heeding Ekho: post-processual archaeology meets art

J. William Waterhouse. "Echo and Narcissus" 1903

Recently, I had the opportunity to conduct a podcast interview with PKAP 2009 artist-in-residence, Ryan Stander in the studio adjacent to my little nook here (the Paul Aaron Ferderer Memorial Office). The primary topic of our interview was Ryan’s show entitled Topos/Chora: Photographs of the Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project which opened on the twenty-ninth of February at the Empire Theater in Grand Forks. Now and then our discussion strayed to Ryan’s blogging on art, space and the sacred as well as other issues in the ordering and conceptualization of space, that is, the cultural construction of landscapes which is such a key point of interest throughout Ryan Stander’s work as well as along the progress of PKAP. Kathy took on the burden of preparing the interview questions herself, so I went into the interview armed with a remarkably thoughtful series of questions which drew not just from a consideration of the works included in the show, but also on Ryan’s musings over the last few years on his blog, The Axis of Access. Sara has also been of tremendous assistance in setting up the technological side of the recording and now, of being its editor-in-chief. Here’s hoping that my Garrison Keillor voice cut the lefse …

Little does Ryan know that we’re planning to leave in the Lake Wobegon bit, complete with sound effects:  by “just for fun” I meant “intended to be the main feature of the site” …

As a veteran of PKAP myself, I have taken particular interest in the concept of this show (Topos/Chora, that is, not PHC). The idea of an artist-in-residence with PKAP isn’t entirely new, considering that Joe Patrow accompanied the first UND crew out to Cyprus in 2006 as a documentary filmmaker. Even during the 2009 field season when Ryan was shooting, there was yet another documentary filmmaker working in conjunction with PKAP by the name of Ian Ragsdale. Likewise, I don’t think that there has been anyone on the team to date who hasn’t taken at least a few photographs of archaeological fieldwork in action and a few of us, at least, were not unconscious of some rudimentary elements of photographic composition.

But Ryan endeavored to produce art: photographic images of an archaeological site and archaeological work in action as art. Ryan, a relative outsider to archaeology — an observer — is reflecting on archaeology through his artistic medium. Not only that, but he is inviting the viewer of his work to reflect on archaeology through his work.

This is where things get a little spacey.

Or a lot spacey.

Any archaeologist who has followed PKAP is probably already conscious of the Post-processual leanings of the project as a whole and, to various degrees, of its scholars. In fact, I would go so far as to say that PKAP is one of the more exemplary Postprocessualist-oriented projects in Cyprus, judging from my own experience with PKAP and from the impression which I got at the 2008 CAARI conference in Nicosia. It’s kind of PKAP’s schtick, as it were. That’s not to say that the project isn’t actually driven by specific research questions nor that those research questions aren’t intended to “further illuminate our understanding” of x, y and, z, but it can lend the impression to an outsider that the project is either a tad quixotic or that these relative greenhorns have bitten off more than they can chew.

Under closer investigation, this impression is quite wrong on both counts. If anything, PKAP guards more fiercely against cowboy archaeology than many other projects and quasi-projects on the island. Working closely with the Department of Antiquities and eschewing “boys with toys” who are less concerned with research questions and more concerned with thrill, the PKAP directors are especially conscious of the archaeological innovations to come, taking care not to damage for no reason what techniques of the future might be able to study better. The data measurable at any site multiplies with the precision of and shifts in questions asked. Here, the scholars are especially conscious of that fact. All archaeologists — all researchers — can be said to have bitten off more than they can chew once one takes into account the vastness of potential implicit in their subject matter.

With the PKAP sites, there is no rush. The threat of urban or suburban development, which so often forces the archaeologist’s hand, is minimal, so the PKAP scholars have the leisure to “do it right” in a way which makes their work stand out in comparison to other projects at similar sites lacking higher concentrations of “important” monumental architecture and artifacts. Actually, the presence of high concentrations of “culturally significant” monumental architecture and artifacts doesn’t necessarily halt real estate development, even in the old town of Nicosia, as the Orthodox Church in Cyprus makes plans for even more monumental architecture of its own. Besides, cultural significance is all relative anyway: that stuff was then, this is now. This is living, that is dead. This is relevant, that is obsolete.

