Objects

I got a mail from a friend about a new podcast - 'A History of the World in 100 Objects', and about a week later, I was sitting in a car waiting when I heard it live on BBC Radio 4. The next day I was talking to my colleague about the TV tie-in episodes and today I visited the British Museum to see the first few objects of the 100. I've fallen in love in a really geeky way with stuff, hundreds and thousands and millions of years-old stuff.

Part of the romance is this way the BBC and the British Museum have approached the project, through every available modern media. If you missed the radio broadcast, you can download the podcast. If you can't go to the museum, you can see the objects online. Or if you can't be bothered to listen and visit and click, you can just push one button and watch it all on the box.

Britain was once a colonial power and stole a lot of swag from a lot of different places. I believe the correct word is 'plunder'. There's a big moral ? hovering over a lot of the stuff in the museum: should we really house Egyptian mummies and a statue from Easter Island in London?

I suppose it's a perennial question for British Museum Director and big brain behind the 100 project, Neil MacGregor, but he seems to have squared it off with his conscience. 'Let's face it', he quips, 'Bloomsbury might have been a bit of a disappointment to him', speaking of Mummy Hornedjitef's final internment in a glass cabinet in room 62, 3F (British) of the museum. 'Where do things from the past belong now?' he continues. He speaks of a 'common heritage' and says that he has increasingly come to think of the history of the world as one, shared story. I like that idea, but I'm not sure I buy it yet. He promised to come back to these questions and I look forward to hearing more.

So after Object [1] in room 62 it was back down to room 2 for Objects [2] and [3]. It was fun, a big kid treasure hunt around a museum I can't remember visiting before, but that I'd already started making plans to come back to for objects [4] - [100].

Done with hand axes, I wandered into the Paul Hamlyn library, just next to room 2. Right there on display were a half dozen or so books on Native Americans. I've been thinking about writing something about the Yurok (a Californian tribe of Native Americans) and a fellow called Demartin for a short story class I'm taking, so I was interested to see the books. I sat down with my bag still slung over my shoulder and read about basketry. But then suddenly it was closing time at the museum and I had to leave the library. I asked if the books would be in the same place for a while - I was feeling lazy and didn't really want to hunt to find them again next time. It's a tie-in with the Native American display upstairs the librarian said and of course it is, I thought, and why wouldn't the British Museum have a cache of Native American art and objects too?