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Posted by Thomas Leppard
I largely agree with Sekedat’s thoughtful review of Pearson’s Carrlands digital media project, although I maintain some reservations. Pearson’s apparent goal is to make the undeniable depth of meaning and experience in the north Lincolnshire landscape accessible to the public. Initially this would seem laudable; public outreach, and indeed the preservation of whole landscapes for the appreciation of the non-specialist, seems to dominate current debates in CRM and heritage scholarship. More specifically, the general school of British landscape archaeology within which this project’s structuring principles can be contextualized has often maintained an approach which is vigorously accessible to the non-specialist, through placing emphasis on the experiential (e.g. Edmonds 1999; although Pearson would presumably reject such categorization as an unnecessary generalization, and in some respects he may be right).
However, the notion of ‘making accessible’ itself demands further evaluation. Pearson invites us to engage with the landscape in a more meaningful way by listening to a series of audio files. This could arguably be seen to carry the perhaps unsettling implication that the listener may have been unable to fully appreciate her surroundings without a specialist (Pearson) assisting in her interpretation of it. The voices and sounds, potentially arranged, we must remember, according to an agenda, become vehicles for interpretation. A reticulate and multi-variant approach to landscape could be seen to be rejected in favor of a single trajectory of experience. There is no a priori reason for preferring one approach or the other, and again, I am sure that the Carrlands team would reject this assertion of their work as delineating an unavoidable path of interpretation. Yet the insistence on the importance of multivocality and of interweaving of narratives jars when considered alongside the somewhat parochial tendency to suppress the listener’s voice, narrative, individual story, call it what you will.
Continue reading "Comments on the Carrlands Project " »
Posted by Bradley Sekedat
Bradley M. Sekedat
Brown University
A growing number of recent studies seek new ways to engage with landscapes (see references). The Carrlands Project (www.carrlands.org.uk) fits aptly into this category as it explores the complexity of the Carrs in southeastern England through the combination of music, dialogue, and composed sound recordings. The format of this presentation is a website that hosts a series of 12 recordings divided among three specific portions of the Carrlands: Snitterby Carrs, Hibaldstow Carrs and Horkstow Carrs. Each recording is approximately 15 minutes long, treating the ‘historical,’ ‘cultural’ and ‘physical’ variations that make up this diverse region. The creators (Mike P. Pearson, John Hardy and Hugh Fowler) encourage users either to bring the recordings with them to the Carrs to enhance the interactivity of their engagement, or to listen to the audio clips at a distance, embracing the message of complexity inherent within them. This reviewer listened from his office in Providence, Rhode Island. I paid particular attention to the dominant themes that arise out of the scripted narrations and musical compositions that accompany the journey through the flat, marshy, industrial and agricultural terrain.
Continue reading "Landscape Complexity and New Media: a review of the Carrlands Project Website (Mike Pearson)." »
Posted by Tim Neal
Tim Neal (The University of Sheffield)
This photo essay was presented at the Association of Social Anthropologist’s conference in London in 2007. It was part of a panel organised around the theme of “Modernising archaeological tourism: from image conflict to archaeological expressionism” convened by Ian Russell and Andrew Cochrane. Taking up the theme of mentality/materiality, this paper suggests that such duality can dissolve through archaeological/heritage tourism. However the normative impulse that informs the latter cannot be maintained where this non-dualist perspective is to flourish.
This paper has been difficult to dislodge from my mind and onto paper. Something about the subject of the session it was prepared for rather than just my own approach. Materialities and mentalities as a subject spoke directly to me because it finds itself at the interface between archaeology and anthropology, material being in a sense the matter of archaeology while mentalities suggest an anthropological domain. Also perhaps, this is a didactic issue that I am raising: how to teach, or facilitate learning, without simply effacing other teachings or learning?
When I sent through my abstract Ian suggested that I might like to offer a substantive example to illustrate my paper. I replied that I would try to do this while in France researching where to carry out my fieldwork for a PhD.
