Ways of telling: Jacquetta Hawkes as film-maker.

Ways of telling: Jacquetta Hawkes as film-maker. Key-words: Jacquetta Hawkes, film, Britain, education This short paper will discuss the role of the archaeologist andwriter Jacquetta Hawkes as filmmaker. It is set within the context ofher widely ranging work -- from poetry and journalism to guide books andacademic papers -- which made varying contributions to the communicationof archaeology from the 1930s to the 1980s. Jacquetta Hawkes' life (1910-1996) spanned significant changesin the way archaeology evolved as a discipline and was received bothacademically and by the public. I do not propose to discuss the broaderhistory of the discipline but instead single out one example, ablack-and-white film titled The Beginning of History, made during theSecond World War, for an audience of schools and general public. It wasreleased in 1946 and helped Hawkes define her work for publicarchaeology in Britain. She went on to become Archaeology Advisor to theFestival of Britain The Festival of Britain was a national exhibition which opened in London and around Britain in May 1951. The official opening was on May 3.[1] The principal exhibition site was on the south bank of the River Thames near Waterloo Station. , the seminal post-war exhibition held onLondon's South Bank in 1951. `... it is remarkable that in the middle of a war two Governmentdepartments ... should undertake a work apparently so unpractical Un`prac´ti`cala. 1. Not practical; impractical.I like him none the less for being unpractical.- Lowell. and solittle urgent': Jacquetta Hawkes' comment on the making of TheBeginning of History, taken from an article she wrote on the subject foran academic audience (Hawkes 1946b), from which all quotations in thisarticle come. The film was made as part of her work for the Ministry ofEducation and it is helpful, perhaps, to set the project in some contextof her personal life. Although married at that time to the eminentChristopher Hawkes, then shortly to become Professor of EuropeanArchaeology at Oxford, Hawkes had already begun to establish herself inher own right. In 1939, she had been elected a fellow of the Society ofAntiquaries see FSA (disambiguation) for other meanings of FSA.FSA indicates Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, the society bears the full title of Society of Antiquaries of London. , helped by her work on the publication of The archaeology ofthe Channel Islands. She had completed Tom Kendrick's work withvolume 2, The Bailiwick BAILIWICK. The district over which a sheriff has jurisdiction; it signifies also the same as county, the sheriff's bailiwick extending over the county. 2. of Jersey (Hawkes 1939). With Christopher shehad written Prehistoric Britain, published in 1943, and was preparingEarly Britain, in a popular picture-book format, published in 1945.However, the marriage was under strain. According to a close friend,Diana Collins, Jacquetta Hawkes was increasingly restless andlooking for ways to resolve her creative and scientific interests.Her father, Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins Noun 1. Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins - English biochemist who did pioneering work that led to the discovery of vitamins (1861-1947)Hopkins , a Cambridge don, had combinedformidable intellect with fertile imagination, and Hawkes was determinedto make her own mark as an educationalist. The burgeoning new area offilm-making was one of the ways she could achieve this. An invitation tobe Editor-in-Chief of the Film Unit at the Ministry of Education wasenthusiastically accepted. The Beginning of History was part of an experimental programmewhich was `modest in scale but revolutionary in its implications',as Hawkes pointed out. `In our militantly decentralised system ofeducation, the Board, or Ministry, has never before produced text-booksor any equivalent form of educational material'. Theprogramme's central theme was human development. Other filmstackled subjects including printing and exploration. Hawkes wasdetermined to confound the sceptics who regarded prehistory prehistory,period of human evolution before writing was invented and records kept. The term was coined by Daniel Wilson in 1851. It is followed by protohistory, the period for which we have some records but must still rely largely on archaeological evidence to asunfilmable, but recognised the limitations: `There is nothing which morenakedly reveals our ignorance than an attempt at the visual presentationof prehistory with its inevitable exposure of all those wide blankspaces which words can conceal or evade'. However, the film was anexercise in creativity. She describes the camerawork in her inimitable in��im��i��ta��ble?adj.Defying imitation; matchless.