"Office of Emilia Munroe" & "The Padley Graves"
Katie Byrne
Manchester School of Art MMU
'"Office of Emilia Munroe" & "The Padley Graves"' is a two-part installation piece telling the story of archaeologist and conservator Emilia Munroe and her discovery that altered our understanding of history. This archaeological fiction is told through an analysis of the ceramic pieces found within the grave of a young woman; date testing of artefacts, remains and stratigraphic layers approximated the burials as almost 12,000 years old, dated between 9,800-9,600BCE. Faced with the discovery of the most advanced mesolithic artefacts she has ever seen from a period that predates known ceramic use in the UK by several thousand years, this archaeologist must use the fragments to piece together who this group of highly intelligent humans were, if they were human at all.