Reconstructing the ‘Minoan Room’ using the Ashmolean’s Sir Arthur Evans Archive

Book section : Chapter

The Sir Arthur Evans Archive at the Ashmolean Museum holds the largest collection of archival materials related to the life and archaeological work of Sir Arthur Evans, the twentieth-century excavator of Knossos on Crete. As well as the primary records of the excavations, including diaries, plans, and object drawings, many of the items in the Archive directly relate to Evans’s publications. These range from early handwritten drafts to paste-ups of illustrations, printer’s blocks, and annotated proofs. The Archive is as much a record of the physical production of Evans’s publications as it is an insight into the excavations at Knossos. The central role of Evans’s publications in the Archive has been explored in a recent research and digitization project about the British School at Athens’s 1936 Jubilee Exhibition at the Royal Academy’s Burlington House in London. Evans, assisted by Mercy Money-Coutts and Edith Eccles, was invited to curate a ‘Minoan Room’ using objects from the Ashmolean and original drawings and photographs of Knossos which are now part of the Archive. The Archive also contains many of the original exhibition labels which seem to be recycled from publication proofs and original drawings. This paper discusses how this project has attempted to organize, understand, and digitally reconstruct Evans’s work in the exhibition. It presents an interactive digital publication as a means to bring together the exhibition labels with the objects in the exhibition. Using the 1936 exhibition project as a case study, this paper interrogates some of the observations and challenges of the Sir Arthur Evans Archive and discusses how to best study and showcase its archival materials.

Authors: Trepagnier, R; Shapland, A

• Publication status: In press
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Brepols
• Host title: Unleashing knowledge and structuring notes: archaeological ‘archives’ and their historiographies
• EISBN: 9782503626956
• ISBN: 9782503626949
• Language: English
• Keywords: exhibition history; Ashmolean; Sir Arthur Evans; Knossos; British School at Athens
• Subtype: Chapter