Community members will have the chance to get their hands on some ancient history this weekend when Brock University’s Department of Classics hosts An Evening at the Museum.

The free event, being held in Brock’s Cypriote Museum Sunday, Oct. 22 from 5 to 6:15 p.m., will allow visitors to handle selected artifacts from the department’s collection dating from the Neolithic (4500 BC) through to Medieval periods. Tours of the department’s archaeology lab will also be offered.

“The Cypriote Museum is a great teaching collection that the department is increasingly integrating into course work and experiential education,” says event organizer Carrie Murray, Assistant Professor in the Department of Classics.

The collection, started in 1970, consists of 173 objects acquired by purchase and donation. Artifacts include pottery, limestone sculpture, terracotta figurines and Roman glass vessels. The department has also begun a program of expanding the teaching collection with 3D-printed replicas, which are on display.

Taking place as part of the Evening at the Museum event will be the installation of a new exhibition project, Faces of Ancient Cyprus, which features some of the collection’s limestone and terracotta sculptures.

The event is being co-hosted with the Niagara Peninsula Society of the Archaeology Institute of America as a part of International Archaeology Day celebrations. Brock’s Department of Classics has worked alongside the Niagara AIA chapter since 1968 to bring archaeologists from around the world to Brock for free monthly public lectures on diverse topics relating to archaeology and cultural heritage.

The Cypriote Museum event will follow an AIA public lecture by McMaster University’s Martin Beckman titled Untangling the Coinage of Hadrian and Faustina Sunday, Oct. 22 at 3 p.m. in Academic South 216.

What: An Evening at the Museum

When: Sunday, Oct. 22, 5 to 6:15 p.m.

Where: Cypriote Museum, Brock University International Centre Room 307