Dr. Peter Hewitt
Dr Peter Hewitt is founder of the Folklore Museums Network and Museums Officer for Collections across Dumfries & Galloway in south west Scotland. He works with two Nationally Recognised Collections of archaeology and art, spread across five museums: the Stewartry Museum, Kirkcudbright Galleries, Kirkcudbright Tolbooth, Stranraer Museum, and the Whithorn Trust. His Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC) funded PhD with the University of Birmingham and the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust (2010-2015) considered the role of material culture within early modern historical research and the potential of museum collections to enhance knowledge around specific topics, particularly folklore. He was Collections Researcher at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust (2010-2014), the Museum of Witchcraft & Magic (2014-2018), and a Curator at Museums Northumberland (2018-2019) before moving to Dumfries & Galloway. He has worked with leading academics and researchers to collaborate on museum projects including MOOCs, podcasts, '100 objects style' histories, as well as temporary and permanent exhibitions. He has worked with a variety of audience groups from addiction charities to YMCA groups. Recently (2021) he has collaborated with The Galloway Glens Landscape Partnership (NGO) and Rathmell Archaeology to help 'citizen archaeologists' map the 'Lost Wells of Galloway'.
He has contributed papers at conferences on local history, the history of witchcraft, folklore and museology. His research interests include the material culture of folklore, folklore collections in British institutions, folklore and the landscape (especially that of British healing and holy wells and springs), intangible cultural heritage, early modern material culture, the history of collecting and 'homeland' ethnography. He has also contributed to the literature on apotropaic material culture, early modern material culture and museum history, most notably in Billingsley, Harte, Hoggard (eds.), Hidden Charms 2: The Magical Protection of Buildings (2019) and Richardson, Hamling, Gaimster (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Early Modern Material Culture (2016). His work on folklore and material culture has also been published by the Inner Lives: Emotions, Identity and the Supernatural Project (2015-2018). He has contributed to the folk-horror zine Hellebore (May 2021), the travel magazine We LOVE England, and Paranormal Review, published by the Society of Psychical Research. As Folklore Museums Network founder he has collaborated on numerous projects including:
Conferences: ('Folklore and ICH in Scotland', online 2021; 'Creative Responses to Intangible Cultural Heritage & Folklore' March 2023, St. Cecilia's Hall, Edinburgh). Co-organiser of Sacred Waters: an International and Transdisciplinary Conference
Buxton, Derbyshire, United Kingdom, 30 June to 3 July, 2024.
Museum access projects: ‘Amulets, charms, and witch bottles: Thinking about ‘magical’ objects in museum collections through collaborative interaction between academics and curators with Pagans, witchcraft practitioners and other communities with spiritual investment’ - a MOLA Impact Acceleration Account project supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AH/X003523/1) and led by Nigel Jeffries at MOLA and museum and heritage consultant Tom Crowley. (2024)
Development of folklore as a discipline: Folklore Without Borders: equality, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) within UK folklore - an Arts and Humanities Research Council Network that aims to embed greater equality, diversity,
and inclusion (EDI) within UK folklore.
From January 2022 he has been Scotland's first Intangible Cultural Heritage Officer at Museums Galleries Scotland, supporting ICH projects across Scotland. You can find out more about this work at https://www.museumsgalleriesscotland.org.uk/. He is also a Trustee of the Folklore Library & Archive https://www.folklorelibrary.com/
Phone: Www.folkloremuseumsnetwork.org.uk
He has contributed papers at conferences on local history, the history of witchcraft, folklore and museology. His research interests include the material culture of folklore, folklore collections in British institutions, folklore and the landscape (especially that of British healing and holy wells and springs), intangible cultural heritage, early modern material culture, the history of collecting and 'homeland' ethnography. He has also contributed to the literature on apotropaic material culture, early modern material culture and museum history, most notably in Billingsley, Harte, Hoggard (eds.), Hidden Charms 2: The Magical Protection of Buildings (2019) and Richardson, Hamling, Gaimster (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Early Modern Material Culture (2016). His work on folklore and material culture has also been published by the Inner Lives: Emotions, Identity and the Supernatural Project (2015-2018). He has contributed to the folk-horror zine Hellebore (May 2021), the travel magazine We LOVE England, and Paranormal Review, published by the Society of Psychical Research. As Folklore Museums Network founder he has collaborated on numerous projects including:
Conferences: ('Folklore and ICH in Scotland', online 2021; 'Creative Responses to Intangible Cultural Heritage & Folklore' March 2023, St. Cecilia's Hall, Edinburgh). Co-organiser of Sacred Waters: an International and Transdisciplinary Conference
Buxton, Derbyshire, United Kingdom, 30 June to 3 July, 2024.
