Fractured Media: Challenging the Dimensions of Archaeology’s Typical Visual Modes of Engagement

As new media technologies increasingly populate our toolkits, questions arise about whether archaeologists are yet even competent users of orthodox media. Prior to engaging with emerging tools, this paper takes one step back to probe the subtexts of traditional two-dimensional archaeological images. Of interest is whether the many implications of these images can be made poignant via personally manipulating and imposing upon their form and function. Influenced by the work of various playwrights, artists, anthropologists, cultural theorists, and archaeologists, this paper examines what is legitimate in our practices of picturing the past, and what it means to explicitly—perhaps illicitly—interfere with typical archaeological visuals. Via tentative experiments with assorted maps, photos and illustrations, I endeavour to turn these orthodox modes of engagement into more defiant tools of discovery and critique. Ultimately, my objective is to disrupt convention and prompt archaeologists to confront and respond to themselves (and their responsibilities to others) in their everyday interactions with media.     

Beneath the Rising Sun: “Frenchness” and the Archaeology of Desire

This article takes the case of “rouge pot” fragments found in an archaeological context in New Orleans’ French Quarter associated with the circa 1822 Rising Sun Hotel and investigates the discourses and desires that shape our interpretations of artifacts. We argue that archaeological, historiographic, and public desires overlap and inform one another in a complex web of relations. In New Orleans, the particular web into which the archaeology of cosmetic jars and hotel sites can fall is spun by the ways in which the former French colonial capital is sexualized in both textbooks and folk songs.     

Landscapes, Houses, Bodies, Things: “Place” and the Archaeology of Inuit Imaginaries

Although the dichotomization of space and place has spawned a lively archaeological discussion, it threatens to devolve into a troublesome binary like sex/gender. Local place-making and universalizing spatial science are not so neatly segregated. Rather than dividing and bounding the notion of an investment of locations with meaning, it can be extended to describe the intricate topologies of bodies and things, as well as landscapes. Places emerge as sites of the hybrid articulation of representations, practices, and things, as spatialized imaginaries. The notion of imaginaries and the rethinking of place are illustrated with Inuit archaeological and ethnographic examples.     

Museums and the ‘Death of Experience’: singularity,interiority and the outside

This paper discusses a number of well-known critiques of the museum that seek to identify it as a problematic space for experience. The key argument put forward is that we can find within that analysis a critical geography around the museum that help us to understand the work that it does in relation to experience. Three spatial motifs are drawn from this analysis and discussed: the singular, the interior and the outside. The paper argues that museums since the nineteenth century have established a topos for experience based on a mimetic realism around the experience of both culture and history through the first two of these spatial expressions. Through them museums produces a fabulation of culture and history that supplements for the lack of topos for experience found within modern society as a whole. The latter spatiality – that of the outside – is found in the form of the absent–presence of the event in relation to the archiving principle of the museum, thereby continually unsettling the first two expressions and calling them into question. This dynamic reveals the museum as a space to critically think about what it does with experience and the importance of spatial analysis for that.     

The “War on Terror” and the Military–Archaeology Complex: Iraq, Ethics, and Neo-Colonialism

The archaeological response to the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq is often portrayed as a crusade to rescue antiquities, destroyed either directly by the military action itself or indirectly by the looting of archaeological sites and museums. I argue in this paper that this narrative is awfully inadequate, and masks the ethical and political dimensions at the core of this historical episode. I contend that, in their often well-intended attempts to rescue antiquities, most archaeologists involved have projected a professionalized, apolitical and abstract response, devoid of the social and political context, and based on the fetishisation of a narrowly and problematically defined archaeological record. I argue further that the increasing collaboration of many archaeologists with the invading militaries and occupation authorities since 2003, assisted by the “cultural turn” especially within the US military, have laid the foundations for an emerging military-archaeology complex. I trace the contours of this phenomenon by examining various archaeological and museum discourses and practices. This new development (with historical resonances that go as far back as the 18th century, if not earlier) is linked directly with the ontology and epistemology of archaeology, and deserves further close scrutiny and analysis. The thesis advanced here does not advocate inaction and withdrawal in situations of warfare, but a critical engagement that safeguards the autonomy of the scholar; critiques the political agendas and power structures of contemporary warfare; deconstructs its discursive basis and its ideological overtones; and shows its catastrophic consequences for people and things alike, past and present.     

