Meroë: Africa's Forgotten Empire
One of the earliest cities in Africa outside Egypt, Meroë was at the heart of a complex, literate culture. Abandoned in the fourth century, the ruins were re-identified as the ancient city of Meroë in 1772. Between 1909 and 1914, the site was excavated by Liverpool archaeologist John Garstang.
This exhibition, due to launch in February 2025, will provide more information about Garstang's own documentation of his Meroë excavation and highlight some of the material that will be the focus of our AHRC RICHeS-funded project, Reconstructing the ancient past: digital access and visibility of the Garstang collection.
In 1887, the Liverpool Marine Biology Committee established a research station on Puffin Island, off Anglesey, Wales. In 1892 the station moved to Port Erin Bay on the Isle of Man, where the University of Liverpool took over control of it in 1919. An extension in 1980 added a library, teaching laboratory, and diving facility.
The station played a huge role in the lives of both students and locals until its closure in 2006. Most of its records and equipment were transferred to the University, including the Journal of the original station on Puffin Island, placement reports by Marine Biology students and photographs of them at work, and cameras and other instruments used on the station.
Some material from the collections appears in our exhibition, Student Life in the University Archive (items 4-6). We have identified the Port Erin collections as a potential pilot project to reunite paper archives with their companion heritage collections (instruments and other artefacts).