The effects of time
For all the ways societies have managed, organised, manipulated
and structured time, the passing of time is inescapable.
European societies have often depicted these changes in a series of
images known as the ‘Ages of Man’.
Stopping the effects of time
We can see this ageing process in coins. Through trade and
commerce, coins travel far and wide and in the past they were often
the on
ly images people saw of their rulers.
As rulers grew old, they sometimes minted new coins with new
portraits that showed how age was changing their appearance.
However, it is unusual for coins to show this ageing, as many
rulers preferred to maintain a youthful public image by continuing
to mint an unaltered portrait.
Conserving and preserving objects
Modern cosmetic surgery is perhaps the ultimate response to
personal ageing. Many of the objects in the British Museum
have been through a process of a kind of ‘cosmetic surgery’.
Conservation enables us to remove, or help prevent, the
effects of time.
By using a range of techniques, (a combination of traditional
and modern methods and machinery) we can preserve objects in their
current state.
We can also use modern technology to turn back time and see what
objects might have looked like when they were m
ade, perhaps thousands
of years ago.
Yet, however hard we try to restore and preserve, we cannot
halt time. In this print, we can see Father Time relentlessly
gnawing at objects.
Dating objects
Dating is another of the great questions that we struggle with
in the Museum – how old is the object? Even the date given on an
object can be misleading and the most sophisticated scientific
techniques do not always reveal the true age of an object.
However, the three main techniques used by Museum
scientists are radiocarbon dating, which enables us to work out how
long ago a plant or animal died; thermoluminescence, which enables
us to work out how long ago a piece of pottery was fired; and
dendrochronology, which can help date objects containing wood.
Dendochronology is also known as tree-ring dating. It was used
to work out that a section of an ancient trackway from Somerset in
England, known as the Sweet Track, is made out of wood from trees
cut down between 3807 and 3806 BC.
More information about objects featured here (from
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