‘Exodus’: The Serb flight from Sarajevo,its legacy,and its role in the political memory of Republika Srpska

This study provides a conceptual and empirical explanation of how and why the leadership of Republika Srpska (RS), which is one of the entities of Bosnia and Herzegovina, formed a specific discourse concerning the flight of Sarajevan Serbs after the 1992–1995 war. Undertaking an analysis of local media, it explores the ‘defensive’ and ‘cohesive’ strategies promulgated by the RS elite that have been pivotal in shaping the idea of Serbhood. The former accentuates victimhood through discursive dimensions of external enforcement, suffering and rupture. The latter channels a sense of collective identity and the notion of ‘statehood’ in RS through narratives of sacrifice and patriotism. These strategies help to advance the concept of Serbhood to counter the war's external near-hegemonic understanding, fuelling denialism and promoting in-group characteristics in the RS society. The legacy of the flight has contributed to moulding the political memory of RS.     

Tracing the Roots of Municipal Archaeology in St Augustine,Florida: The Story of How ‘The Oldest City’ Connected Archaeology,Local Government,and the Public

Abstract

This article explores the history of public archaeology in St Augustine, Florida, and identi?es lessons that may be useful for archaeologists looking to develop a stronger relationship with the public. The City of St Augustine has developed an archaeology ordinance, it keeps an archaeologist on staff, and it boasts a grassroots non-pro?t organization dedicated to supporting archaeology in the city. This framework is the result of a conversation that has been taking place within the community since the 1930s. As public archaeologists seek new ways of establishing long-term relationships with community groups, this exceptional programme, which only exists because of community support, provides insights into how to build those relationships on a solid foundation.     

A Review of “Henri Lefebvre and the Spanish Urban Experience: Reading the Mobile City”

In this article, the author analyzes how Salvador Espriu in La pell de brau (re)builds the myth of Sepharad that refers to the Hebrew name of the assembly of the medieval Hispanic kingdoms. La pell de brau is a work that opens the "collective cycle" toward a "we" framed within a specific historical context. The poet criticizes the unified vision of the Spanish nation and of the Catholic religion. The (re)construction of the myth of Sepharad not only reflects the crisis of the subject in search of an identity in an intolerant Spain after the civil war but also subverts the myth of the Spanish nation as created by the doctrine of National Catholicism under Franco.     

Thinking through “Vernacular Cosmopolitanisms”: Historical Archaeology in Senegal and the Material Contours of the African Atlantic

This article draws on recent archaeological research on coastal Senegal to examine how the concept of “vernacular cosmopolitanism” can contribute to scholarship about the construction of cultural hybridity in West Africa during the Atlantic era. It argues that Senegambia between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries was a vibrant theater of international exchanges, and that archaeological examinations of these processes can both assist our understanding of regional history and enrich discussions about the African diaspora, diasporic identities, French imperialism, and Atlantic modernity. The study of material experiences can also raise critical questions about our conceptual categories and limits to our understanding of the Atlantic past.     

“Making Us Uneasy”: Clarke, Wobst, and Their Critique of Archaeology Put into Practice

Both David Clarke and Martin Wobst have had a significant impact on archaeological theory and practice through their critical insights into the nature of archaeological inquiry and their respective challenges to assumptions about what we know and how we know it. This paper examines the development and historical context of some of their ideas, and highlights how their notions of responsibility, self-awareness, and relevance influence or intersect with contemporary archaeological practice.     

Integrating Archaeology and History at the “Commonwealth Block”: “Little Lon” and Casselden Place

My purpose here is to outline the research design for the excavation and analysis of Casselden Place, make some preliminary remarks about the initial phases of analysis and integration of archaeological and historical datasets at the site, and to make some general comments about the archaeology of the modern city. Much of what I say rests on intensive artifact analysis that has been reported in the papers collected here, in the major site report, and on research being undertaken on assemblages derived from comparable sites in Sydney.     

