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.1 Who were these visitors? How did they engage with and respond to the collections? How did museum staff address them, seek to control them, and interact with them? To tackle these questions, this chapter draws from the established bodies of work in cultural theory, mass communication studies and book history that view the communication process from both sides. In museum studies, visitor theory and contemporary surveys are replacing the passive audience with active participants in the construction of meaning, but seldom has the historical visitor been awarded the
This book presents a study of material images and asks how an appreciation of the making and unfolding of images and art alters archaeological accounts of prehistoric and historic societies. With contributions focusing on case studies including prehistoric Britain, Scandinavia, Iberia, the Americas and Dynastic Egypt, and including contemporary reflections on material images, it makes a novel contribution to ongoing debates relating to archaeological art and images. The book offers a New Materialist analysis of archaeological imagery, with an emphasis on considering the material character of images and their making and unfolding. The book reassesses the predominantly representational paradigm of archaeological image analysis and argues for the importance of considering the ontology of images. It considers images as processes or events and introduces the verb ‘imaging’ to underline the point that images are conditions of possibility that draw together differing aspects of the world. The book is divided into three sections: ‘Emergent images’, which focuses on practices of making; ‘Images as process’, which examines the making and role of images in prehistoric societies; and ‘Unfolding images’, which focuses on how images change as they are made and circulated. The book features contributions from archaeologists, Egyptologists, anthropologists and artists. The contributors to the book highlight the multiple role of images in prehistoric and historic societies, demonstrating that archaeologists need to recognise the dynamic and changeable character of images.
otherwise empty burial chamber. Assmann’s explanation of the roles of various priests in the funerary ritual can perhaps explain the personnel depicted on the ostracon (Assmann 2005: 302–3). A New Kingdom funeral was a complex undertaking requiring a number of participants. It is perfectly conceivable, of course, that such a funeral would have been an expensive affair, requiring some form of ‘payment in kind’ to all the participants. For those families who could not afford a costly funeral, one would expect that ‘cost savings’ could be made by employing fewer participants
cemetery (assuming it was in one), as well as the orientation of the grave and its relationship with earlier graves and the use of markers, feature or structures, the inclusion of objects, the dress a person wore, how they were positioned and whether they were alone. The mortuary party also dictated the length of the mortuary event, the stories told, and how the person was remembered. These decisions were directed by the participants and influenced by their approaches and attitudes, and so each event was the result of the contemporary societal context created by such
Each early Anglo-Saxon cemetery was unique, the product of multiple agents working at different times, in different spaces and with different visions. Each grave was the end result of a funeral situated within specific chronological and community circumstances, influenced by social agents and their relationships to the deceased and to each other. In many ways each grave was the product of both a social context and of interpersonal relationships. Inhumation graves were cut into the soil and cremation pyres were built by hand. Together some participants had to
complex product of multiple agents working at different times. Each grave was the end result of a funeral designed by multiple architects working within specific chronological and personal circumstances and influenced by social agents which extended across peopled landscapes. At the graveside, funeral participants negotiated the details of a burial through participation. Part of this negotiation included decisions about the deceased’s place within the contemporary community narrative – a choice was made to maintain or reject an existing epitome – and this negotiation
audience were encouraged to make their own ‘ancient Egyptian’ clay cobras. The goal was to gain an impression of the skill set required to create such a figurine, as well as providing participants with opportunities to work with the clay themselves. The individuals in the audience included children and adults, some of them elderly, and ranged from those who had never touched clay to experienced potters. Four volunteers were selected to sit at a table on the top of the stage and create figurines for the benefit of the live streaming broadcast.3 Although the results may
themselves change. This persona depends on participants who make sense of the world around them though a matrix of semiotics expressed as conceptual, material and physical cultures consumed within social life and through communication. The result is a way of perceiving difference and creating similarities that identify, define or create networks between people and communities, but also utilises material things, visual processes and language in the expression of those relationships. In short, people use a combination of mythology, material culture and speech to construct
and Indigenous) and Native American participants, giving each equal weight.8 It is striking that the exhibition team received approval for an approach whose central message was the multiplicity of ‘truth’ from a museum executive which, in its efforts to represent Canada’s military history, has had to negotiate highly charged disputes among veterans’ groups, academics, partisan government officials and the public over facts and interpretations.9 Glenn Ogden’s exhibition design successfully realised the multiperspectival theme through its handling of space, text and
farming and gardening, furniture making, stone working, writing and painting, and food and beer preparation were set alongside various leisure pursuits: personal hygiene, music and musical instruments and the world of play. The practical craft making drew its inspiration from the University of Swansea’s ‘Experiment and Experience: Ancient Egypt in the Present’ conference (10–12 May 2010) (Graves-Brown 2015), which was made available to a wider audience by streaming the proceedings online.1 Participants were encouraged to include physical demonstrations to support their