Students from Swanage have helped curate a new exhibition about historical objects that were once treasured, buried for centuries, and then rediscovered, including an Anglo Saxon sword found in the River Frome in Wareham, Dorset.
The major new exhibition called Treasure! Lost and Found at the Dorset Museum and Art Gallery in Dorchester, runs until Sunday 13th September 2026.
Curator of archaeology at Dorset Museum, Jon Marrow, with the Wareham Sword
“Celebrates the richness of Dorset’s past”
Created in partnership with Arts University Bournemouth, and worked on by students including some from Swanage, the exhibition combines rare artefacts with holograms, digital storytelling, and hands on displays.
One of the displays in the exhibition is the Wareham Sword, an historically significant Anglo Saxon weapon discovered in 1927 in the River Frome in Wareham.
Dating to the late 9th or early 10th century, it was found by workers during the construction of South Bridge.
The thousand year old sword is highly prized because its hilt features an inscription suggesting it belonged to a wealthy aristocrat or royalty.
While owned by Dorset Museum it has been loaned in the past to Wareham Museum on several occasions.
Wareham was an important town in the Kingdom of Wessex during Saxon times, probably including a royal palace at Wareham and the town’s famous walls were constructed around the same time.
Curator of archaeology at Dorset Museum, Jon Marrow said:
“The exhibition is a celebration of Dorset, highlighting the extraordinary quality of archaeological finds uncovered across the county – it celebrates the richness of Dorset’s past and our curiosity to discover our roots.
“It is absolutely extraordinary, if not mind-blowing, the quality of the finds that have come up from under the ground here in Dorset.”
Lucius, Dorset’s AI Roman soldier, with Bournemouth University student Olivia West, programme leader Penelope Norman and Jasmin Herr of tech company Vertex
Interactive hologram driven by latest tech
One of the ground breaking exhibits is an AI powered Roman soldier created using gaming technology and historical research.
Known as a holobox, it is a physical display unit that uses transparent screens, projection, or LED panels to make digital content appear as if it’s floating in mid-air in three dimensions.
Using the latest tech, Lucius, the Roman centurion, is able to talk to visitors to tell them about his life and what Roman Dorset was like.
He is one of the first holobox museum exhibits outside London to be created using the kind of tech which has made ABBA Voyage possible, a virtual concert featuring avatars of the group as they appeared in 1979.
But all of his intelligence has been programmed in directly from trusted sources about the Roman occupation of Dorset, including information from the gravestone of Lucius himself.
The gravestone of Lucius, who fought his way through Dorset and died at Dorchester, was engraved with details of his life
“Evokes life thousands of years ago”
Penelope Norman, programme leader at Bournemouth University’s School of Arts, Media and Creative Industries Management, said:
“Students have created a fully immersive environment where visitors can engage with history through touch, sound and smell.
“Rather than simply viewing objects in display cases, visitors can walk through a reconstructed Iron Age roundhouse, examine 3D printed replicas of artefacts and even smell mead and midden, designed to evoke life thousands of years ago.
“But we are most proud of Lucius, an AI powered Roman soldier created using gaming technology and historical research, who is based on a real first century soldier whose gravestone is held by the museum.
“Visitors can ask him questions about life in Roman Britain and hear his account of serving with the Roman army in Dorset, and students did a lot of research into the background of the Romans here to set his historical context in fact.”
Joe Sibley and Shauna Hale, students at Bournemouth University, helped to make the interactive roundhouse
Step inside an Iron Age roundhouse
Visitors can also step inside an Iron Age roundhouse, complete with replica artefacts and holograms of the people who would have lived in such dwellings.
Joe Sibley, the former Swanage School student who worked on the Iron Age roundhouse exhibit, said:
“To make the roundhouse interesting and accurate, we worked closely with the ancient technology centre at Cranborne and with the Dorset Museum.
“We did a lot of historically accurate sketches and put them into a generative AI programme called Viscom, to help us to be able to build a walk-in exhibit.
“We took pictures of the museum display space and combined those with sketches of our roundhouse to work out exactly what it would look like, and to get all of the props historically accurate.
“We were going to include a potato in a basket of fruit and vegetables until our studies uncovered the fact that potatoes didn’t exist in England at that point in history.”
The Iron Age roundhouse complete with holograms
“Two of my passions coming together”
Joe added:
“There was a bronze mirror found buried in Dorset with a woman who died at the age of 20 about 2,000 years ago. She didn’t have a hard life, and was well looked after by her community even though she was ill.
“We know that she was really important just because of the sheer quality of things found with her at Langton Herring, including the bronze mirror which we wanted to include somehow in the roundhouse.
“So we made some simple holograms as we wanted to bring a digital element into the exhibit, to bring things to life so that people can discover them, and included a projection of a woman using the mirror, which was AI generated, using software that’s made for the fashion industry.
“This project is two of my passions coming together, history and design, and the creative direction course I’m on has been wonderful – you get to apply yourself to so many different avenues in design, and the technology you get to work with is fantastic!”
Roman dressing up clothes are also being used to help the museum appeal to younger visitors
Prehistoric gold hoard
Among the other highlights in the exhibition are a rare early Bronze Age mirror discovered by a Dorset metal detectorist at Langton Herring, an exquisite crescent-shaped gold collar known as the Tarrant Valley lunula, Viking silver treasures and objects from the internationally renowned Staffordshire Hoard.
Many of the exhibits are being displayed publicly for the first time, including a prehistoric gold hoard from Crichel, near Wimborne, dating back more than 3,000 years and a uniquely preserved middle Bronze Age rapier found in a field near Stalbridge.
Further information
- Discover more about the exhibition at Dorset Museum‘s website
- More about the Wareham Sword
