Seven Interventions with the Flatlands: Archaeology and its Modes of Engagement Contributions from the WAC-6 Session, “Experience, Modes of Engagement, Archaeology”

Abstract

This volume is the product of the WAC-6 session, “Experience, Modes of Engagement, Archaeology”, which was part of the conference theme, “Archaeological Theory? Legacies, Burdens, and Futures.” The following contributions embrace emergent, analog, and paper-based media and move on from the worn observation that these media can be important tools towards active interventions that demonstrate how they affect practice and theory when employed critically and reflexively. This introduction orients the focus of the volume through a discussion and case study that place theoretical emphasis on experiences documented through multimedia. Important questions are raised throughout concerning: archaeology and digital representation, the creation and destruction of archaeological information, authenticity in representations, the construction of archaeologists’ identities, and the non-linearity of archaeological practice. The studies in this volume approach archaeology through the lens of experience and multimedia engagement. In doing so they blend or altogether question the traditionally divided realms of theory and practice. Consequently, these contributions work with the interrelated agendas of the present between media ecologies and archaeology, and the changing pace and character of archaeology in the 21st century.