Notes for the class
Eight great archaeological sites
One of the main aims of the class Eight great archaeological sites is to unpack notions of site and place, to ask questions of the role of narrative, categorization, illustration, memory, identity ... whatever, in constructing our relationships with site.
Some basics:
- distinguish site from place - with site refering to geometric x,y,z coordinate; place refering to human relationships with a site
- landscape is a particular ideological relationship with site and place that was refined in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and after; it includes notions of the picturesque, of beauty, countryside, city and country, and the sublime
- on architecture - think of "building sites" (verb and process) and how architecture does not just provide a space for something to happen, but actively helps create a sense of place and engenders specific experiences
- on time - think beyond the notion of "date" into how many different times and temporalities are often interwoven through a place - this is to think topologically of time - that it percolates through site and place
- think of place as a "gathering"
- connect time, date, process, and narrative in the notion of place-event
Some archaeological attitudes to site and place:
- forensics - evidence found in relation to the question - "what happened here" - "at a scene of crime anything could be relevant"
- figure and ground - the task of distinguishing what matters, the message from what is background noise
- "this happened here" - a relationship of actuality - the conjunction of two present moments
Themes to think about - in no particular order:
- immediacy - the significance of presence, the feeling of "being there" (for a broad and oblique view have a look at the Presence Project - http://presence.stanford.edu)
- the importance of narrative in creating a sense of place
- site/place as a character in a narrative
- place as a particular way of framing site
- the contrast between city and country as a fundamental way of structuring space and place
- classic attitudes - escape, the idyll, adventure, epic encounters
- eighteenth century inventions - the gothic, the picturesque, the sublime
- the role of ecology and natural history in creating the chracter of a place
On the use of social software in generating "site reports":
- simply follow any appropriate connection to and from the site and write the wiki accordingly - this will re-constitute the site as place
- don't start with plans, structures, dates - these will emerge in following connections and re-creating a sense of place
- stay as empirical and detailed as possible in following any kind of connection in and away from a site - see where this takes you all, then look for emergent insight
More guidelines:
wiki guidelines
wabi-sabi as a philosophy and attitude for site reporting
heretical empirics
More resources
notes on place and space
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