The Archaeological Imagination - Summary (original) (raw)
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The Archaeological Imagination - Origins and Case Studies
To recreate the world behind the ruin in the land, to reanimate the people behind the sherd of antique pottery, to bring alive the past-in-the-present, as in an historical novel, to cherish and work upon fragments of the past, what remains of the past in the present. This is the work of the archaeological imagination – a creative impulse and faculty at the heart of the discipline of archaeology, but also embedded in many cultural dispositions, ways of thinking and talking, institutions like museums and archives, commonly associated with the modern world. This book details the components of the archaeological imagination by connecting its origins in the eighteenth century with popular culture, the heritage industry and academic interests today. This file is of the introduction and the case studies that plot the origins of the archaeological imagination in the eighteenth century, as well as offering examples from contemporary popular culture.
The Archaeological Imagination (2019)
2020
Draft: to appear in The Cambridge Handbook of the Imagination, Anna Abraham (ed). A summary description and critical assessment of the character, scope, and working of the archaeological imagination since the seventeenth century. "Imagining past lives experienced through ruins and remains: telling the story of a prehistoric village through the remains of the site and its artifacts. And more: dealing with the return of childhood memories, or designing an archive for a corporation. The archaeological imagination is a creative capacity mobilized when we experience traces and vestiges of the past, when we gather, classify, conserve and restore, when we work with such remains, collections, archives to deliver narratives, reconstructions, accounts, explanations, or whatever ..."
Journal of Skyscape Archaeology, 2023
All archaeologists use creative methods, whether consciously or unconsciously. In the context of archaeological theory and method, the edited volume Art in the Archaeological Imagination explores postprocessual approaches to the study of the past through art and imagination. The editor, Dragoş Gheorghiu, is a professor at the Bucharest National University of Arts in Romania and the author of many publications in the field of historical anthropology and archaeology. His research topics span from sensorial to experiential approaches, intangible heritage to augmented reality, rites of passage to prehistoric technologies. European prehistory is the historical context mostly explored in his publica-tions, and that is also the case with this volume. He has been the co-author of several EAA (European Association of Archaeologists) conference sessions in recent years, with themes centred on soundscapes and rhythm in prehistory, anthropomorphism, identity, interdisci-plinarity and educational practices between past and present. Archaeological imagination is also a key topic among Gheorghiu’s interests. This subject has been explored already by Michael Shanks, who observes that “there are many creative choices to be made in the way that we may take up the past” (Shanks 2012, 149). Adding art to the idea of archaeological imagination, for Gheorghiu the field can be referred as “art-chaeology”, to emphasise the “cognitive analogies between the archaeological research and the artistic practices” (p. 95). The volume contains much technical language, but the book is nevertheless acces-sible to non-specialists, with the style changing across the different contributions. In some chapters, such as Jacqui Wood’s contribution on “the prehistoric artisan’s mindset”, findings are presented qualitatively in the form of an artist’s diary or journal, and take a subjective literary form. Other chapters, however, tend towards quantitative analysis and essay-style arguments on topics such as cognition, aesthetics, psychology and demog-raphy. Several black-and-white images aid comprehension.
'Archaeology’s places and contemporary uses'. An archaeologist’s perspective
The relationship between archaeologists and architects dealing in cultural heritage is not always idyllic. It can be complex, tense and sometimes, even hostile with each discipline being characterized by seemingly incompatible principles and criteria. The issue is part of a wide and heated debate focusing on the preservation and enhancement of archaeological heritage, using this term both for ancient buildings and areas subjected to the excavation activities of archaeologists. The recent increase in conferences, study days and publications demonstrates the attention that professionals are paying to this problem 1 . There seems to be a desire to find the meeting point where profound reflection can occur with respect to the meaning of the work of archaeologists and architects regarding the protection, enhancement and communication of historical places. The Intensive Programme 'Archaeology's places and contemporary uses' appears strictly related to this topic. Students belonging to faculties of Architecture and Archaeology coming from Italy, Spain and The United Kingdom have been involved in the creation of temporary shelters for archaeological sites in the Triveneto region. During the first days they were arranged into mixed groups, awakening them to the many differences imposed by university education, culture, outlook and modus operandi which they were expected to overcome in order to fulfil project requirements to a certain degree of quality. Specific areas of X Regio Augustea were selected to highlight the different needs and priorities required by each different site. The groups had to analyse aspects such as the history of the area, its relationship with the environment, protection from natural and human elements and, last but not least, its improvement. The result was a tense dialogue with no-holds barred: tension, friction, ideas merging and clashing in a practical demonstration of the importance of collaboration among differing professionals. As the archaeologists' tutor for this edition as well as the previous one I pondered at length the potential impact that an experiment like this could have on the growth of young archaeologists and designers who wanted to practice in the field of archaeological heritage. It constituted an occasion for a strict analysis of ethical and social responsibilities, strengths and weaknesses that characterize both of the disciplines. It wasn't easy. Let's face it: we think in dissimilar ways and view problems from dissimilar perspectives. Not even languages are the same. An example which is more significant than it may at first appear is the use of the term 'ruins' commonly used by architects as opposed to 'archaeological evidence' preferred by archaeologists. Clearly synonyms, but even in this case the students seemed to want to distinguish the same notion into different streams of thought. For students of Architecture the term 'ruins', rather than evoke Houel, Goethe or Maupassant's romantic vision, it emphasized their decay. Ruins reach the present through a series of passages that have eroded its original form thus representing fragments of an intangible past but creating a new entity at the same time: a sort of Chimera. Although mysterious and fascinating, ruins for them remained unrelated to contemporary reality, frozen in their timeless dimension. Creating a link between the old and the new was often the young architects' conceptual premise. They gave fundamental value to the redevelopment of the ruins, resurrected only through the creative impulse of their work.
