Multiple fields & archaeological practice: Multiple fields and surface survey

Key Pages

Christopher Witmore |
-- |
Table of Contents |
-- |
Archive |
Scenographies |
-- |
Symmetrical Archaeology |
-- |
the Metamedia Laboratory |
-- |
Mediating Archaeology

In this section, I detail the ways in which the Argolid Exploration Project (AEP) (Jameson, Runnels, and van Andel 1994; Runnels, Pullen and Langdon 1995; Sutton 2000; van Andel and Runnels 1987), an intensive archaeological survey, progressively moved from the material past of the countryside to the polished language of the final publication. By focusing on what archaeologists actually do in real-time, I rework the notion of field in relation to the archaeological process, that is the mobilization of the material world, whereby the archaeological materials of the Greek countryside are transformed into text, plans, and documents—into media (specifically refer to Latour 1986, 1-40; 1999, 24-79). In this way, archaeology is able to manifest sites, landscapes, and materials and transport them anywhere while maintaining something of their reality on a two-dimensional surface. Of course, theodolites, tapes, pencils, rulers, paper, graven images and the printing press have a stake in this too. Many of these ‘actants’ will also be acknowledged.

My purpose here is to shift the field from the material side of the divide and position it along a series of transformations that occurs between the Greek countryside and the final publication volumes from the AEP. Rather than a background to the ‘objects’ of a distanced and detached archaeological gaze, these fields have action. They play roles in situating and directing survey practice. Furthermore, I argue that the archaeological process, far from linear, is one full of many twists and turns. By referencing every step between the Greek countryside and the final publication volumes, the practitioners behind the AEP regional survey facilitated the possibility of circulation, the potential for reiterative practice. It is in this regard that I approach AEP process by retracing the references maintained in the project archive in the Department of Classics at Stanford University.

Return to Media | archaeology

Forward to the fields of the AEP

Table of Contents

Multiple fields and archaeological practice Home