[Middle English, from Latin inimit style: `The lens slides down the walls of Cheddar Gorge and penetratesits caves to find the home of Palaeolithic man, its twists along a SkaraBrae alley-way ... it explores every corner of Little Woodburyfarmstead'. A series of animated maps and captions provided moremovement, as did demonstrations of techniques such as flint-knapping,hoeing and the making of Bronze tools. The film took ten-and-a-half months to make, from first talks topreview. Grahame Wallace, the director of the film, toured a number ofBritish monuments from Wessex to the Orkneys, reporting back to Hawkesthat archaeologists were `a delightful breed'. Preliminarydiscussion and research took three months; scripting one month,preparations for production one month; shooting four months, and editingand completing six weeks. The script, somewhat predictably, is heavy with references to`invasion'. The war made it difficult to gain access to museumartefacts and such national treasures as the Witham Shield had to befilmed as photographs. For other objects, a display table was designedwith backgrounds of different tone and colour values, and the cameramoved around the artefacts, sequences which, although strikingly lit,Hawkes considered to be the least successful part of the film. The warconditions did provide some benefits, however. The aerial shots of SkaraBrae in the Orkney Islands were achieved by the intervention of a Navalhelicopter crew who became interested in the project and took acameraman on board. Furthermore, Hawkes suggested that the permission tomake such a ground-breaking film was only obtained because thegovernment was concerned with altogether weightier matters elsewhere. Hawkes agonized ag��o��nize?v. ag��o��nized, ag��o��niz��ing, ag��o��niz��esv.intr.1. To suffer extreme pain or great anguish.2. To make a great effort; struggle.v.tr. over the sequence of archaeological reconstruction.After the audience is shown the varying stages of prehistoric Britain,the door is opened, quite literally, on the interior of an Iron Agedwelling in Southern Britain. A full-size set was constructed atPinewood pine��wood?n.1. The wood of the pine tree.2. A forest of pines. Often used in the plural. Studios, based on the findings of Dr Gerhard Bersu'sarchaeological excavation at Little Woodbury. During the Second WorldWar, Bersu and his wife were interned on the Isle of Man Noun 1. Isle of Man - one of the British Isles in the Irish SeaManBritish Isles - Great Britain and Ireland and adjacent islands in the north Atlantic as `enemyaliens'. Graham Wallace visited Bersu on the island, where theunusual conditions imposed on the archaeologist had enabled him to carryout Iron Age excavations, aided by volunteers from internment camps. Hisresulting revised opinion on the roofing of an Iron Age round house --turfed rather than thatched -- was a detail passed on to the film'sArt Director. Hawkes deliberated over the degree of authenticity to be allowed inthe building of the Iron Age set -- primitiveness or sophistication so��phis��ti��cate?v. so��phis��ti��cat��ed, so��phis��ti��cat��ing, so��phis��ti��catesv.tr.1. To cause to become less natural, especially to make less naive and more worldly.2. ?Simplicity was the astute term used, and so, as Hawkes explained, `Thelarge farmstead that went up in a meadow in the grounds of PinewoodStudios at Iver was, therefore, of rude appearance, with a framework ofunshaped logs and no architectural pretentions whatever'. Thereconstruction was more than facade, however, and the ArtDirector's set-dressing invoked a charm more usually seen inwar-time romances. Of the round house itself, Hawkes commented: `Itappeared to be worn smooth, endlessly smoked, crowded with a longaccumulation of possessions, thick with the breath of the cooking pot.There was nothing of the hygienic unreality of the usual museummodel.' Such attention was not without its problems; the fakecauldron which bubbled over the fire fell to pieces during shooting. Although there was some human intervention in the earlier sequencesof the film -- the Hawkes' son Nicolas can be seen whittling Whittling is the art of carving shapes out of raw wood with a knife.Whittling is typically performed with a light, small-bladed knife, usually a pocket knife. Specialised whittling knives are available as well. awayat a wooden stick at London Zoo and the hands of craftsmen are seenmaking tools or chopping trees -- the Iron Age house is shown empty,apart from artefacts such as `toys'. This was a cautious move, asHawkes noted: `What pre-historian would care to advise an Art Directorhow to dress the shepherds of Windmill Hill ...?' There wereanimals, providing a new challenge for the film-hands; a couple of sheepapparently escaped into neighbouring cornfields and were never seenagain. Hawkes wondered later if the film was too ambitious and overcrowdedwith information, a comment again raised in her somewhat self-conscious1946 ANTIQUITY article, and one which may have been made with thehindsight of criticism from her peers. By today's standards itappears overlong o��ver��long?adj.Excessively long: an overlong play.adv.For too long: talked overlong., at 45 minutes, with particularly slow pauses betweenthe sequences which may have been deliberate to enable screening inchunks for single lessons. Allowance should be given for the stylisticconventions of 1940s schools programming for which the film wasdesigned. It came complete with poster-board displays of informationabout pre-history, together with models and film-strips. Thesereinforced the film's content while providing an insight into thenarrative process. Hawkes' article for ANTIQUITY is, after all,illuminating for the technical and practical information contained init, as much as for being a document of public archaeology in progress.It helps us to understand the constraints and issues involved in thetransformation of complex archaeological concepts and evidence into thetangible format of film, and further, reveals the constraints and issuesinvolved in the use of film as the medium, rather than text. The Beginning of History, made under wartime conditions, wasreleased post-war. This critical timing in British cultural historylends it a weight which makes it interesting beyond the traditionalcritical range of early representations of archaeology. It is more thantext, but less than what is available today, some 50 years later. Itsvalue is as