The Virtual Museum of European Roots

1
The Virtual Museum of European Roots

• MU.S.EU.M.
• Kick-off meeting
• Rome, Pigorini Museum, 29-30 January 2004
• Pigorini First Report, point B1
• (a brief introduction to the exhibition)

2
Pigorini an Introduction

• The National Prehistoric-Ethnographic Museum was
  established on 1875 in Rome by the great
  archaeologist Luigi Pigorini, one of the founders
  of Prehistory in Italy. The principle of this
  first collecting phase was inspired by the
  neo-positive approach to the interaction between
  studies on modern and ancient Ethnology and
  Anthropology, recently renewed by the so called
  Etnoarchaeology. Quoting Pigorini in a few
  words to know the life of the modern savages to
  understand that of prehistoric ones.

3
The Origins

• The actual Museum was developed around the
  original core placed in the Roman Collegium and
  collected during the XVII-XIX century by the
  Jesuit father Athanasius Kircher and his epigones
  of the Christs Company.
• Other important acquisitions were granted to
  Luigi Pigorini from new discoveries carried out
  by some large digging Italian campaigns, devoted
  - towards the end of the XIX century - to the
  exploration of the lake-side dwellings in
  Northern Italy or other rich contexts, from Iron
  Age Latium to Neolithic Southern Italy and Minoan
  palaces in Crete.

4
The EUR Location

• In the early 70 the Pigorini Museum was
  transferred to the new location in the Sciences
  Palace in the rationalist quarter of the EUR.
  Here the Museum is grown until the actual sizes
  during the last decades with new important items
  from recent research in Italian prehistory.

5
The Museum Today

• The Pigorini Museum is now organized in two
  branches Ethnography and Prehistory. The first
  one, at the first floor, devoted to the important
  ethnological collection from Africa, Oceania and
  recently too America (partly again in progress)
  meanwhile the last section Asia - is planned
  for 2006.

6
The Prehistory

• The prehistoric exhibition, at the second floor,
  starts with an introductory section conceived as
  an explanation of the stratigraphic approach in
  modern archaeological research, realized throw
  suggestive reconstructions of true archeosurfaces
  and goes on with the so called Evolution Box,
  an innovative tool of communication that is
  actually the blockbuster of our young visitors.
  A more classic exposition of the prehistoric
  collections is presented in the following parts
  of the Museum, with several thousand of objects
  and contexts from the major Italian and European
  sites.

7
The Public

• The public of the Pigorini Museum - around 40.000
  visitors each year - comprises mainly scholars
  and prehistory-fans, with well oriented interests
  on certain items in the exhibited collections or
  in the deposits, and alumni of the low and high
  schools, as shows the monitoring of the visiting
  flows during the year with clear peaks in the
  winter and autumn months.