Call for Papers – Theoretical Archaeology Group Conference

The deadline for submission of abstracts to Sara Perry (sara.perry@york.ac.uk) – or through the TAG webpages (http://microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk/tag2013/) – is 10 September. TAG is in the unique position of being able to accept papers streamed in from other locations via Google Hangout, so we welcome remote participation.

Contact: Sara Perry.

Seeing, Thinking, Doing: Visualization as Knowledge Creation
Organizers: Gareth Beale (Gareth.Beale@soton.ac.uk), Catriona Cooper (catriona.cooper@soton.ac.uk) & Sara Perry (sara.perry@york.ac.uk)

Decades of enquiry have born witness to the importance of visualization as a critical methodology in archaeological research. Visual practices are intimately connected to different ways of thinking, shaping not only how we interpret the archaeological record for diverse audiences, but how we actually see and conceive of that record in the first instance (before investigative work has even begun). A growing body of volumes, workshops and symposia* testify to the centrality of visualization in processes of deduction, narrative construction, theory-building and data collection – all those activities which lie at the heart of the discipline itself. But these testimonials generally still lay scattered and detached, with researchers and visual practitioners often talking at cross-purposes or working in isolation from one another on issues that are fundamentally linked.

Following the success of Seeing, Thinking, Doing at TAG Chicago in May 2013 (http://seeingthinkingdoing.wordpress.com), we seek here to delve further into such issues, concentrating on those bigger intellectual tensions that continue to reveal themselves in discussions of the visual in archaeology. We welcome short papers attending in depth to any of the following five themes:

(1)    Realism and uncertainty

(2)    Ocularcentrism

(3)    Craftspersons and visualization as craft

(4)    Historical forms of, and past trends in, visualization in archaeology

(5)    Innovative approaches to representing the archaeological record

The session will be linked across two continents with a discussant in Canada as well as the main presentations in Bournemouth. We are happy to include speakers willing to participate remotely, via Google Hangout, and we encourage all contributors to add their perspectives to our group blog prior to – and following – the session: http://seeingthinkingdoing.wordpress.com. The papers will be accompanied by a roundtable discussion, where we will analyse the five themes—and related intellectual trends in visualization—at an overarching level.

*E.g., Molyneaux 1997; Smiles and Moser 2005; Bonde and Houston 2011; “Seeing the Past,” Archaeology Center, Stanford University, Stanford, USA, February 4–6, 2005; “Past Presented: A Symposium on the History of Archaeological Illustration,” Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, DC, October 9–10, 2009; “Visualization in Archaeology,” University of Southampton, Southampton, UK, April 18–19, 2011.

Bonde, S. & Houston, S. (eds.) 2011. Re-presenting the Past: Archaeology through Image and Text. Oxford: Joukowsky Institute Publications/Oxbow.

Molyneaux, B.L. (ed.) 1997. The Cultural Life of Images: Visual Representation in Archaeology. London: Routledge.

Smiles, S. & Moser, S. (eds.) 2005. Envisioning the Past: Archaeology and the Image. Malden, MA: Blackwell.

For more information about TAG please see http://microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk/tag2013/

For more detail on our session see http://seeingthinkingdoing.wordpress.com/tag-2013-bournemouth/