Top 50 Objects

Collected by the nephew of William Smith, John Phillips, Ammonite specimens are still cared for as part of the Scarborough collections over 200 years on.

The skeleton of the Gristhorpe man is an internationally important piece of archaeology – Britain’s best-preserved Early Bronze Age skeleton.

This tiny object, found close to Scarborough is a rare example of a Bronze Age food vessel; only six others are known and these have been found in East Yorkshire and Northumberland.

These intriguing objects were found at Star Carr, an archaeological Stone Age site close to Scarborough. The site is very important and is world famous amongst archaeologists. 

Fancy abseiling down the rocky cliffs of the Yorkshire Coast to collect seabirds' eggs? Nope, nor us!

It's hard to imagine now, but these simple objects – part of a red deer’s antler, and two teeth, one from a horse, one from a rhinoceros – caused something of a schism between scientists and the Church in the early 1800s.

On Wednesday 16th December 1914, one of the most dramatic days in Scarborough’s history took place.

The history of dolls is a long and complex one – these days we tend to view them simply as innocent playthings, but ancient societies, both primitive and advanced, used them as art and as religious and magical artefacts as well.

Although this may look like a tired looking painting, this special object has quite the story to tell!

These gold coins are still as dazzling as the day they were made, around 2,500 years ago. They’re part of a larger collection that includes Roman gold coins as well as three ‘staters’ from the reign of Alexander the Great (356 BCE to 323 BCE), ruler of the ancient Greek kingdom of Macedon.