That’s just it: those who would say such things are more right than many archaeologists would like to admit. Where would the archaeologist’s craft be if it weren’t for the past equivalents to today’s fast food chains, suburban housing projects, office buildings, industrial parks, and big box stores  ”infesting” the landscape and plopping down on top of something else? Material culture doesn’t cease to be material culture the closer its “birth date” is to the present. Put another way, when you pave paradise, you only give it a new life. To quote Marc Bloch’s quote of Henri Pirenne: “If I were an antiquarian, I would have eyes only for old stuff; but I am a historian, therefore I love life!” One could easily replace “historian” with “archaeologist” here — or, at least, one would think.

I mentioned “Post-processual” archaeology above and, considering that many people reading this blog are not archaeologists, I think that a definition might be in order. Postprocessualism is a deliberately reflective approach to archaeology and only hesitantly postivistic. While increasing the scientist’s concern with method, it takes it so far that it runs the risk of undermining archaeology’s claim to being a science altogether. To some, this is an un-scientific excess; to insiders, perhaps, it is hyper-scientific to the point of being post-scientific (implying, then, that science has an end). On some level, research conclusions rely on scholarly consensus in order to live — all the more so in fields of inquiry which do not permit controlled experimentation. Numbers don’t lie, but the humans who lend significance to the numbers can never be entirely objective. In the face of consistent, controlled experimentation and sound math, human subjectivity is understandably rendered negligible, but no matter how hard archaeologists may try, they simply cannot carry the scientific method all the way through. Scholarly consensus is vital.

Needless to say, then, when those consenting scholars are overwhelmingly men (of the male sort) or when they come from the colonial or dominant/hegemonic cultural center, then, in general, they can be expected to look at the world more like men, in general, as opposed to women, in general, or as members of a colonizing society and dominant culture, in general, as opposed to members of a colonized society and subaltern culture, in general. The focus on urban centers in archaeology is partially a product of this — along with a heavy helping of pragmatism (urban sites are more compact and yield more artifacts than rural sites). The focus on finite cultures and periodization is yet another artifice born of cultural bias, especially nationalistic assumptions. This, of course, betrays a sort of collective narcissism on the part of the researchers. They look for civilization and empire and they find them; they look for male dominance and they find it — or, when they don’t, the data is anomalous. Scorning the naïvété of past archaeological paradigms, the empiricism-driven Processualists still couldn’t keep from falling in the pond, so to speak.

Postprocessualism, as with “Postmodernism” more broadly, also tends towards narcissism: this time with its emphasis on reflective research. This is a conscious narcissism aimed at reducing unconscious narcissism with the excuse that at least what is in the open can be better accounted-for.

Right into the middle of all this wanders Ryan Stander with his camera, very much like the picnicker who joined the melée at the First Battle of Bull Run/Manassas, with an even more ambiguous sense of his “business” in engaging in this contest. As the archaeologists reflect on their work among themselves, Ryan reflects on their reflecting, and invites us to do the same by means of his carefully-selected, “reflective” photographs.

But we call it art.

The Lost City of Grand Forks, ND

This whole blog thing is going to take some getting used to.  I’ve never kept a personal blog, let alone a semi-professional blog…but hang in there, it will get better!

The past week has been filled with the finishing touches on the online exhibit with hopes of going live early this week.  On our end, I (and Bill) finished the interview and Kathy had her own trials with writing an introduction to a collection of essays.  On the server end (right, Bill?) we’re waiting for some updates to the layout.  But it’s getting to the end of our first go at an online collection.

However, its amazing how mother nature can put a hold on everything, including working on the computer and the internet.  If this next “prolonged snow event” (the words of the NOAA) again cause UND to shut down on Monday, our ETA for the exhibit could be pushed back if the techi’s can’t get in and make our changes.

My theory on this spring in the Red River Valley and UND’s spring semester?  We are going to continue to have Monday snow storms and the University will cancel classes every Monday until the middle of March when the melt starts, and then Grand Forks will submerge into an ocean of snow melt and disappear like Atlantis.  So this semester could possibly be incredibly short.

Remember us, dear readers, when your grandchildren wander museums and listen wide-eyed to the tales of the once real but will be mythical city of Grand Forks, North Dakota that disappeared in one night and sat where there is now a giant lake on the ND/MN boarder.  At least this blog and our online exhibit will live on.

Flying Too Close to the Sun

I love the history of flight, from the mythical story of Icarus and Daedalus to when the Wright brothers soared to new heights at Kittyhawk, North Carolina.  I’ve visited that hallowed ground on many occasions.  Carved into the door that leads under one of the monuments there, you will find the most important moments in flight history recorded.  My favorite mile markers are the myth of Icarus and Daedelus, the conceptual work done by Leonardo D’ Vinci, the first hot air balloon flown by the Montgolfiers, and, of course, the flight at Kittyhawk.