Museum access projects: ‘Amulets, charms, and witch bottles: Thinking about ‘magical’ objects in museum collections through collaborative interaction between academics and curators with Pagans, witchcraft practitioners and other communities with spiritual investment’ - a MOLA Impact Acceleration Account project supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AH/X003523/1) and led by Nigel Jeffries at MOLA and museum and heritage consultant Tom Crowley. (2024)
Development of folklore as a discipline: Folklore Without Borders: equality, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) within UK folklore - an Arts and Humanities Research Council Network that aims to embed greater equality, diversity,
and inclusion (EDI) within UK folklore.
From January 2022 he has been Scotland's first Intangible Cultural Heritage Officer at Museums Galleries Scotland, supporting ICH projects across Scotland. You can find out more about this work at https://www.museumsgalleriesscotland.org.uk/. He is also a Trustee of the Folklore Library & Archive https://www.folklorelibrary.com/
Phone: Www.folkloremuseumsnetwork.org.uk
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Talks by Dr. Peter Hewitt
How did decorated swords and weapons help early modern men display their identities? This talk considers Roman beards, codpieces and how hard your steel was - using authentic early modern objects from the collections.
Shakespeare Centre / Birthplace Trust, Henley Street, Stratford-upon-Avon, Summer 2013.
This open lecture was part of the 2018 excavations of Pendle Hill organised by Professor Charles Orser of the Institute for Field Research and Vanderbilt University, Nashville Tennessee.
Barley Village Hall, Pendle. July 2018
Listen for free:
https://thefolklorepodcast.weebly.com/season-3/episode-41-witch-bottles-a-conference-lecture-by-dr-peter-hewitt
Thanks to Mark Norman @ the Folklore Podcast for recording and hosting this podcast.
https://thefolklorepodcast.weebly.com
Delivered at the Folklore Society symposium: 'Reflected Shadows: Folklore and the Gothic', 15-17 April 2016, Kingston University, London.
This talk was delivered at the Museum of Witchcraft & Magic as part of the Councild of British Archaeology's 'Festival of Archaeology', Sat 29th Jul 2017, 1pm – 3pm.
Delivered at the Friends' of the Museum of Witchcraft & Magic AGM, December 2014
Teaching Documents by Dr. Peter Hewitt
Papers by Dr. Peter Hewitt
Publications by Dr. Peter Hewitt
https://helleborezine.bigcartel.com/
The paper shows how these bottles developed (after c. 1850) from protective device to malefic spell, love charm, vessels for transference or contagious magic and haptic healing; even receptacles to imprison the ‘familiar’ of a witch ('spirit prison'). The paper draws upon objects and archival information from the Museum of Witchcraft & Magic and sieves this evidence through archaeological, historical and material cultural methodologies. In summary, new sources and a new theory of witch-bottle use and meanings in the modern period is offered.
A version of this paper was delivered at the Hidden Charms 2 Conference in Salisbury, April 2018.
This paper explores the history of the witch ball and its use in various domestic, apotropaic, religious and commercial contexts.
Written for and published by the Inner Lives: Emotions, Identity, and the Supernatural, 1300–1900 project (University of East Anglia / Ashmolean, Oxford).
Books by Dr. Peter Hewitt
The volume provides a rounded, accessible collection of work on the nature and significance of materiality in early modern Europe – a term that embraces a vast range of objects as well as addressing a wide variety of human interactions with their physical environments. This stimulating view of materiality is distinctive in asking questions about the whole material world as a context for lived experience, and the book considers material interactions at all social levels.
There are 27 chapters by leading experts as well as 13 feature object studies to highlight specific items that have survived from this period (defined broadly as c.1500–c.1800). These contributions explore the things people acquired, owned, treasured, displayed and discarded, the spaces in which people used and thought about things, the social relationships which cluster around goods – between producers, vendors and consumers of various kinds – and the way knowledge travels around those circuits of connection. The content also engages with wider issues such as the relationship between public and private life, the changing connections between the sacred and the profane, or the effects of gender and social status upon lived experience.
Constructed as an accessible, wide-ranging guide to research practice, the book describes and represents the methods which have been developed within various disciplines for analysing pre-modern material culture. It comprises four sections which open up the approaches of various disciplines to non-specialists: ‘Definitions, disciplines, new directions’, ‘Contexts and categories’, ‘Object studies’ and ‘Material culture in action’.
This volume addresses the need for sustained, coherent comment on the state, breadth and potential of this lively new field, including the work of historians, art historians, museum curators, archaeologists, social scientists and literary scholars. It consolidates and communicates recent developments and considers how we might take forward a multi-disciplinary research agenda for the study of material culture in periods before the mass production of goods.