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Based on her exloration of the British Museum's world-famous collection of Egyptian antiquities, this pioneering study reveals the powerful role of museums in shaping our understanding of science, culture, and history.
Pictorial reconstructions of ancient human ancestors have twin purposes: to make sense of shared ancestry and to bring prehistory to life. Stephanie Moser analyzes the close relationship between representations of the past and theories about human evolution, showing how this relationship existed even before a scientific understanding of human origins developed. How did mythological, religious, and historically inspired visions of the past, in existence for centuries, shape this understanding? Moser treats images as primary documents, and her book is lavishly illustrated with engravings, paintings, photographs, and reconstructions. In surveying the iconography of prehistory, Moser explores vi...
Painting Antiquity explores the archaeological dimension of the works of these three artists: in doing so, it addresses how the aesthetic engagement these artists had with ancient objects represented a unique and important development in the cultural reception of the past.
The material and intellectual presence of Egypt is at the heart of Western culture, religion and art from Antiquity to the present. This volume aims to provide a long term and interdisciplinary perspective on Egypt and its mnemohistory, taking theories on objects and their agency as its main point of departure. The central questions the book addresses are why, from the first millennium BC onwards, things and concepts Egyptian are to be found in such a great variety of places throughout European history and how we can account for their enduring impact over time. By taking a radically object-oriented perspective on this question, this book is also a major contribution to current debates on the agency of artefacts across archaeology, anthropology and art history.
When ochre-stained bones were unearthed by William Buckland in a Welsh cave in 1823, they raised many unsettling questions regarding their origin, and inspired the casting and recasting of the character who became known as the Red Lady. Her biography reflects the personal, professional, and national ambitions of those who studied her.
Archaeology’s Visual Culture explores archaeology through the lens of visual culture theory. The insistent visuality of archaeology is a key stimulus for the imaginative and creative interpretation of our encounters with the past. Balm investigates the nature of this projection of the visual, revealing an embedded subjectivity in the imagery of archaeology and acknowledging the multiplicity of meanings that cohere around artifacts, archaeological sites and museum displays. Using a wide range of case studies, the book highlights how archaeologists can view objects and the consequences that ensue from these ways of seeing. Throughout the book Balm considers the potential for documentary imag...
This book explores the expressly pictorial type of visual archaeology, the transcribing of three-dimensional materiality into two-dimensional depictions, and its influential history within the discipline. The picturing of ancient sites and artifacts to convey information links visual reporting with the workings of the imagination and indicates that the study of antiquity has always had a hybrid identity: part artistic and part scientific. In examining expressly pictorial forms of visual story-telling about the past, this book looks beyond certain supposed "creative turns" and focuses instead on creative continuities, answering key questions about the power of picturing and its ability to not...
Critical approaches to public archaeology have been in use since the 1980s, however only recently have archaeologists begun using critical theory in conjunction with public archaeology to challenge dominant narratives of the past. This volume brings together current work on the theory and practice of critical public archaeology from Europe and the United States to illustrate the ways that implementing critical approaches can introduce new understandings of the past and reveal new insights on the present. Contributors to this volume explore public perceptions of museum interpretations as well as public archaeology projects related to changing perceptions of immigration, the working classes, and race.
In recent years the intersections between art history and archaeology have become the focus of critical analysis by both disciplines. Contemporary sculpture has played a key role in this dialogue. The essays in this volume, by art historians, archaeologists and artists, take the intersection between sculpture and archaeology as the prelude for analysis, examining the metaphorical and conceptual role of archaeology as subject matter for sculptors, and the significance of sculpture as a three-dimensional medium for exploring historical attitudes to archaeology.
This reader of original and reprinted articles—many by indigenous authors—is designed to display the array of writings around relationships between archaeologists and indigenous peoples around the globe.