Dr Mark Hall

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 University of Stirling 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 – 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 antichità 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.