In the name of God: translation and transformation of Chinese culture,foreign religion,and the reproduction of “Tianzhu” and “Shangdi”

Translation between one language and culture into another assumes that a fundamental set of commonalities exist between the two cultural and linguistic contexts. In the case of the Christian Bible, Chinese translations not only involved translating words into Chinese, but also adapting and transforming an exotic Western religion for local sensibilities in such a way that Christianity might be recognized as a legitimate system of thought within a Chinese cultural milieu. Focusing on the perspective of different Chinese translations of the name of the Christian God, this article examines the history of the debate regarding the issue of translation, and the approaches adopted by the Catholic and Protestant faiths. It examines the reclamation and evolution of traditional Chinese vocabulary into new terminology through the application of Western religious concepts, and the ways in which indigenous Chinese society accepted these concepts, with an eye towards examining the course of historical progress through the history of social adoption of these ideas.     

The Colonial (Dis)order and the (Im)possibility of Redemption: Jeong,Abolition, and Living from the “End of the World”

This article develops the oppositional edge of postcolonial theologies by way of Frantz Fanon’s anti-colonial desire for the “end of the world.” It connects W. Anne Joh’s elaboration of jeong – the living in excess of (neo)colonial violence – to Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s anti-fascist critique of the godlike desires of European humanism (the sicut deus). The overall aim of the article is to clarify and assess what is at stake in a project of eschatological decolonialism. What might it mean to think theologically about salvation as abolition? And what might it look like to live from the “end of the world?”     

More than Meets the Eyes?: Archaeology Under Water,Technology, and Interpretation

Abstract

Archaeology has had a long and interesting relationship with technology. Technology has arguably allowed us to move from antiquarian interest to the robust academic institution that we now are. The importance that technology plays within archaeology is perhaps best exemplified within the increasingly popular/populist 'sub-discipline' of underwater archaeology. After all, contemporary underwater archaeology could not exist if it was not for the invention SCUBA. Alongside the 'day-to-day' use of technology there is also a rush to latch on contemporary technologies within the sub-discipline. The reasons for this are examined within this work, however, what is argued to be more important is the implications this has had on our discipline.

This paper examines these implications on and as part of underwater archaeology. The impact of its use on interpretive thinking within the sub-discipline are analyzed by assessing the very nature of theoretical thinking within our work. This paper raises the difficult and perhaps controversial question — are underwater archaeologists merely substituting technology for theory and as such offering, admittedly impressive, complex and sound scientific computer models as interpretation, rather than the data that they really are?     

The Institute’s seventieth volume: the journal,its origins and its engagement with foreign policy debate

Australian Outlook, published initially in 1947, was Australia’s first journal devoted exclusively to the analysis of Australia’s foreign relations and of international affairs. It emerged from a context where nationalist and internationalist sentiments were taking on new prominence and in a time of heightened public awareness of global issues. The journal came to provide a unique venue for academic and expert commentary, especially on the international politics of Australia’s region, as well as on a wide range of topics from defence and trade to great-power dynamics. Early contributions demonstrated a generally sound—and sometimes remarkably prescient—grasp of regional and international trends. The journal built on earlier Australian Institute of International Affairs publications—notably, the Austral-Asiatic Bulletin, inaugurated in 1937.     

Theocracy,Eschatology, and the Ephemeral Church: Graham Ward and the “Crisis of Democracy”

This article offers a critical assessment of Graham Ward’s political theology and critique of modern democracy. Ward argues that modern democracy expresses a nihilistic metaphysics and lacks an adequate account of the embodiment of sovereignty within the social, with the result that it tacitly harbors totalitarianism. As an alternative, Ward advances a theocratic model of the social, with the aim of providing an account of the social embodiment of sovereignty lacking in democracy. The article argues that Ward is ultimately unsuccessful in this attempt. His eschatological focus separates the church from the world, undermining his account of the embodiment of sovereignty and reinforcing the very emptiness at the heart of the social his theology is intended to counter.