Reception of Nineveh sculptures at the British Museum, Illustrated London News, 1852.
I’ve just had an article published in “The Ancient Near East Today”, which is the online news journal of the Friends of the American Schools of Oriental Research. The article – Comics, Narrative and the Archaeology of the Near East – is about comics and archaeology, and the it they can bring something “new” to information about a very “old” part of the archaeological world.
Most of my comics and archaeology projects have been based in the “New World” – and have dealt almost exclusively with new sites, new projects and new data. It’s easy to do something “new” about archaeology which itself is mostly “new”. Not only is there a fairly shallow depth to the information – coming as it does from one a few seasons, but there is also a fairly contained context to the information – a single team, often operating on a restricted number of research threads. It’s not too difficult a job, therefore, to present that information to a non-archaeological audience.
But in the Near East, this is not the case. Research and excavation may be “new”, but it takes place within a context of archaeological work that goes back centuries, and within a complex network of cultures and civilisations that goes back millennia. It’s hard to talk about a small Bronze Age site in eastern Turkey without needing to talk about the Bronze Age as a whole across most of the eastern Mediterranean. And it’s almost impossible to talk about a Neo-Persian fortified site without talking about the Byzantine Empire, the Roman Empire, Sassanian kings, etc., etc. Indeed, in outreach about Near Eastern archaeology, it often boils down to trying to decide what you aren’t going to talk about, more than what you are. Our archaeological stories deal with this great depth of complexity and context by sticking to time-honoured boundaries and limits – quickly making those narratives feel “overly-familiar”. Despite decades of new and interesting research, most archaeological explanations of Near Eastern archaeology conform to recognisable patterns because it’s simply too difficult to tell such stories any other way within the narrative restrictions imposed by a museum interpretation panel or a site guide book.
My argument in this ASOR article is that using comics as a medium for presenting such complex, multi-threaded and multi-layered information offers us a unique opportunity to do three things: (1) To re-present the archaeological stories of “old” sites, cultures and monuments in a way that actively addresses the complexity and connectedness inherent in Near Eastern archaeology, and in doing so (2) to look anew at the way we traditionally break down these stories along well-worn – even traditional – geographical, cultural and temporal lines, and in doing so (3) start to talk about the “overly-familiar” archaeology of the Near East in new – and perhaps unexpected – ways that more accurately reflects new research and scholarship.
I grew up with the archaeology of the Near East, studied it at University, and worked out there for over a decade as illustrator at Çatalhöyük. I know this world, and I know first-hand some of the issues facing public outreach in such places. But I also know that, with comics, the medium can make us think differently about our message – the form can suggest new ways to shape and present content. This is, I think, something that “old” archaeology might need – and this is why I think comics can bring something new and invigorating to our archaeological stories of the ancient Near East.
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