Researchers can access a newly remodelled physical research space at the Garstang Research Centre.
The University of Liverpool has marked the official opening of the Garstang Research Centre (GRC), a major new heritage science facility at the University's Garstang Museum.
The centre combines:
- A newly remodelled physical research space with enhanced storage, environmental controls, security, and object visualiser to support virtual access.
- A digital research infrastructure, the Garstang Archaeology Portal (GAP), enabling global remote access to data about Garstang excavated finds held across 100+ institutions.
The Garstang Research Centre is open to all researchers, providing opportunities to undertake research both on-site and online, with the GAP to follow later this year.
The GRC represents significant investment, including £450k University capital works and £1.85million from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)'s Research Infrastructure for Conservation and Heritage Science (RICHeS) programme as part of the wider Reconstructing the Ancient Past project.
The Garstang Museum at the University of Liverpool is working in partnership with National Museums Liverpool to increase visibility, accessibility and usability of the archaeological finds from excavations led by John Garstang (1876-1956) throughout the first half of the twentieth century in Egypt, Sudan, and the Near East.
A significant proportion of these finds are held at the Garstang Museum and National Museums Liverpool, but many more are distributed across museums, libraries, and private institutions across the globe making research challenging and resource intensive. This project connects data and creates new data about the collection items, providing both virtual and physical access to the research resource at scale for the first time.
Joanne Fitton, Deputy Director of Libraries, Museums & Galleries said: "Through the Garstang Research Centre and the Garstang Archaeology Portal, we are not only enhancing access to the collections in Liverpool, but also helping to reconnect dispersed archaeological material held in institutions around the world. This investment ensures that these collections continue to support world-leading research, teaching and public engagement for generations to come."
AHRC Executive Chair, Professor Christopher Smith said: "This investment in heritage science will allow researchers in the UK and abroad to access the Garstang Museum's collections in new and transformative ways. I am excited to see what new insights they can glean into ancient peoples and their lives."
Dr Ashley Cooke, Head of World Museum at National Museums Liverpool, said: "Those of us who have worked with this material have long understood its significance and the untapped potential it holds for advancing our understanding of the ancient world. As a partner institution holding 3000 artefacts and archives connected to the Garstang excavations, we have also long hoped for a way to reunite these dispersed collections intellectually, if not physically. It is tremendously exciting to see that vision becoming a reality through digitisation. By bringing collections together virtually and making them accessible online, this project will open up new avenues of research, enabling scholars to study related objects across institutional boundaries and reveal connections that have remained hidden for decades. We are proud to contribute to an initiative that will fundamentally enhance access to, and understanding of, this important archaeological legacy".
