See Bristol's bones at M Shed until 3rd September
Posted on: 22 Aug 2017A bone-rattlingly brilliant collection of skeletons will be on display at M Shed in Bristol as part of its Skeletons: Our Buried Bones exhibition which runs until Sunday 3rd September 2017.
What at first might seem like a grisly amalgam of skinless cadavers propped up for curiously macabre eyes is actually - under the skin - an intriguing historical insight into society's rich and diverse past and how it and its incumbents have evolved into the way we understand it today.
A collaboration between Wellcome Collection and the Museum of London, the exhibition will tour this skeletal spectacular across Glasgow, Bristol and Leeds throughout 2016-2018. As it contains actual human remains it does come complete without its own requisite corpse-styled caveat in that children under 12 must be accompanied by an adult.
That said, once the kids are ensconced in this thrillingly cadaverous cavern of the country's historical yesteryear they'll be able to learn some of the science behind the stories in the Bone Lab, as well as scratching their noggins to plunder their own knowledge of bones and searching for clues to analyse skeletons. There will also be plenty of experts on hand to impart their wisdom on the lab, excavation site and museum.
From the Bristol skeletons - here displayed in cases rather than closets - you'll be able to see a young man found at Tormarton from the Bronze Age whose skeleton shows multiple weapon injuries, a woman from Filton buried between 410-655AD whose major skull injury miraculously didn't kill her, and a Victorian child who died around 8 years old and was discovered at St Catherine's Court and revealed to have undergone a post-mortem craniotomy.
Perhaps one of the more excitingly dark and historically unsettling exhibitions to hit the city for some time, it nevertheless casts a unique, vital story and understanding on the region's people of the past.
Open Tuesday to Sunday from 10am to 5pm there's no admission charge, you just pay what you like. What's pretty certain, however, is that you're bound to find someBODY to go with.
For more information about this marvelously fleshless, historically attuned feast, poke your bony digit here.
M Shed is located at Princes Wharf, Wapping Road, Bristol, BS1 4RN
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Jamie is a writer, blogger, journalist, critic, film fan, soundtrack nerd and all-round Bristolian good egg. He loves the music of Philip Glass, the art of Salvador Dali, the writings of Charles Bukowksi and Hunter S Thompson, the irreverence of Harry Hill, and the timeless, straw-chomping exuberance of The Wurzels. You can sometimes find him railing against a surging tide of passing cyclists, or gorging himself senseless on the Oriental delights of a Cosmos all-you-can-eat buffet.
