Different expressions of the same mode: a recent dialogue between archaeological and contemporary drawing practices

ABSTRACT

In this article, we explore what we perceive as pertinent features of shared experience at the excavations of an Iron Age Hillfort at Bodfari, North Wales, referencing artist, archaeologist and examples of seminal art works and archaeological records resulting through interdisciplinary collaboration. We explore ways along which archaeological and artistic practices of improvisation become entangled and productive through their different modes of mark-making. We contend that marks and memories of artist and archaeologist alike emerge interactively, through the mutually constituting effects of the object of study, the tools of exploration and the practitioners themselves, when they are enmeshed in cross-modally bound activities. These include, but are not limited to, remote sensing, surveying, mattocking, trowelling, drawing, photographing, videoing and sound recording. These marks represent the co-signatories: the gesture of the often anonymous practitioners, the voice of the deposits, as well as the imprint of the tools, and their interplay creates a multi-threaded narrative documenting their modes of intra-action, in short, our practices. They occupy the conceptual space of paradata, and in the process of saturating the interstices of digital cognitive prosthetics they lend probity to their translations in both art form and archive.

KEYWORDS:

• Archaeology
• craftwork
• contemporary drawing
• embodied practice
• paradata
• phygital

Acknowledgements

This article originated as a presentation to the Theoretical Archaeology Group 2016 (TAGsoton) conference session on Digital Visualisation Beyond the Image: Archaeological Visualisation Making in Practice organised by Paul Reilly and Gareth Beale. Jeremy Huggett, who participated in that session, Michael Carter and Simon Pope have since offered insightful comments on an earlier draft of this article. None of the work presented here could exist without Banba and John Dawson, who gave us access to their land, and Professor Gary Lock and John Pouncett, the field directors of the Moel-y-Gaer, Bodfari archaeological investigations. We warmly acknowledge their enthusiastic support for our activities. Equally, we would like to acknowledge and applaud our onsite co-workers for their good-natured tolerance of the additional cognitive artefacts we introduce into their (un)daily work. Thanks also to Simon Callery, the first artist in residence on the project, for inviting Stefan Gant to join the wonderful and dynamic people who make up this fascinating project team.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Stefan Gant's practice and research explores the discourse of contemporary drawing. Through peer selection, Gant was selected as a finalist and exhibitor in 2007, 2010 and 2012 for the Jerwood Drawing Prize, London and UK tour. He was also ‘Highly Commended’ at the National Eisteddfod of Wales Visual Arts Exhibition in 2007. Through his art practice, Gant challenges the notions of what drawing can be through the temporality of filmic medium and digital technologies. He has exhibited nationally and internationally and has been the recipient of Arts Council of Wales and Wales Arts International funding.

Paul Reilly is a both a practicing field archaeologist and a pioneer of virtual and creative digital archaeologies. His current research explores ontological transformations that occur when (im)material archaeology enters the digital. He has published widely (see orcid.org/0000-0002-8067-8991). He is an honorary life member and former chairman of the Computer Applications and Archaeology organisation (CAA), and also chairs the CAA International Scientific Committee.

ORCID

Paul Reilly http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8067-8991

Notes

1 For the purposes of this paper the terms dematerialise, materialise and rematerialise refer to archaeological concepts pertaining to how the archaeological record encountered in the field through the interventions of excavators produces, or (re)materialises, new entities in another imbricated archaeological record commonly known as the archive (See Lucas 2012 for an in-depth discussion).