material which marked a new development in the presentationof the past. The film, with Hawkes' article, opens up a discussionof ways in which archaeology is `marketed'. In The Beginning ofHistory, the audience is shown a progression of archaeological artefactsand likely techniques, and this is put together with a reconstruction ofIron Age life which draws on a range of considerations. These includeattention to accuracy as far as archaeology could provide at the time; anarrative -- the audience is told the round house occupants are`out'; and a consideration of aesthetic sensibilities; after all,images in The Beginning of History are pleasing. The round house, thescript suggests by implication, is a `nice' home with a comfortingsight -- the bubbling pot over the fire. The artefacts described aschildren's toys are tidily placed. For all Hawkes' concernsabout sophistication versus primitiveness, this is not a hovel HOVEL. A place used by husbandmen to set their ploughs, carts, and other farming utensils, out of the rain and sun. Law Latin Dict. A shed; a cottage; a mean house. . Overall,in fact, this is a `nice' film. Hawkes' consideration that the film includes too muchinformation in too short a time, is of course, difficult to appreciatetoday, given modern attention-spans as perceived by programme-makers. Ifviewed now simply as a piece of educational footage, the innovations ofThe Beginning of History, such as the use of aerial shots if not theoverall idea behind the film, are in danger of being lost in the clumpygraphic sequences and the quaint, if not patronizing, script, whichsometimes works at odds with the visuals. It is perhaps more helpful to regard the film, and Hawkes'commentary on it, as an artefact See artifact. in its own right. Most recently, thefootage itself did not exist as an entity. When traced in the archive ofthe Central Office of Information and called up from the vault, it wasfound to be in separate pieces, one of them missing. The final one wasonly tracked down clays before its first contemporary screening,transferred to video, at the World Archaeology Congress, Cape Town, inJanuary 1999. The aim of this article is not to put the film in competition withmodern television and multi-media presentations of the past, nor topoint out its failings with the hindsight of the many advances inarchaeology, such as radiocarbon dating, or changes in theory andinterpretation since its release in 1946. The intention is simply toflag up the film as a part of the history of archaeology The history of archaeology has been one of increasing professionalisation, and the use of an increasing range of techniques, to obtain as much data on the site being examined as possible. OriginsThe exact origins of archaeology as a discipline are uncertain. and education.The premise of its making -- to present archaeology tonon-archaeologists in an easily-understandable format -- is crucial tocontemporary archaeology. Perhaps at the heart of this discussion is howmuch of the film, with judicious editing and re-scripting, could stillbe shown today. Note. The Beginning of History. Ministry of Information Film forthe Ministry of Education, produced by the Crown Film Unit with theco-operation of the British Museum, The National Museum of Wales, TheNational Museum of Antiquities, Edinburgh, The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford,The Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology ethnology(ĕthnŏl`əjē), scientific study of the origin and functioning of human cultures. It is usually considered one of the major branches of cultural anthropology, the other two being anthropological archaeology and , Cambridge, The Morven Instituteof Archaeology The Institute of Archaeology is an academic department of University College London (UCL), in the United Kingdom. The Institute is located in a separate building at the north end of Gordon Square, Bloomsbury. , Avebury, the Wellcome Research Foundation, TheZoological Society and HM Inspectorate of Ancient Monuments. Commentaryspoken by Neal Arden. Includes: Windmill Hill Neolithic causewayedenclosure, Belas Knap long barrow, Avebury, West Kennet Avenue,Stonehenge, Lambourn Seven Barrows, Overton Hill barrows, Skara BraeNeolithic village, The Ring of Brodgar, The Stones of Stenness, Midhowechambered stall cairn cairn,pile of stones, usually conical in shape, raised as a landmark or a memorial. In prehistoric times it was usually erected over a burial. A barrow is sometimes called a cairn. , Midhowe broch For other types of towers see round tower The Broch is an Iron Age dry stone hollow-walled structure of a type which is only found in Scotland. The brochs of Scotland include some of the most sophisticated examples of dry stone architecture ever created. , Chun Castle, Stanton Drew,Uffington Castle, Uffington White Horse, Hambledon Hill, Hod Hill,Maiden Castle, Tre'r Ceiri hill-fort, reconstruction of LittleWoodbury Iron Age village farmstead. References HAWKES, J. 1939. The archaeology of the Channel Islands 2: TheBailiwick of Jersey. London: Methuen. 1945. Early Britain. London: W.Collins. Britain in Pictures series. 1946a. The Beginning of'History. Ministry of Information Film for the Ministry of Education.1946b. The Beginning of History: a film, Antiquity 20: 78-82.http://intarch.ac.uk/antiquity/hp/hawkes2.html HAWKES, J. & C. 1943. Prehistoric Britain. Harmondsworth:Penguin. KENDRICK, T.D. 1928. The archaeology of the Channel Islands 1: TheBailiwick of Guernsey. London: Methuen. CHRISTINE FINN, Institute of Archaeology, 36 Beaumont Street,Oxford OX1 2PG England. christinefinn@hotmail.com