This is the story of that attempt to illustrate.
I was visiting the department of the Ariege in the Pyrennees. My PhD research is based around an extended period of participant observation in a French commune with a significant proportion of resident and partially resident British migrants. My interest in this was initially prompted by a concern to explore the way in which British migration was activated by a British sensibility towards aspects of European cultural heritage such as Romanesque architecture, deserted uplands and surviving ‘peasant’ traditions. I decided to visit the cave of Niaux in the foothills of the Pyrennees. This cave, much like similar caves in the Dordogne where I had been a guide, was decorated in the late upper Palaeolithic some 14,000 years ago, with friezes of bison, horses and more abstract designs. I duly phoned the cave and booked myself for the 3.30 visit.
As I drove over the mountains to the cave I listened to the radio in the car. I tuned into the French culture programme to which I listened hoping to improve my ‘cultural’ French. The programme was about the destruction of aboriginal rock art by mining interests in Australia and consisted of the witness of various French anthropologists to the effects of mining and the unthinkable demolition of a possible 40,000 year tradition of decorative art. As one of the commentators said:
“Would we, the French, allow Lascaux to be destroyed by such actions? These paintings are at least as valuable”.
Continue reading "Once upon a time: Truth as an Expression" »
Posted by Andrew Cochrane
By Andrew Cochrane (Cardiff University).
On Wednesday 17 October 2007, the auspicious Council Chamber of the Glamorgan Building at Cardiff University, played host for a workshop dedicated to the skill enhancement of graduate and part-time teachers and new lectures in archaeology and classics. Rather than rely on more traditional approaches to lecturing and presentation, this day-school sought to illuminate alternative modes of teaching and mediation.
Continue reading "Supporting Teaching and Learning in Archaeology and Classics: a day in the life of a day school" »
Posted by Rama Krishna Pisipaty
S. Rama Krishna Pisipaty
SCSVM University,
Enathur, Kanchipuram – 631561
India
Email – pisipaty@indiainfo.com
Kanchipuram (12 degrees 50'N & 79 degrees 25'E) is one of the important cities in the southern part of India from its very beginnings. Like so many ancient cities, Kanchipuram is also situated on the banks of a river, Vegavati—a rain fed subterranean river which now rarely has a visible flow of water. Today, the present city is situated a short distance away from the existing channel. Kanchipuram was the capital of the Early Cholas dynasty as far back as the 2nd century BCE and the capital of Pallava between the 6th and 8th centuries CE. The successive dynasties from the Pallavas to the Vijayanagar kings have consciously added to the architectural and religious grandeur of the city (Nilakanta Sastri, K.A. 1966). Rich in ancient monuments and inscriptions Kanchipuram was glorified in both Sanskrit and ancient Tamil literature. It was even eulogized by the Chinese traveler, Yuanchuang (7th century CE). Kanchipuram is revered as one of the seven sacred places of the Hindues. The city was ruled by illustrious monarchs from very celebrated dynasties like the Pallavas, the Cholas, the Rastrakutas, the Vijayanagaras, the Nayakas, the Pandyas, etc. together with Muslims and Britishers (Mahalingam, T.V. 1969). The foundations of south Indian art and architecture were truly laid in the region round sixth century CE. Kailasanath, Vaikunta Perumal, Kamakshi Amman, Ekambaranath, Varadaraja, Ulagananda, etc. are some of the unique examples of their artistic activities. Furthermore, this city was destined to become a great centre of literature. Many references to it can be found in the Sangam Tamil compositions. An institution for the advanced studies in Vedas called the Ghatika (advanced study centre) was also established here and this gave literary pre-eminence to Kanchipuram (Gurumurthy, S. 1970; 1979).
