Pictorial Archaeology: Modernity and the Muse of Antiquity 9781003850571, 100385057X

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PICTORIAL ARCHAEOLOGY MODERNITY AND THE MUSE OF ANTIQUITY Roger Balm

Pictorial Archaeology

This book explores the expressly pictorial type of visual archaeology, the transcribing of three-dimensional materiality into two-dimensional depictions, and its influential history within the discipline. The picturing of ancient sites and artifacts to convey information links visual reporting with the workings of the imagination and indicates that the study of antiquity has always had a hybrid identity: part artistic and part scientific. In examining pictorial forms of visual story-telling about the past, this book looks beyond certain supposed “creative turns” and focuses instead on creative continuities, answering key questions about the power of picturing and its ability to not only inform documentary practices but also actively structure those practices. How are prints, drawings, paintings and photographs able to collapse the three-dimensional world of the ancient past onto a flat page while also conveying a sense of material reality? In contemporary practice, how do pictorial ways of seeing enable the interpretation of material remains but also shape the recognition of digital traces on a computer screen? Published illustrations, both historical and contemporary, are primary sources of evidence for answering such questions and identifying common patterns of pictorial information. This book provides a framework for scholars researching the visual culture of archaeology as well as the history of archaeology. It is also recommended for professionals in the fields of heritage studies, conservation and community archaeology. Roger Balm holds a Ph.D. in geography from Rutgers University (New Jersey, USA). He is an independent researcher whose interests focus on the visual record of ancient remains from the Mediterranean islands and Mesoamerica. His published work examines aspects of Western archaeology from the perspective of visual culture.

Pictorial Archaeology

Modernity and the Muse of Antiquity

Roger Balm

First published 2024 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2024 Roger Balm The right of Roger Balm to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-1-032-64687-9 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-64688-6 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-64689-3 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781032646893 Typeset in Times New Roman by KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd.

Contents

List of figures Acknowledgments Introduction 1 Antiquity and the Enchanted Eye

vi viii 1 12

2 Picturing the Past

43

3 Visualizing Time

79

4 Pictorial Meanings: Avebury and Knossos 5 Pictorial Meanings: Ancient Maya and Ancient Khmer

108 147

6 Visual Replication and the Muse

185

7 Conclusions

215

Index

235

Figures

1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 2.8 2.9 2.10 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4

Frontispiece (Worm 1655). 18 Cartouche (de Caylus 1752). 19 Frontispiece (de Caylus 1752). 20 Studies of Greek architecture at Agrigento (Piranesi 1761). 24 View of Goodrich Castle (Gilpin 1789). 44 Roman antiquities (Archaeologia 1786). 48 Anglo-Saxon grave goods (Archaeological Journal 1851). 50 Entrance to a chambered tumulus (Archaeological Journal 1854). 52 Painting of an excavation (Crocker c. 1820). Image reproduced courtesy of Wiltshire Museum. 53 Barrow types (Hoare 1812). 55 Remains of a Roman building at Caerleon (Archaeological Journal 1850). 56 Frontispiece (Layard 1849a). 61 Arrival of an Assyrian sculpture at the British Museum (Illustrated London News 1852). Image reproduced by permission. 62 Karnak Monolith (du Camp 1852). Wikimedia Commons. 68 Prehistoric flint tools (Evans 1897). 86 Stratigraphic position of flints (de Perthes 1847). 88 Radiometric versus Historical age (Arnold and Libby 1949). Image reproduced by permission. 91 Radioactive decay anomalies (Stuiver and Suess 1966). Image reproduced by permission. 94 Radiocarbon age of the Dead Sea Scrolls (Bonani et al. 1992). Image reproduced by permission. 98 Qumran cave scroll fragment. Wikimedia Commons. 99 Frontispiece (Stukeley 1743). 113 Avebury and Vicinity (Stukeley 1743). 114 Avebury reconstruction plan (Keiller 1939). Image reproduced by permission. 117 Photograph of Avebury site before landscaping (Keiller 1937). Image reproduced courtesy of Alexander Keiller Museum, Avebury Papers Project. 119

Figures vii 4.5 Photograph of Avebury site after landscaping (Keiller 1939). Image reproduced courtesy of Alexander Keiller Museum, Avebury Papers Project. 4.6 Avebury geophysical anomalies (David et al. 2008). Historic England Archive. Image reproduced by permission. 4.7 Goddess sealstone from Knossos (Evans 1901). 4.8 Cupbearer fresco reconstruction (Evans 1928). 4.9 Frontispiece (Evans 1928). 4.10 Imagined palace scene (Evans 1936). 4.11 Tourists at Knossos (2021). Image reproduced courtesy of Cheryl Gowar. 4.12 Drawing of fresco fragments (Cameron 1968). Image reproduced by permission. 5.1 Altar of Stela D at Copán, Honduras (author sketch). 5.2 Fallen Stone Idol at Copán, Honduras (Stephens 1949 [1841]). 5.3 Alfred Maudslay at Chichén Itzá, Mexico (Maudslay and Maudslay 1899). 5.4 Zoomorphic Sculpture at Quiriguá, Guatemala (Maudslay and Maudslay 1899). 5.5 Photograph and drawing of a Maya Stela (Maudslay and Maudslay 1899). 5.6 LiDAR image of Caracol, Belize (Chase and Chase 2017). Image reproduced courtesy of Arlen F. Chase. 5.7 Temple of Ongkor Wat, North Side (Mouhot 1864). 5.8 Central Portico of Ongkor Wat (Mouhot 1864). 5.9 Map of Ongkor Thom, Ongkor Wat and Vicinity by Henri Mouhot, c. 1860 (Mouhot). 5.10 Ruins of Mont Bakheng (Garnier 1885). 5.11 Map of Koh Ker (Parmentier 1939). 6.1 Parthenon under restoration 2007. Image reproduced courtesy of Lena Lambrinou, Acropolis Restoration Service. 6.2 Printed copies of a cuneiform tablet. Image reproduced courtesy of Hod Lipson, Columbia Creative Machines Lab. 6.3 Boy-King statuette forgery. Wikimedia Commons.

119 123 129 132 133 135 137 138 148 152 154 155 157 163 166 167 168 169 173 197 200 205

Acknowledgments

The research and writing of this book, and that of the previously published Archaeology’s Visual Culture: Digging and Desire (Routledge 2016), adds up to some 15 years over which time my indebtedness to others has far exceeded any prospect of repayment. I wish to express my gratitude to the various peer reviewers, especially Antonia Thomas (University of the Highlands and Islands, Orkney) and Stephanie Moser (University of Southampton) who directed me to fresh troves of literature which have greatly enriched the current work. A book about pictorialism would, of course, mean little without images and I greatly appreciate the generosity of those who freely granted rights to reproduce visual reports that I consider important in the context of pictorial archaeology and visual culture more generally. This group of donors includes Fran Allfrey (University of York, Department of Archaeology), Lisa Brown (Wiltshire Museum), Arlen F. Chase (Pomona College, Department of Anthropology), Hod Lipson (Columbia University Creative Machines Lab) and Lena Lambrinou (Acropolis Restoration Service, Athens), Andy Payne (Historic England), Andrew Shapland (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford) and archivists at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, gave valuable assistance in locating archival material. My thanks also go to Cheryl Gowar whose photographs of Knossos (Crete) and the Avebury megaliths (England) disclosed details I would otherwise have missed. My appreciation also extends to those whose advice, ideas and encouragement came at key moments. Included in this group are Rosemary Clough, Ken Mitchell, Bill Saturno (former Director of the San Bartolo Project, Guatemala), Linda Southwell, Sarah Southwold-Llewellyn, Charlene Vincent and my travel companions during a fellowship to Mexico and Central America in 2007. Others I came to know during a 2010 Fulbright fellowship in Cyprus, including Chris Schabel, Chair of the Department of History and Archaeology at the University of Cyprus, and Tom Davis, Director of the Cyprus American Archaeological Research Institute (CAARI) in Nicosia.

