Daily Archives: March 27, 2012

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.