FIRST SIGHT

This escutcheon (7.5cm high), a copper-alloy hook from a seventh-century AD hanging bowl, was found near Firsdown, Wiltshire in October. The bird's head would have curled over the bowl’s rim to hold a suspension ring, and the forked-tail plate gives the effect of folded wings. The knotwork design is created with champlevé enamelled cells, illustrated at top to suggest original colours. Photography Portable Antiquities Scheme

Fieldwork in distant places, and living with a local community over numerous years, make the dynamics of ancestry and heritage recording, and isolating conservation and preservation priorities, a mixture of diplomacy, empathy and co-production of research to secure the futures of a living past.

Sue Hamilton reflects on Easter Island/Rapa Nui, interviewed by Sian E Gardiner for ucl blog Ask an Academic, May 2019