My fellow interns and I, with the support of our advisor and others, are supposed to launch an on-line art exhibit within a couple of days.  I originally visualized the many projects we are undertaking in blueprint form in my mind.  I conceptualized a building made up of many rooms that acted as workshops.  In one, the on-line art exhibit, in another, scanning, cataloging and archiving slides that show the degradation of ruins over time, and so on.  I move from room to room depending on things like deadlines or availability of materials.  The more that I have worked on the on-line art exhibit, however, the more that concept has morphed from a blueprint into something else.  That’s where the history of flight comes in.

Many an educational soundtrack has begun with a statement something like,  “Since the dawn of time, humans have watched the birds of the air and dreamed of taking flight.”  Fulfilling this dream has taken a great deal of time and been accompanied by a multitude of errors, beginning with the mythical Icarus and Daedalus.  In an attempt to escape the island of Crete upon which they were imprisoned, Daedalus crafted wings from feathers and wax for himself and his son.  Inspired by the thrill of their cunning escape, and despite his father’s warnings, Icarus flew closer and closer to the sun.  The wax melted, and he plummeted to his death in the deep ocean below.

Leonardo did not rely on myths to create his flying machines.  Though only experimental, he explored many different means by which humans could take flight.  His designs reflect the earliest attempts at hot air balloons, helicipoters, human wings, and even aeroplanes of sorts.  His was certainly a more profound understanding of the realities of flight than the Greek tale offered.

Shortly thereafter, the Montgolfier family created the first hot air balloon.  Though it took people into the air, it could not soar like a bird, so the dream was only partially realized.  Finally, after much trial and error, the Wright brothers were able to lay claim to the most bird-like, working craft.

Creating an on-line exhibit follows in similar progression.  I can see the end product, can even see the steps that will help me and/or our group to achieve that end.  Because of this, I am usually able to move rather swiftly from design (Leonardo), to progressive step (Montgolfier), to prototype (Wright).  Rarely do I have to visit the earliest Greek stage which, more than anything else, is a reflection of their hopes and fears.

Daedalus feared for his impetuous son.  Often early attempts at anything are fraught with fear.  I have had them when it comes to dealing with computers.  There’s been no dearth in the number of people that have told me I cannot break the computer.  I believe them.  But I can lose data, thereby creating chaos out of order.  I have no desire to do that with my own information, let alone someone else’s.  Today I had to face that fear.

There are a series of essays on this fledgling on-line exhibit that needed an introduction.  I was tasked to write a draft and submit it to my peers for input.  In preparation, I visited the actual physical exhibit, revisited the artwork on the on-line site, and reread all the essays.  Like the author J. K. Rowling, I often write long hand using pen and paper.  It is cathartic, and I enjoy the process.  Sometimes I open up a simple computer program, write, and save.  Not this time.  I felt it was time to take flight.  I boldly entered our website and began to put thoughts to cyberpaper.  I was happy with the outcome.  The words conveyed the very thoughts and feelings I wanted them to.  Pleased to have been savvy enough to figure out how to traverse the sticky “web” and accomplish this task, I placed my cursor on the “Save and Return” button and watched every word immediately disappear into the irretrievable mists of cyber-ether.

Gone.

Like Icarus, my waxed wings melted and I plummeted into the sea.

My advisor was, as usual, most patient and helpful.  Despite his busy schedule, he, like I, excavated the website for my lost ruins, to no avail.

Enough time had passed that I could not remember the exact words that had flowed only a while before.  I attempted to reconstruct my thoughts, but they did not rival the beauty of that first set of wings.

Like D’ Vinci, though, I have learned from the trial of that experiment.  My ignominious defeat has served to help me progress, to better design, to come up with differing sets of ideas that will lead me to actually fly in the future.  At the end of this internship, I suspect I will have been able to present you with a prototype, no matter how crude.  I stated in my first blog that we would begin, and so we have.

Thanks to my patient peers, the “launch” of this on-line exhibit will look a great deal more like that windy day at Kittyhawk and much less like those wonderful old films of airplanes falling off of cliffs.  Make no mistake.  I will soar with the best of them.  Today just wasn’t that day.

Can a blog change its skin?

There’s a reason that this one didn’t make it as a proverb: blog skins are altered, shed and reassumed with ease. The development of blog “skins” is a great outlet for the artistically-inclined, and, with the number of artistically-inclined folks out there, there have been many skins developed for sharing which I could apply to this blog with a few clicks of the mouse. Now, considering that we will be increasingly personalizing this blog in response to concerns both functional and aesthetic, I’d like to open this up to preliminary discussions on color, graphics, fonts and layout …

Last but not least….

