‘Made in Africa’ Exhibition - A Volunteer’s View - Manning the Table
So yesterday afternoon was my first volunteering session for the Made in Africa exhibition at Bolton Museum. It was great the see the exhibit in all this glory - with the finished perspex cases displaying the tools and images on the walls. I was there, with a member of the museum staff, to man the handling table. The table has a rubber mat on top so that if someone drops one of the artefacts it would land on the soft rubber, limiting the possibility of damage.
There are four tools that the public can handle. The oldest is 1.8 million years old and looks very rudimentary, in fact it looks pretty much like any other pebble to the untrained eye. It is a chopping tool made from black basalt by Homo habilis and is among the first tools ever made by man’s ancestors. This demonstrates the moment that man’s ancestors invented technology.
The next tool in the timeline is about 1.4 million years old and is an early handaxe made from lava rock by Homo erectus. You can see clearly that their tool making skills have dramatically improved. It has the characteristic tear-drop shape and is symmetrical, but is still fairly rough and imperfect. This tool shows the beginnings of our sense of visual preference - our liking for one shape over another and our desire to make things look a certain way.
The final handaxe is 800,000 years old and is very fine indeed. Made from quartzite by Homo erectus it is quite stunning - it is finished much more finely than the earlier tools and has a lovely sparkly surface. It seems unlikely that it’s beauty was lost on it’s maker, indeed it is tempting to think that this may have been it’s purpose - that it was never meant for use as a tool, but simply as a statement of the maker’s skill and for other members of the community to admire.
The final tool is probably a tool for making tools - it’s a ’spheroid’ or round stone that may have been used as a hammer stone for knapping. It’s made from quartz and is dated to about 1.2 million years old. Some researchers have also speculated that it might have been used as a sling-shot for hunting.
Our role is to explain all this as people handle the stones, to point out the progression in skills and the development of intention behind the design of the tools. Basically, to encourage folk to think about what they are seeing and feeling and to put that into the context of human development in Africa.
By the end of the day the exhibit had been visited by over 200 people. Not everyone took advantage of the handling session - some didn’t seem to realise what any of it was about or that this was probably their once in a lifetime opportunity to actually hold some of the first tools ever made by man’s ancestors. Others took a genuine interest, and some came back again later having brought other members of their families with them to share the experience. Generally the questions were fairly straight forward - where, when, how? Often people were confused about the timelines - was this before or after the neanderthals? The answer being long before. One small boy was more interested in how they illuminated the writing etched into the perspex display cases, which was fair enough and an excellent question. Apparently there is a blue led light directly underneath the perspex sheet - where the writing is etched in the light bounces of the edges making the writing shine in blue. It really looks very cool. Probably the main comment though was how the axes ‘make you want to hold and feel them’. I couldn’t agree more.