Dr Sally Foster, lecturer in University of Stirling

8pm

School 1, St Salvator’s Quadrangle

St Andrews University Archaeology Society

'I can't think of anything more worthwhile doing'. This was the verdict of Fife-based David F. O. Russell of his involvement in a project to create a concrete replica of the St John's Cross, erected on Iona in 1970. How did this project come about, why was it so important to the people involved, and what significance now attaches to this replica? Such replicas are common features on heritage sites, but what do we actually know about how they 'work' in practice? What is their value and how is their authenticity perceived? Taking into account new ideas about authenticity, this paper will present the results of new interdisciplinary research that explores the meanings and values of the St John's Cross and its copies. It takes a cultural biographical approach to understand how the meanings of things changes in different contexts and through time, and to provide a wider context for that understanding. It draws on archives in St Andrews University Special Collections and elsewhere, oral history and techniques of rapid ethnographic assessment. Beforehand you might like to take a look at a 1970 homemade cinefilm discovered during the course of the research, particularly if like so many of the people involved you are an Iona lover: