Monthly Archives: March 2012

Democratizing Heritage: New Media

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This week our discussion centered on the use of visual and new media in public archaeology.  This blog already provides examples of a wide range of alternative tools for communicating archaeology: blogs, digital narratives created through Voicethread, Youtube videos, and online museum exhibits to name a few. What possibilities do media outside of the traditional academic categories open for doing public archaeology? What challenges to alternative media present?

General consensus seems to be that new media are a powerful tool for communicating with the public- more compelling and interesting than traditional texts. New media are more accessible both to readers, who have the ability to give direct feedback, and to authors, who can be published online without much of the gatekeeping of print.

Chip Colwel-Chanthaphonh saw the potential in an online archaeology exhibit to reach a wide audience while also providing not just information, but an experience that steeped the viewer in culture through music, image, video, text and art. For him, “alternative” archaeology is best matched with alternative media. Ruth Van Dyke explores other possibilities in new media, including experimental video that challenges the conventional codes used in archaeology documentaries, hyperlinked web sites that force the viewer to navigate his or her own course.

Though critical movements in archaeology have led to a deeper self-consciousness in the producers of archaeological knowledge when writing texts, Sara Perry sees a lack of critical examination in the use of images. She uses the example of visualizations used for the peopling of areas as a troubling example in which contemporary and objectivizing conceptions are projected on the past and legitimated through the unquestioned mode of image.  She suggests remediating such images to force the viewer to engage with them as constructed media rather than as transparent depictions of reality. Van Dyke also notes the power images, in particular photographs, have to legitimate themselves; a picture says, “I was there”. She suggests using this power to drive new interpretations that challenge present accepted interpretations.

 

 

 

The texts mentioned here focus on how new media can be and has been used to communicate archaeology, but only in one direction, from the archaeologist to the non-archaeological public. Could video, interactive programming, or other non-traditional forms  ever be considered appropriate for communication strictly within academic circles?

 

 

 

Looking Both Ways

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Looking Both Ways is an online, interactive exhibit about the Alutiiq People of Southern Alaska, created by the Smithsonian Arctic Studies Center, the Alutiiq Museum and Archaeological Repository and the Alaska Native Heritage Center. The names of these three institutions are displayed largely on the homepage, indicating the collaborative nature of the project.

The exhibit provides a brief introduction to the region and people and map, which you can click on to learn about each village. Each village has about five photographs from different time periods with descriptions that name specific individuals and locations. The exhibit also has a section entitled “Object Categories,” which is comprised of different pages, such as “Our Ancestors,” or “Our Beliefs,” that use archaeological artifacts to tell the story of their way of life and show their evolution from the time of their ancestors through the present. These materials are, however, completely removed from their context, photographed against a white background, and the descriptions rarely tell you from which site they were found, which village they belonged to, what they meant to their owners or how they were found. Furthermore, images under the “Our Way of Living” section are given no dates, and are photographed as if primitive tools, no longer in use, but they sill allow the viewer to associate them with contemporary Alutiiq life. (see right)

I think the main idea of the site is to attempt tell the story of the Alutiiq people from their perspective, and teach the public about their heritage and identity. However, the exhibition focuses primarily based on the incontrovertible evidence of archaeological material to build their story, rather than through the multiple perspectives of oral histories, and in doing so loses any sense of indigenous authorship, despite its alleged collaboration. Whether the individual tribes where a part of the process, remains unclear.

While there are a lot of good ideas in this site, and it is very engaging, in some areas I believe is misuses images, as Perry warns us in her article. Some of the pictures are so obviously staged that they seem a bit phony, more like Halloween costume advertisements than images of real contemporary people, as they are completely removed from any sort of context (see left). Images such as these perpetuate stereotypes, and do not enable the viewer to create this new, factual-based conception of modern and historical indigenous life that the site aims to depict.

Review of Colonial Williamsburg’s Online Exhibit, “Mapping Colonial America”

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I have chosen to review the “Mapping Colonial America” online exhibit on the Colonial Williamsburg website.  The home page of the actually Colonial Williamsburg website consists of scrolling images that relate to a number of really cool blogs and articles relating to colonial US history.  Among these links is also access to a page titled “Help Preserve America’s History,” allowing site visitors to make donations.

 

To access the exhibit, one must click a link title “Museums” and from there click “Online Exhibits and Multimedia.”  That page then lays out links to the online exhibits including a summary of each one.  I have chosen to focus on the online exhibits, “Mapping Colonial America,” which discusses and displays colonial maps from the collection at Colonial Williamsburg.

The multimedia presentation first displays a home page with the title of the exhibit with a sketch of a ship and what appears to be an old compass.  This presentation is based on the book “Degrees of Latitude: Mapping Colonial America,” written by Margaret Beck Pritchard and Henry G. Taliaferro.  The presentation display twenty-two maps with a variety of views as well as a brief description of each.  At the top of the page, there a number of topics including “Discovery & Exploration,” briefly discussing the importance and use of maps in colonial America.  The other topics include “Boundary Disputes,” “Navigation &Trade,” “French & Indian War,” “Revolutionary War,” and a “New Nation.”  These topics set the stage for the exhibit, giving an essence to and providing a context for the maps on display.

When clicking “got to maps,” the viewer can begin in 1701 viewing a map entitled “A New Map of Virginia, Maryland, Pensilvania, New Jersey, Part of New York, and Caroline.”  On the bottom of the page is a timeline with marks indicating the time period of the rest of the maps, giving the viewer a sense of where they are in the timeline of colonial American maps.  To the left is a more specific timeline relating to the date the map was created offering information of important events that occurred in colonial America.  On the right is information about the map itself such as the creator of the map, their profession, when the map was created, where it was created, and some interesting facts about it.  The presentation also allows the viewer to click on the map for more specific information about it as well as alternative ways to view the map including close ups of writing on the map.  The viewer may also zoom in on the actual map, which is pretty cool because it allows the viewer to have a more personal experience with the artifact allowing for closer exploration and observation.

I personally really enjoyed this exhibit.  I feel that this multimedia presentation did a great job of condensing relevant information and putting it in one accessible place.  I thought the exhibit was well organized in that the viewer could look through all of the maps but could also click on a map for further information about it.  The number of settings and different ways to view the map were effective as, and I think maybe create a greater impact than seeing the artifact in person.  I say this because the way in which the images are set up, give the viewer an idea of what to look for on the map.  However, I think that this exhibit would be pretty confusing for someone who is not super tech savvy.  I also wish there was a comments section or something like that to offer a place for community discussion.

Burarra Gathering: Sharing Indigenous Knowledge

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Burarra Gathering is an online project authored by Questacon, Australia’s National Science and Technology Centre. At its physical location in Canberra, Questacon provides public exhibitions that promote greater awareness of science and technology within the community, emphasizing fun and hands-on experience. One of their outreach projects is Burarra Gathering, an interactive online exhibition (based on a physical one by the same name) that brings users on a virtual trip to the land of the Burarra people. The creators wanted to explore the significance of Indigenous technologies, and were intend upon making the exhibit ‘collaborative’ with the Burarra people of northern Arnhem Land.

The exhibit does an interesting job of presenting the intersection of Indigenous and ‘mainstream’ cultures. Our virtual host, a teenage boy named Danaja, is depicted wearing a brightly colored jersey and shorts, next to his grandfather in muted colors and a scruffy beard. Both guiding characters introduce the viewer to choice vocabulary of the Burarra language, and demonstrate usage of ‘traditional’ technologies like trapping fish, navigating a boat, understanding seasons, making fire with sticks, and tracking animals. Everything is animated, which perhaps appeals to their younger target audience, but also prevents any sense of real ‘intimacy’ with artifacts.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the online exhibit is the ‘permit application.’ Aboriginal land in Australia is privately owned, and you must be an invited guest to be issued a permit to visit. Danaja presents a postcard inviting us to visit the Burarra people, then asks that the user inputs their name into a simplified version of a permit application. The permit explains the importance of protecting the privacy, culture, and environment of Aboriginal communities.

The interface is not the smoothest by today’s standards, but the site could definitely be interesting and informative in classroom settings. Questacon says that Burarra Gathering has been successful because it shows that indigenous knowledge can be presented in engaging ways, and it helped cultivate a close relationship between Questacon and a remote Burarra community. They also say that it has inspired future creation of more projects that allow Indigenous communities to tell their stories online.

Review: The British Sloop Industry Online Exhibition

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I looked at the the British Sloop Industry Exhibit from the Underwater Archaeology Museum. The authors, Chuck Meide (Director, Lighthouse Archaeological Maritime Program) and Sam Turner (Director of Archaeology, LAMP) identify themselves in the introduction and provide a list of acknowledgments on the credits page (which is, perhaps significantly, a separate page.) The webmaster, T. Kurt Knoerl, is listed at the bottom of the page. In the pictures that follow, none of the people are identified by name (attention is paid to the artifact or process being depicted), nor are the photographers identified. Self-erasure from the record is not the most reflexive method, even if a crew list is provided in the credits.

The introduction provides a historical context concerning Industry’s activities before it embedded itself in a sandbar in St. Augustine’s Harbor in 1764 (St. Augustine being, unfortunately, the sloop’s final destination), and the ship’s subsequent discovery by Southern Oceans Archaeological Research, Inc. in 1997.  The historical background gives a strong narrative of “discovering” and “colonization”, and mention of indigenous settlements is peripheral. This surprised me, as one panicky primary source reported that the beached ship (heavy with artillery and weapons) had been ransacked by Timucuan Indians, such that locals were now fearing all-out warfare. Certainly this is significant! “Today there are no known Native Americans who call themselves Timucuan”, but there must be ways to delve back into the record (archaeological or historical) to integrate that part of the story.

The methodology section provides an interesting account of how looting changes the archaeological process (but in an oddly disaffected way) and includes original surveys, but the jargon is not always explained. The findings section does not contain a full catalogue (a link to a dissertation on Industry provides a larger report), but each item is accompanied by a description, pictures, and historical context, making it the easiest to understand. However, this setup exactly mirrors what one might encounter in a museum, so I am not entirely sure what the online experience “adds” (other than helpful links to said dissertation and LAMP’s website, which are indeed helpful to have as immediate resources.)

SOAR worked to engage the general public through articles, high school internships (providing students with generalized training in nautical studies, museum practice, and public interpretation as well), television segments, and public talks. A section titled “Conservation” shows schoolchildren around a cannon submerged in a tank of water, speaking to the conservation of artifacts as well as public interest.

Viktor Deak and Visual Science

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Per this week’s readings on the power of visuals, I thought I’d post something about paleoartist Viktor Deak:

Homo rudolfensis, Viktor Deak

Deak has created innumerable models of early humans for museums around the world, and has been featured in NOVA’s human origins documentary, Becoming Human. He works with sculpture and digital imaging, often combining mediums to get the hyper-realism he desires (e.g. taking a picture of a sculpture and then photo-editing in minor details). His computer models have also been used to as starting points for simulating the movements of the specimens in question. Deak always begins his work by examining the physical fossil remains, then works his way upwards from a cast of the fossils, laying on muscle structure, cartilage, and finishing up with skin, eyes, and hair. He defines his work as inherently grounded in science: “If there’s no science to begin with, we unfortunately don’t get to do any art.” (New York Times, Envisioning Our Distant Past, 2009)*

However, just from his murals and landscapes (such as the series “Lucy’s World”), it is evident see that human origins as a concept captured Deak’s imagination in a thoroughly un-scientific way, and this (though, far be it from me to pass judgment) is a good thing. In this sense, Deak’s work connects back to our discussion of the power of creative agency and imagination in creating formative epistemologies, even if the modes of learning we are discussing are purely visual. You can’t hypothesize about what something looks like unless you know how to hypothesize (that is, imagine) what something might look like. As colonized archaeology takes away the ability to create new trains of logic from material evidence by limiting the archaeologist’s scope before they even get to the dig, science that is grounded in reiteration and rearticulation without imagination is inevitably a regurgitation of the same information. Thus, imagination becomes a mode of “enskilment”. (Perry 2009)

Neandertals, Viktor Deak

Deak’s own fascination with his subject material is telling in regard to the ways museum practice and archaeological displays capture the hearts and imagination of the public: “Once the eyes are in the face and there’s a face on that thing, I feel as if there’s a chasm of time that’s eliminated. I wish I could travel in time to look at these things, but I can’t. [recall Bolter and Grosin’s discussions of immediacy] So the best thing I can do is to try to bring them to us.” (NOVA, Building Faces From Fossils, 2009; embedded below)**

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*If you choose to watch this interview, be forewarned of the New York Times’ choice of a didgeridoo for representing a “pre-modern human ambiance”.

**Come to think of it, this soundtrack is pretty jarring as well.

Review: NPS Archaeology Exhibit

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The National Park Service’s Archaeology Program hosts a series of online archaeology exhibits, one of which is called The Earliest Americans.The Exhibit's Home Screen. The exhibit’s home screen has a sidebar with a list of subheadings containing links- the first two of which focus on archaeologists and archaeology as a discipline.  These hypermediate the exhibit as constructed, as the bearer of praxis and not just pure information. According to the first of these subheadings, the exhibit was inspired by a Harris poll that assessed the American public’s understanding of archaeology and attempts to move the public’s conception of archaeology away from archaeology and toward an understanding of publicly funded archaeology. The second subheading acknowledges past misrepresentations of early inhabitants of America and discusses the nomination of new National Historic landmarks. Three more subheadings divide the nation into the Midwest, Northeast, and Southeast. These subheadings begin with a migratory narrative of the prehistoric people in the area then have further panels focusing on archaeological and geological conclusions about the area and artifacts.

Each subheading can be converted into a Word document, which betrays the exhibitors’ conception of the exhibit as closer to a book than a museum experience- though links allow the audience to explore under self-direction, there is no video or interactive programming, so text is the dominant medium.

The exhibit is as much about archaeology as it is about early American inhabitants. Photos of archaeologists at work juxtaposed with artist’s interpretations of prehistoric scenes encourage the audience to engage with the text as a product.  Links allow the interested reader to engage deeper with the scholars by reading the study on which it was based. However, this reflexive attempt is mitigated by the fact that the exhibit is almost entirely lacking a female perspective: though one female archaeologist is portrayed in a photograph, the illustrations show only male figures and the narratives are either male-centered or genderless.

Museums and Communities

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This week our discussion focused on the relationship between Museums and their communities, addressing the key themes of the readings, minority criticisms of the museum, the changes and different approaches that have arisen from their demands, including the founding of community and tribal museums, and the issues that must still be addressed in the future.

The most important idea that ran throughout the readings this week was the desire of native communities to take control of the ownership and representation of their heritage, and to bring the idea of ownership to the general public’s attention. While Clifford describes how, at the Kwagiulth Museum and Cultural Centre, each label contains the phrase ‘owned by’ followed by an individual’s name, Atalay criticizes the NMAI’s exhibition for failing to mention the issues of “cultural and intellectual property rights” and give viewers the opportunity to engage with issues such as “who has the right to control, utilize and profit from Indigenous knowledge, symbols [and] images” (Atalay, 608). These examples, however raised the tricky questions of the ownership and repatriation of rare and precious artifacts. Should scholars and museums give back ownership of objects that they have the means to better preserve for the future, or objects that, through analysis, have the possibility to provide valuable information? Another common theme was the importance of collaboration with Native communities at every stage of the process, in order to create exhibits that counter stereotypes and are relevant and beneficial to the community’s needs. The readings also discuss the importance of highlighting contemporary issues facing indigenous communities, in order to show the public that these are not static, unchanged cultures, but active ones that are both producing new things in art and culture and facing the issue of survival.

In order to fully understand the importance of museum representation, and the criticisms of museums that arose to fight for representation, one must realize the power of the museum as an instrument of civil society. Karp discusses the power a museum has to construct knowledge, provide the public with a certain set of cultural values and define the ideal citizen, which easily excludes groups who do not fit that image. With the catalyst of the civil rights movement, minority groups began to fight for better representation, arguing that museums had an all white staff, served a cultural elite and followed a Western-based knowledge approach that excluded minority perspectives and stories.

As minority groups began to voice these ideas through picketing, demonstration, establishing coalitions, and even vandalism, museums began to focus on their responsibility to their communities. Changes began to occur in subject matter, the exhibition planning process and the variety of activities museums offered. Museums established advisory boards, complied of individuals from the cultural groups they are representing, to aid and approve exhibitions, and have often turned them into permanent consultative positions. One of the most challenging questions of our discussion, however, was if this advisory involvement is enough, or if these boards are merely token positions. While this is definitely a good step, I think that there is more that can be done, in both changing the structure of the museum, and in educating and providing opportunities in the museum field for minority students. While there has been an increased interest in visitor feedback, with the installation of focus groups and comment books, and community outreach and education, with the Philadelphia Museum of Art helping provide ten Latino students with paid internships in the museum field, and many other museums, especially those in urban areas stressing the importance of the “education and vocational training of young people,” and creating mentor-ship programs for students (Simpson), still more can be done.

