Hostname: page-component-6766d58669-r8qmj Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-05-22T13:41:22.946Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

RECONSTRUCTION ART AND DISCIPLINARY PRACTICE: ALAN SORRELL AND THE NEGOTIATION OF THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL RECORD

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2014

Sara Perry  and
Matthew Johnson
Sara Perry
Affiliation:
Department of Archaeology, University of York, King's Manor, York YO1 7EP, UK. Email: sara.perry@york.ac.uk
Matthew Johnson
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, Northwestern University, 1810 Hinman Avenue, Evanston IL 60208, USA. Email: matthew-johnson@northwestern.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Alan Sorrell is best known today as a ‘reconstruction artist’, employed between the 1930s and the 1970s by the Ministry of Works and other bodies to produce reconstructions of ancient monuments and re-creations of ancient life. The archive containing many of his papers, working drawings, correspondence and other material was temporarily loaned to the Society of Antiquaries of London for study in 2010–11, and is now publicly accessible via the Sorrell family. This paper reports on initial research into the Sorrell archive and other documentary sources, funded through a British Academy Small Grant. We discuss how the archive throws new light not just on Sorrell's career and achievements, but on the intellectual and professional development of archaeology as a whole in the mid-twentieth century.

Résumé

Alan Sorrell, connu principalement aujourd'hui comme «artiste de reconstruction», a été employé entre les années 1930 et 1970 par le ministère des Travaux et d'autres organismes, afin de reconstruire les anciens monuments et de recréer la vie ancienne. Les archives contenant un grand nombre de ses documents, plans, correspondance et autres, temporairement prêtées à la Society of Antiquaries of London, à des fins d’étude, de 2010 à 2011, sont maintenant accessibles au public par l'intermédiaire de la famille Sorrell. Cet article relate les recherches initiales effectuées sur les archives de Sorrell et les autres sources de documents, financées par la British Academy. Nous exposons la façon dont ces archives projettent un nouveau jour non seulement sur la carrière et les accomplissements de Sorrell, mais aussi sur le développement intellectuel et professionnel de l'archéologie dans son ensemble au milieu du xxe siècle.

Information

Type
Papers
Information
The Antiquaries Journal , Volume 94 , September 2014 , pp. 323 - 352
Copyright
Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 2014 