Introduction

The picturing of ancient sites and objects has an influential history extending back hundreds of years, but as a way of archaeological story-telling, it should have been rendered redundant as questions about the nature of antiquity and means of providing answers have evolved. However, based on the evidence of the visual record, that redundancy never occurred and pictorial depiction and its association with art, aestheticism, subjectivity and the workings of the imagination has retained relevance into the twenty-first century. What is the key to the illusionistic power of picturing that it can shape meaning on the flat page and, in contemporary practice, also shape the interpretation of a photograph or pixels on a screen? As a cultural force, pictorial illustration is deeply rooted in the identity of archaeology, but how was that force acquired and how is its identity-forming power exerted today? The evidence suggests that pictorial depiction of antiquity was a point of resistance against the accelerating pace of modernity in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but how effective was it as a counter-modern force, and does it still exert that power? Does archaeology’s embrace of the muse mean that it can never be modern? These are the principal questions this book seeks to answer. Creativity and imagination informs all fields of inquiry but particularly so with archaeology and there has been no shortage of interdisciplinary projects over the past three decades incorporating aesthetically attuned practices. But it is now time to look beyond certain supposed “creative turns” and focus instead on creative continuities, examining how the power of picturing has not only persistently informed documentary practices but actively structured those practices. That structuring began with the first stirrings of antiquarian observation, treating the ancient past both as material presence and as muse. Along the way it forged a hybrid identity for archaeology that remains distinctive to the present day. The desire to picture the past has, over time, created a rich and widely scattered archive of drawings, paintings, prints and photographs from a range of geographic locales and this archive is now being supplemented by new varieties of picturing made possible through technological innovations in instrumental imaging. Discussions across the various chapters are set within a broadly chronological framework. The earliest illustration examined is over 300 years old, while the latest dates from the early twenty-first century. The basic methodology in all cases is to interrogate specific images and contrast them with later or DOI: 10.4324/9781032646893-1

2 Introduction earlier counterparts in order to identify common patterns of pictorial information, bearing in mind that the visual life of an image may well have begun with a single observational moment. Pictorial Legacies Stories about antiquity have always been told more in images than words. Archaeologist and curator Laurent Olivier is of the view that “archaeologists have never been excavators. Rather, their principal occupation has been that of examining illustrations. They trade in elaboration, in piecing together and analyzing images of the past.” The beating heart of archaeology, he suggests, “lies in this practice of accumulating depictions of the material past” (2011, 111). Frederick Bohrer, historian of archaeological imagery, has recently reiterated the point in arguing that “images, perhaps even more than artifacts, held (and perhaps still hold) the archaeological enterprise together” (2011, 15). The first minute book of the Society of Antiquaries of London, compiled in 1717, indicates how foundational visual tropes had already become in Britain by the early eighteenth century, noting that “without drawing or designing, the Study of Antiquities or any other Science is lame and imperfect” (Piggott 1978, 7). Already, at this early time, the relationship between scholarship and pictorial illustration was a matter of considerable interest. The taproot of the aesthetic muse runs deep in archaeology and draws widely from the cultural soil. While the pursuit of resemblance and visual correspondence remains important, picturing also represents a point of connection with institutions and apparatus (Mitchell 1994, 16). As applied to the study of the ancient past, a line can be traced between today’s facets of pictorialism and the ways of seeing of the so-called antiquaries in centuries past. The story told by practitioners and historiographers about the emergence of Western archaeology as an organized field of study often identifies a time when antiquarian ways of seeing and describing both defined and limited the scope of investigation. It is typically a story of evolutionary progression toward modernized theory-building and systematic interpretation and it devalues much of the antiquarian record and its exuberant imagery. Paul Bahn, a widely published commentator on the history of archaeology, states unequivocally that “the mid-nineteenth century saw the final transition from an age of antiquarians to one of archaeologists” (1996, 80) and he is far from alone in this assertion. It is commonly implied that the association of antiquarianism with armchair scholarship and self-indulgent speculation needed to be broken to make way for progress and in much of the commentary it is not until the chapter on antiquarianism is brought to a close that the beginnings of archaeology proper are addressed (see, for example, Daniel and Renfrew 1988, 21; Thomas 2004 149; Trigger 1989, 72–73; 1978, 59). Thus, we are cautioned by two widely cited archaeologists to be wary of “lingering antiquarian tendencies” and to check “under the floorboards of contemporary enquiry” from whence they exude an air of melancholy (Shanks 1992, 20–21; Shanks and Tilley 1992, 10; 192). But having raised some of those floorboards in researching this book, I can report that the air is fresh; we will inhale deeply in the chapters ahead.

Introduction 3 We should be wary of stories told from an evolutionary perspective and in no time-centered area of study is this more so than in archaeology. An examination of the published visual record, such as that which underpins this book’s various chapters, shows that imaginatively informed picturing remains a documentary force in modern archaeology. Although idle speculation has no useful place in scholarly reporting, the relationship between visual impressions in the mind and their transfer from mind to media remains strong and the aesthetic muse continues to inform aspects of archaeology even though it is well over two centuries since the cultural force of antiquarianism was at its peak. The challenge is to link the visual archaeology of the present day with the documentary practices of centuries past. In tackling that challenge I set discussions within a revisionist frame for there are clear signs in the academic literature over the past 30 years of a push-back against the entrenched belief that antiquarianism was merely a wrong turning toward an intellectual dead end (see Scalia 2005, 2). Even those who once subscribed to this view have mellowed and we find in a co-authored essay by archaeologist Michael Shanks and anthropologist Timothy Webmoor that earlier cautions about lingering antiquarian tendencies have been overwritten by references to the “witnessing pace of the antiquarian [and] how sites … become itinerary, chorography, cartography, or travelog” (2013, 100). To construct a picture is to create an illusion whereby any aspect of the observable world can be depicted convincingly within a coherent spatial frame. The central roles played by hand and eye involve elements of subjectivity so no picture should be considered a true copy, especially given that the act of picturing collapses the three-dimensional world onto a flat surface. As I discuss in Chapter 2, documentary illustrations have to be viewed as convincing replicas of reality rather than reality itself. As observers, we are accustomed to distinguishing between artifacts as pre-existing material entities and illustrations of those artifacts, but the antiquarians often treated objects presented in well-executed pictorial form as equivalent to the original object in terms of the affect that could be projected onto them. In terms of recording individual objects, acts of picturing essentially converted material presence into portraiture and this allowed a state of charmed awareness to be constructed. The antiquarians also had a strong proprietary interest in the relics of the past and pictorialism formed an important support for this, enabling acts of depiction to become equivalent to acts of collecting. The making of a visual record was an act of possession, albeit in paper form (see Sha 1989, 63). Overall, we could say that the antiquarian visual relationship with the ancient past enabled ancient artifacts as well as sites of archaeological interest to be enfolded within a common cloak of allure. The end results were notably sympathetic, rarely depicting material remains of the past as abject. Even ruins (in fact, especially ruins) often acquired grandeur in the process of picturing. Early pictorial accounts can present something of a trap that might ensnare the unwary to the extent that they are interrogated for early signs of objective scientific reporting, leading to misunderstandings and misreadings of the evidence. It is a useful fiction that early visual records have stable meanings that match-up with the stability expected of documentary images in modern times (see Luthy and

