Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 16, No. 293.
Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/
Submit to: humanist@princeton.edu
[1] From: Patricia Galloway <galloway@gslis.utexas.edu> (16)
Subject: Re: 16.289 the archaeological imagination
[2] From: Geoffrey Rockwell <grockwel@mcmaster.ca> (21)
Subject: Re: 16.289 the archaeological imagination
[3] From: "Arianna Ciula" <ciula@media.unisi.it> (15)
Subject: Re: 16.289 the archaeological imagination
--[1]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 24 Oct 2002 06:54:54 +0100
From: Patricia Galloway <galloway@gslis.utexas.edu>
Subject: Re: 16.289 the archaeological imagination
The issue of "making of the absent present," simply because it has been
used in a colonialist context so much to shape the histories of people
who had no say in the shaping, has got a bad name in archaeology among
those who adhere to a liberatory ideology. Meantime, there has been a
determined adherence to materialist methods by those who wish to make an
exclusive claim to objective knowledge. In fact, archaeology as
intrinsically a colonialist enterprise, meant to replace indigenous
histories, has been and is being rethought seriously by the former camp.
This is why the idea of an "archaeological imaginary" is such a red flag
these days. The question is whose imagination? All too often indigenous
histories have been ignored by positivist archaeologists just because
such histories are seen to be so "unscientific." So there is a very
schizophrenic thrust to archaeological work these days, which has split
departments just as it has in anthropology proper and for the same
reasons. Even pattern-recognition cannot but be value-laden.
Pat Galloway
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Date: Thu, 24 Oct 2002 06:55:51 +0100
From: Geoffrey Rockwell <grockwel@mcmaster.ca>
Subject: Re: 16.289 the archaeological imagination
Dear Willard,
This may be off topic, but I can think of one project that is trying to
archive the wealth of digital information around an event (in this case
9/11). That is the Sept. 11 Archive at http://911digitalarchive.org/. This
is a serious attempt by historians to preserve the wealth of materials
created online around the event so that there is a record of the reactions
at the time. In a conversation I had with someone near the project the
issue of capturing all the Bin Laden Group (by which I mean the family
engineering/banking firm) www sites (that dissappeared within days of the
event) came up. The Sept. 11 archive would welcome people who cached such
materials or saved other related materials.
This raises an interesting issue. Within days of 9/11/2001 a large
corporate entity was able to erase their presence on the WWW by removing
sites and abandoning domain names. The only things I could find were the
google caches. Without archiving projects there may be little for digital
archaeologists to study. I know in Canada there has been a process to
discuss the establishment of a Digital Research Data archive to maintain
funded research data/texts over time. I assume there are similar projects
elsewhere. Is this a topic of interest to our community?
Yours,
Geoffrey Rockwell
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Date: Thu, 24 Oct 2002 07:11:10 +0100
From: "Arianna Ciula" <ciula@media.unisi.it>
Subject: Re: 16.289 the archaeological imagination
Even if it is a bit out from the present discussion subject, I would like to
suggest a wonderful book about a scientific paradigm which involves all
sciences based on clues grasping: History, Art history, Palaeography...may
be Archaeology...
Carlo Ginzburg, Miti, emblemi e spie: morfologia e storia, Einaudi, 1986,
Torino.
I am sorry, but I don't know if an English edition exists.
Sincerely,
Arianna Ciula
Dipartimento di documentazione e tradizioni culturali
Universit degli Studi di Siena (Italy)
[The book referred to above is in its 1st English edition: Myths, Emblems,
Clues (Chatham, Kent: Mackays, 1986). I would guess that this is the same
as Clues, Myths, and the Historical Method (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1989), which is still in print. --WM]
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