Comics, archaeology and fieldwork

Extremely creative journal pages by Michelle Allen, via Journal Pages Group on Facebook and allendesigns.typepad.com

One of the things that came out of this weekend’s Underhill Farm Art & Wild Craft Fair was the possibility of running a course at the farm on Landscape Journaling, with Steve Evison of development company R4C. This is something that has come out of my work with comics and archaeology – specifically the Palau field journal I discussed on my SAA poster – and is an approach which seeks to better document the experience and process of fieldwork practice.

My background is in archaeology, and Steve’s is in environmental and social development work, both in the UK and abroad. We’ve both faced the same problems, however, of trying to document the practice of our fieldwork in a meaningful way. Both of us have realised that formal approaches rarely work well; both of us recognise the great value of personal journals and notebooks as a way of documenting field practice. Steve is an avid journal-keeper and sketcher, and knows from his own experience how text and image can work together as a recording tool. My work on comics in archaeology has suggested to me that using other mechanisms specific to comics – direct speech, people as agents/characters, panels & gutters, etc. – will also help capture the narrative of field practice beyond the basic recording of data.

So the theory is that using the experience of landscape as a framework, it is possible to create a narrative journal that more effectively records the practice of fieldwork. In practice this means bringing together the ideas and techniques of creative sketchbook and journal writing and comics to build a true narrative document. The aim is to create something which is genuinely useful as an archive resource, a presentation and PR tool, and as a personal record.

Together, we’ll be developing the course structure through the summer, and hopefully think about running an initial course later in the year. I’m interested to see how this course works out. It’s an opportunity for me to see how the ideas I’ve had for archaeology work out for artists, greenwood workers, environmental workers, teachers and others for whom “fieldwork” is often a major part of their professional practice, but for whom the experience of it is often poorly recorded.

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SAA Poster – available for download

Click above for a link to the pdf of “Drawn Together” – my SAA Poster on comics and archaeology.

Here’s a link for anyone who wants to download a copy of my SAA Poster: Drawn Together.

The copy here is only half the size of the one I displayed in Honolulu – 4′ x 2′ – but I think you’ll be able to see everything quite clearly, and it’ll still be readable if you want to print it out.

And yes, please do print it out – I’m perfectly happy for people to stick copies of this up in their lab, office, etc., particularly if it encourages people to get in touch and/or to start using comics in archaeology themselves.

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Past and Future Marks

‘Au: Tattooing implements from Samoa – appropriately pronounced “Ow”?

Got up to the Bishop Museum this week, to their excellent and recently refurbished Polynesian and Hawaiian galleries.

Both featured an extensive collection of material, nicely-displayed and with very good and signing and interpretation. In one of the cases was a small group of tattooing implements from Samoa. Far too dark to take photographs, but here are a few sketches from the case.

My apprenticeship at Fineline Tattoos begins properly in a fortnight’s time, so tattooing is much on my mind at the moment! There were some fascinating examples of tattoos from the Marquesas Islands in the Bishop Museum, and from Indonesia in the Honolulu Academy of Art. It got me thinking a bit about traditional tattoos on Palau.

A few comments came in to a post of mine here several months ago, saying how “traditional” tattoos seem to have vanished from Palau. One person remembered their grandparents with tattoos, and sent a link to some Japanese anthropological drawings from the ?1920s up on the web. I’d be interested in knowing if anyone else remembers “traditional” tattoos from Palau, and if anyone knows of more photographs or drawings of old Palauan tattoos.

Is it possible – or ethical – to revive such a traditional art? How does one find new meaning for an artform whose social and cultural context is now “lost”? How does such an artform adapt to find new, contemporary meanings and contexts? Is there an example in the revivals of other Polynesian tattooing traditions – Maori, Hawaiian, etc.? Or is there a precedent closer to home in the approach taken by Hisakatsu Hijikata and the evolution of the Palauan Storyboards?

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Drawing Together

Big thanks to everyone who stopped by my poster presentation yesterday, and apologies to anyone I didn’t get a chance to talk to. Thanks also to all the positive feedback as well – it was very gratifying to feel like I hit a common nerve with so many people.

I’m hoping that one of the things that will come out of this poster is the beginning of some productive dialogue between people who are interested in using, creating and publishing comics in archaeology. I feel like it’s beginning, and it will be interesting to see where it heads from here. I’ll keep posting comics and archaeology stuff here, and I’m more than happy to re-post stuff that other people are doing as well. Also, the SAA’s Public Archaeology Interest Group has asked me to keep them updated on developments via the Interest Group’s Facebook page.

Next planned archaeological comic stuff for me will be in the autumn, when my two archaeological web comics - Copernicus, Amy & Me and Jima San – start being published online. But conversations with people during the poster presentation may be leading to some more archaeological comic projects before the year’s end, too.

And yes, for everyone that’s been asking: the pdf of the poster will be available here sometime towards the end of next week.

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The Lost Art of Archaeological Narrative

Telling the whole archaeological story? Max Mallowan and Agatha Christie

A paper yesterday by Mitch Allen (Left Coast Press) in an excellent late-evening session on “Accessible Archaeology” struck a distinct chord. He was advocating the increased use of narrative in archaeological writing – or, perhaps more accurately, the increased use of narrative in writing by archaeologists – something that was the theme of my presentation at the York Heritage Research Seminars in February (“Discussion, Dialogue, Debate: Examining the role of narrative in the visualisation of archaeology).

