The artifacts have a variety of origins – Byzantine, Roman and Egyptian are a few. Each piece was researched by an MSU student supervised by Dr. Julia Troche and/or Dr. Bryan Brinkman, who both led the project. One of those students was Susan Hardy, a junior who researched a statuette of the Egyptian god Osiris (which happens to be the object pictured in most promotional images for the exhibit).
“I spent the entirety of that semester researching that artifact: how it might have been made, what it might have been used for – all of that," said Hardy.
All of this was original research – students had to date the objects, for example, based on style, condition and other physical attributes. Students also had some influence on the presentation of the exhibit, like how the artifacts would be grouped and how they would be displayed. While most of this was classwork, some students, like Hardy, were also involved through an independent study.
“It just provided me with something very, very unique that I don’t know if I could have gotten anywhere else in the way that I did," she said.
Brinkman and Troche recently went on KSMU's Talking History podcast, where they discussed their work on the exhibit in-depth.
Ancient Artifacts Abroad is open through June 24.