Art and Archaeology Close Encounters of the Third Kind (original) (raw)
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Chapter 25: The Public Face of Archaeology at Çatalhöyük
Last House on the Hill: BACH Area Reports from Çatalhöyük, Turkey (Çatalhöyük vol.11), edited by R. Tringham and M. Stevanovic, pp. 503-529. Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA., 2012
In this chapter I set the efforts that we have taken to give the BACH Project a public face within the context of some of the work of the Çatalhöyük Research Project, which itself is set in the broader enterprise of cultural heritage and public archaeology. I start with a discussion on the nature of Public Archaeology and Cultural Heritage. In this chapter I identify more with a practice-based discourse of heritage rather than what LauraJane Smith has referred to quite critically in her book The Uses of Heritage as the hegemony of the traditional heritage discourse based on a common-sense identification of “heritage as ‘old’, monumental, grand, and aesthetically pleasing sites, buildings, places and artifacts”. Smith’s argument is that heritage is about much more than objects and sites and landscapes, although these play a role in creating the contexts of practice; it is about the cultural and social processes and performances of management, conservation/preservation, interpretation, and commemoration. I continue with a discussion on the relationship between the sustainability and the longevity of heritage. I conclude that to achieve sustainable longevity, a heritage place needs to be designed, managed and presented with the possibility of flexibility in meeting the challenge of changing social and cultural trends, values, and practices. Longevity is not achieved by irreversibly preserving a place or a tradition, or locking it away in a museum or digital vault, but by bringing the idea and its tangible, intangible, and/or digital manifestation into everyday practice, so that the place or the digital document can be accessed, visited, used, and built upon (metaphorically) by many generations in the future. We are always reminded that archaeological excavation is a form of destruction of heritage, although ironically its aim is to create knowledge about the past. Archaeology’s current format of documentation is predominantly digital. Thus the cleansing of digital servers and drives may seem less political than the destruction of tangible or intangible heritage, but it can result in equally devastating destruction of past heritage and knowledge. This leads me into a discussion of how digital documentation leads in good practices of sustainability for the long-term. I then pose the question what are the implications of these sustainability issues of heritage and its digital documentation for the public presentation of heritage? The response is a discussion about the multiplicity of publics/communities and the varying “affects” that heritage performance and communication has on them. Each person creates meaning out of what they see and hear depending on their lives, knowledge base, and experiences at the time. Thus, the audience is not a group entity passively waiting to be filled with information. Guidance and scaffolding will better encourage active participation and sustained use by users and visitors, than structured information transmission. This conclusion leads into the important point for the BACH project that innovative strategies based on the creative uses of digital technology and on less fixed, less tangible manifestations of heritage interpretation become highly attractive. Digitally based and event-based presentations are seductive and engaging – they are also powerful ways of reaching many publics - but they are ephemeral social practices, and their meaning and engagement may not last. This puts a certain responsibility on the designers and managers of heritage places to be aware of emerging formats and interests and to maintain the heritage place as a focus of their attention, rather than to think of their design as a finite project to be completed and moved on from. In fact the maintenance of a heritage place is not only the responsibility of the designers and managers of heritage. Remembering, commemorating, and forgetting the past is an active cultural – and political – process. The idea of all heritage being “intangible” forefronts the role of memory, stories, experience and ‘affect’ of social practice in places, creating a large intellectual space for heritage visitors and practitioners to participate in the construction of history through the creation of multiple and multivocal narratives that provide a healthy contrast to a single set of facts received by ‘consensual agreement’ from the authoritative story of the past. I come at last to Çatalhöyük as a Heritage Site and discuss a number of past and ongoing issues and public archaeology projects (including TEMPER) at the site. Among these is a discussion started by Louise Doughty and Ian Hodder on the challenges of engaging the public with prehistoric sites especially those without surface architecture , and the entangled nature of the many publics interested in Çatalhöyük as pointed out by social anthropologists Ayfer Bartu-Candan and David Shankland. In this chapter I draw attention to the broader definition of "public" as including both on-site as well as on-line communities and the large and varied population that makes up the ever-changing Çatalhöyük project team. The sections that follow describe the ways in which communication about the Çatalhöyük Research Project, especially the BACH project, are implemented: •On-site Installations: the idea of Excavation as live performance, Demonstration Houses in which excavation is frozen to show architectural features in situ, The Visitor Center, The Replica Neolithic House created by Mirjana Stevanović. In this section I also describe The Compound where the team members live and work which impacts the visitor experience by their exclusion from it. On-site Self-guided Tours, Display panels, Audio Guide, and the Video-Walks of the Remediated Places Project are other on-site installations. Finally Press Day is the dramatic annual performative event for the complete team and the public. •Off-site Performance includes presentations about the to public and/or professional audiences, as well as live performances and museum exhibits. •Media Popularization and Popular Culture representation of Çatalhöyük includes a discussion on the differing popular impact of the two periods of research. I review four popular books that represent the impact of the new excavations. •On-line Sharing: a discussion of Çatalhöyük’s digital heritage in relation to the transformation of the Internet during the project's history, including Conventional (Web 1.0) websites and portals, and the more recent democratization of technology provided by the public participation and professional networking of Web 2.0. This section also includes the important issue of sharing digital databases with the public. The impact of licensing the Çatalhöyük data with Creative Commons ‘some rights reserved’ is to ensure greater usability of the project's data, thus encouraging its greater sustainability and longevity The BACH's contributions to the outerfacing of the Çatalhöyük and BACH Databases receives a long discussion at this point. The final section of the paper concerns Çatalhöyük and the use of the project on-site facilities and on-line data as resources for learning about archaeology and the process by which we construct the prehistoric past of Turkey both within and outside Turkey.
