Abstract:The legal battles ensuing from the discovery of the "Kennewick Man" brought mass media attention to a longstanding divide between the science of archaeology and contemporary indigenous peoples. In this essay, I reflect on this divide as experienced from the perspective of a student of archaeology who later became a cultural anthropologist specializing in the anthropology of Inuit/settler relations in Nunavut. Building on the concept of community-oriented approaches to archaeology, I examine how a humanistic ap… Show more
“…As discussed by Shanks and Hodder (), interpretive archaeology embraces uncertainty and multiple narratives of the past, offering a range of approaches that might be used to make meaning from archaeological texts or artifacts. For instance, such approaches might include a more thorough engagement between archaeologists and indigenous people about the “stories of collaborations, conflicts, and struggles” that emerge from excavations (Searles :86). And perhaps more controversially, “dramatic performance” is offered as one possible mode for interpretation:Where a particular interpretation of a dramatic text is offered according to the judgment of performers and director … interpretation is in performance an active apprehension .…”
What happens when you take archaeological artifacts out of the lab or the museum, and use them to inspire a storytelling performance? How might artifacts inspire theater, and how might theater animate artifacts? Here, in a dialogue between a writer/performer and an anthropologist, we explore these questions, using a recent solo performance piece to think about the possibilities of theater inspired by an "archaeological imagination." [performance, theater/archaeology, Onfim, interpretive archaeology, dialogue]
The Journey BeginsWhat happens when you take archaeological artifacts out of the lab or the museum, and use them to inspire a storytelling performance? How might artifacts inspire theater, and how might theater animate artifacts? Here, in a dialogue between a writer/performer (DBT) and an anthropologist (SEB), who also happen to be mother and son, we explore these questions, using a recent DBT solo performance piece to think about the possibilities of theater inspired by an "archaeological imagination" (Pearson and Thomas 1994:156).
DBT: Imagining the Dead 1Entering my sophomore year at Washington University in St. Louis, I thought I wanted to be an archaeologist. I had just completed an archaeological dig on the St. John's River in Florida of a site dating to over 5,000 years ago. Sifting through layer after layer of dirt, shell, bone, pottery, and tools, I felt connected to the earth, to the past, and to myself. Then I returned to the lab. In cleaning and processing all those artifacts, I was washing away all the beauty I had experienced in the sweltering Florida sun. I was turning these people's stories and voices into mere numbers and morphologies. Archaeology lost its magic, and I felt adrift.Theater restored for me that magic to the world, and I followed this storytelling language into a career in the arts. Later, when studying with the SITI Company as a graduate student in Theater Performance, I found the words that began to connect archaeology and performance. In one of her talks, Anne
“…As discussed by Shanks and Hodder (), interpretive archaeology embraces uncertainty and multiple narratives of the past, offering a range of approaches that might be used to make meaning from archaeological texts or artifacts. For instance, such approaches might include a more thorough engagement between archaeologists and indigenous people about the “stories of collaborations, conflicts, and struggles” that emerge from excavations (Searles :86). And perhaps more controversially, “dramatic performance” is offered as one possible mode for interpretation:Where a particular interpretation of a dramatic text is offered according to the judgment of performers and director … interpretation is in performance an active apprehension .…”
What happens when you take archaeological artifacts out of the lab or the museum, and use them to inspire a storytelling performance? How might artifacts inspire theater, and how might theater animate artifacts? Here, in a dialogue between a writer/performer and an anthropologist, we explore these questions, using a recent solo performance piece to think about the possibilities of theater inspired by an "archaeological imagination." [performance, theater/archaeology, Onfim, interpretive archaeology, dialogue]
The Journey BeginsWhat happens when you take archaeological artifacts out of the lab or the museum, and use them to inspire a storytelling performance? How might artifacts inspire theater, and how might theater animate artifacts? Here, in a dialogue between a writer/performer (DBT) and an anthropologist (SEB), who also happen to be mother and son, we explore these questions, using a recent DBT solo performance piece to think about the possibilities of theater inspired by an "archaeological imagination" (Pearson and Thomas 1994:156).
DBT: Imagining the Dead 1Entering my sophomore year at Washington University in St. Louis, I thought I wanted to be an archaeologist. I had just completed an archaeological dig on the St. John's River in Florida of a site dating to over 5,000 years ago. Sifting through layer after layer of dirt, shell, bone, pottery, and tools, I felt connected to the earth, to the past, and to myself. Then I returned to the lab. In cleaning and processing all those artifacts, I was washing away all the beauty I had experienced in the sweltering Florida sun. I was turning these people's stories and voices into mere numbers and morphologies. Archaeology lost its magic, and I felt adrift.Theater restored for me that magic to the world, and I followed this storytelling language into a career in the arts. Later, when studying with the SITI Company as a graduate student in Theater Performance, I found the words that began to connect archaeology and performance. In one of her talks, Anne
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