Naturally, the first question that springs to mind is, "What does an exhibit on the archaeological findings of a Bulgarian seaside town have to do with Montreal?"

Pointe-à-Callière is the Montreal Museum of Archaeology and History, housing a variety of artefacts discovered in and around Montreal's environs. Like any city that re-invents itself regularly, Montreal is a rich archaeological location, drawing on over four hundred years of European-connected history and thousands of years of Native history.

The latest temporary installation at Pointe-à-Callière, however, features over 300 artefacts from the other side of the world. Varna: World's First Gold, Ancient Secrets is a co-operative exhibition developed in tandem with the Varna Museum in Bulgaria. Like Montreal, Varna is a port town, situated on the western shore of the Black Sea. Once known as Odessos, the area has been occupied by mankind since the Paleolithic era. This exhibit focuses on the evolution of European civilization, beginning with those lost Paleolithic settlements, touching on the Thracians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Byzantine Empire, and finally arriving in modern Bulgaria. Today, Bulgaria is a country of nine million people, occupying approximately 111,000 square kilometers, bordered by Romania, Yugoslavia, Macedonia, Turkey, and Greece, with the Black Sea lying to the east. Over the past century, the Varna Museum has collected thousands of local artefacts dating from the Paleolothic period through the eighteenth century.

In an interesting twist, the Pointe-à-Callière exhibit is organised by reverse timeline, beginning in the Middle Ages with the establishment of Bulgaria and travelling back through the different peoples who have settled in the Varna area, contributing to its multi-dimensional history. A quick overview of the area through the last half-century prepares visitors to travel backward in time, beginning with a focus on the Roman people. Examples of marble funerary art, goldwork, tools and lamps illustrate examples of an artistic style which most of us find very familiar. The exhibit then proceeds to the Greeks, who occupied Varna before the Romans, displaying various examples of finery and ceramic work found in archaeological digs.

Less familiar to the average visitor than the marble busts of the Romans and the black and red vases of the Greeks, the subsequent Thracian artefacts from Varna revolve around artisan talent utilised in the service of trade, horsemanship and the art of war: glass beadwork, bronze weapons, and gold work featuring horse motifs. The Thracian artefacts contrast sharply with the Greco-Roman examples of fine art and jewellery. "Varna" is, in fact, a word of Thracian origin, meaning "site near water".

The shimmering blue curtain that subtly dominates the exhibit room serves as an initiatory passage of sorts as visitors step from one world into another. Past the fabric lies the last part of the exhibit, subtitled "Sunken Europe: Memories Beneath the Waves". The Copper Age is this final step of the exhibition, showing visitors the world's oldest example of gold, found in a Varna necropolis. This was the dawn of goldsmithing, an art developed by the Varna people and subsequently lost for three thousand years, when global warming accelerated the rate of glacier melt, leading to the premature rise of sea levels that claimed the thriving, complex settlements along the shores of Varna not once, but twice. The exhibit offers visitors a glimpse of the tools used by Copper Age craftsmen to create bowls, jugs and weapons; raises questions regarding spiritual beliefs with speculation about goddess figures; and talks about funerary customs reconstructed thanks to the rich discovery of two necropoli in Varna.

The design of the exhibition leads to quick connections between the different time periods, and artfully evokes the unity of life displayed by every civilisation. Common themes such as love, beauty, worship, and war emerge; the awkward, yet strangely beautiful, practice of inferring a way of life from how a society buries its dead is used responsibly. With no written records from the societies lost beneath the rising waters swelled by glacier runoff, the only basis that the archaeologists on the 1970s could use in their efforts to piece together daily life in those lost societies were the graves found in the extensive Varna I and II necropoli.

The documentation is user-friendly; both English and French information is presented clearly and in accessible terms. The overall design of the exhibit is pleasing as well as mysterious, with the constant sound of waves, the faintly flowing blue-tinged lighting designed by Axel Morgenthaler, the evocative original soundtrack by Karen Young, and well-organised artefact displays. The ingenious reverse timeline takes a visitor's understanding of the word "civilised" and turns it inside-out, providing examples of what we have been socialised to accept as advanced cultures, before sweeping aside the blue curtain and revealing art and craftsmanship beyond what the average visitor believes possible from Copper Age man.

The exhibit ends with a single arrowhead, one of Pointe-à-Callière's many Native artefacts. The statement is eloquent: although separated by oceans and continents, Montreal, like Varna, rests on a gold-mine of history and culture.

www.pacmusee.qc.ca/indexan.html

(c) A. Murphy-Hiscock. Originally published in Montreal Entertainment, January 2003.