 I'm going to begin by presenting my PhD methodology for evaluating visitor perceptions and engagements with British prehistory sites and I'll be presenting this through free case studies. So part of my PhD research involves a large-scale analysis of how prehistory is presented in British museums. To date I visited 75 museums, predominantly in the British Isles, but also further afield in Europe. And when I go and visit these museums I'm taking a note of these display variables you can see listed down the side here. Because it's these variables that affect how visitors engage and relate to the place. For example, the term to describe proof history can affect whether it's seen as something familiar or relatable or if it's seen as something disinteresting and irrelevant. But also looking at the colour scheme that's used, the architecture of the space, the amount of material on display as well as a host of other variables. And it's by recording these display variables at the different museums like this that I can start to see what trends and patterns there are in how prehistory is presented in British museums. So far I've noted some very general trends which I'm going to go over briefly. Firstly, is that the narrative remains very consistent. It's consistent across different types of museums and it's consistent across time. It doesn't matter when the displays are last updated, the narrative stays the same. It's one I'm sure we're all very familiar with in which the paleolithic is represented in terms of first people, the mesolithic under-gatherers, the neolithic first farmers and the Bronze Age, the first use of metals. And it's only really with the INAs that we see more of a general focus on daily life. But how is this prehistory displayed? There seems to be three main focuses for how it's displayed and sometimes a combination of these. Sometimes it's through a focus on landscape, trying to invoke a sense of the prehistoric landscape in the museum space through audio-visual elements and interactives. Or sometimes it's through a focus on people and identity, trying to connect the visitor to the people of the past through the use of illustrations, dioramas and reconstructions. Also, there tends to be, as has been noted for many years, a general misrepresentation of women and we'll be hearing a bit more about that in one of my papers later. There's also a tendency to exoticise the period, to present prehistory as many early ethnographic museums presented non-Western cultures. And there's also a tendency to present prehistory in almost exclusive association with archaeology to always be focusing on the archaeological process. And support my wide-scale analysis, I'm also undertaking in-depth visitor data collection to find out what visitors themselves actually think of prehistory and prehistory of slaves. So part of that methodology is using tracking surveys. This is an example of one that I completed at the British Museum. And these tracking surveys produce a wealth of quantitative data to show you exactly how people are interacting with the space. On the tracking map, I can record the route of the visitor. I can record where they're stopping, what they're looking at and how long they stop for. But I can also record how they're engaging with the displays. If they're taking pictures of certain objects, if they're calling someone over to look at something or if they are perhaps just not actively engaging and just looking at their mobile phone. Which is sometimes the case. Although quite positively, not that often. And so far I've completed 402 of these tracking surveys across six locations. And after I've completed several tracking surveys in the same location I can work out the average length of visit in that particular space. I can work out the average length of time that's spent at each case, at each text panel and the frequency with which they're visited. And to support my tracking data, I'm also undertaking in-depth visitor data collection through questionnaire data collection. And as you can see from my questionnaires, I've got quite open-ended questions so as not to restrict the response of the visitor. This gives me quite a lot of qualitative data that I can then start to pick up on key themes that are coming across. And here I get an opportunity to explicitly ask the visitor what they think of prehistory, what they think of the displays and whether the displays are reinforcing or challenging their preconceptions. So far I've collected 480 of these questionnaires across six locations. And today I'll be presenting on three of these locations very briefly. I'll be showing you some of my visitor data from the British Museum Stonehenge Visitor Centre and North Leithshire Museum. And these all represent a very different type of museum. We have here a national museum, a site-based museum and a regional museum. And from all three of these I've collected data from 364 visitors. So for those of you who are unfamiliar with the displays in these museums these are some images of the prehistory displays in the British Museum and a bit of a description based upon those display variables I introduced at the beginning. So the British Museum presents prehistory from the Paleolithic through to the Iron Age. There's a preference for later prehistory with early prehistory, the Paleolithic, the Mesolific, and the Melchocase. It's predominantly displayed within two adjoining plumb rooms set out almost like a corridor. And it's set in a chronological framework with a focus on certain national sites on European trends. In general quite a neutral colour scheme and a lot of green in association with the Iron Age. In general there's a focus more on singular artefacts quite spaced apart and in terms of extra interpretation the visitor can purchase an audio guide or sometimes there is a handling desk available just outside. At Stonehenge Visitor Centre the time period focused on is predominantly the Neolithic and the Bronze Age because the visitor centre focuses on the site of Stonehenge. So the entire visitor centre is dedicated to prehistory but it's not presented in a chronological or a thematic framework but through a focus on questions about the site. Likes the British Museum we also have quite a neutral colour scheme quite a predominance of grey and there's a tendency to focus more on single artefacts and single groups of artefacts quite widely spaced apart. In terms of extra interpretation there is a lot of it. Lots of interactives, lots of audio visual elements there's also an audio guide to be purchased and there are staff members walking around to give people further information. At North Lincolnshire Museum the Paleolithic Free to the Iron Age is covered an almost equal covering of each time period and it's presented in a room split into two segments. As you can see from the images it's quite a vibrant display and that each colour is associated with a different time period the Stone Age is blue, the Bronze Age is yellow and the Iron Age is red. It's presented in a chronological framework with a very local focus and in terms of extra interpretation there's a children's activity table and a few tactile elements. And in comparison to the previous two museums there's a lot more material on display a lot closer together. So this is the demographic profile of the questionnaire respondents from the free museums. I managed to get a roughly 50-50 split of men and women that completed my questionnaires and you'll notice that at North Lincolnshire Museum predominantly the respondents