Analog to Digital: Transitions in Theory and Practice in Archaeological Photography at Çatalhöyük
2016
Archaeology and photography has a long, co-constructed history that has increasingly come under scrutiny as archaeologists negotiate the visual turn. Yet these investigations do not make use of existing qualitative and quantitative strategies developed by visual studies to understand representation in archaeological photographs. This article queries the large photographic archive created by ongoing work at the archaeological site of Çatalhöyük in Turkey to consider the visual impact of changing photographic technologies and of a shifting theoretical focus in archaeology. While using content analysis and semiotic analysis to better understand the visual record, these analyses also unexpectedly reveal power dynamics and other social factors present during archaeological investigation. Consequently, becoming conversant in visual analyses can contribute to developing more reflexive modes of representation in archaeology.
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.
Visualizing, reconstructing, and „visiting” the past: a challenge for the modern archaeotourist? This paper aims to present how the modern digital technology can be a medium to a direct connection between the past and the future for visitors of archaeological sites. The presentation is based on my PhD dissertation about the cult group in Lycosura in Arcadia of Peloponnese and the upcoming 3D reconstruction project of the colossal statues in the dark cella of the temple of Despoina. Pausanias was an archaeotourist of the 2nd century AD., who visited the sanctuary of Despoina at Lycosura and his description about the temple, the statues, and the secret cult of the goddess is the only literary source about this archaeological site. The preserved fragments of the depicted figures in the National Archaeological Museum of Athens and of Lycosura Museum and the digital reconstruction of the group give the opportunity to the modern scholar and viewer to visualize and see them completed. A 3D visualization and tour inside the temple, where the visitor can experience and interpret the colossal group could be a real challenge. What is the purpose of this reconstruction and how far can the virtual reality affect the interest of interpreting ancient traditions? How can the visitor- in the case of Lycosura- experience the secret and forbidden and be a part of them?
Yasemin Karakaya Science and Art Center Archaeology Project
The present study is based on an archaeology project, which was aimed to provide the 3rd and 4th grade students of Yasemin Karakaya Science and Art Center of the Ministry of National Education of Turkey with historical information and high level thinking skills such as analysis, synthesis, and assessment, and performed in 13 sessions for 6 groups during the 2012-2013 educational year. It was intended in the scope of the project to help improve the sense of protection and possession towards cultural assets and raise awareness regarding cultural heritage at early ages based on the themes of Anatolian civilizations, archaeological excavations, basic principles of archaeology, and archaeological materials. During the project, activities towards the objectives of creativity, love of art, visual imagery, museum awareness, and visual culture were conducted by the field representatives in different milieu via various educational methods. The final products of the project activities were shared in the scope of an exhibition in the science fest.
Image communication and contemporary visualisation in the popularisation of archaeology
Sprawozdania Archeologiczne, 2023
Markiewicz M. 2022. Image communication and contemporary visualisation in the popularisation of archaeology. Sprawozdania Archologiczne 74/2, 7-28. In modern society where images begin to play a dominant role in the cognitive process, the use of visualisation as a carrier of information about archaeological research becomes more and more important. The main aim of this article is to consider visualisation as a method of education and protection of cultural heritage, as well as the role of image communication in popularising archaeology. These issues will be subject to a critical discussion in terms of advantages, possibilities and challenges resulting from the use of 3D reconstruction of prehistoric objects in museology, the Internet and popular science publications. In order to understand the idea of image communication in popularising the archaeological heritage better, an example of visualisations comprising a graphic part of museum exhibitions will be presented.
ICOM Prague, ICMAH Annual Conference , 2022
The restoration and reinstallation work in the Classical Building, in which primarily ancient Greece and Roman artifacts are exhibited, within the İstanbul Archaeological Museums, has just been carried out. While the first phase of the work was completed in September 2019, the second phase was completed at the end of 2021 and the Museum was opened to visitors. The galleries of the Classic Building are arranged in chronological order and every gallery has a theme related to the objects exhibited and their periods. These themes have been supported with large wall-sized graphic panels in every gallery. The main purpose of the graphic panels with historical subjects is to move archaeology beyond fantasy or myth and to make history more understandable for the audience. Because, due to the possibility that the objects cannot provide enough information directly to the audience, it may be inevitable in some cases to use various visuals in order to tell the story behind the objects and visualize them in the minds of the visitors. In this paper, I will try to explain how the story behind the object has been visualized in the new exhibition of Istanbul Archeological Museums by focusing on the criteria and main principles applied in the exhibition process.
2020_"The Archaeology of Images: from Excavations to Archives"
S. Alaura (ed.), Digging in the Archives (Documenta Asiana XI), Rome, 2020
In the continuous process of storing, managing, processing and interpreting the data from the field, the production of images seems to be an enduring activity, which mirrors and reveals the continuity of research more than the written production does. In light of this potential quantity of images produced in the course of archaeological research, digging and drawing seem to be bound together by reciprocal necessity. In accordance with the contemporary focus on the history of archaeology, new attention has recently been paid to archaeological drawings. In particular, approximately two centuries of archaeological research in the Near East and their graphic/visual documentation constitute a prominent case study. In fact, the circulation of images of ancient Mesopotamian monuments in both the scientific and public domains contributed more in a way to the consolidation of the historical importance of the first discoveries in contemporary Western culture and politics of the 19th century than narrative reports did. Most important, the echo of that visual documentation is reflected in the current interpretation of ancient architecture as it has been reflected in the primary record of the archaeological remains through the past decades of field research, independently of the application of traditional or informative instruments of drawing. Thus, in accordance with the numerical and qualitative relevance of the drawings in the archaeological set of data, it seems important to pursue specific lines of research regarding archaeological drawings, not only to valorize the archives and their contents, but also to trace and develop a helpful method for reading a drawing as an alternative narrative accompanying both discovery and interpretation.