Media-Archaeologies

Abstract

The Media Archaeologies Forum in the Journal of Contemporary Archaeology presents the first meeting of archaeologists with interests in the media assemblages of the contemporary world and media scholars with interests in ‘media archaeologies’, variously enacted. It was inspired by the Archaeology as Such panel at the Archaeologies of Film and Media Conference (Bradford, UK, September 2014), a panel organized by Angela Piccini and the Committee for Audio-Visual Scholarship and Practice in Archaeology (CASPAR). Where some media archaeologists have dismissed archaeology-as-such as a practice of dirt and deep time, archaeologists have critiqued media archaeology for its lack of methodological rigour and specificity. What the contributors to this Forum demonstrate, however, is the rich diversity of scholarship within and across fields. All acknowledge a shared focus on the media networks and technologies that produce conditions for the observable and the sayable. They understand that the very practice of media archaeology emerges out of the intra-actions of the material events out of which our ‘disciplines’ unfold. This Introduction briefly sets out the terms of our meeting, welcomes the productive frictions that occur through the incommensurabilities of material-discourse and invites readers to consider possible non-normative futures for our mutual endeavours.