Figure 1: Terracotta single Massive Ring (105 X 55 X 6 cm) TCR 15
Continue reading "Multipurpose terracotta rings and other new evidence from the South India Excavations" »
Posted by Krysta Ryzewski
The Greene Farm Archaeology Project (GFAP), in Warwick, Rhode Island, began in 2004 as a transdisciplinary and long-term project designed to facilitate research among a broad range of scholars and volunteers, using established and experimental archaeological methods. The central focus of the project is on researching 400 years of cultural and natural landscape transformations on one of the few remaining Providence Plantations (see project wiki http://proteus.brown.edu/greenefarm/Home).
Greene Farm landscape (2004).
In 2005, artist Lee Fearnside approached GFAP interested in filming a documentary called Telling Stories, focusing on how archaeologists create knowledge through discovering history. As archaeologists and historians having little knowledge or experience with filmmaking, we permitted Fearnside access to the project without considering how her work might affect our practices directly and indirectly. We were especially interested to see how Fearnside would translate and represent archaeology in her art, as she had no archaeological background except for having read Deetz’s In Small Things Forgotten. Over the course of two years, Fearnside filmed the field crew during excavations and in the laboratories. Though still a work in progress, I recently screened a rough cut of the film for the members of the Greene Farm field crew and gathered their response through a detailed survey and several discussions.
As an anthropologically trained archaeologist, I am particularly interested in examining the reception of the film by those whose work, voices, images, and interpretations appear in it. The field crew’s feedback and reactions are especially valuable in thinking about the many implications for relationships between artistic film/creative documentation and archaeology projects, and more importantly, the implications for how digital media affects archaeological practice. The following commentary focuses on an experiment stemming from the crews’ mixed reactions to the film. This is not an attempt to discuss the quality of the film (which is remarkable) or whether the filmmaker successfully captures the “creation of knowledge”. Instead, the purpose is to explore some of the questions and observations resulting from the intersection of the creative documentation and archaeological projects, as initially raised through the voices of the crew.
Continue reading "Creative Documentation and Archaeological Practice: Surveying Archaeologists on Film" »
Posted by Christopher Witmore
The disjuncture between ‘what we do’ and ‘what we say we do’ has contributed not only to a great deal of conversation and debate it has also lead to a fair amount of angst and misunderstanding in archaeology (i.e. theory/practice split or the homebase/field bifurcation). Many (myself included) firmly believe that this disjuncture can only be addressed by following up close what ‘we’ (understood to encompass people, institutions, media, materials, things, etc. which comprise an archaeologist) actually do in practice.
Anthropologists and sociologists have long enrolled ethnography and ethnomethodology as set of practices for engaging with what scientific practitioners do (this has been especially successful when they have been bold enough to free themselves from the weight of epistemology!). Hitherto, archaeology, sadly, has been in large part ignored by these practitioners (refer to my entry from October 23, 2005 and Tim Webmoor’s from November 6, 2006), though there are notable exceptions in the related field of the philosophy of science with the important work of Alison Wylie. Thankfully, the tides are changing and this is in large part due to a few archaeologists who have taken the initiative themselves.
A recent book edited by Matt Edgeworth, Ethnographies of Archaeological Practice: Cultural Encounters, Material Transformations is an example of this initiative and will help us along the path to knowing who we are! The volume pulls together a diverse and welcome body of ethnographic work with archaeology (beyond the well-known reflexive strategies operating at Çatalhöyük, Turkey) from projects throughout Europe and the Americas
Continue reading "Id quod facimus sumus! (We are what we do!) A commentary on Ethnographies of Archaeological Practice: Cultural Encounters, Material Transformations" »
Posted by Andrew Cochrane and Ian Russell
An artistic exploration of archaeological theory
Andrew Cochrane (Cardiff University) Ian Russell (Trinity College, Dublin)
The pieces in this exhibition seek to contest traditional mechanisms for representation and spectatorship by questioning the status that visual images occupy in archaeological discourse. Photomosaics of iconic archaeologists and archaeological objects are constructed through the manufacture of archives and archaeological records of public images available over internet search engines. This digital ‘excavation’ of what is traditionally an unarchived public space marks the beginnings of a digital archaeological practice.