4 Introduction Smets 2009, 400) and it elides the free-ranging visual inclinations of the antiquaries which alternated between the factual and the fanciful. They are records shaped by distinctive ways of seeing that should be viewed, indeed celebrated, as an infusion of creativity into more formalized agendas of knowledge-construction. Accurate capture of resemblance was often considered vital but so also was the embedding of visual values whereby the remains of antiquity were treated both as specimens and as loved relics. I will be making the case throughout the discussions ahead that acts of picturing antiquity required advantageous observation working in combination with the visual allure projected onto the remains of the past, making picturing both a covetous and curatorial endeavor. This combination justifies use of the term “muse” and it is diagnostic of the long historical reach of ancestral sensibilities that we can still find in the contemporary literature of archaeology.1 In the discussions ahead I attach considerable weight to the concept of enchantment and the notion that revealing relics of the past and returning them to visibility is akin to conjuring reality from invisibility. This is not the sort of conjuring associated with the occult or the legerdermain that Walter Benjamin dismisses as “the arts of the fairground” (1979 [1931]), 240), but rather a binding together of the observer and the observed into a condition of shared identity. It acknowledges that antiquity can be returned to visibility by means of a convincing pictorial illusion. As applied to archaeology, the terminology of enchantment and conjuring is not of my devising but drawn from published literature. For example, archaeologist and theorist Cornelius Holtorf refers to “the magical experiences” that an encounter with the past can create (2005, 155). Gavin Lucas adds some specificity by asserting that the skills of the archaeologist are associated with the ability to see what to them might be self-evident but which to others is extraordinary (2012, 16) and it is not unreasonable to think that the ability of “the radar trowel” to return the buried to a condition of visibility without displacing so much as a thimbleful of soil is a capability that the antiquarian mind would consider magical (see Price and Feinman 2001, 491). Field archaeologist Matt Edgeworth goes so far as to identify a broader philosophical context of disclosure and concealment and the cultural afterlife following their discovery where the remains of the past are simultaneously hidden and revealed (2013, 34). Contemporary references to enchantment present it as a structuring presence in archaeological investigation. This is exemplified in a comment by Ian Hodder, a researcher well known for his directing of a multi-media project (now concluded) at the site of Çatalhöyük (Turkey). “What, he asks, is the magic and the enchantment that transforms a material entity? It is, he concludes, the entanglement of things with humans and the shared agency between people and objects” (2012, 26). This is also a point-of-view embedded in the cross-disciplinary research of Michael Shanks who sees “the magic of the real” being worked both by physical objects and by their representation in image form (1997, 80). Absent the ineffable power of enchantment, the power of crafting illusions would amount to little more than an inventory of visual facts; antiquity as an array of surfaces neutrally observed and reiterated and thus complicit in what Don Slater terms the “disenchanting mission of modernity” (1995, 223).

Introduction  5 Before going any further, let me state clearly my rejection of any idea that some sort of Golden Age of visual expression once existed but which has now gone. Rather, what I am pointing out is the role of “pastness” as a spur to documentary depiction and as a focus for contemplation and reflection. I make the argument that pictorial depiction and the power of the muse are historically crosscutting and can be found embedded within forensic lines of inquiry and technologically driven lines of investigation as well as in illustrations from centuries past. It is unhelpful, therefore, simply to divide documentary imagemaking into analog (marks on paper inscribed by hand) versus marks obtained by other means. Rather, it is the shared perceptual and visual terrain that is important. Exploring and evaluating this terrain in the pages ahead involves a fair degree of time travel, from the work of Alfred Maudslay and his visual archiving of ancient Maya sculpture from Mesoamerica at the close of the nineteenth century to the observations of George and Bernard-Philippe Groslier in the 1950s of the landscape archaeology and artistic legacy of the Khmer empire in Cambodia; from the restorations by Arthur Evans of the site of Knossos in Crete in the early decades of the twentieth century to the efforts of Alexander Keiller to reinstate the ancient complexion of the stone circles at Avebury, England to accord with the eighteenthcentury visual schema of William Stukeley. Every image deserves evaluation in its own right and to be assessed in terms of its composition and its intention as disclosed by its pictorial “argument.” However, one must also be alert to any overarching cultural forces (metanarratives) that may be refracted through the image. Two such structuring cultural forces stand out as particularly important: the condition of modernity and the European turn toward romanticism beginning in the late eighteenth century. Those critical of Western notions of progress have characterized modernity as a force that dissolves the singularity of objects through mass production and commodification (see Chapter 1). Bjørnar Olsen et al., in their investigation of archaeology as a “discipline of things,” do not mince words in claiming that “in the ruined landscape left by the onslaught of capitalism and industrialization,…cold and inhuman technologies became the incarnation of our inauthentic, estranged, and alienated modern being” (2012, 21). If one accepts this characterization, then we must conclude that antiquarian ways of seeing and visual reporting were counter-modern; an oppositional response expressed through affectionate scrutiny of remains from the ancient past and their preservation through collection and illustration. The on-rushing present with its churnings, reformulations and constant changes threatened to make exchangeable that which the antiquarians thought singular, but acts of retrieval and visual display were a means of reversing the erasures of the modern age (Crary 1992, 10; Kaplan 1996, 28; Manning 2009, 52; Wood 2007, 185). For them, engagement with a speeding and ever-changing world was to be avoided for as long as possible. Eventually the need to integrate into that world required a coming to terms with the “tradition of the new” but it was negotiated largely on the terms laid down by antiquarian precedent, ensuring that links with aestheticism and the role of pictorialism would not be ruptured.2

6 Introduction The Antiquarian Factor It is highly questionable whether antiquarianism’s counter-modern proclivities could have been expressed so effectively and its ways of seeing perpetuated so strongly were it not for the revision in visual manners that romanticism encouraged, particularly the privileging of subjective imagery.3 Philosopher and cultural historian Isaiah Berlin describes romanticism as a phenomenon that heralded a shift in Western consciousness (2001, 1) but it emerged in different European regions at different times. In Britain it attained its fullest expression, as professor of art history and visual culture, Sam Smiles, lyrically puts it, between the publication of The Bard by Thomas Gray in 1775 and the death of the painter J. M. W. Turner in 1851 (1994, ix). In addition to the value placed on individual creativity, there was an attraction on the part of the romantics to the notion of “spirit,” a concept which could be applied to ancient relics as well as to entire sites of archaeological interest. Romanticized perspectives enable the world of the past to be re-imagined and converted into a fertile source of speculation. The medieval period in Britain and continental Europe, for example, tended to be thought of as a mythic age of chivalry (Edwards 2012, 52) and it is diagnostic of such sympathetic treatment that the Society of Antiquaries of London, during the high tide of romanticism, became more interested in medieval England than in classical Rome (Sturma 2008, 219; Trigger 1989, 66). Nourished by the conjoining of antiquarian and romantic sensibilities, the documentary role of pictorialism was much strengthened. Indeed, so tight did the bond eventually become that we might justifiably refer to the epistemological outcome as “romantic antiquarianism.” However, there have long been rumblings of disquiet about this bonding. According to Stuart Piggott, a prolific commentator on the cultural roots of archaeology, by the early nineteenth century, romanticism and antiquarianism “walked hand in hand” (1937, 36). But in a later publication he declares that pairing to be highly problematic; a “dubious aegis” that, in his opinion, “quickened a general apprehension of ancient monuments [but] hardly served to tighten the disciplines by which they were studied” (1976, 21).4 There has been no shortage of other scholarly voices similarly critical of the relationship between the antiquaries and the romantics. For example, in her work on the history of science and documentary practices, Barbara Maria Stafford asserts that by the end of the eighteenth century a “dusk of unreason” had descended as magic, illusion and science flowed together unimpeded (1994, 186) and points out that, as romanticist thought hold, the notion of unreflexive quotation and attempts at mimesis fell into disfavor (Stafford 1984, 449). In the opinion of the historian Rupert CrawshayWilliams, the sea-change in visual meaning left the antiquarians free to enjoy what he calls “the comforts of unreason” (see Crawshay-Williams 1947; see also Schadla-Hall 1999, 147–158). Far from considering their conjunction to be a dubious aegis, the discussions ahead treat it as a productive shaper of documentary imagery, and the flow of magic, illusion and science that Stafford views so skeptically is treated as a positive force. This perspective is not mine alone for it has been suggested that the