My name is Sara McIntee and I am the final intern for this experimental project at the University of North Dakota.  I was born and raised in North Dakota and love everything the state has to offer, hands down.  The “prairie” is my life.  Although, North Dakota is not the flat state you think it to be.  Look at a topographical map.  Trust me.  We have hills. 

I am a MA candidate at UND with a major in history. This is my first semester as a graduate student, so I feel I am tripping my way through the month of January.

I consider myself different from the rest of the graduate students in the history department because my goals as a MA candidate are different.  I’m not looking to teach and I’m not looking to do research.  I am concentrating on Public History.

For the past few years I’ve worked at the local historical society archiving artifacts and spreading the good news of the historical world to the public in a language they speak- simple and entertaining.  While some graduate students get a high off the latest WWII book or writing a 50+ page paper, I prefer to get my kicks giving a tour and writing a artifact-acceptance receipt for a 100+ year picture of Grand Forks.  Historical interpretation is important, but I sometimes think the scholars (and grad students) of the world forget the pictures, letters, documents, and artifacts need to be cared for and who takes care of it so they can view it for years to come.  Theories and stories can only go so far- artifacts are what keep history alive.

I hope I can gain more experience with working with a team of “archivists” as in the historical society I am the only one.  I hope this blog will also reach aspiring historians all over the world- young and old, professional and amateur- and let them in on the unseen behind-the-scenes of a working museum.

And don’t be shy to comment!  We would love to answer questions or just engage in conversations about history, our museum, Pyla-Koutsopetria, North Dakota….or anything else that strikes your fancy!

Sara McIntee

“Outer” Spaces?

I’ve been asked to introduce myself.  I have no idea how to take 46 years and amalgamate them into something meaningful in a venue demanding brevity.  I’m practicing to be an historian, after all, and brevity is not central to that profession.

I didn’t start out as an historian.  I started out as an anthropologist.  That isn’t exactly true.  I, like you, started out as a child.  My upbringing had too much of an impression on my future career path for me to ignore it in this, my truncated autobiography.  It also helps to set up how my introduction ties into a blog about history interns and on-line museums, so I am compelled to mention it.  Intrigued yet?  Read on.

I grew up around scientists, test pilots, and astronauts.  That was my dad’s field, so that’s what I knew.  I not only watched the first, and subsequent, moon landings and jaunts into outer space, but was also privy to the preparation that took place to make them happen.  “Journeys.”  “Outer” space.  Important words that shaped my destiny.

I love journeys, trips, pilgrimages.  I love to seek out a destination, research it, and make preparations to travel to it by whatever means is available.  I care that I go through the process and arrive at my destination.  I care that, upon arrival, there is much to learn and explore.  In that vein, anthropology suited me.  It still does.

I was the director of a small but regionally significant museum for a short time early in my career.  I loved being the director of a destination, of my own little moon, if you will.  I worked hard to entice people to come, and they did.  I also loved the tangible, creative process of setting up displays to convey that bit of history that would most intrigue and inform the visitors.  They travelled from their world to mine.  My daily space was their “outer” space.  They explored and made discoveries.  The work was immensely satisfying.

This worldview makes it difficult for me to imagine a destination without envisioning the preparations and travel that take me there.  They are all integral to the whole.  I have as much difficulty creating a mental picture of a museum without walls.  Yet as a master’s level graduate student in history, I have been tasked to help create such a “space.”  My initial reaction is to ask whether this is possible.  Continuing with the cosmic metaphor, I feel that I have been asked to find a way to bring the moon to the earth.  If I am able, won’t those visiting have lost something without completing the journey that “should have” taken them there?

I found the beginnings of my answer in a speech given by John F. Kennedy to a university crowd in Houston on the 12 of September, 1962.  He said, “…all great and honorable actions are accompanied with great difficulties, and…must be enterprised and overcome with answerable courage.”  Creating an on-line art exhibit, a museum, and a blog, represents a new age of exploration for me, one that turns from the “outer” spaces of my world and life to the “inner” spaces of my computer and mind.  This journey is already creating difficulties as I move from macro to micro measurements, from hectares to gigabytes, from buildings to computers.