Another major issue we discussed is how museums address controversial issues. How far does one go in exposing the truth in an exhibition? Atalay’s major criticism of the NMAI is that they did not go far enough in the presentations of the guns and bibles, which were instruments of oppression and horror. Atalay claims that “there can be no stories of survivance without an understanding of the extreme struggle and survival in the face of horrific circumstance,” arguing that the full gory context must be provided in order for viewers to fully understand Native American survivance (Atalay, 610). In this decision of how revolutionary to make an exhibition, however, the curators hope to be offend as little of their audience as possible. Simpson states that the curator tread[s] a tightrope between offending one sector of the community or another: for no matter how warranted a revisionist approach may be, it almost certainly cannot fail to offend those who prefer the nostalgia and glories of heroic myths to the realities of the past,” highlighting how even within one cultural group, it is very difficult to make everyone happy, much less dealing with an entire diverse public. Thus controversy often arises when a museum challenges a popular belief or national ideology, or when there is a misinterpretation of the exhibit’s mission. Simpson believes such issues can can be avoided by clearly stating one’s objectives, close collaboration with native communities, creating open places for discussion, and using vandalism as a starting point for dialog and bringing difficult issues to the public’s attention.

Finally, we discussed the development of community and tribal museums as spaces for communities to take control of the representation of their cultures, to house community activities and to promote their culture. In contrast with cosmopolitan, majority museums, tribal museums challenge the idea of a unified, linear national history, focusing instead on the importance of family relationships and local narratives. Even these community spaces, however, may not be as open as they seem, as certain communities may be given preference over others, and exhibits may not be rotated as often as they proclaim.

Thus, while great strides have been by museums to connect to their public, there are still many issues they must address in the future, including indigenous ownership, minority involvement in the planning process, establishing long term relationships with diverse communities, dismantling their Eurocentric approach, including multiple perspectives, and daring to expose the truth of the colonial past.

Highway to the Past: The Archaeology of the Central Artery Project–A Review.

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The online archaeology exhibit, “Highway to the Past: The Archaeology of the Central Artery Project,” was created by “an intern from Northeastern University.” Though it would be preferable to know the name of this intern, the website was part of an archaeological project conducted by the Massachusetts Historical Commission, which lends it some legitimacy. That is, assuming the intern was actually working for the Commission. Knowing the author of a site can give the viewer an idea of the perspective the author is presenting a topic from, and may suggest possible biases. It can also help the reader decide whether or not the author can be trusted as an expert on their subject.  Here, it is a bit ambiguous.

This exhibit does a good job clearly and concisely explaining the context of the archaeological finds and what the objects are. There are also many pictures of the sites, the excavation process, and the artifacts. Only one of the sites in the archaeological project (which was done over a large area before the construction of a major highway in Boston) was described as a Native American site. Interestingly, unlike the other sites, which were fairly precisely dated (from the 1600s to 1900s), this site was given no date—not even an estimate. Perhaps we are expected to assume the site is from pre-Colombian times? Not including even a general date sort of puts the Native American site in a timeless space, which is both weird and inaccurate. Also, there is no mention of any Native Americans in any of the other sites, as if they did not and do not exist in more recent times, alongside the colonizers and their descendants. The website also does not provide much analysis for the reader as to the meanings of the artifacts. On the Native American site page, they merely provide a list of artifacts and encourage the reader to guess “what kind of activities” the Native Americans carried out there. There is no mention of which specific tribe or group might have used the site, which, along with not giving a time period, doesn’t help contest the image many people have of all Native American groups being basically the same. There is no use of any line of evidence besides the artifacts presented for people to guess what went on at the site.

Overall, the site is a pretty intuitive experience, and a good, if simple, use of the Internet as a medium for presenting archaeology. It uses a map of the general area of the sites as the basis for navigation, so that each page takes you to a new archaeological site. The overall purpose of the site seemed to be to educate the general public about how archaeology can uncover interesting windows into the past, even while progress is being made in the present (with the construction of the new highway). As might be expected with a large, urban governmental construction project, there is no evidence that any local people or descendants of the sites excavated were involved in any of the process.