Inspired by Joan Foncuberta's series of Googlegrams (2005), we call into question the ways in which archaeologists position themselves and their work within contemporary society. By juxtaposing the figures of archaeologists or archaeological artefacts with a collage of public images, the pieces reveal the manufacture of representations of archaeological identities (of archaeologists) and that of the artefacts and monuments with which they work. In addition, through the use of the world wide web and freeware, they also challenge the role that digital media are playing in the fabrication of collective archaeological visual memory, interpretation, and mediated information. Rather than merely engaging in the pasts as archaeology has previously presented them to us, views are disrupted, interrupted and displaced.
During digital ‘excavation’ records are kept of the location, context, and dimensions of each available image in order to produce an ‘archaeological record’ detailing the point in time when the search occurred. This seeks to enhance archaeological practice to confront a world which is rapidly becoming saturated by fluid and transient systems of information. In these works, Google Image searches are utilised to amass libraries of images by employing generalised search terms with no artistic intervention. These libraries are then fed through Easy Mosaic 2005 v1.2 to produce a pixel system which manufactures the original images of archaeologists and objects.
Each (in)dividual piece subverts and parodies notions of 'truth' in archaeology and the veracity of dominant images in the construction of the past and present, memory, identity, gender, emotion and agency. Such a reflexive approach generates connections between unfamiliar essences, resulting in ruptured and fragmented yet dynamic archaeologies, histories and representations.
This exhibition will be composed of between three to five 1m x 1.5m mounted images with accompanying titles cards and a separate poster introducing the exhibition.
Confirmed exhibitions include:
♦ EAA 2006. 19th - 24th September. IAE, Cracow, Poland
♦ CHAT 2006. 10th - 12th November. Bristol University
♦ TAG 2006. 15th - 17th December. University of Exeter
♦ Resisting Archaeology 2007. 17th -20th May. Uppsala University, Sweden
♦ WAC 2007. 20th -27th May. University of the West Indies, Jamaica
Full text version forthcoming with the Cambridge Archaeology Journal February 2007.
Posted by Matt Edgeworth
text by Matt Edgeworth
images by permission of Fotis Ifantidis
In the midst of beings as a whole an open place occurs. There is a clearing, a lighting... Only this clearing grants and guarantees to us humans a passage to those beings that we ourselves are not, and access to the being that we ourselves are. Martin Heidegger 1971 (1935): 53
‘Plan Générique’ by Fotis Ifantidis. http://visualizing-neolithic.blogspot.com/2006/05/plan-gnrique.html
In this short piece I sketch out why it is useful to think of excavation as a kind of clearing.
Continue reading "THE CLEARING: Heidegger and Excavation" »
Posted by Timothy Webmoor
Returning from the 'field'...some thoughts on what constitutes fieldwork. Such a pregnant term for the human sciences; replete with senses of: initiation, untowardness, difficulty, spontaneity, inauguration, maturation, practicum, discipline, validation, accreditation, as well as exoticism, travel, aristocratic pursuit and leisure. A process or 'fielding' of experience, 'fieldwork' plays an indispensable role in the training of academicians - but also of inculcating professionalism in general - so what/why is it? Is it simply the proverbial adage? application of skill is the best apprenticeship. Amazingly, though pedagogically central to these disciplines, there is little explicit discussion except in the administrator's office signing forms or expressing anxiety, or as part of a project defense; and in these instances the logistics of preparation for carrying out a project 'in the field' outweighs any mention of what type of experience it will entail. This only adds to the mystique of 'the field'. And sets up the fieldworker for the questions: is this what they hinted at with their reticent descriptions?; is this how it's supposed to go? for everyone or is this intended to be an idiosyncratic experience?
