Output details
34 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
University of Dundee
The Lewis Chessmen. (Portfolio of outcomes: Journal Article, “The Lewis Hoard of Gaming Pieces: A Re-examination of their Context, Meanings, Discovery and Manufacture”, in Medieval Archeology, [2009]; Conference proceedings: Journal of Forensic Science, Medicine and Pathology [2009]; Book, “The Lewis Chessmen Unmasked”, National Museums of Scotland Publishers, [2010]; Symposium, National Museums of Scotland, [2010].)
The original research project examined the hoard of gaming pieces from Uig, Isle of Lewis, commonly known as the Lewis chessmen and probably the most well-known archaeological find from Scotland. There are 93 pieces, and with the exception of 11 chessmen in the National Museums Scotland (NMS), all the pieces are in the British Museum (BM).
The overall research project included work from the coauthors on context, history and meaning, with Wilkinson’s novel analysis. She utilised forensic techniques in order to analyse the figurative chess pieces in relation to facial morphology and proportions. This was an unique approach treating the chessmen as if they were living people and produced viable results for 50 of the 59 faces in the hoard, identifying five groups with similar facial morphology. This was the first time that the chessmen were studied in this way with significant results that enabled the co-authors to conclude that at least five craftsmen were responsible for the hoard. This led to further discussion on the origin of the hoard and was featured in national news articles, radio interviews and academic meetings.
This research led to a journal article (Caldwell, Hall & Wilkinson, 2009), conference proceedings from the International Association of Craniofacial Identification (Wilkinson, Hall & Caldwell, 2009), an additional book publication (Caldwell, Hall & Wilkinson, 2010) to accompany the National Museums Touring Exhibition of the Chess pieces, a public symposium (Caldwell, Hall & Wilkinson, 2010) hosted at the National Museum of Scotland and a joint international conference presentation (Caldwell, Hall & Wilkinson, 2012 - Lewis Chessmen Conference at Poznan Archaeological Museum (Poland); May 2012).
