Art forms, body forms and hidden identities

Archaeologists give the impression they are ashamed of their bodies. Not, I must hasten to say, in any personal sense where, honed by the physical demands of excavation and fieldwork, they represent a golden mien among the academic profession. Rather in the curious absence of bodies in the photographic record of ancient remains. By popular convention monuments and landscapes, even artefacts, are photographed without anyone present. At best somebody appears as a scale, standing like a rigid metric pillar in a trench or next to a wall and, as Marcia-Anne Dobres (2000:Figure 1.2) has pointed out, disembodied hands holding an artefact. The effect is disconcerting, the message clear. The past is remote because it is un-peopled and definitely un-gendered. Allowing ‘modern’ people into the photographs changes the significance of the monuments. Stonehenge, for example, ceases to be an icon of remote time and instead becomes a contested space for many conflicting ideologies. While this convention may contribute to the continuing mystery of Neolithic Britain (Edmonds 1999) and the haunting affect of Stonehenge (Manley 1989:plate 2) it directs the archaeological gaze at external objects and the body is shamed by its invisibility.

When bodies do appear they are the product of interpretations governed by scientific accuracy and the principle of authenticity.