No ritual without anticipatory anxiety and then confusion, self-doubt and questioning. Eventually a re-orientation or shift somehow, bringing a re-formed confidence.
This could be discussed with respect to Van Gennep or Turner's process of ritual. And of course social/cultural anthropology, the discipline of fieldwork, has drawn this reflexive analogy. But I'd like to start with what/why fieldwork is from a ground perspective.
First, ‘an archaeology through the back door’. This relates to the sentiment of attempting to begin a project. Without using prior personal or professional connections to an archaeological field-site there is an incredible amount of leg work – or more accurately dialoging – which has to be built up incrementally in order to gain the confidence and critically the acquiescence to begin working as ‘an outsider’ @ a new site. Summer after summer I would meet more Mexican and foreign archaeologists excavating at the site and visit their camps. At the end of the day over a beer or pulque – think milk gone off mixed with tequila – perhaps after mixing a ton of concrete by hand with the site’s restorers to gain respect - there would be a verbal exchange about projects’ intentions, theoretical background, legitimacy of interests, appropriateness of Teotihuacan, etc.; generally culminating in a tour of recently excavated tunnels or trenches, chatting with the other excavators, and perhaps a ride back through the site at night on an ATV – urbanized Teotihuacan covers more than 22square km. – catching ‘privileged’ glimpses of the pyramids in moonlight not permissible for tourists.
Yet often the result is utterly discouraging: excavation leaders are uninterested in participating, or downright hostile to your theoretical intentions, days are ‘wasted’ attempting to track down ‘so and so’ who finished/is starting/is looking for help for a project, a bottle of coca-cola is thrown from a passing bus @ the strange gringo walking the streets, a run-in with feral dogs in an abandoned street, seeing a drunk man die in the mercado, being lost and alone in the northern deserts, spending days fevered and ill in bed, etc. At times that ‘back door’ only seemed to become impenetrable, and a desperate feeling builds: will I have to conduct a project ‘through the back door’ without institutional approbation and as the strange outsider/gringo – how? And how much time before its necessary to tell the academic advisors that prospects are looking bleak?
Second, though, there slowly builds a feeling of gaining ‘the inside’: guards no longer harass you but wave you through the gates, the ubiquitous vendedores of crafts (and sometimes cheap crap) no longer proposition you, señoras at the mercados recognize you – and no longer overcharge you – you’re invited to houses for dinners, senoritas begin to flirt; and then you find yourself in a cantina singing a Led Zeppelin song you barely remember, but which the señor singing Mexican ballads insists upon as a sign of good faith between the two cultures. You become part of the local gossip. Just everyday experiences; but they’re paramount in building a confidence and an inter-confidence with the site, the archaeologists, the towns, the people. And none of this ‘data’ will be part of the finished dissertation. Throughout the fieldbook, thoughts scribbled in the margins: “how am I going to use this” crop up. Critical yet not within the strictures of an archaeological report, it forms part of the ‘behind the scenes’, off the stage field-working which will continue to inform the meshing of practice and theory for the duration of the project. It also nonetheless furnishes the requisite starting point of a project – later condensed and edited for the revealing and liberating personal prefatory remarks. At this point, the ‘limen’ or threshold of Van Gennep’s scheme seems to still hold as a concise metaphor for this experience of imperceptibly gaining a new vista– of the possibility of conducting and concluding the project. Something critical has been crossed.
But this takes a while (not quantifiable) as you, your demeanor, your spoken Spanish, your institutional standing, your generosity, your clothing, your amiability, your propensity to drink/or not and so forth are all studied and the conclusions evaluated. Really, it constitutes an intimate defense of the project’s fieldwork.
