The Concept of Art as Archaeologically Applicable (original) (raw)
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The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology and Anthropology of Rock Art, 2017
This chapter explores questions of ontology in rock art analysis. More specifically, it argues that the distinction between ‘informed’ methods and ‘formal’ methods reproduces some problematic dichotomies, such as the distinction between active subjects and inert objects, culture and nature, and a conceptualization of meaning as being external to the art itself. The chapter proposes a move away from such an ontologically hierarchical approach to rock art analysis to a relational approach in which there is no ontological priority between the different elements that make up the rock art assemblage. It emphasizes that placing formal methods at the heart of rock art studies, alongside analogy, shifts the questions we ask of rock art away from simple epistemologically derived enquiries to ontological questions. To illustrate this the chapter examines case studies of parietal art of the European Palaeolithic and Comanche rock art in North America.
Art, craft, and the ontology of archaeological things
Tim Ingold's 'science of correspondence' describes a kind of epistemological intimacy in the practices of art, science, and anthropology. Archaeology would benefit from cultivating correspondence as a way to understand its research process. Ingold's model, however, appears to elide art and craft. Though both are necessary, I argue they should be kept separate for analytical purposes. Correspondence as pre-conceptual practice provides a way to understand that the form of archaeological objects is the outcome of processes of growth rather than design. Artworks as non-conceptual outcomes of practice provide insight into the nature of archaeological things beyond what can be understood under the general terms of correspondence. Artworks and archaeological things share the ontological problem of how to make something new out of materials. Artists work on materials to generate sensations never before experienced. Archaeologists work on a more circumscribed body of material to produce a past not thought of or experienced before. Unlike artworks, archaeological things carry both sensation and the residue of concepts with them. An archaeological sensibility can help archaeologists resurrect not the original concepts themselves but the conceptual potential immanent to the specific arrangements of materials and the forms they, however temporarily, take on.
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.
Introduction: Artistic Practices and Archaeological Research
Artistic practices and archaeological research, 2019
Printed ISBN 9781789691405. Epublication ISBN 9781789691412. Artistic Practices and Archaeological Research aims to expand the field of archaeological research with an anthropological understanding of practices which include artistic methods. The project has come about through a collaborative venture between Dragoş Gheorghiu (archaeologist and professional visual artist) and Theodor Barth (anthropologist). This anthology contains articles from professional archaeologists, artists and designers. The contributions cover a scale ranging from theoretical reflections on pre-existing archaeological finds/documentation, to reflective field-practices where acts of ‘making’ are used to interface with the site. These acts feature a manufacturing range from ceramics, painting, drawing, type-setting and augmented reality (AR). The scope of the anthology – as a book or edited whole – has accordingly been to determine a comparative approach resulting in an identifiable set of common concerns. Accordingly, the book proceeds from a comparative approach to research ontologies, extending the experimental ventures of the contributors, to the hatching of artistic propositions that demonstrably overlap with academic research traditions, of epistemic claims in the making. This comparative approach relies on the notion of transposition: that is an idea of the makeshift relocation of methodological issues – research ontologies at the brink of epistemic claims – and accumulates depth from one article to the next as the reader makes her way through the volume. However, instead of proposing a set method, the book offers a lighter touch in highlighting the role of operators between research and writing, rather entailing a duplication of practice, in moving from artistic ideas to epistemic claims. This, in the lingo of artistic research, is known as exposition. Emphasising the construct of the ‘learning theatre’ the volume provides a support structure for the contributions to book-project, in the tradition of viewing from natural history. The contributions are hands-on and concrete, while building an agenda for a broader contemporary archaeological discussion. http://archaeopress.com/ArchaeopressShop/Public/displayProductDetail.asp?id={BAAF7F21-9F73-4A38-AACC-AD0DD3A5B31C}
Fleeing from Categories: Monstrous Artefacts and Style in Archaeology
Monstrous Ontologies: Politics, Ethics, Materiality, 2021
The styles of Celtic art are populated by monstrous artefacts whose forms and decorations are an admixture of animal, human, and vegetal motifs. Because of these material qualities, monstrous artefacts flee from our categorisations, capture our attention, and entrap our senses. They evade from the notion of style that archaeology has created to make sense of the cultures and people who created them. In this paper, I present an analysis of style and argue that it is necessary to take monstrous artefacts seriously. An enterprise that requires to analyse what they do for us, rather than what they represent. That is, observing the requirements that these monstrous artefacts place on artisans in the context of reproducing them. By adopting the Material Engagement Theory (MET), I present a novel definition of style as a continuous creative process: an accumulation of ways of thinking and acting recreated every time an artisan engages with them through required creative gestures and skills. The aim is to explore how artefact are not passive entities but actively constitute our modes of engaging with the world.
In this chapter, practices surrounding production and reception of north Swedish rock paintings are investigated. Taking the accumula- tive aspect of rock art as point of departure, the material is addressed in the constricted temporal frame of a late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age. After demonstrating the applicability of the four-phase chronology originally developed for elk figures at the region’s larg- est petroglyph site; Nämforsen, 112 elk figures from 33 of 35 painting sites are quantified. The result shows an increase of red-ochre paintings from approximately 2500 BC. Additionally, this process is characterised by a changed attitude towards non-synchronised artistic dialogue, from making pictorial expressions on previously-unpainted cliffs, the composition practices start to revolve around panels made in the past. This engagement with communal memory and historicity encompassed both iconoclastic and archaic prac- tices. Although the design references a Mesolithic style, the compositional interactions were orientated towards transformation of images made in the past. Drawing on recent studies in environmental research, this use of red ochre is proved to occur simultaneously with significant climate changes. As an interpretative conclusion, the role of red ochre pictures during the late Neolithic is suggested to have operated as a complex semiotic tool, used for grasping concerns regarding the balance between tradition and revitalization. This view on the role of rock paintings implies a view on pictorial significance as situated in time, and thus changeable, dynamic and entangled in the social.