Alex Ward, University of Cardiff

This paper examines the competing professional, political and personal values behind the development of a Welsh folk culture collection within the Archaeology department of the National Museum of Wales in the 1920s/30s. It draws attention to the impact of curatorial agency on interpretations of the material past and the particular narratives created. The two central figures involved in the study and display of folk material culture in the Museum at this time imposed their own influence, identities and ascribed ideals; the working relationship between the English archaeologist Cyril Fox and the curator and ardent Welsh nationalist, Iorwerth Peate, produced its own dynamics and tensions. Their individual and collective approach to the past and to the folk culture of Wales was inherently complex, situated in a continual process of convergence and divergence as differing worldviews, politics and cultural agendas surfaced. This paper seeks to deconstruct the key cultural, political and intellectual values which underpinned the ideology of the Museum collection and shaped the ideological vision of its principal curator, Iorwerth Peate, to revitalise Welsh national identity.