Visual Essays: Different Ways of Knowing and Communicating the Archaeological

Abstract

A variety of visual material has always been part of the archaeological record, and the share and significance of this data has only increased with new technologies in recent decades. It is in reaction to this and with a wish to diversify the mediation of archaeological research that NAR introduces Visual Essays as a new format in its portfolio of academic publication. The essays follow the established aim of the journal to communicate the diversity of archaeological practice, ranging from microscopic details to landscape and aerial approaches, through intricate combinations of visual and textual mediation

Archaeology and archaeological work can be described in many different ways according to, for example, chronological focus, the morphology of the archaeological structures and deposits engaged with, and the various thematic concerns of distinct sub-branches of the field. Whatever the perspective, however, a common characteristic of most archaeology is the tactile approach to its empirical material – be that a museum collection, an open landscape, an enclosed site, a soil sample or a single artefact. Archaeological inference is not merely about asking what things are, but about considering how they are; how they are composed and fabricated, how they relate to other objects and features, how they fracture and decay, how they act as symbols and social components, how they have preserved, and how they are engaged with today. Answering these questions requires multiple approaches and methods, but also entails, in its most humble form, what Anna Tsing (2015) refers to as the ‘art of noticing’: a simultaneously simple and complex multisensory attentiveness to the way archaeological materials present. How they come to view.

While the domination of the visual sense in archaeology’s sensorial repertoire, and of the priority of the visual more generally, may be rightfully criticized (e.g. Moser 2001) the fact is that a diversity of graphic material – drawings, photographs, maps, etc. – has always constituted a significant part of the archaeological data record. With the development of new technologies, more accessible devices and an increasing emphasis on public outreach and broader communication of research and results, the significance of this material has only increased in recent decades. This notwithstanding, visual material is still largely downgraded when compared to the written or spoken word (evident, for example, in the evaluation of research output among university-affiliated scholars), and its importance thus, in many contexts, hardly more noticeable today than say, 70 years ago. Publications are still produced without or with only a few depictions and most academic journals (though with important exceptions) pose strict limitations on the number of images allowed each contribution.

While mostly disguised as a matter of economic concern (which it surely also is), this attitude towards visual material is equally anchored in a more deep-seated discrimination between word and image, between the articulated and the artistic and, more generally, in a semiotics of suspicion that has permeated the humanities and social sciences throughout the 20^th century. Things are never what they appear to be. In a brilliant critique of art criticism, Susan Sontag referred to this attitude as a ‘contempt for appearances’ (Sontag 1966, p. 6). A disdain driven by the modern intellectual imperative of interpretative depth, where true meaning is rarely to be found unconcealed or in the immediately perceived, but much rather in abstract form and hidden from view (Foucault 1989, Thomas 2004). A similar discrimination (and critique of the same) is also seen in Roland Barthes’ Camera Lucida where he describes the experience of being torn between two ‘languages’, where one is merely expressive (the image) while the other is critical (the text) (Barthes 1984, p. 8). As hinted at by Barthes, the inevitable fate of the photograph and of visual language more generally, in this paradigm, is to remain simply illustrative, superficial and secondary to text.

Criticizing this is neither to argue against interpretative depth nor a distinction between visual and textual communication. Quite the opposite – the two are significantly different media, but it is precisely because of their differences that they are able to grasp and communicate alternate aspects of the same phenomenon: They articulate matters differently. I would suggest one could think of this difference in the way Karen Barad thinks of measurements and monitoring in the sciences. Measurements, as she says – including the measures we take to articulate the archaeological – ‘are not simply revelatory but performative: they help constitute and are a constitutive part of what is being measured’ (Barad 2012, p. 6). For this reason, because ‘measurements are world-making’ (Barad 2012, p. 6), it matters greatly how matters are observed, explored and expressed – and opening up for different ways of viewing and mediating thus contributes to a more manifold vocality.

Articulating archaeology, as stated earlier, is not simply a matter of explaining what things are, but equally about considering how they are, and the methods available to enquire this ‘how’ are becoming increasingly varied. It is in reaction to this, and with a wish to diversify the communication of archaeology that NAR now invites Visual Essays as a new format in its portfolio of academic publication (see NAR’s webpages for more information). In essence, this new format will follow the established aim and scope of the journal, which through a focus on archaeological theory and method and a creative interweaving of the visual and textual, will communicate the diversity of archaeological practice – from microscopic details of material remains to landscape and aerial approaches.

Visual essays may indeed invoke expectations of a more ‘artistic’ genre. However, and importantly, while this may be among the potentials integral to this new format, this is not at all our sole intent. Rather, the drive behind NAR’s visual essays is the conviction that, whether identifying as artists or not, archaeologists are already producing a wide variety of magnificent visual material – and we simply want to do what we can to render this part of our craft more visible. Hence, our call for material is broad and open, and the only thing we emphasize is that you consider the two media, text and imagery, as equally communicative. As carried across in Rose Ferraby’s essay in this volume – our very first visual essay – images and text should work in symphony to carry a narrative, told as much through the mood and tactility of the visual as the focused address of the written.