About me
Mark Anthony Hall PhD is Collections Officer at Perth Museum & Art Gallery (managed by Culture Perth & Kinross on behalf of Perth & Kinross Council). This role is the current iteration of a long-term position at the Museum curating human history collections, in particular archaeology, world cultures and numismatics. His current focus is on contributing to the preparation of a new museum for Perth & Kinross. The new Perth Museum occupies the renovated former City Hall and will provide extensive new displays exploring the region¡¯s archaeology, history and global engagement, when it opens to the public in the spring of 2024. Pivotal elements in the new museum¡¯s cultural and heritage positioning is the long-term loan of the Stone of Destiny/Scone and developing co-curatorial practices with indigenous communities of origin.
Mark is an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the Â鶹´«Ã½AV Centre for Environment, Heritage and Policy for the period 2022-2025. He has previously held research fellowships at the University of Glasgow (twice), the University of Sheffield and the University of the Highlands and Islands. He is a member of the Scottish Archaeological Finds Allocation Panel and has recently served as a member of the steering group for Scotland¡¯s Archaeology strategy (where he is still active on the museum archaeology subpanel), co-lead the Medieval Panel of the Scottish Archaeological Research Framework and steering group member for the Perth & Kinross Research Framework; and a co-editor of the Medieval Europe Research Community Manifesto. He is co-lead with Dr Alex Sanmark (UHI) for the RSE supported ¡®Kingship¡¯ Project, exploring early medieval kingship in Scotland in a European context. He led the Perth Museum contribution to the Glasgow University SERF Project, as lead researcher on the Forteviot Pictish sculptures and as co-lead for the joint Hunterian and Perth Museum exhibition, ¡°The Cradle of Scotland¡±.
His research interests seek to understand human society as a tapestry of interwoven modalities encompassing the archaeology of play (especially board games), the medieval cult of saints, Pictish sculpture, the cinematic re-tellings of the past and biographical trajectories and itineraries. Recent publications include: ?¡®The Lewis Hoard of Gaming Pieces ¨C Evoking and Reassembling a Viking Past?¡¯, in Horne, T., Pierce, E. and Barrowman, R. (eds) The Viking Age in Scotland, Studies in Scottish Scandinavian Archaeology, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 239-50. ?¡®Games of Character: The Role of Board, Dice and Card Games in Popular Cinema¡¯, in Board Games Studies Journal 16. 2, 17-46. ?¡®Mixed fortunes: magical, mundane and modish reuses of coinage in Early Medieval Scotland: A European case study¡¯, in Quaderni ticinesi di numismatica e antichit¨¤ classiche 50 (2021), 241-72 ?¡®Status, magic and belief: exploring identity through dress accessories and other amulets in medieval Scotland: a Perthshire case study¡¯, in The Scottish Historical Review C.3: No. 254 (Dec. 2021), 469-92. ?¡®Trading games? Playing with/without the Vikings in Dorestad¡¯, in Willemsen, A. & Kik, H. (eds) Dorestad and its Networks Communities, Contact and Conflict in Early Medieval Europe Proceedings of Third ¡®Dorestad Congress¡¯ held at the National Museum of Antiquities, Leiden, the Netherlands, 12-15 June 2019, Leiden: Sidestone Press (PALMA: Papers on Archaeology of the Leiden Museum of Antiquities Vol. 25), 35-48.