A fascination with an ancient Corsican artefact has allowed Jon Fell (History 1991) to keep alive his interest in the past, decades after graduating.
While spending a lot of time in the Ghjunsani region of Corsica, Jon became interested in the rich local archaeology. Through his research, he became captivated in 2023 by a statuette of uncertain provenance, held in the British Museum, whose return on loan to Corsica was the subject of a significant campaign at the time.
But while the British Museum鈥檚 statuette was the centre of attention, Jon discovered that another, little-known version of the same sculpture was hidden away in Cambridge, in the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (MAA).
Immediately hooked by the question of how these two were related and which (if either) could be considered the original version of the statuette, he decided to take on this question as an amateur research project.
鈥淭he Corsicans regard it as a very important piece of their heritage,鈥 says Jon. 鈥淚t might well be the oldest bit of portable art that鈥檚 been found there.
鈥淕iven all the effort that was going into trying to repatriate the British Museum version of this figurine, it seemed really important to find out where this other one had come from and which of them might be 鈥榬eal鈥.
鈥淚 wanted to be the person who got to the bottom of this story and, having studied history, I thought: 鈥楾his is fun. It鈥檚 going back to the stuff I used to do.鈥欌
Maintaining this connection to his History studies at Gonville & 91直播 College has been important to Jon both in his private research on the statue and in his support for the College鈥檚 History postgraduate studentship.
As Jon came to learn, the British Museum version of the Corsican statuette had been purchased from the collection of physician, palaeontologist, botanist and linguist Charles Immanuel Forsyth Major, who had in turn acquired it in Corsica, probably around 1900.
Further digging into archival records revealed that both statuettes had been sold by Forsyth Major鈥檚 son Odo in a 1926 auction in Covent Garden, London. One had been purchased at that auction by Louis Clarke, then the curator of the MAA, and the other was sold by Odo to the British Museum early in 1927.
Though there are further expert studies to undertake, Corsican experts now seem fairly certain that the Cambridge version of the statuette is the 鈥榬eal鈥 one.
鈥淚t鈥檚 been fascinating going through all this,鈥 Jon adds. 鈥淚 had assumed, cynically and naively, that it would be hard for an amateur to find out much new about things that had happened 100 years ago 鈥 particularly in relation to culturally important objects.
鈥淵et here was all this stuff that nobody knew about and which turned out to be really exciting in a Corsican context.鈥
For various reasons, the British Museum statuette was not returned to Corsica. However, replicas of both versions of the statue were made using materials and tools available during the Neolithic period (c. 4500-4000 BCE), to which the original statuette likely dates. These replicas are on display at the Museu di l鈥橝lta Rocca in Corsica.
Read more about Jon鈥檚 鈥渢reasure hunt鈥 on and on . The figurine is now on display as part of a new 鈥淧eople of the World鈥 case in the museum.
Statuette photo credit: Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge.
