Objects that tell us about the history of the world

(PhysOrg.com) -- Five out of the ten objects chosen to tell a history of Oxfordshire are from Oxford University museums. In the project led by the BBC, the county’s curators selected objects which ‘tell us about Oxfordshire history and its place in the world’.

The Ashmolean Museum has two objects, firstly with the oldest piece in Oxfordshire’s list, a Roman coin showing the short-lived emperor Domitianus II. This coin is the only material evidence anywhere in the world that he did actually exist and when, and was found in the Oxfordshire village of Chalgrove by someone with a metal detector. Also included is the Museum’s painting ‘The Return of the Dove to the Ark’ by Sir John Everett Millais. It was chosen because the Pre-Raphaelite art movement influenced not only painters, but also architects, poets and writers. This was the first Pre-Raphaelite painting seen by William Morris and influenced his thinking about art and decoration before he went on to inspire and lead the Arts and Craft movement.

A ‘Whit-Horn’ from the Pitt Rivers Museum was also selected for the list. In accordance with an old charter, certain villages in Oxfordshire were allowed on Whit-Monday to kill a stag in the forest preserves. These instruments, made from a strip of willow bark, were used to ‘call’ the villagers to the hunt. The Whit-horns, along with Morris Dancing, are emblematic of the traditional Oxfordshire way of life and community that are now seldom seen in a faster moving modern age.

Not forgotten is the finishing post and bell from Roger Bannister’s sub four minute mile, which is on public display at Iffley Road Sports Centre, Oxford. The former medical student at Oxford University was the first man to run a mile in under four minutes, a time long thought to be impossible to beat.

Also chosen for the list is a model of the structure of penicillin in the Museum of the History of Science. The structure of Penicillin was worked out using X-ray crystallography. The leading contributor in this research was the Oxford scientist Dorothy Hodgkin who took up the problem in 1942. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1964.

The list of ten objects for Oxfordshire is part of the wider A History of the World project formed out of a unique partnership between the BBC, the British Museum and 350 museums and institutions across the country.

Also as part of A History of the World, tonight’s BBC Inside Out South (BBC One 7.30pm) will visit two of Oxford’s museums as guest presenter Dr Tom Higham of the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit and Inside Out’s Joe Crowley go on the hunt for the best object from six museums across the South. Dr Higham visits the Pitt Rivers Museum and the Ashmolean in Oxford, on a 1910 bicycle made by William Morris who mended cycles before building cars.

Dr John Hobart of Oxford University Museums said: ‘This is a fantastic opportunity for the museums and the people of Oxfordshire to focus on local objects and show how our county has contributed in many and diverse ways to the wider world. These ten objects are only a starting point for discussion, and we look forward to seeing what else is put forward from private and other collections to add to the story of Oxfordshire and its relationship with the world.’

Provided by University of Oxford