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

Secondary sources

Birley, A 1970. Imperial Rome, Lutterworth, LondonGoogle Scholar
Bonde, SHouston, S (eds) 2013. Re-presenting the Past: archaeology through text and image, Oxbow, OxfordCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bradley, R 1997. ‘ “To see is to have seen”: craft traditions in British field archaeology’, in Molyneaux 1997, 62–72Google Scholar
Cain, V E M 2010. ‘ “The direct medium of the vision”: visual education, virtual witnessing and the prehistoric past at the American Museum of Natural History, 1890–1923’, J Visual Culture, 9, 284CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cain, V E M 2011. ‘The art of authority: exhibits, exhibit-makers, and the contest for scientific status in the American Museum of Natural History, 1920–1940’, Science in Context, 24, 215–238CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carr, L C 2012. Tessa Verney Wheeler: women and archaeology before World War Two, Oxford University Press, OxfordCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Conneller, C, Milner, N, Taylor, BTaylor, M 2012. ‘Substantial settlement in the European Early Mesolithic: new research at Star Carr’, Antiquity, 86, 1004–1020CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dykes, D W 1980. Alan Sorrell: early Wales re-created, National Museum of Wales, CardiffGoogle Scholar
Edgeworth, M (ed) 2006. Ethnographies of Archaeological Practice: cultural encounters, material transformations, Altamira Press, Lanham, MDGoogle Scholar
Fox, A 1961. Roman Britain, Lutterworth, LondonGoogle Scholar
Fox, A 2000. Aileen: a pioneering archaeologist, Gracewing, LeominsterGoogle Scholar
Graves, TPoraj-Wilczynska, L 2009. ‘ “Spirit of place” as process: archaeography, dowsing and perceptual mapping at Belas Knap’, Time and Mind, 2, 167–194CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Green, B 1968. Prehistoric Britain, Lutterworth, LondonGoogle Scholar
Harris, A 2010. Romantic Moderns: English writers, artists and the imagination from Virginia Woolf to John Piper, Thames & Hudson, LondonGoogle Scholar
Hauser, K 2007. Shadow Sites: photography, archaeology, and the British landscape, 1927–1955, Oxford University Press, OxfordCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hawkes, J 1951. A Land, Cresset Press, LondonGoogle Scholar
Hodgson, J 2004. ‘Archaeological reconstruction illustrations: an analysis of the history, development, motivations and current practice of reconstruction illustration, with recommendations for its future development’, unpublished PhD thesis, Bournemouth UniversityGoogle Scholar
James, S 1997. ‘Drawing inferences: visual reconstructions in theory and practice’, in Molyneaux 1997, 122–48Google Scholar
Johnson, M H 2007. Ideas of Landscape, Blackwell, OxfordCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnson, M H 2010. Archaeological Theory: an introduction, 2nd edn, Wiley-Blackwell, OxfordGoogle Scholar
Lane, P JSchadla-Hall, T 2004. ‘The many ages of Star Carr: do “cities” make the “site”?’, in A Barnard (ed), Hunter-Gatherers in History, Archaeology and Anthropology, 145–161, Berg, OxfordGoogle Scholar
Latour, B 1986. ‘Visualization and cognition: thinking with eyes and hands’, Knowledge and Society, 6, 1–40Google Scholar
Latour, B 1990. ‘Drawing things together’, in M Lynch and S Woolgar (eds), Representation in Scientific Practice, 19–68, MIT Press, Cambridge, MAGoogle Scholar
Lewuillon, S 2002. ‘Archaeological illustrations: a new development in nineteenth-century science’, Antiquity, 76, 223–234CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Llewellyn, SSorrell, R (eds) 2013. Alan Sorrell: the life and works of an English neo-Romantic artist, Sansom & Co, BristolGoogle Scholar
Llobera, M 2011. ‘Archaeological visualization: towards an archaeological information science (AISc)’, J Archaeol Method Theory, 18 (3), 193–223CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Manovich, L 2006. ‘Visual technologies as cognitive prostheses: a short history of the externalization of the mind’, in M Smith and J Morra (eds), The Prosthetic Impulse: from a posthuman present to a biocultural future, 203–219, MIT Press, Cambridge, MAGoogle Scholar
Molyneaux, B L (ed) 1997. The Cultural Life of Images: visual representation in archaeology, Routledge, LondonGoogle Scholar
Moser, S 1992. ‘The visual language of archaeology: a case study of the Neanderthals’, Antiquity, 66, 831–844CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moser, S 1998. Ancestral Images: the iconography of human origins, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NYGoogle Scholar
Moser, S 2012. ‘Archaeological visualisation: early artefact illustration and the birth of the archaeological image’, in I Hodder (ed), Archaeological Theory Today, 2nd edn, 292–322, Polity Press, CambridgeGoogle Scholar
Munro, R W 1985. ‘Monumental guidebooks “in state care” ’, Proc Soc Antiq Scotl, 115, 3–14Google Scholar
Pearce, S (ed) 2007. Visions of Antiquity: the Society of Antiquaries of London 1707–2007, Archaeologia 111, Society of Antiquaries of London, LondonGoogle Scholar
Perry, S 2009. ‘Sights of invention: deconstructing depictions of the earliest colonisations of Australia and Oceania in the academic archaeological literature’, Archaeol Rev Cambridge, 24, 109–130Google Scholar
Perry, S 2011. ‘The archaeological eye: visualisation and the institutionalisation of academic archaeology in London’, unpublished PhD thesis, University of SouthamptonGoogle Scholar
Piggott, S 1965. ‘Archaeological draughtsmanship: principles and practice. Part I: principles and retrospect’, Antiquity, 39, 165–176CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pitts, M 2005. ‘Alan Sorrell: hysteria, gloom and foreboding’, Brit Archaeol, 83, 16–19Google Scholar
Redknap, M 2002. Re-creations: visualizing our past, National Museum of Wales and Cadw, CardiffGoogle Scholar
Roberts, J 2005. ‘Towards a cultural history of archaeology: British archaeology between the wars’, unpublished PhD thesis, University of Wales, NewportGoogle Scholar
Schlanger, NNordbladh, J (eds) 2008. Archives, Ancestors, Practices: archaeology in the light of its history, Berghahn Books, New YorkGoogle Scholar
Shanks, MMcGuire, R 1996. ‘The craft of archaeology’, American Antiquity, 61, 75–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shanks, MWebmoor, T 2013. ‘A political economy of visual media in archaeology’, in Bonde and Houston 2013, 87–110CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shapin, SSchaffer, S 1985. Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle and the experimental life, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJGoogle Scholar
Shone, R 1983. ‘London and Cardiff: the British neo-Romantics’, Burlington Mag, 125, 637–638Google Scholar
Smiles, S 2005. ‘Thomas Guest and Paul Nash in Wiltshire: two episodes in the artistic approach to British antiquity’, in Smiles and Moser 2005, 133–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smiles, SMoser, S (eds) 2005. Envisioning the Past: archaeology and the image, Blackwell, OxfordCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, P H 2004. The Body of the Artisan: art and experience in the scientific revolution, University of Chicago Press, ChicagoCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, P J 2009. A ‘Splendid Idiosyncrasy’: prehistory at Cambridge 1915–50, BAR Brit Ser 485, Archaeopress, OxfordCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sorrell, A 1934. ‘The mural paintings for the Central Library, Southend-on-Sea’, Trans Southend-on-Sea District Antiq Hist Soc, 2, 263–269Google Scholar
Sorrell, A 1969. Roman London, Batsford, LondonGoogle Scholar
Sorrell, A 1973. ‘The artist and reconstruction’, Curr Archaeol, 41, 177–181Google Scholar
Sorrell, J 2012. ‘Alan Sorrell: the man who created Roman Britain’, Brit Archaeol, 127, 26–27Google Scholar
Sorrell, J 2013. ‘Alan Sorrell: early work’, in ‘Alan Sorrell RWS Artist 1904–74’, 〈http://www.alansorrell.ukartists.com/index_files/earlywork.htm〉 (16 Feb 2014)Google Scholar
Sorrell, M (ed) 1981. Reconstructing the Past, Book Club Associates, LondonGoogle Scholar
Sorrell, M 2010. ‘Stone Age house found at last’, The Independent, letters, 18 Aug 2010, 〈http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/letters/letters-blairs-gift-wasnt-remorse-2055792.html〉 (16 Feb 2014)Google Scholar
Stout, A 2008. Creating Prehistory: druids, ley hunters and archaeologists in pre-war Britain, Blackwell, OxfordCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Watterson, A 2012. ‘The value and application of creative media to the process of archaeological reconstruction and interpretation’, in A Chrysanthi, P F Murrieta and C Papadopoulos (eds), Thinking Beyond the Tool: archaeological computing and the interpretive process, 14–23, BAR Int Ser 2344, Archaeopress, OxfordGoogle Scholar
Willsdon, C A P 2000. Mural Painting in Britain 1840–1940: image and meaning, Oxford University Press, OxfordGoogle Scholar
Wylie, A 2002. Thinking From Things: essays in the philosophy of archaeology, University of California Press, Berkeley, CACrossRefGoogle Scholar