Curators at The McManus: Dundee’s Art Gallery & Museum have launched an appeal to find members of the Dundee Museum Club from the 1960s and 70s. The club worked on a model of Finavon hillfort in 1970 that is now featuring in the current ‘Reflections on Celts’ exhibition and staff are keen to get in touch with former members.
The scaled down model followed a 1930s excavation report that showed the original Finavon hillfort in Angus had walls over six metres thick and between three and five metres high. The fort has been dated to the 7th century BC. It was excavated by Professor V. Gordon Childe in the 1930s. In the interior of the fort he discovered a well, a row of dwellings with hearths and evidence of spinning, pottery making and metal working. At the end of its life the fort was engulfed by a fire hot enough to fuse together the stones in the top section of the walls.
Christina Donald, Curator in Early History said
“We would love to hear from anyone who remembers working on the model. It is clear the Museum Club paid close attention to Professor Childe’s excavation report published in 1935 when they constructed this scale model of the fort. They locate the buildings and well that he wrote about and include the animal species he found evidence for inside the fort.”
The model fort is on show as part of the ‘Reflections on Celts’ exhibition at The McManus which is running in partnership with National Museums Scotland and the British Museum. The tour is generously supported by the Dorset Foundation.
Anyone who has information about the museum club can get in touch by emailing christina.donald@leisureandculturedundee.com.
