Hostname: page-component-89b8bd64d-x2lbr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-05-08T04:12:49.361Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Crossing boundaries

Some thoughts about communication in archaeology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

Nicola Laneri
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Archaeology is not just about writing reports and interpreting ancient societies and their social structures, but it is also a process which should aim at the creation of a clear communicative message to the general public. Thus, archaeologists should be aware of every possible medium of communication – verbal, written, visual, sound – to express re-constructions of ancient pasts. In this essay I express some ideas about how archaeologists could collaborate with experts, for example theatre directors, in defining artistic way of communicating the past. Finally, I focus on the relationship between academia and fringe archaeology and I look into the political role of archaeologists in modern society.

Keywords

communicationpublic archaeologyvisual archaeologyfringe archaeology

Information

Type
Essay Competition
Information
Archaeological Dialogues , Volume 9 , Issue 2 , December 2002 , pp. 90 - 97
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2002

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Banks, M., 1998: Visual anthropology: image, object and interpretation, in Prosser, J. (ed.), Image-based research. A sourcebook for qualitative researchers, London, 9–23.Google Scholar
Banks, M., and Morphy, H. (eds), 1997: Rethinking visual anthropology, New Haven and London.Google Scholar
Barthes, R., 1977: Image – text – music, New York.Google Scholar
Breton, A., 1969: Manifestoes of surrealism, Ann Arbor.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brook, P., 1968: The empty space a book about theatre. Deadly, holy, rough, immediate, New York.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, P., Passeron, J.-C. and Saint Martin, M-D., 1994: Academic discourse, linguistic misunderstanding and professorial power, Cambridge and Palo Alto.Google Scholar
Clifford, J., 1985: Introduction: partial truths, in Clifford, J. and Marcus, G.E. (eds), Writing culture. The poetics and politics of ethnography, Berkeley, 1–26.Google Scholar
Cornuke, B., and Halbrook, D. 2000: In search of the mountain of God. The discovery of the real Mt. Sinai, Nashville.Google Scholar
Edmonds, M.R. 1999: Ancestral geographies of the Neolithic. Landscape, monuments, and memory, London.Google Scholar
Eisenstein, S.M., 1957: Film form: essays in film theory. The film sense, New York.Google Scholar
Greenwood, D.J. and Levin, M., 2000: Reconstructing the relationships between universities and society through action research, in Denzin, N.K. and Lincoln, Y.S. (eds), Handbook of qualitative research, Thousand Oaks and London, 85–106.Google Scholar
Habermas, J., 1979: Communication and the evolution of society, Boston.Google Scholar
Harrold, F.B., and Eve, R.A. (eds), 1993: Cult archaeology and creationism. Understanding pseudoscientific beliefs about the past, Iowa City.Google Scholar
Hodder, I., 1999: The archaeological process, Oxford.Google Scholar
Kohl, P., 1993: Limits to a post-processual archaeology (or, the dangers of a new scholasticism), in Yoffee, N. and Sherratt, A. (eds), Archaeological theory. Who sets the agenda, Cambridge, 13–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lampeter Archaeological Workshop, 1997: Relativism, objectivity, and the politics of the past, Archaeological dialogues 4, 164–184.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leone, M.P., and Potter, P.B. Jr., 1984: Archaeological Annapolis. A guide to seeing and understanding three centuries of change, Annapolis.Google Scholar
Mackenzie, I.M., and Shanks, M., 1994: Archaeology: theories, themes and experience, in Mackenzie, I.M. (ed.), Archaeological theory: progress or posture, Hampshire (World archaeology), 19–42.Google Scholar
Marinetti, F.T., et al. 1914: I manifesti del futurismo, Florence.Google Scholar
Mort, F., 1990: The politics of consumption, in Hall, S. and Jacques, M. (eds) New times. The changing face of politics in the 1990s, London, 160–172.Google Scholar
Odin, R., 1994: Semio-pragmatique du cinema et de l'audiovisuel. Modes et institutions, in Muller, J.E. (ed.), Towards a pragmatics of the audiovisual. Theory and history, Munster (Vol. 1), 33–47.Google Scholar
Pearson, M., Thomas, J. and Shanks, M., 1994: Theatre/archaeology, Drama review 38, New York, 133–161.Google Scholar
Pearson, M., and Shanks, M., 2001: Theatre / archaeology, New York.Google Scholar
Pluciennik, M., 1999: Archaeological narratives and other ways of telling, Current anthropology 40, 653–678.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Potter, P.B. Jr, 1997: The archaeological site as an interpretive environment, in Jameson, J.H. (ed.), Presenting archaeology to the public. Digging for truths, Walnut Creek, 35–44.Google Scholar
Pozzo, A., 1998: Grr… Grammelot: parlare senza parole. Dai primi balbettii al grammelot di Dario Fo, Bologna.Google Scholar
Recanati, F., 2000: The iconicity of metarepresentations, in Sperber, D. (ed.), Metarepresentations. A multidisciplinary perspective, Oxford, 311–360.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shanks, M., 1992, Experiencing the past. On the character of archaeology, London.Google Scholar
Shanks, M., 1996, Photography and archaeology, in Malyneaux, B.L. (ed.), The cultural life of images. Visual representation in archaeology, London, 73–107.Google Scholar
Sperber, D., and Wilson, D. 1995: Relevance. Communication and cognition, Oxford (second edition).Google Scholar
Taussig, M.T., 1992: The nervous system, New York.Google Scholar
Thomas, J., 1995: Where are we now? Archaeological theory in the 1990s, in Ucko, P. (ed.), Theory in archaeology. A world perspective, London, 343–362.Google Scholar