Third, once a measure of momentum builds, the project unexpectedly take off. All that ‘pointless pandering’ in the towns, with the local archaeologists and tourists, at local festivals, affords a familiarity which abruptly makes the project viable and, even better, builds an interest in what you are doing. Suddenly, I am asked for questionnaires and times to chat for interested brothers, knowledgeable grandparents, disgruntled employees of the site wanting an outlet for their opinion, local ‘traditional’ leaders who are conducting fasts in opposition to a new Walmart, ‘new age’ Toltec shamans meditating in the site who believe in ‘black light’ conduits of spiritual experience, and for once aloof archaeologists who now want ‘their story’ to be included. This is the rewarding part. And though fleeting, the ‘hope’ should be recorded for reading through the fieldbook later on: “yes, thank god it’s somehow coming together. Letting things unfold w/o expectations, and people and opportunities present themselves – I let it unfold without forcing” (p.159 fieldbook).
Fourth, the security in the project is fleeting and circumstances continue to place you in an ‘over-exposed’, vulnerable position. Not that the momentum of the project has slackened, but ever new happenstances present themselves which poise to threaten the progress. The new director – as with ever-changing political contexts – of the site sends his guards to collect you in their pick-up for an impromptu meeting. Things have changed since the meeting with the original director: the governmental institute overseeing the archaeological zone has created their own questionnaire, and mine is now seen as competition with the ‘official census’. Moreover, he is displeased with the questions targeting the institute, and he is concerned about the critical opinions of the employees. I should preface this by stating that the director has an uncanny resemblance to Fidel Castro, replete with obsequious assistants running to and fro and a large cigar. He would like me to discontinue working within the zone. A set-back; yet I already have a sufficient number of completed questionnaires from internal employees, and am already at the decisive stage in fieldwork where the question becomes: one can always collect more information, more contacts, but balancing that with the progress already made and the financial and temporal constraints of continuing, do I have enough to produce a convincing and compelling dissertation? Part and parcel with the behind the scenes ‘establishment phase’, this represents another crucial topic of fieldwork rarely explicitly discussed – and certainly not quantifiable in definite terms. Somehow my guidance for this portion came solely from a nondescript, almost folkloric saying: ‘you will know when the time is right.’ My ‘field’ component of the fieldwork was winding down. And at the time, I knew that the ability to make this decision was somehow an encapsulating learning experience in my ‘fielding’: identifying an interesting project, locating it materially where it would be most salient and potentially poignant, stepping-off into the vagaries of ‘background work’, and making the project feasible all appear to be contained within that singular moment when theoretical interest and lived-through practical application collude in the judgment ‘I have enough to write this fieldwork.’
There it is again: ‘fieldwork’. But such a realization quickly makes one certain of the dispersed and distributed nature of ‘fieldwork’. It was not over. I would be reworking and generating anew information for my dissertation long after my flight back north over the Chihuahuan deserts. Chris Witmore has pointed up this heterogenous, un-contained nature of ‘multiple fields’ of production. Where did the fieldwork begin and end? Even while in the preliminary stages in Mexico I was far from gathering data. And now back, much information will still be collected via the internet in the form of newspaper articles and e-mail exchanges. Can we only lodge a definition in physical terms: the presence in Mexico, whatever form it took, constituted my fieldwork? This contains some of the ‘field of production’ for my dissertation, but much slips by. ‘The field’ for me might have been geographically encapsulated by the valley of Teotihuacan, but the fields of engagement and production extend to my room cluttered with notes and papers, to conference locales where the material is worked through, and even cybernetically, with material being continually worked and reworked on my computer, and through its connection to servers sitting distributed over various non-places.
Perhaps then I would, if forced, land on a definition in terms of a state of being; something closer to an emotional state than anything else. There doesn’t seem to be a concise word to summarize the travails of being simultaneously driven for a purpose and ‘on’ in every sense of the word, while simultaneously being vulnerable, of allowing oneself to be a neophyte open to happenstance and opportunity. A paradox, a process indefinable in temporal and physical terms and yet definite in experience and memory, ‘fielding’ may better capture the dynamic Being, the what, why and how, of fieldwork.
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