Det monterløse museum: En etnografisk undersøkelse av et arkeologisk universitetsmuseum som møtested for arkeologiske praksiser og museal gjøren

Abstract

This thesis examines processes at play in the knowledge production in the interdisciplinary academic community, as well as the dissemination directed towards the general public, at the Museum of Archaeology at the University of Stavanger. It does so by examining what takes place during meetings at the museum’s outdoor knowledge arenas. My study is located at the intersection between archaeology, museology, and cultural studies/culture history. I highlight recent perspectives on audience, knowledge, and place by the use of analytical terms such as knowledge production, meeting place, involvement, memory, narration, visitors and site museum. The study has been conducted using qualitative methods such as participatory observations, interviews, and visual analyses. In the analysis, encounters between actors in connection with the university museum’s archaeological excavations are presented through my own confessional and impressionist tales, which are based on observations, conversations, and interviews with museum staff. I have conducted an ethnographic analysis of what occurs in knowledge production in a museal context. My study has uncovered a distinct museo-archeological form of knowledge production. The unique characteristic of the actors’ archaeological fieldwork is the frequency and diversity of interpretations connected to place, time, and experiences. The actors retain these interpretations from the field in the form of stories or memories from the work with archaeological structures, or through a selection of significant site elements. The museum experts have multidisciplinary meetings through walking tours of the sites. External actors contribute local knowledge to the project and provide a new understanding of specific places in the local community. The knowledge is transferred through active dissemination on the part of the archaeologists and creates the basis for collaboration and the development of new methods. Imaginary time travel occurs in encounters between archaeologists and the public. The public is directly or indirectly included in the museum’s knowledge production, as a part of the guided tour narrative, through activities or improvised forms of presentation. The archaeological excavations at the university museum are a part of the museum’s museal processes and are temporary places for scientific knowledge production. The sites are converted into meeting places for the production, transfer, and development of knowledge, in which the actors’ interaction is place- specific. External actors are members of the public who transfer, explore and take part in producing knowledge about the places being excavated by the university museum. Co-operation with the museum’s professional staff is a type of involvement that changes the local population or museum visitors into amateur archaeologists or fellow museo- archaeological researchers. In museal outdoor spaces, members of the public become discoverers, through becoming involved in an ongoing museo-archaeological knowledge production process. As such, imaginary time travel is not limited to activities in permanent museum institutions but is also tied to guided tour narratives and excavation activities, as parts of a temporary form of museum dissemination. The guests are presented with and involved in interpretations that are accessible in this museum without walls. The university museum’s excavation sites are converted into temporary site museums. This opens up for the public’s own experience and understanding of the past, at the same time as such encounters involve the public in knowledge co-production. Members of the public become co-creators or co-producers in a co-production museum. The university museum’s excavation sites enable another way of involving the public in a ‘museum without cabinets’ than that which can be offered through its permanent exhibitions. A museum space without cabinets is formed. The museum gains an outdoor knowledge arena that functions as a post- museum (Hooper-Greenhill, 2000), offering openness, co-operation, knowledge sharing and the actualisation of places and stories.