Introduction 7 romantic turn added an essential relevance to antiquarianism and helped transform the antiquaries from bespectacled savants into something more heroic (Blix 2009, 7) and, according to art historian Stephen Bann, romanticism helped move awareness of deep history away from being largely a literary genre, to a paradigmatic form of knowledge based on observable phenomena (1995, 4). While identifying antiquarians as heroes is going a little too far, it could apply to the object of their musings: the picture as hero. The long history of antiquarian observation in published form gave antiquity a readily accessible form and we find today a vastly broadened horizon of accessibility by virtue of digital publication. It is also the case that the rapid proliferation of vision-assisting technologies overlays the conventions of direct sensory contact, both retinal and tactile, and this has had a bearing on the way authenticity is determined, away from the erudition of embodied observers to the erudition of apparatus. This was not a sudden turn. Indeed, a trend toward greater abstraction and quantification has been identified extending back to the early eighteenth century in Europe involving increased exclusion of the uninitiated (Stafford 1984, 446). In archaeology since the mid-twentieth century, this has opened up new spaces of visual focus based on fragmentary and fugitive features. Martin Jay, historian of art and scientific culture, applies the term “denarrativization” to the move away from story-telling based on direct contact (1993, 51–52), but the continuing role of pictorialism despite this shift is indicative of its flexibility and potential for adaptation. As archaeologist and illustrator Rose Ferraby asserts, “through the machines we employ we are able to stretch our imaginations into new worlds, to ask new questions and find new solutions to old problems” (2017). In addition, and of relevance to the discussions ahead, there is good reason to think that, even with the transcribed linear traces of rarefied technology, the power of pictorial explanation is maintained. Evidence and Terminology Since, from the great variety of images, it is the documentary type that is the focus of attention in this book, there is need for precision in what can be classed as evidence. The evidence I use consists of illustrations published and circulated over the past 300-plus years. The oldest of these is the frontispiece of Olao Worm’s Museum Wormianum from 1655 and selected engravings by the French antiquarian Comte de Caylus from the mid-1700s. The most recent images include remote-sensing imagery from Central America (published 2017), earth resistivity traces from Avebury (2008), scanning electron microscopy of fragments from Knossos (2005) and three-dimensional prints of ancient cuneiform tablets. Justifiably or not the medium of publication, both currently and historically, bestows status and connotes expertise and has long functioned as a form of gatekeeping. In this respect it represents a link between those writing, say, for early volumes of the journal Archaeologia in the late eighteenth century, and those publishing in Radiocarbon 200 years later.5 Almost all the images reproduced in

8 Introduction chapters ahead are taken from these original sources with all the variation in quality one might expect when working with historical documents within public archives. Certain long-standing serial publications are particularly useful sources. In addition to Archaeologia, the first edition of which appeared in 1770 (renamed The Antiquaries Journal in 1921), Archaeological Journal (published since 1844), Antiquity (founded in 1927) and the annual Reports of the British School of Athens (published since 1886) are notable. Additional sources include illustrated travel accounts, a popular genre during the nineteenth century featuring the accounts of antiquarian travelers. The publishing firms of John Murray (London) and Harpers (New York) were particularly avid producers of these accounts which, in one case (a recounting of mid-nineteenth-century discoveries in the Middle East by Austen Henry Layard), went on to become the first ever best seller on an archaeological subject (Bohrer 2003, 146). Certain terms recur in the discussions ahead and require some definition, even though I have already introduced a few of them. The most important terms are “visuality,” “visual rhetoric” and “scopic regime.” Visuality refers to culturally shaped ways of seeing as distinct from the physiology of vision; the difference between the mechanism of sight and the learned perceptions that help us make sense of the world (see Foster 1988, 14). The term “scopic” refers, of course, to acts of observation but these acts are inflected by a range of choices and subjective responses that bear on what we notice and why. Certain observational patterns are so common as to be considered natural, even though they are culturally and historically determined. The Western idea of perspectival ordering, for example, allows us to situate objects and scenes within a readable and navigable spatial framework. The sense of utility and discipline this imposes on daily life and thought has prompted Martin Jay to refer to it as “the scopic regime of modernity” (1988; see also Ivins 1975, 13). Within that regime, documentary imagery can be understood as propositional statements or arguments, and I use the term “visual rhetoric” to describe how the various pictorial elements can work in combination to encourage particular readings and understandings. One common example is the use of ruins as a surrogate for time. I have taken the term from an essay by the cultural theorist Roland Barthes in which he talks of the “totality of utterances” that underpin a picture (1977, 47). Interrogation of such a widely scattered pictorial archive and its recurring visual tropes can answer the question of why and how pictorial representation has survived displacement as a documentary influence in archaeology, but there are several caveats to be borne in mind. The first and most obvious is that documentary images are representations of reality and not reality itself. This is not an obstruction to our reading of the image and is, in fact, central to the rhetorical work that all visual transcriptions perform. The second cautionary note concerns veracity, because an image is persuasive does not make it true and there are plenty of examples of error and embellishment to be found. Some documents, over time, lose the veracity once assigned to them, but this does not make them any less instructive as visual evidence; rather the reverse in fact. The third and final point to be borne in mind concerns “ghost presences” lying behind the image. As I note at several points, an

Introduction 9 observer who witnesses a scene or scrutinizes an object of archaeological interest may not be, and indeed, often is not, the person who renders that observation into final publishable form and, in the process of transcription from first-hand witnessing to printed image, impressions may well become embellished by additional stylistic elements, even though the final version would almost certainly have been subject to approval by the original observer(s). Notes 1 In Greek and Roman mythology, the muses refer to the nine goddesses that inspire poetry. In its modern sense, it refers to acts of reflection and meditative gazing and pondering. 2 This term was minted by Harold Rosenberg (1959) to describe the array of impulses that comprise modern artistic endeavor, but it can usefully be applied to modernity more generally. According to Paul de Man (1970, 381) the label of “modernity” tends to be applied retrospectively to characterize certain historical periods of radical invention and productivity, while Jean Baudrillard (1987, 63) points to upheavals in economic and social organization as being diagnostic. Marshall Berman dates the first stirrings of modernity to the beginning of the sixteenth century but identifies a second phase in which it took on a form recognizable to us today during the “revolutionary wave” at the end of the eighteenth century (2010, 16). 3 Opinions differ as to whether the terms romantic (denoting historical period) and romanticism (denoting artistic and literary style) should be capitalized. I use lower case throughout, following the editorial style used in Isaiah Berlin’s highly influential essays in The Roots of Romanticism (2001). 4 In fairness we should balance Piggott’s commentary against his other writings in which he was more sympathetic toward the influence of romanticism and antiquarianism and that one outcome of the romantic movement was a new branch of science. For prehistoric archaeology in England was not the product of the classical lore so eagerly absorbed from Italy in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but originated in those eccentric gentlemen of the eighteenth century who perambulated the countryside studying at first hand the antiquities of their own forefathers. (1935, 22) In a later essay, Piggott identifies the influence of romanticism on specific areas of research that emerged much later, such as field archaeology (1937, 32). 5 This would also apply to self-published works in some instances. One of the most comprehensive and influential in terms of British archaeology is that of Augustus Pitt Rivers and his multi-volume account of excavations at Cranborne Chase (England) and environs (see Pitt Rivers 1887-1898).

References Bahn, Paul G. 1996. Cambridge Illustrated History of Archaeology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bann, Stephen. 1995. Romanticism and the Rise of History. New York: Twayne. Barthes, Roland. 1977. Image, Music, Text, translated by S. Heath. Glasgow: Fontana/Collins. Baudrillard, Jean. 1987. “Modernity.” Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory 11:3, 63–72.