The legends and the myths from the popular culture are quite a common element everywhere in the world. But when they come to be combined to ruins and ancient buildings there is often some kind of special mix. This mix brings the imagination beyond the works and the ventures of paladins and architects, it brings the imagination to discover the " underground world ". So it may happen to hear stories about tunnels, caves, hidden rooms where fabulous treasures are hidden. The size and the possibility to see the place is simply secondary. Most of the time, if no one is able to find those places that is considered the demonstration of how it is difficult to discover them. There are many meaningful examples of these phenomena: from places seen, but only partially explored, to places that have lost the consistence of the myth and are then recognized in their real function, to the places only existing in the collective imagination. The research structure proposed here will present an approach to this subject, linking together strategies for documentation, digital survey solutions and techniques for cataloguing the intangible elements from the popular culture. It will propose some important and clear samples like the " Buca di San Rocco " in Sasso Pisano, Tuscany (a cave crossing the rock where a fortress was raised); the Cryptoporticus of the Hadrian's Villa in Tivoli (where the legend places the rooms for Hadrian's expiation); the mysterious tunnel in San Marco Argentano in Calabria, imagined as crossing the land from the local castle to a nearby monastery. These samples (and others) will allow to structure a proposal for documenting and interpreting the reasons of this specific fascination, creating not a simple catalogue of strange places and mysteries, but a tool for interpreting the relationship between suggestion and strength of the architectural and archaeological remains in the popular culture. First of all, we give a brief explanation of what we mean by " Intangible Heritage ". When we talk about " Intangible Heritage " we address to that huge portion of our culture which is not tangible or palpable: songs, music, theatre and many other cultural components are naturally included in this enormous patrimony. A set of artistic expressions with which is impossible to interact, though they are completely and widely recorded. A bizarre consideration is that even architecture, at first glance one of the most tangible and palpable form of art, can sometimes be considered as another example of " Intangible Heritage ". We do note that this immaterial patrimony is often passed down orally, within small or large communities, tending to emphasize
Experiencing the Past: On the Character of Archaeology
Routledge, 1992
All things archaeological - from archaeological method, the connections between archaeology and modernity, through a process-relational paradigm, to the heritage industry and archaeology as a mode of cultural production, with an outline of archaeology as craft. Overall it is an exploration of the archaeological imagination, as I called it when I was at University Wales Lampeter, with archaeology a relationship between the remains of the past and present interests. I wrote this book while still making my way into archaeology - it brought together what I had been saying with Chris Tilley in the 1980s with a personal vision of what the archaeogical past means to many people now. The book takes risks with experimental writing and imaging, including eidetics and collage. Twenty five years after publication it is pleasing to see that much of what I was writing about then has come to figure significantly in archaeological thinking: — the book is a kind of analysis of the discourse of archaeology and exemplifies an interest in how the past may be mediated - written and visualized - imagery, simulation, narrative — the book argues for an extension of archaeological interest to include the contemporary world - archaeologies of the contemporary past, with a particular focus upon the convergence of archaeology and contemporary art — in this the book deals with archaeology's cultural associations with modernity - horror fiction to gardening, forensics to fakery — the cultural politics of archaeology are revealed through an ethnography of archaeology, archaeologists and those with archaeological interests the book argues for a new conception of heritage - not academic disdain for popular interest in the remains of the past, but a celebration of certain kinds of actuality that embody creative relationships with the past — rather than have archaeology only engaged in explaining and interpreting the past, the book argues for a post-interpretive turn to take us beyond epistemology into work upon the materiality of the past - ontologies of relationship between past and present — this means thinking about the materiality of cultural experience and its embodiment - a focus on experiences past and present in a process-relational paradigm related to a reading of Nietzsche, Bergson, Adorno's negative dialectics, and Deleuze's nomadics.
Archaeological Dialogues, 2018
The paper ponders on the object of archaeology, called here 'the archaeological.' It argues that the existence of such an object is a necessary premise of the field and that ultimately it is on this object that the validity of all claims and arguments must rest. The paper suggests that the archaeological be conceived as a cultural phenomenon that consists in being disengaged from the social, an understanding that positions archaeology as a counterpart to the social sciences and the humanities, rather than a member in the same milieu. The first part of the paper focuses on the position of the archaeological with reference to the concepts of 'Nature' and 'Culture' that eventually leads us to a confrontation of archaeological statics with the dynamics of the world. Efforts to justify and understand archaeological statics, consequently, leads to the recognition of a constitutive distinction between buried and non-buried conditions, upon which the differentiation of the archaeological from the social is established.