Mitch’s argument was that narrative seems an obvious language for archaeologists, but that without training, they do it very badly. He pointed out that it is a literary tool that has a long and honourable history in archaeological writing. By coincidence, I’d picked up a copy earlier in the day of Max Mallowan‘s memoirs – exactly the kind of narrative archaeological writing that Mitch had held up as an example: informative, aimed at a general audience but yet full of detail and specialist information, and – yes – accessible.

This was exactly the point I made in my seminar presentation: that narrative is a vernacular language, and that in the context of public archaeology or community-based archaeological practice, finding a ‘common language’ is key to establishing sustainable lines of communication and engagement. Comics and other similar narrative graphic formats share this vernacular heritage, making them ideally suited to use in outreach and community involvement. They are, if you like, “literacy-blind”. As such, they don’t just “overcome” the issue of varied literacy in audiences – they can “work with” ordinary or everyday literacy across age, class, gender and other social and cultural divisions. After all, in community-based archaeology, “narrative” – in the form of oral histories, stories and personal experiences – often form a significant contribution by communities to the knowledge generated from the archaeological project.

Whether in comics, fiction or public speaking, I see narrative as offering those working in community-based archaeology a “shared voice”. Let’s not forget that archaeologists such as Mortimer Wheeler and Max Mallowan were among some of the earliest advocates of what we would now recognise as “public archaeology” – and putting their work into a narrative context was what made it accessible.

 

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Waikiki Tikis

Waikiki Tiki – Hidden at the back of the International Market.

There’s tons of great reasons to get your sketchbook out in Waikiki!

Hidden amongst all the modern glass and steel are reminders of the early days of tourism here – Polynesian “tikis”, relics of a bygone era now. A bit of urban archaeology will locate them: spirits of a vanished past, hidden in odd, forgotten corners near lo-rise “Aloha-Deco” apartment complexes back towards the Ala Wai canal.

Although no longer the poster children of Pacific tourism that they once were, these early gods of cheap air-travel and mass-market 1950s aloha still hold a certain fascination. For me, they conjure up the Pacific that my Grandparents knew – that mysterious, still slightly edgy post-war world complicated by contested memories of war and America’s new colonial aspirations.

Perhaps there is no more appropriate symbol for that era than the stolen iconography of the “Tiki”, now itself reduced to the status of a modern antiquity?

 

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Off to SAA 78

I’m off to the SAAs – great location, but even better: I’m looking forward to a great five days. I thoroughly enjoyed the meeting in Memphis last year, and got a lot of great feedback on the paper I gave, both on the day and afterwards.

My poster “Drawn Together” is part of the Saturday afternoon session on The Impacts of Public Archaeology Programs: Evaluating participant responses and feedback, sponsored by the Public Archaeology Interest Group. I enjoyed the session they sponsored last year, and got a lot out of the papers. I’m really hoping that the poster will help start to bring together more people who are interested in using comics in archaeology. My approach isn’t the only one – and if the field is to grow and develop, it needs others to get involved, to bring their own ideas and approaches into the mix; its the only way to create the kind of richness the genre deserves.

So if you’re at the SAAs, and interested at all in the idea of using comics in archaeology, come down to the poster session on Saturday, Apr. 6 in the afternoon and talk!

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SAA Poster

Picked up my SAA poster “Drawn Together” from the printers this week. Thanks to Nick and Ollie at NOW Signs in Oswestry for doing an excellent job. The print quality is excellent, the colours look fantastic – I’m really very pleased. I’ve had a number of pieces printed up by them now – prints on art paper, posters, signs; they’ve all looked great.

So thanks again, Nick and Ollie. The sign’s all packed up – now it just has to survive the trip to the conference!

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Comics and Process

I’ve been finishing up my “Drawn Together” poster for the upcoming SAAs next month. The poster looks at the work I’ve done on my field journal comic from Palau, and it’s thrown up some questions about sequence and process in fieldwork.

Recording the process of fieldwork is always difficult – it’s hard to spend too much time recording the process if you’re spending all your time and effort doing the actual process. This is why context sheets have evolved in the way that they have, and why any field processes that are introduced need to be streamlined and integrated into other elements of practice. While out at the Llanymynech limekilns, and in talks with Steve, I began thinking more about the nature of sequence and process in this context.

If comics are to be a useful addition to the process of recording archaeological fieldwork practice, then they need to also be integrated into current practice in much as surveying, site illustration, photography, environmental sampling or any other technique. Importantly, this integration needs to be not just a matter of achieving seamlessness, but in making the additional steps resonate and speak to existing practice.

It’s a question of time, a question of speed, of course – but more importantly, it’s a question of layering more into a field-based comic work than simply a record of events. The “sequence” of knowledge creation in archaeology is partly about how information builds up, layer upon layer, evolving out of field process. Rather than be simply documentary accounts of events, comics in archaeology need to embrace this broader concept of “sequence”. I’ve tried in Palau: An Archaeological Field Journal to do just this, but I think we can go further.

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Discussion and Debate

I’ve just added the text of my York Heritage Research Seminar paper from February up on the site. The video of the presentation still isn’t available on Sara’s YouTube page, so you’ll just have to make do with the old-tech written version for the moment.

Had a lot of good feedback since the presentation, and hopefully it’s sparked off some ideas in people for their own narrative images and archaeological comics. Encouraging to see so many students interested in the visualisation of archaeology and how the field is developing and adapting.

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