Carolina Desel González has been the director of the Museu de Menorca since 2014, when she replaced the archaeologist Lluís Plantalamor in the post. With a degree in Art History and a master's degree in Museology, under her direction this cultural institution started on a new path with the aim of opening the museum to the public and reinforcing its more didactic aspect. As one of the most emblematic museum spaces on the island, the Museu de Menorca acts as guardian of the greatest treasures of Talayotic material culture.
Let's start by knowing a little more about your career. What drove you to Museology?
I studied Art History and my favorite subjects in class were about museology and dissemination of heritage. When you finish, you ask yourself what else you want to do, so I did a master's degree in Museology. I have always really liked the didactic aspect, being a bridge between art and people. Someone has to translate art, culture and history to the public. I’ve always liked this role.
You have made your passion into your profession. How did you arrive to the Museu de Menorca?
I was the director of the Vall d’Aran Museum, in Viella. For personal reasons, we came to live in Menorca and I found out that Lluís Plantalamor, the former director of the museum, was retiring. I presented my candidacy and proposal to Maruja Baíllo, who was the consellera of Cultural Affairs at the time, and she gave me the opportunity to be the director. And Miquel Àngel Maria, the current conseller of Cultural Affairs, gave me his confidence again and here we are, directing the museum since 2014.
What weight does the Talayotic culture have in the Museu de Menorca’s collection? What will the visitor interested in learning about this historical period find?
If we talk about figures, the total collection of the museum has approximately 250,000 pieces and perhaps 80% are from Menorca’s prehistory, not only from the Talayotic culture.
We show Menorca’s prehistoric times from different points of view: how they lived, what they ate, how they worked, how they conceived death and how they were buried... All these daily aspects that we know through archeology and the studies that surround it is what we have tried to capture in the first two exhibition halls of the museum. For us, prehistoric times are, together with the 18th century, one of the most unique areas of the mueseum and are the ones that arouse the greatest interest.
Some of the most important treasures of Talayotic culture are preserved in the museum. How many pieces are there currently from this period? And from your point of view, which are the most relevant?
In the permanent exhibition there are approximately 600 pieces. When we carried out the 2018 reform, we tried to ensure that all the pieces that were exhibited had good reading conditions, that is, that they were more complete pieces and that they served to tell the stories behind them: how people lived at that time.
As for the most relevant, for me is everything related to the funerary ritual of hair. We have a braid, a tube where the hair of the dead was deposited, combs…; I think they are the most interesting pieces because very few have been preserved and it is a unique ritual in prehistory. Then I would also highlight everything related to food production, the large number of “molons” (local name for the moving parts of swaying mills) that we have in the collection.
Staying faithful to the idea of ??bringing Talayotic culture closer to the public, the museum has launched such original initiatives as the creation of the Talaiòtica beer. How did this joint initiative come about with the Talayotic Menorca candidacy?
It all started with the first intervetions in the sa Mola hypogeum, where we found 50 high-bottomed cups, together with the 400 cups we already had from the Flaquer collection, so we decided to analyze them. The cups are unique pottery samples in Menorca, which have only been found on this site and have never been analyzed with a scientific basis. They were analyzed at the University of Granada and at the Milà i Fontanals Institute in Barcelona, ??and it was concluded that these cups had contained a concoction similar to beer. So we contacted Grahame Pearce, brewers from Sant Climent, and together with the initial analytics and others that had been done on the use of plants at the time, we started testing. It was a sort of experimental archaeology. We liked the result a lot and decided to market it together with the Talayotic Menorca candidacy. It has been very well received by the public. What was originally a purely experimental archeology initiative has ended up on the streets. It is a 0 km product and made by people from Menorca, similar to what the Talayotics would have done.
What activities related to Talayotic culture does the museum have scheduled for this year?
We are doing activities around the current temporary exhibition, because it is the way of doing new activities. We want to give people the opportunity to discover new aspects of Menorca’s culture. However, Talayotic culture and the prehistory of the island are one of our mainstays. Apart from the excursions we do, we have the piece of the month, we organize conferences on Talayotic culture... This year we will talk a lot about the importance of the bull within Talayotic culture, one of the divinities. One of the most interesting excursions we will do is to Son Olives, which has never been done before, an interesting and still quite unknown site.
Precisely the excavations in the hypogeum of sa Mola are part of the museum’s important research projects on Talayotic culture, together with those of Cornia Nou. What are the main advances of the 2021 campaign?
In the sa Mola hypogeum what was done last year was more of an extraction campaign; we already knew we would find a lot of material. About sixty high-bottomed cups and other types of pottery appeared. It was decided that this year there would be no excavation campaign, but rather micro-excavations, which will be carried out in the laboratory, where we will analyze all the pieces that were extracted.
Cornia Nou is one of the excavations that has currently provided the most relevant news, because carbon-14 tests were carried out by European universities that have changed how we considered the chronology of Menorcan prehistory to be.
As we mentioned, in addition to the social and educational aspect, the museum has important research projects underway, such as underwater archaeological surveys of the Menorcan coast. The excavation campaigns in the Binissafúller wreck, that were carried out between 2006 and 2016, are an example. What do you have planned for this year related to underwater heritage?
In this field, we have been collaborating a lot with Amics del Museu, because Octavi Pons, one of our archaeologists, is an underwater archaeologist.There is nothing new planned for this year; we will just be keeping an eye out. We have to be very careful with this heritage, it is very delicate and susceptible to looting. The last big campaign we did was before the pandemic, 2019, when we worked with the Universitat de Catalunya in Calescoves Bay. Recently, we collaborated in the last dredging of the port of Maó. There is less awareness about underwater heritage and all the work involved in the restoration of a piece extracted from the sea is extremely important for the museum's restorers.
This year is key for Talayotic Menorca candidacy. What role should the museum play keeping in mind Talayotic Menorca possible inscription on the World Heritage List in June?
The Museu de Menorca and the one in Ciutadella are where all the pieces that are recovered from the excavations are kept. Therefore, we take care of Talayotic cultures’ material legacy. We like to think that we are the gateway to this culture, because we explain what the Talayotic people were like, how they lived, what they did, how they died. Once impregnated with this culture, when you go and see the sites you will surely understand much more. We have models that describe the architecture of the time, which helps in understanding this world. Throughout the entire process of the candidacy, we have given both our technical and moral support, and we are in the advisory bodies itself. If in June we obtain the declaration, the museum must be the gateway to get to know this fascinating culture. Welcoming visitors and researchers to study the objects, that is our role.