Art, Archaeology and Community

My Gillray-inspired political cartoons about Old Oswestry have been part of an exhibition of art inspired by the iron age hillfort put on by the Artists Hugging the Hillfort group. The exhibition has been at The Willow Gallery in Oswestry, and is now at Blossoms Gallery in Aberystwyth all through June.

As part of the exhibition opening at The Willow, I gave a short talk about the connections between art and archaeology. The response from the audience was really interesting. Most people attending the talk were completely unaware that there were any connections between archaeology and art – but most were also immediately enthusiastic about the possibilities and potentials of those connections.

For archaeologists, connections with art are opportunities to explore relationships between past material culture and the wider social and cultural meanings of ancient landscape, environment and ecology. But for local communities, connections between art and archaeology are opportunities to help express intimate, contemporary relationships between people and place.

This exhibition brought home to me how much the connections between art and archaeology have to offer those who often feel powerless in the battle to preserve and protect their local heritage. Art about archaeology gives members of a community the chance to show the lived importance of their historical, ancient and ecological heritage – to politicians, to developers, to friends and neighbours… even to archaeologists.

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Comics, Politics and Heritage

Not on our doorstep! New cartoon in support of the campaign to keep Old Oswestry Hillfort the way it is, thank you very much. John G. Swogger, 2015.

It’s Comics Forum this week, one of the best conferences on comics in the UK. The theme of the conference this year is Politics, and I’m going to be giving a paper on the role of politics in archaeology comics.

This is something I’ve become both increasingly aware of and increasingly involved in recent years. As I produce more and more archaeological comics, so I’ve come to understand that these comics have a political dimension beyond the simple communication of information about the past. In some cases, it’s the information which is outright political – in some cases, more intriguingly, it’s the medium itself. Sometimes the very act of communicating accurate information about the past can be a political act – sometimes the use of comics as a form of science communication it itself a form of political statement.

Sometimes, aspects of the study of the past collide with personal politics. The illustration above is one of a series of cartoons I’ve done, very much after the work of the 18th-century political cartoonist Gillray, and all about the current heritage-politics surrounding Old Oswestry iron age hillfort in Shropshire.

Personal, professional, practical: there’s a lot of politics in archaeological comics, and as far as I’m concerned – – well, if you want to know what I think, you’ll just have to come to my session. See you at Comics Forum!

“Digging Deeper: Applied comics and political discourse in archaeology”, Panel 2A – Constructing History with the Community. 11:15-12:15, Thursday, Nov. 12th, Leeds Central Library.

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Archaeology, Comics and Politics

A Serpent in Paradise! Or: a Gillray-styled cartoon in support of the “Hands Off Old Oswestry Hillfort” campaign.

I’ll be heading to Comics Forum 2015 in November, where the theme of the conference this year is comics and politics. I’ll be presenting a paper about politics in my archaeological comics – specifically about how the use of comics as a medium to present archaeological information reflects both “big” and “small” political decisions.

I’ve only recently come to appreciate the fact that using comics to present information about the past isn’t just a cultural, intellectual or creative decision – it’s a political one, too. And I’ve also come to appreciate that exploring and embracing this political context might result in new kinds of archaeological comics – ones that can function as more than just simple informational tools.

Anyway, I’m still writing my paper, so I’m still thinking through some of these ideas. In the meantime, here’s another kind of political archaeology comic: one in a series of political cartoons about Old Oswestry hillfort in the style of James Gillray, inspired by a trip to the British Museum’s Bonaparte and the British exhibition – and, of course, the venality, hypocrisy and ignorance of some of our local politicians.

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