more chance to join in (at least for now)

not so sure about a mug of tea among the bones...

Wednesday 16th March: Bone Detectives, 2:at Buxton Museum and Art Gallery, Terrace Rd, Buxton, SK17 6DA, Tel: 01629 533540. 1 session: 10am - 1pm

This is a free session with activities and delivery aimed more at adults or young people of secondary school age

Again, this workshop is free and visitors are welcome to drop in. We recommend allowing an hour to work through activities but you are welcome to come for longer and spend more time handling, drawing and talking about the bones, skulls and shells we will have on display

Visitors are welcome to bring their own clean mystery finds with them - with no guarantee that we'll be able to solve the mystery but have confidence that we will be enthusiastic about them! (Whistlestop mysteries included an ichthyosaur rib, the lower jaw of a sheep and some crumbling mouse bones)

extra research

Community group Stone and Water have been supported by British Science Week in presenting these workshops