Computers move too quickly for me, so I will have to adjust my steps to keep up.  Sentiments concerning the speed at which change occurs are not unprecedented.  Kennedy, in the same speech, stated, “This is a breathtaking pace, and such a pace cannot help but create new ills as it dispels old, new ignorance, new problems, new dangers.”  Laptops, in 1962?  No, Kennedy was referring to space travel.  He continued, “Surely the opening of vistas of space promise high costs and hardships, as well as high reward.”  Kennedy was in the first stages of a pilgrimage.  His speech revealed that he had chosen a destination:  the moon.

I, too, have a new destination in mind.  It does not hang over the earth, caught in orbit, however.  It quite literally exists in my own, and my peers’, minds at present.  We will delve into the microcosm of cyberspace and experiment with its matter in an attempt to create a place that you find enticing.  I hope that asking you to accompany me on this trek will satisfy your need for exploration and discovery in the same way it does mine.  I am compelled to embark on this adventure for the same reasons that Kennedy urged the nation to go to the moon.  He said, “We choose to go to the moon…not because [it is] easy, but because [it is] hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, …one we are unwilling to postpone….”  So let us begin.

Kathryn A. H. Nedegaard

Who let this guy in?

My name is Christopher Gust and I’m one of three interns collaborating on the projects to be discussed in this blog. I am a MA candidate at the University of North Dakota, majoring in history and minoring in English. I am an aspiring medievalist and cultural historian with a long-time fascination with archaeology and material culture studies. I spent the summer of 2004 at various Pre-Columbian/Pre-Contact sites throughout North Dakota and, in 2008, I accepted Dr. Caraher’s invitation to join the Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project in the Republic of Cyprus/Dhekelia Sovereign Base Area. Now, as I complete my thesis concerning medieval ghost folklore and the dialogic aspects of sermon exempla under the guidance of Drs. Broedel, Caraher, Sauer and Beard, I look forward to engaging the material which Dr. Caraher has provided our “public history” team this semester. Considering that some of these projects will continue for multiple semesters in the hands of other students, I also look forward to laying both a substantive foundation in terms of quality and quantity as well as a legacy of daring creativity and avant-garde conceptualization for those who will come after. In our own, small way, I see this team as participating in a larger movement of pioneers moving into the foggy, increasingly complicated and frequently alarming future of the present disciplines of history and archaeology. One thing is certain, and that is that our disciplines will not be static, just as they have not been static in the past. The key lies in anticipating change and learning not only to adapt to it for the sake of our own paid employment, but to thrive amid it to the edification of our fellow humans.

That’ll do for now. I look forward to meeting our readers over the course of this semester through our communication on this blog, and I hope that you get to know me a little better with every new post.

Until next time,

Christopher Shaw Gust

the laboratory is within the experiment

… or, at least this blog itself is expected to morph considerably over the course of these next few months. In setting up the blog I hastily chose a simple, pre-packaged visual format which vaguely reminded me of the most assertive visual backdrop of the PKAP site: the Mediterranean Sea. I’m not sure that I would call it a neutral space — that is, the sea-scape presented by the Mediterranean Sea in Larnaka Bay — but, neutral or not, it does draw the gaze more than the landward portion of the panorama. But maybe that’s just me. Judging from the Topos/Chora photographs, I don’t think that I’m the only one who was drawn to the great blue expanse ….

So, this is all to warn our audience ahead of time that we will be “tweaking” or “niggling” the particular manifestation of this blog as we go along. If you have any ideas which you would like to contribute, we welcome and encourage them.

An Introduction to the Experiment

Welcome to an experiment blog for an experimental class! This blog will detail the adventures of an intrepid group of public history interns as they work on several online and real life public history projects in the Department of History at the University of North Dakota. The goal of this blog is to make our efforts to create an online museum, manage an online complement to a gallery show, digitize analog data, prepare analog data for formal archiving, and create an online companion to a paper article. I have no idea how many of these projects this team will succeed in completing this semester or what realizations and limitations the team will encounter. The primary method of instruction, which this blog will reflect, is hands-on learning and like the best kind of hands on learning experiments, the results are not predetermined, but will depend on the success, energy, and abilities of the participants.

The hope is that this blog will make the process of learning and creating a range of public history experiments transparent to anyone who is interested and attract some positive (and maybe even critical!) attention to our high quality graduate students and their creativity.  Above all,however, the idea is to make the process of public history as visible as the products of public history itself.  In other words, I want to make sure that the process of producing public history (of all descriptions) is as important to how we think about the past as the product is.

So, stop back to the blog, three times a week to follow the trials and accomplishments of the public history team! And feel free to contribute in the comments line.