10 Introduction Benjamin, Walter. 1979 (1931). “A Small History of Photography.” In One Way Street, translated by Edmund Jephcott and Kingsley Shorter, 240–257. London: New Left Books. Berlin, Isaiah. 2001. The Roots of Romanticism. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Berman, Marshall. 2010. All That Is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity. London: Verso. Blix, Göran M. 2009. From Paris to Pompeii. French Romanticism and the Cultural Politics of Archaeology. Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press. Bohrer, Frederick N. 2003. Orientalism and Visual Culture. Imaging Mesopotamia in Nineteenth-Century Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bohrer, Frederick N. 2011. Photography and Archaeology. London: Reaktion Books. Crary, Jonathan. 1992. Techniques of the Observer. On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century. Cambridge: MIT Press. Crawshay-Williams, Rupert. 1947. The Comforts of Unreason: A Study of the Motives behind Irrational Thought. London: Kegan Paul. Daniel, Glyn and Colin Renfrew. 1988. The Idea of Prehistory. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. De Man, Paul. 1970. “Literary History and Literary Modernity.” Daedulus 99:2, 384–404. Edgeworth, Matt. 2013. “The Clearing. Archaeology’s Way of Opening the World.” In Reclaiming Archaeology. Beyond the Tropes of Modernity, edited by Alfredo GonzálezRuibal, 33–43. London: Routledge. Edwards, Elizabeth. 2012. The Camera as Historian. Amateur Photographers and the Historical Imagination, 1885-1918. Durham: Duke University Press. Ferraby, Rose. 2017. “Geophysics: Creativity and the Archaeological Imagination.” Internet Archaeology 14. http://doi.org/10.11141/ia.44.4. Last accessed August 2021. Foster, Hal. 1988. “Preface.” In Vision and Visuality, edited by Hal Foster, 9–14. New York: The New Press. Hodder, Ian. 2012. Entangled. An Archaeology of the Relationships between Humans and Things. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. Holtorf, Cornelius. 2005. From Stonehenge to Las Vegas. Archaeology as Popular Culture. Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press. Ivins. William M. 1975. On the Rationalization of Sight. With an Examination of Three Renaissance Texts on Perspective. New York: Da Capo Press. Jay, Martin. 1988. “Scopic Regimes of Modernity.” In Vision and Visuality, edited by Hal Foster, 3–23. New York: New Press. Jay, Martin. 1993. Downcast Eyes. The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-Century French Thought. Berkeley: University of California Press. Kaplan, Caren. 1996. Questions of Travel. Postmodern Discourses of Displacement. Durham: Duke University Press. Lucas, Gavin. 2012. Understanding the Archaeological Record. Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press. Luthy, Christoph and Alexis Smets. 2009. “Words, Lines, Diagrams, Images: Towards a History of Scientific Imagery.” Early Science and Medicine 14, 398–439. Manning, Susan. 2009. “Antiquarianism, Balladry and the Rehabilitation of Romance.” In The Cambridge History of English Romantic Literature, edited by James Chandler, 45–70. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mitchell, William J. T. 1994. Picture Theory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Introduction 11 Olivier, Laurent. 2011. The Dark Abyss of Time. Archaeology and Memory, translated by Arthur Greenspan. Lanham: AltaMira Press. Olsen, Bjørnar. 2012. “Symmetrical Archaeology.” In Archaeological Theory Today. 2nd edition, edited by Ian Hodder, 208–228. Cambridge: Polity Press. Piggott, Stuart. 1935. “Stukeley, Avebury and the Druids.” Antiquity 9, 22–32. Piggott, Stuart. 1937. “Prehistory and the Romantic Movement.” Antiquity 11, 31–38. Piggott, Stuart. 1976. Ruins in a Landscape. Essays in Antiquarianism. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press. Piggott, Stuart. 1978. Antiquity Depicted. Aspects of Archaeological Illustration. London: Thames and Hudson. Pitt Rivers, Augustus. 1887-1898. Excavations in Cranborne Chase near Rushmore on the Borders of Dorset and Wilts. 4 vols. London: Printed privately. Price, T. Douglas and Gary M. Feinman. 2001. “The Archaeology of the Future.” In Archaeology at the Millennium. A Sourcebook, edited by Gary M. Feinman and T. Douglas Price, 475–495. New York: Kluwer Academic. Rosenberg, Harold. 1959. The Tradition of the New. New York: Horizon Press. Scalia, Christopher. 2005. “The Grave Scholarship of Antiquaries.” Literature Compass 2:1, 1–13. Schadla-Hall, Tim. 1999. “Editorial: Public Archaeology.” European Journal of Archaeology 2:2, 147–158. Sha, Richard. 1989. The Visual and Verbal Sketch in British Romanticism. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Shanks, Michael. 1992. Experiencing the Past. On the Character of Archaeology. London: Routledge. Shanks, Michael. 1997. “Photography and Archaeology.” In The Cultural Life of Images. Visual Representation in Archaeology, edited by Brian Leigh Molyneaux, 73–107. New York: Routledge. Shanks, Michael and Christopher Tilley. 1992. Re-Constructing Archaeology. 2nd edition. London: Routledge. Shanks, Michael and Timothy Webmoor. 2013. “A Political Economy of Visual Media in Archaeology.” In Re-Presenting the Past. Archaeology through Text and Image, edited by Sheila Bonde and Stephen Houston, 85–108. Oxford: Oxbow Books. Slater, Don. 1995. “Photography and Modern Vision: The Spectacle of ‘Natural Magic’.” Visual Culture, edited by Chris Jenks, 218–237. London: Routledge. Smiles, Sam, ed. 1994. “Introduction.” In The Image of Antiquity. Ancient Britain and the Romantic Imagination. New Haven: Yale University Press. Stafford, Barbara Maria. 1984. Voyage into Substance. Art, Science, Nature, and the Illustrated Travel Account, 1760-1840. Cambridge: MIT Press. Sturma, Dieter. 2008. “Politics and the New Mythology: The Turn to Late Romanticism.” The Cambridge Companion to German Idealism, 219–238. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Thomas, Julian. 2004. Archaeology and Modernity. London: Routledge. Trigger, Bruce G. 1978. Time and Traditions. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Trigger, Bruce G. 1989. A History of Archaeological Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wood, Ralph C. 2007. “God May Strike You Thisaway: Flannery O’Connor and Simone Weil on Affliction and Joy.” Renascence 59:3, 181–195.

1

Antiquity and the Enchanted Eye

Much of this chapter was written in the library of one of the ancient cathedrals of England, in the city of Norwich. On my daily route from home to desk, I would pass by the site of a meadow (now a car park) where the medical doctor and antiquary Thomas Browne (1605–1682) once grazed his cattle. As I passed, I would occasionally mull the words he penned in a letter to an acquaintance in which he reflected on the excavation of some ancient burial urns not far from Norwich; it is a document still frequently cited as significant in the history of archaeological thought.1 “With the mortal remains of the famous and those of our direct ancestors,” writes Browne, “we mercifully preserve their bones, and pisse not upon their ashes.” But how fitting it would be, he speculates, to extend reverence to “sad and sepulchral pitchers, which have no joyful voices” (1984a [1658], 264–265). Following Browne’s urgings, we could say that the antiquarian mission as it unfolded over time was indeed to “pisse not” whether on ashes or any other traces of the past. Today, the word “antiquarian” connotes little more than volumes of Dickens and Tennyson resting undisturbed on bookshop shelves, but it was once a term of reference for a distinctively affectionate way of looking at the world and its ancient remains, and in some respects antiquarians considered themselves intermediaries between present and past. The late Stuart Piggott, who wrote forcefully over many years on the development of archaeological thought, once claimed that “[t]he accurate and precise science which some of us would consider modern archaeology … began merely as an episode in the history of taste less than two hundred years ago” (1937, 31). He was certainly right about archaeology’s rootedness in cultural taste but dead wrong, I feel, in suggesting it was a mere “episode” and in this chapter I will be situating the “history of taste” as a central element in the formation of archaeology’s visual culture as it has been sustained through to the present day. The impulses underlying antiquarianism were international, if not universal, emerging wherever there was a cultural need to construct a coherent account of the past and apply some form of meaning to what remained of it (Schnapp 1997, 319; 2013). The focus in the discussions ahead is antiquarianism as an outcome of broadened intellectual curiosity and scholarly practices within Europe where it took on an increasingly curatorial complexion (see Levine 1986, 12–13; 94–95; DOI: 10.4324/9781032646893-2

