Should one of the
greatest of Welsh treasures be returned to the country in which it was found?
David R. Howell investigates.
Welsh
gold: the Mold Cape. British Museum The Mold Cape,
discovered in 1833, is among the most significant Bronze Age archaeological
finds ever to come out of Wales. Created between 1900-1600 BC from a single
piece of gold, the cape is a remarkable survival of ritual activities and
provides a tangible insight into Bronze Age ceremonial practices.
Over the summer of 2013 people in Wales
were briefly able to see the Mold Cape in the country in which it was
discovered. With no national museum established in Wales at the time of the
cape’s discovery, the British Museum in London became its custodian and
continues to conserve and present the object to the highest professional
standards. Since devolution in 1998 and the creation in 2006 of the National
Assembly for Wales in Cardiff, the Mold Cape has returned to Wales twice, once
in 2005 and again this year. When it will next be seen in Wales is open to
question.
What we can be certain of is that there is
clear local enthusiasm for this object. The Wrexham County Borough Museum in
North Wales, which recently displayed the cape for a little over a month,
reported in excess of 10,000 additional visitors, an increase of over 200 per
cent from previous years. The local appetite for this artefact is apparent yet,
based on the frequency of such loans, it is unlikely that this demand will be
satisfied again for another decade. For the North Walian interested in their
‘local’ heritage a trip to London will now be obligatory for the foreseeable future.
The question of repatriation is one with
which the museum community in Britain has become increasingly well versed.
Human remains, such as those returned to New Zealand from the National Museum
of Wales in 2009, are frequently repatriated. Meanwhile, ongoing controversies
over the British Museum’s Elgin Marbles or the Parthenon Frieze (depending on
which side of the debate you fall) ensure that the subject of repatriation is
rarely far from the headlines. Nevertheless, no significant claim for the Mold
Cape has been made for over a decade, or for any other artifacts found in Wales
but not on display there.
This may change in the wake of the 2014
referendum on Scottish independence, when a ‘Yes’ vote would have potentially
significant implications for many other parts of the UK. A greater emphasis
placed on the return of cultural property frequently follows from the
establishment of political independence. This was perhaps best illustrated in
Iceland, where in 1971 a package of medieval manuscript materials was returned
from Denmark, the former colonial power. While discussions over ownership of
the materials had been ongoing since the 1920s, it was the establishment of
Iceland as a republic in 1944 that stimulated discussion which resulted in an
active campaign for the repatriation of Iceland’s cultural heritage.
Repatriation of manuscript material to
Iceland continued over three decades, the process coming to a formal end in
1997. Significant from a Welsh perspective was the way in which the initial return
of the manuscripts was received in Iceland. Escorted by Danish naval officers,
the first manuscripts to come back to Iceland were greeted by thousands in the harbor
of Reykjavík. A national holiday was announced and schools closed. The first
open-air live television broadcast in Iceland ensured that all who might be
interested had the opportunity to participate in the return. The return of the
manuscripts was regarded as the symbolic rebirth of the nation, with many
regarding the arrival of the first manuscripts as the day on which Icelandic
independence was truly achieved. The practical implication of the return was
manifest in people having access to their cultural heritage. Museum displays,
as well as a wider body of archive material for research, were now accessible
in Iceland to Icelanders, who no longer had to travel to Denmark to engage with
their cultural treasures.
The visitor numbers logged during the
summer of 2013 indicate similar levels of interest in Wales for the Mold Cape,
yet it may be that an entire generation will be unable to benefit from such
access. Iceland has certainly seen the benefits, with national research
stimulated through access to source material, the establishment of
international attractions in its capital city and an associated string of
commercial tourism-driven enterprises linked to the Icelandic Sagas. These are
the areas which Wales currently cannot develop, especially in regard to its
Bronze Age heritage.
Politicians in post-devolution Wales have
not appeared overly preoccupied with the theme of repatriation so far. Yet,
should the political landscape radically change next year, it might be expected
that objects such as the Mold Cape, alongside many other collections, will
become the focus of a new raft of repatriation claims being submitted to what
remains of the ‘British’ museum collections.
- See more at:
http://www.historytoday.com/david-r-howell/cape-nations-hopes#sthash.16Ke7uZ1.dpuf
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