Theme:
3. Heritage Narratives and Representations
Session format:
Regular session
Content:
As archaeologists, we are often the most popular attendees at the cocktail party. Tell your occupation and (as long as people don’t ask you about your favourite dinosaur or the latest building you designed), the other guests enthusiastically gush about “every time there is an archaeology special on, I always watch it!”. Nevertheless, it is quite rare that archaeologists themselves write stories about their discoveries, research or even their quite adventurous lives. Archaeologists do write, but we often do not share these works outside of our professional bubble. We rely mostly on interviews with the press and/or specialized communicators to tell the stories for us. We let others decide how archaeology and archaeologists are presented to the public, whilst we could be our own spokespersons.
This session invites papers which explore the connection between the public fascination for archaeology and the means to encourage archaeologists themselves to capitalize on it. We invite papers from writers of popular science, archaeologically-oriented fiction and museum exhibition designers which address the balance between entertainment and education as well as the importance of narrative. Written, illustrated or otherwise acted case studies of single individuals (either real or imagined) are also welcome and encouraged, as are short vignettes and thought experiments humanizing our shared past. You may consider exercising your archaeological imagination by reading a narrative document addressing either a pre/historic theme or a larger metadata-style discourse on living as an archaeologist in order to tell the story behind the story accompanied by an image collage.
Keywords:
story, narrative, archaeological imagination, education, communication, science and fiction
Session associated with MERC:
no
Session associated with CIfA:
no
Session associated with SAfA:
no
Session associated with CAA:
no
Session associated with DGUF:
no
Session associated with other:
Main organiser:
Samantha Reiter (Denmark) 1
Co-organisers:
Matthew Walsh (Denmark) 1
Martin Bača (Slovakia) 2
Morgan Schelvis (Netherlands) 3
Affiliations:
1. National Museum of Denmark
2. Comenius University Bratislava
3. University of Amsterdam
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