Antiquity and the Enchanted Eye 13 Lucas 2012, 21–22). In its European form, antiquarian interests migrated from textual documents to physical objects in the seventeenth century and this shift of focus marked a divide between antiquarian and historical lines of inquiry. Distinctions blur; however, if we go back far enough in time, for early illustrations of archaeological sites and objects can be found in medieval manuscripts from Northern and Western Europe. Fourteenth-century studies by Petrarch, sometimes cited as the first true antiquarian in the European intellectual and aesthetic tradition, embraced both texts and objects in an attempt to provide a window into the past (see Adkins and Adkins 1989, 1; Burke 1969, 23). It is clear, however, that by the mid-eighteenth century the physical relics of antiquity, in whatever form they were encountered, had become of compelling interest. It motivated those with sufficient time and money to travel to locations in the classical world where what remained from the past was largely above ground, accessible and came pre-steeped in intellectual, literary and artistic associations. There was also growing awareness of ancient remains in plain sight on local landscapes. In terms of physical objects, affection for antiquity was often expressed either by interest in their illustration or through purchasing a piece of the past to form part of a personal collection or for resale to others. Wherever and however encountered, remains of the ancient past were a perfect choice of muse and came to form part of a broader enthusiasm in which the visual capture of impressions became a virtuous undertaking performed not only through direct encounter and observation but also through first-hand recording in the form of drawings, paintings and prints. Indulging those interests was largely an amateur undertaking, reflecting the Latin root of the term “amateur” as one who loves.2 But love, we are told, is blind, and perhaps this helps explain how objects of dubious provenance tended to find their way into personal collections. This tendency, coupled with the insertion of artistry and aesthetic elements into the negotiation of meaning about the past, cohered into critiques of antiquarian study as anti-rational and ill-informed, a judgment still quite common today. As early as the seventeenth century, antiquarians could be caricatured as savants casting a curatorial eye over the remains of the past and the conflation of antiquarians with the objects they studied, fueled myriad jokes about dust, death and decay (Hanson 2009, 140). Consider, for example, the pungent comments of John Earle from the early seventeenth century in his Microcosmographie. The antiquary, he remarks is one that hath that unnaturall disease to bee enamour’d of old age, and wrinckles, and loves all things…the better for being mouldy and worm-eaten … His chamber is hung commonly with strange Beast’s skins, and is a kind of charnel house of bones extraordinary. (1628 [1930], 57–58)3 But criticism and occasional ridicule of antiquaries could extend beyond the question of their immediate interests to the company they kept, for antiquarian societies tended to serve as clubs for the well-to-do. Consider, for example, the Society of Dilettanti established in England in the 1730s and which consisted

14  Antiquity and the Enchanted Eye largely of members who considered themselves arbiters of public taste as property owners or through political affiliation. Even a hundred years after its founding, out of a total membership of 708 in 1838, 14 percent were from the titled aristocracy (Cust 1898, 1; see also Levine 1986, 49). Similarly, the Society of Antiquaries of London, the oldest of the national associations in Britain, had, as late as the mid-nineteenth century, a membership tilted heavily toward the landed classes and also to members of the clergy. However, as I later emphasize, the social connections of antiquarians, particularly with those holding membership in scholarly associations, brought considerable benefits, most notably by ensuring the continued relevance of antiquarian aesthetic sensibilities and their ways of seeing and documenting antiquity. Their relationship between fact and subjectivity was interwoven into archaeological imagery remained, so let us now examine the roots of that interweaving. Shipwreck of Time and the Shuffle of Things As historian Nathan Schlanger remarks, the antiquarians were particularly receptive to “traces, marks, fragments, ruins and, by extension, strewn debris and detritus, barely perceptible or legible patterns, accidentally preserved, partial and incomplete” (2010, 344–345). Francis Bacon (1561–1626), philosopher, essayist and polymath, was an early identifier of how that wealth of accumulated traces could disclose information. He considered ancient remains to be sources of evidence and knowledge-creation rather than mere curiosities and was critical of the tendency of antiquarians to focus on seemingly random detail, but he also ascribed explanatory force to the antiquarian imperative of preservation and its underpinnings of subjective speculation. The resonant term “shipwreck of time” originated with Bacon as far as is known (see Bacon 1861 [1594], 303). The wreckage metaphor implies destruction, loss and a rupture between present and past and seems almost to anticipate modernist anxieties about a fast-changing world and the propensity to cast history aside. But it is clear that, in Bacon’s view, the shipwreck of time represented an opportunity; he saw the study and recording of artifacts (scattered on the reef of daily existence as it were) as a salvage operation and was resistant to the idea that the past was wholly alienated from the present. This resistance is particularly evident in the importance he attached to objects from which facts might be derived; not only works of nature but anything unfamiliar and strange and “whatsoever the hand of man by exquisite art or engine has made rare in stuff, form, or motion; whatsoever singularity chance and the shuffle of things hath produced” (1861 [1594], 335). By characterizing the archival impulse as a counterweight to loss, Bacon provided an intellectual platform for the acquisitiveness of antiquarians and their insistence, evident through documentary practices, that remains from the past had agency in the present. Moreover, in making the case for collecting as a necessity for knowledge-creation he foretold the value of objects as foci of scrutiny for later archaeologists. We find, for example, the metaphors of wreckage and salvage

Antiquity and the Enchanted Eye 15 reiterated in the inaugural volume of Archaeologia, the journal founded by the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1770: The only security against … the accidents of time and barbarism is to record present transactions, or gather the more ancient ones from the general wreck. The most indistinct collection has this merit, that it supplies materials to those who have sagacity or leisure to extract from the common mass whatever may answer useful purposes. Here begins the province of the Antiquary … In words that could have come from Bacon himself, the statement goes on to proclaim that every artifact from the past is potentially valuable and worthy of safeguarding, implying that the project of archival collection had no boundaries: The arrangement and proper use of facts is History; not a mere narrative taken up at random and embellished with poetic diction, but a regular and elaborate inquiry into every ancient record and proof, that can elucidate or establish them. (ii) Bacon is often presented as empirically minded and someone for whom reasoning centered on factual evidence, but in his writings we find suggestions that ways of seeing built on affect and feeling were also important for him. He describes, for example, how collections of artifacts are best presented within enclosed spaces that could function as both physical and intellectual repositories. Ideally, he said, such repositories should take the form of “a goodly huge cabinet.” (1861 [1594], 335). Bacon is referring to what came to be known as the “cabinet of curiosities” or wunderkammer. I explore later in this chapter some specific intellectual and aesthetic issues regarding these assemblages, but I first want to identify the roots of the impulse to collect and display and how it served as both an incubator and an outcome of enchanted ways of contemplating and picturing antiquity. As I have noted at several points, it has been commonplace to fault the antiquarians for their perceived whimsy, credulity and apparent lack of interest in situating relics from the past within a synthetic framework. Indeed, they have been dismissed as a mixed crowd of “devoted pedants, ineffective triflers and credulous collectors” (Piggott 1989, 14; see also Haskell 1995, 185). But gaps in explanation and errors of judgment were inevitable outcomes when little was known about the objects they scrutinized (see Schnapp 1997, 180). Indeed, this uncertainty had virtue insofar as it drove the urge to archive and illustrate the vestiges of the past wherever and however encountered and it helped shape antiquarianism into what scholar of romance languages and literature, Maria Grazia Lolla, calls “a fissile discipline” based on acts of noticing, gazing, recognizing, comparing and picturing (1999, 26). We can, I believe, plausibly consider the acquisitiveness of the antiquarians as well as the allure they projected onto the remains of the past to have its roots in the cult of relics that extends back at least as far as the early Middle Ages in Europe, predisposing certain objects to work as auratic presences (see Walsham 2010, 32).4

