Feb. 21: Mapping Archaeology: Recording Sites and the Landscape

Readings:

Bradley, Richard.

1997.“To See is to have Seen”: Craft Traditions in British Field Archaeology. In B. L.

Molyneaux, ed., The Cultural Life of Images: Visual Representation in

Archaeology, 62-71. London: Routledge.

Fowler, Peter

1995. “Writing the Countryside,” chap. 13 in Hodder, Ian, Michael Shanks, Alexandra Alexandri, Victor Buchli, John Carman, Jonathan Last and Gavin Lucas, eds., Interpreting Archaeology: Finding Meaning in the Past, London: Routledge.

Lazzari, M.

2003.“Archaeological Visions: Gender, Landscape, and Optic Knowledge.” Journal of Social Archaeology 3(2):194-222.

Mundy, Barbara E.

1996.Excerpts from The Mapping of New Spain: Indigenous Cartography and the Mapsof the Relaciones Geográficas. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Romano, David G., N. Stapp, and M. Davison

2006“Mapping Augustan Rome: Towards the Digital Successor.” In Haselberger, Lothar, and John Humphrey (eds.) Imaging Ancient Rome: Documentation— Visualization—Imagination. Journal of Roman Archaeology, Supplementary Series No. 61:271-282.

Study questions (in order of discussion):

Mundy:

-- What are the antecedents and motives behind the Philippine mapping projects of the early Colonial period in New Spain?What were their political and ideological underpinnings? The distinction between “chorographic” and “geographic” maps?

-- What, in contrast, were the indigenous mapping traditions into which the Relaciones Geográficas came into “contact”? What were their ideological associations, as of

“community maps” and their perceived secularism? What was the relation of “margin” to “periphery” in Mundy’s argument about survivals?

-- How did these indigenous traditions “relate to” the Spanish commissions? What was

the local “vocabulary” of cartographic representation? What is the distinction

between a “cartographic history” and a “social settlement map”? How does

Mundy employ the term “projection” in describing indigenous productions?

-- What other examples can you recall of such “cartographic” collisions and fusions?

Fowler:

-- What, according to this essay, are the shifting and alternative views of the countryside, of the “landscape”? (And as represented in prose: “mapping” is not only visual.)

-- What do you see as alternatives beyond those posited by Fowler? What is the ideological freight, or the “editing” as described here, behind such representations of space? Think of examples.

Lazzari (apologies for the prose-style of this article, BTW!):

-- The author examines the concept of “gender” and its effects on “ocularity.” She situates such ideas in ideas of “domination,” but how does she see this a critique of “feminism” and the subversion of a better “relational field”? How does she

relate vision to the “invisible,” courtesy of Merleau-Ponty?

-- How does the author critique “homogenous” or “universalizing” visions of “hegemonic nature”?

-- How is the landscape a “chronotype,” and how is positionality understood in representations of landscape?

-- How would such relations and material or “formless” things be best depicted in maps? What is the role of “labels” applied to such depictions of space? How can other forms of perception be folded into map-making, if at all?

Bradley:

-- How does Bradley relate what we do to a “history of seeing”?

-- How does Bradley suggest that “ways of seeing” shift and are adjusted by preceding example? (Consider his specific examples.)

-- What is seen or detected? Features vs. “types”? Contrast between Wheeler and Bersu?

-- What is your response to Bradley’s call for “humility” and attention to subjective mediation? Is closer description or (to him) “spurious uniformity and authority” impossible?

(extra readings: Hingley and Webmoor describe the meaning of, and alternatives to, conventional mapping, in a Roman and Mesoamerican context:

-- how does Hingley relate the mapping of the Roman world to evolving views of later Britain as a colonizing power? Consider by century, including Hanoverians and

Victorian and Edwardian imperialism, the Ordnance Survey, and the relation of “duty to dominance.”

-- how does map-making predetermine interpretation at Teotihuacan? What are Webmoor’s criticisms of maps as conventionally understood? What is the distinction, mentioned here, between Barthes’ ideas of “stadium” and “punctum”?

What is the relation in maps between “non-sensorial data” of a map and the actual “perceived landscape of the map-reader”? What sorts of “transformations” does

Webmoor recommend?

Romano et al.:

-- This ambitious project describes its stages of development, from book and maps to a “digital” version. What are the practical and theoretical challenges of such a project? How were “attribute data” handled? How is the project moving to

a perception of 3-D?

-- Can you think of a comparable project in your own area of expertise? How could it

be both scholarly yet open-ended?