were in the over 60 age category mostly British residents mostly local as well. And this demographic profile reflects the general visitor profile for the museum. In contrast to the British Museum at Stonehenge Visitor Centre most of my questionnaire respondents were in the younger age category predominantly 21-30 year olds mostly overseas residents and a mix of British and other European nationalities as well as quite a lot of North Americans and Australians. And this more overseas demographic at the British Museum and Stonehenge Visitor Centre reflects their status as tourist attractions. So what exactly do visitors think of prehistory? Across the free museums in my questionnaire I explicitly ask visitors what does prehistory mean to you? And from the 175 respondents I was able to put their responses into a word file generator where the words come out most frequently in association with prehistory and here you can see history comes up quite prominently and that's because most people define prehistory in relation to history but there's also quite a lot of confusion about the difference between prehistory and history. A lot of respondents say that prehistory and history are the same and also a lot of respondents that are confused about where prehistory begins and where it ends. Also from these responses these are the most frequently mentioned topics. You'll notice that all free case studies there's a general recognition that prehistory is prewriting. At the British Museum there's a sense that prehistory covers a much deeper timescale a lot of respondents mentioning pre-human history and a lot of them expressing a lack of knowledge and unfamiliarity. Also seen at Stonehenge. At North Lincolnshire Museum at Stonehenge you see the most frequently mentioned time period is the Bronze Age. Second to that at North Lincolnshire Museum is the Iron Age whereas at the Stonehenge Visitor Centre second to that is the Stone Age. Also at North Lincolnshire Museum 80% of respondents mention Stonehenge so this site is clearly of very prominent in local knowledge. Also 60% of respondents mention that prehistory is pre-Roman. So how exactly are visitors then engaging with these prehistory displays? Based upon my tracking surveys I was able to produce these heat maps to show the visitor frequency at the free museums. So this for example is from Stonehenge Visitor Centre where you can see the hotter areas the red areas at the higher visitor frequency and the colder blue areas at the lower visitor frequency. So from this map it's quite a warm map quite high on average visitor frequency most of the cold areas are text panels and also the hottest areas you can see are these audio-visual interactive elements as well as human remains. There's panoramic view of Stonehenge through time, a video of the landscape and these reconstructed developmental phases. At the British Museum we see a very different heat map. We see in general it's quite a cold map it's got on average quite a low visitor frequency and that impacts you to its layout like a corridor where visitors have a tendency to walk straight through. There are some cases to try and attract the attention of the visitor which is quite successful in the case of the mould gold cape we see here, this is one of the higher visitor frequencies but what else can we see about the cases that are more frequently visited? They tend to have the more shiny objects in them and human remains. So it seems that visitors have a tendency to walk straight through unless they see these magpie cases of shiny material and human remains. It's also reflected in the average blood time for the gallery which is just four minutes. At the British Museum again like Stonehenge quite a warm map the only cold areas are the text panels and the case on Liffix. The hottest case is arguably the star object which is the Appleby log boat and then second to that are two cases on the Iron Age. Now what's surprising here is that in many of my other case studies it's just from questionnaires that visitors the thing they least like about free history is pottery and then here the second most frequently visited case is full of Iron Age pottery and it's perhaps because this is the focus on the local Iron Age like Dragonby which reflects the interest of the predominantly local demographic and again we also see human remains featuring quite prominently as being frequently visited. So what exactly do the visitors themselves think? When asked what do you like most about the gallery and what's the free museum? These are the responses that come up most frequently and for the most part these answers support tracking data. At Stonehenge a lot of respondents mentioning the interactive audio visual elements at both Stonehenge and North Lincolnshire Museum a lot of respondents say how much they like the displays and the layout which is reflected in the generally warm heat maps at these two museums. At the British Museum visitors saying they really like the jewellery, the tools, the weaponry and the high cases and also at North Lincolnshire Museum lots of respondents say they like the local focus which perhaps explains that high frequency at the Dragonby case. But what do visitors like least about these museums? When asked this question you'll see across all three cases there are issues with display layout and displays themselves and these issues are predominantly visitors wanting to see more space there's a lack of flow lots of displays of similar artefacts and also that displays can sometimes be not very exciting but more positively across all three case studies when asked what do you least like about the displays they said nothing and this is supported by 36% of respondents who chose not to answer the question. So what exactly do visitors engage well with? Unfortunately I've only presented on a very small part of my research today but for my other case studies and research I can say something that comes across quite strongly is visitors love timelines and context they want to be able to situate their knowledge for many prehistories a period that's unfamiliar so to see references to sites and periods they are more familiar with they can become more relatable to them and this was particularly obvious to me at Stokehand Visitors Centre where they have this global timeline putting the site in context and in the questionnaires many respondents explicitly said how much they liked this timeline and also many respondents who said they were surprised to learn that that Stonehenge predated that Pyramid predated the Easter Island heads and upon learning this they became much more interested in the site but also what lots of respondents have said but what they find most interesting about prehistory not just the museums is the mystery of it the sense of unknown and discovery but on the flip side what they least like is the assumptions the theories and the speculation so this ambiguity of evidence and interpretation that characterises prehistory can either be really engaging or disengaging to visitors depending on how it's framed visitors also really like the tactile hands on experience audio visual elements and they like a narrative to follow as we saw in what people least like from the previous free museums a lot of people mentioning issues with a lack of flow and that's because they want to be able to follow something through and finally they like to see what it was like for people like them in the past aspects of daily life and of course shiny things and human remains thank you very much for listening