16  Antiquity and the Enchanted Eye Archaeologists Michael Shanks and Christopher Tilley describe the “surplus of meaning” projected on to ancient remains, with contemplation and speculation outweighing the more obvious and measurable physical attributes of an object (1987, 66). Arguably, holy relics are subject to the same projection and likely to generate a comparable surplus of meaning. Of course, as geographer David Lowenthal reminds us, relics cannot speak for themselves and require interpretation in order to “voice their reliquary role” (1985, 243). In centuries past, this labeling often took the form of an actual reliquary, a particularly elaborate type of enclosure intended to generate or amplify a sense of wonder and curiosity (Nagel 2010, 211–212).5 Such containment allowed the eye to enter while at the same time protecting the contents within, a concept of visibility that aligns in some ways with curatorial practices and museum protocols from much later times (see Hahn 2005, 239; 244). Enclosing and Disclosing the Marvelous

Let us now return to the concept of Francis Bacon’s “goodly huge cabinet.” Antiquarian collecting was an expression of ownership but also provided a portal into antiquity itself. In admitting an object into a collection, the primary arbiter of status was visual allure by means of which an object became a cherished presence in the here and now (Stewart 1984, 140). At least as far back in time as the European Renaissance, visual fascination with the unusual and the exotic took on a quasi-architectural form as objects began to be placed within dedicated enclosures (Elsner and Cardinal 1994, 2). A cabinet could refer equally well to a room as to a crafted item of furniture (the form in which Bacon presumably envisaged it). Regardless of scale as both enclosers and disclosers, such cabinets had visuality at their core and functioned in much the same way as the framing of two-dimensional illustrations: signaling particular ideas about antiquity. In terms of archaeological remains, cabinets reflected forms of affect and curiosity by bestowing visual and intellectual access and according authenticity to whatever was displayed (see Schnapp 1997, 181). The contents of cabinets would typically include gems, coins, medallions, rock samples, figurines and natural history specimens along with antiquities. In some instances, a curatorial distinction would be drawn between exhibits of “naturalia” and those of human culture or “artificialia” (see Schnapp 2013, 4), but despite attempts at categorization the arrangements of exhibits, or what we know of them from illustrations, can be puzzling to the Western eye. In the opinion of historian Barbara Maria Stafford, exhibits often “cacophonously chatted among themselves and with the spectator [and their] manifest incompleteness precluded incorporation into a seamless narrative and controlling taxonomy” (1994, 238; 1991, 329–330). This apparent disorder and obscurity suggests that some fixed and identifiable sense of visual logic was being violated, but what may look like disorder to the modern eye would have made visual sense when a collection was first compiled. The absences, lacunae and confusions that might jar our sense of order today were, back then, visual outcomes of uncertainty about what was being displayed and it therefore made sense to place exhibits within ensembles that were largely suggestive

Antiquity and the Enchanted Eye 17 rather than definitive. Stafford notes that “the amassing of things based on their interesting looks, often involved the arrangement of unidentifiable objects waiting to be intellectually discovered.” To the extent that objects might be grouped by correspondence or association but not necessarily fitted to an overarching scheme of classification, they existed within a “sensual sphere of analogies” (1994, 274). Objects that may once have coexisted in a past world could, when reunited as part of a collection, create an “enlivening and obsessional dynamic” (Elsner 1994, 155–156). All in all, although it has been said that classification precedes collection (Elsner and Cardinal 1994, 2), for antiquarians the reverse seems to have been the case and collectors were driven not by desire to solve specific puzzles but by an obsession with parts and particulars (Momigliano 1950, 286; see also Mendyk 1989, 9–11). Indeed, perhaps the intention was willfully to create puzzles rather than solve them since that would fit with the pleasure to be gained from open-ended speculation. Natural curiosities, ancient remains and what Bacon referred to as “anything unfamiliar and strange” were capable of attracting awe-struck attention and this included specimens that were singular, irregular, incomplete, aberrant or otherwise extraordinary. Incompleteness and fracture opened space for pluralities of interpretation and freed the imagination to attribute meaning (see Burström 2013, 313; Thomas 2003, 179). Considered within a Baconian frame of reference, contents of cabinets which were specifically archaeological in nature held out the prospect that an observer could be connected to the formerly invisible past (Pomian 1990, 1; Stewart 1984, 142). There exist published illustrations of cabinets in the form of catalogs or guides. Such illustrations are particularly diagnostic when intended as frontispieces which would announce the contents of a published work by, as it were, raising the curtain on the scenes within and implying that the entire scope of a cabinet could be assessed with a single glance. The frontispiece to Museum Wormianum from 1655 (Figure 1.1) serves as an early example of this visual rhetoric, prefacing in image form the collection of Olao Worm of Denmark (1588–1654).6 Worm was particularly attracted to ancient artifacts and historian of archaeology Colin Renfrew attaches particular importance to Worm’s acquisitions and publications since they mark “the beginnings of collection and display” in the domain of antiquities (2003, 95). The title page of the publication refers to “varris accuratis Iconibus illustrata” but we should not presume that the frontispiece comprehensively replicates details of the collection. Rather, it is a pictorial expression of the cabinet as an expansive intellectual and aesthetic concept. It reveals clearly the scale of the collecting impulse with shelves and recesses serving as containers within the all-encompassing architecture of a room. The interests represented range from natural history specimens to ethnographic and archaeological curiosities and include objects with a utilitarian function. According to Alain Schnapp, antiquarian collecting at this time emphasized the differentiation between functional everyday objects and those that have no utility but are considered rare or exotic (2002, 36). The Worm illustration, however, also suggests the intermingling of objects one

18  Antiquity and the Enchanted Eye

Figure 1.1  Frontispiece (Worm 1655).

might find in an attic. The visual allure of the exotic and the singular saturates the scene and were we truly able to enter the space of the museum to examine the content of the various drawers and shelves, as the sharp perspective of the floor tiles seemingly invites us to do, we would find ourselves entering exactly that sensual sphere that Stafford describes and that was noted earlier. Meanwhile, inclusion of the windows in the frame of the picture suggests to the viewer that the source of the specimens and of all knowledge about them lies beyond the confines of architectural space and must be gleaned from the outside world. Each item, we may be sure, gained admittance to the museum through the workings of sensibilities that were both inquisitive and acquisitive; they charmed their way in. Worm’s frontispiece serves as both a scene-setting device and an invitation to enter a repository of the marvelous and view the contents from that most privileged of vantage points: face-to-face and close-up. Colin Renfrew’s opinion notwithstanding (2003), Worm’s frontispiece was not truly path-breaking in its visual form since it follows the style of Historia Naturale (1599) by the Neapolitan collector Ferrante Imperato (see Felfe 2005, 231) and it also forms a bridge to a later project undertaken in France between 1752 and 1755 by Comte de Caylus (1692–1765) and published as Recueil d’Antiquites Egyptiennes, Etrusques, Grecques et Romaines (1752–1755). Being a highly competent printmaker, de Caylus was both antiquary and artist and the artifacts that he illustrated were often drawn from his own collections or those of his friends and acquaintances.

Antiquity and the Enchanted Eye 19 Two examples from Recueil d’Antiquites reveal a curatorial stance, but with a pictorial formality that the Worm frontispiece lacks. The first example, shown in Figure 1.2, is a cartouche from the title page of volume 1 which works visually in a similar way to the Worm illustration by inviting the reader to enter a space of contemplation. It suggests a well-stocked collection but the conspicuous statues emphasize crafted antiquities thought to have aesthetic value and thus refer back to the title of the published work. Certain illusions are reiterated, such as the enforcement of a perspectival view by the recessional pattern of floor tiles and also the implication of visual order with antiquities aligned along shelves and forming distinct visual registers. This has an obvious association with library shelves and, through that association, to learning and scholarship. The second example is found on the next page of Recueil d’Antiquités. In this frontispiece (Figure 1.3) the visual references construct a wider context that binds together ideological and aesthetic sensibilities and leaves us in no doubt as to the cultural frames of reference. It foregrounds the role of antiquarian inquiry as an archival project by depicting three forms of effort that the study of the past was

Figure 1.2  Cartouche (de Caylus 1752).

