Museum Demonstrations

We offer a variety of museum demonstrations, generally themed around Music, Stone Age Lifestyles or The History of Textiles.

Please also see our Access to Experts workshops if you have volunteers or staff who wish to pursue historical skills as part of personal career development,

Music Demonstrations

As specialist makers of ancient musical instruments Ancient Music have a large collection of reproduction musical instruments and actual historical instruments spanning 40,000 years of history!

We have provided demonstrations and workshops at Stonehenge, The Ancient Technology Centre, Butser Ancient Village, Salisbury Museum, The Weald and Downland Museum, Chiltern Open Air Museum and many more.

We can offer hands on 'have a go' demonstration tables as well as talks, walkabout displays, static displays (with appropriate tentage) and instrument making workshops or demonstrations for the following periods:

Paleolithic - featuring bone flutes, phalangeal whistles, bullroarers, shell and bark trumpets and animal horns, nature instruments (including nut whistles, plant stem flutes, leaf mirlitons and reedpipes) and stone and bone percussion.

Neolithic - featuring the above but in addition pottery drums and horns, frame drums, pottery whistles and vessel flutes.

European Bronze Age, as above but including the Bronze Age horn.

British Iron Age, bone flutes, lyre, carnyx and many of the instruments from earlier periods plus approrpiate song and storytelling if required.

Viking and Saxon, including many of the instruments above, plus lyres, Germanic Syrinx (wood block panpipes), harps, gusli and kantele, prillar horn and bukkehorn, lur, early bowed instruments (if appropriate), later styles of bone flute, song and storytelling.

Early Medieval (only available for walkabout music as we are still building this collection and it is not yet complete enough for a static display or talk) including early bowed insruments (rebec, fidel, bowed lyre) plus harp, early hurdy gurdy, wind instruments such as pibgorn, bagpipes and bagged hornpipe, recorders

Georgian/Victorian with flutina, harmonium, harmoniflute, pipe and tabor, flute, parlour guitar, fiddle and song.

Please see our YOUTUBE Channel for various instrument demonstration videos.

Stone Age Lifestyles

We can bring a variety of animal skin tents and our hide coracle for an outdoor display or demonstrate indoors. Either way our display of Stone age life including foods, weapons (archery, spear throwers, antler maces, slingshot), clothing, tools, fibre-craft, textile and cordage, firelighting, shelter and religion/art is sure to fascinate and educate the public. Can be tailored to a particular persiod or be generic Paleolithic to Neolithic.

History of Textiles