As part of the British Museum touring
exhibition ‘Roman Empire: Power and People’, which is at Leeds
City Museum 20th Sept – 4th Jan, we decided to highlight some of
our own Roman collections.
Many of our fantastic Roman objects are
already on display in Leeds City Museum, both in the Ancient Worlds
and the Story of Leeds galleries, but we have collected many more
objects since these galleries opened and we want to tell different
stories in ‘Roman Empire’.
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| Marble head of a satyr, 100-50 BC, collected in 1896 from Lord Savile’s excavations at Lanuvium, Italy |
Firstly we integrated local objects
into the existing themes of the exhibition, and objects from
Yorkshire are highlighted throughout so visitors can easily spot
them. A beautiful fantail brooch from Wattle Syke sits alongside
several brooches from the British Museum’s collection.
Altars from
Adel and Chapel Allerton fit into the wider theme of religious
beliefs, as does a silver ring depicting Fortuna found by a metal
detector user in Micklefield. These displays are also complemented
by objects from The Yorkshire Museum’s collection, which root these
larger ideas about the empire to Yorkshire objects.
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| Fantail brooch, AD 70-130, from recent excavations at Wattle Syke, West Yorkshire |
In the introductory area of the gallery
there is also a display about the how Leeds Museums and Galleries
collected all of this Roman stuff in the first place. It looks at
19th century collecting by the Leeds Philosophical and Literary
Society, and at what Roman material we collect today.
We hope that by highlighting our local
Roman heritage, visitors will engage more with the wonderful objects
on display from across the Roman Empire, and embrace the Roman period
as part of our shared history.
By Archaeology Curator Katherine Baxter
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