20  Antiquity and the Enchanted Eye

Figure 1.3  Frontispiece (de Caylus 1752).

thought to demand: the physical work of excavation, the collection and sorting of finds and the project of memory reinstatement. All of this effort, we note, is framed pictorially within a classical Italianate landscape, and the excavators themselves, in their muscularity and sense of purpose, strike statuesque, even heroic, poses. These figures are exemplars of the unknown artisans from the past to whom de Caylus felt he was indebted. The frontispiece is hallmarked by the title of the project and we are informed about the centrality of collection as a key objective by

Antiquity and the Enchanted Eye 21 the inscription on the column and it is significant that the definition of “recueil,” as a collection or compendium, can be conflated with the notion of “recueillment,” or contemplation. As an illustration, the work presupposes a readership accepting of the need to indulge in close scrutiny. The economics of publishing played a hand in this since, by the mid-eighteenth century, somewhat reduced production costs meant that images of antiquity could be made available to a wider audience. Arguably, this would have redoubled the efforts of antiquarians and artists to measure, draw and visually organize the relics of the past (Moser and Smiles 2005, 4) and also diffuse broader awareness of the rhetorical flourishes that made those illustrations persuasive. Published illustrations by de Caylus are said by some to foretell modes of observation and reasoning that would become dominant centuries later. Historians Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison detect in the work “distinct epistemic virtues – not only truth and objectivity but also certainty, precision, replicability” (2007, 33). But de Caylus himself declares in the third volume of Recueil d’Antiquités that “the antiquarian should shun every kind of system: I look upon them as an illness of the spirit” (cited in Haskell 1995, 183). We also find in his accounts a substantial amount of subjective musing. When an antiquary opens for the first time a consignment of artifacts, de Caylus tells us, there is always “a feeling of sweet anxiety and hope” that “he will find there rare and unknown objects. The moment of discovery is one of pleasurable thrill” (volume 2, ii). de Caylus’ Recueil d’Antiquités restates visual tropes of celebration, and assurance that antiquity can be delivered into one’s hands. Although the epistemic virtues to which Daston and Galison refer are somewhat hard to find in de Caylus’ work, one can detect in his approach to illustration a connection to a later period of visual enthusiasm as some European cabinets opened to the public (see Felfe 2005, 229; McGregor 2001; Shelton 1994, 180). Those who entered may well have expected displays that, while reflecting the tastes of the collector, would provide a more didactic visual experience such as that suggested in the illustrations of de Caylus. In that later period, idiosyncratic displays of collected objects were no longer quite as appealing as they once were, but the allure of rare and evocative objects and artifacts remained undiminished. A more focused mode of speculation meant that objects could become catalysts for study and the exchange of ideas and the term “collectors’ cabinets” came to supplant “cabinets of curiosities” (see Davenne 2012, 164). More capacious spaces of observation into which the public could physically enter presaged the emergence of permanent institutional spaces which would come to have a profound effect on preserving and nurturing the enchanted eye. According to Susan Stewart, the interplay between private and public spaces of display and scrutiny reveals an uneasiness between the nostalgic desires of antiquarianism on the one hand and expectation of demonstrable authenticity on the other (1984, 140), but the visual evidence suggests complementary rather than competing interests and values. On that note, let us turn to the issue of institutional display and museum culture and how it underpinned the migration of antiquarian manners into larger scale repositories of knowledge and speculation about the ancient past.

22  Antiquity and the Enchanted Eye Museum Culture

The origins and fortunes of major Western museum holdings connect to broad cultural imperatives, including the politics of nationalism and empire, but they also link to sentiments expressed at the level of the individual. Indeed, it has been said that rather thanconsisting of objects collected by people, the furnishing of museums relied on people collected by objects, in the sense that relics from the past attracted a certain type of person predisposed to acquire them, value them and eventually have them placed within a suitable institution in perpetuity (Gosden, Larson and Petch 2007, 64; 88–91). Whether in the form of a specific artifact or a whole collection, presentation and display became autobiographical statements as objects of antiquity were bequeathed, not only to shield them from the indignities of the auction room but also to preserve the post-mortem reputation and identity of the donor (Swann 2001, 194; Woodward 2002, 160–161).7 Then, as now, the extraction of objects from economic circulation implies that they have value beyond price and draws a distinction between objects that are considered transient, having value and status that is negotiable and variable, and those that are stable and deserve protected status (Thompson 1994, 270–273). Some collections have served both as autobiographical statements and affirmation of imperial aims, often reflecting an overlap between consular duties and archaeology. For example, Paul-Émile Botta’s finds from excavations in Khorsabad (in modern-day Northern Iraq) in the mid-nineteenth century helped furnish the first Assyrian collection at the Louvre in Paris. On a more provincial level gifted collections inevitably reflect concepts of antiquity that were dominant during a donor’s lifetime. One example is the collection of Augustus Pitt Rivers (1827–1900) in Oxford, England, and its emphasis on taxonomic classification and developmental sequence; an emphasis which still structures the museum’s displays (see Clifford 1994, 265). Bequests come freighted with issues of identity and status and it is perhaps unsurprising that acts of gifting should, on occasion, become somewhat grubby affairs. Consider, for example, the case of John Tradescant (1608–1662) and Elias Ashmole (1617–1692). Tradescant’s house in London functioned as both library and museum. His collection, some of which was amassed by his father, was wideranging. While not exclusively archaeological in focus, it was important for being an early example of public access into a private space of display. In 1659 Tradescant made a deed of gift to transfer his collection to a fellow collector, Elias Ashmole, who, in turn, stated his intention to bequeath the entirety to Oxford University assuming a suitable building could be constructed to accommodate it all. So far, so good, but Tradescant, in his will, had named his wife as beneficiary and assigned to her the task of deciding which institution should receive the bequest. This prompted a lawsuit to resolve matters, a dispute which was eventually resolved in Ashmole’s favor. The Tradescant collection was amalgamated with his own and later transferred to Oxford where it formed the core of the Ashmolean Museum when it opened in 1685. It has long been referred to as the Ashmole collection but it is, in reality, largely the legacy of John Tradescant.

Antiquity and the Enchanted Eye 23 It is, however, another home-based museum which represents the clearest expression of how self-identity can insinuate itself into the display of objects and images. John Soane (1753–1837) was a noted architect whose house in London over the course of many years became the repository of original and copied ancient artifacts, paintings and other artwork. He also built a collection of plaster and cork models of ancient buildings and sites reproduced in both original and ruined state, including Pompeii and monuments from the Athenian Acropolis. It is diagnostic of Soane’s aesthetic preferences that in his lectures at the Royal Academy, where he served as Professor of Architecture, he praised the work of Giovanni Gianbattista Piranesi (1720–1778), an artist known both for his studies of architectural grandeur reduced to ruin and also for pictorially restoring ancient architecture to a state of visual wholeness.8 Indeed, some of the plates in Piranesi’s De Romanorum Magnificentia et Architectura de Romani (1761) resemble blueprints for reconstruction (Figure 1.4). Soane declared his pictures to be “a mine of information to the serious student” (1809, in Watkin 2000, 86; see also Cavazzi 1998; Wilton-Ely 2012, 9). For Soane, such views were doubly charming; as depiction of ruin and also as the return of ruin to pristine perfection and such depictions chimed with Soane’s own visual sensibilities for he envisaged his collection as an architectural history of antiquity in ideal form. A few years prior to his death, plans were made to leave the collection to the nation but with the legal stipulation that his collection should not “suffer the arrangement…to be altered” (cited in Elsner 1994, 156–162). Thus, the collection was “museumized” in situ. It has been said that the impulse for collection and institutional display is essentially nostalgic, informed by a wistful desire to reassemble and complete the ancient world that is invariably presented to us as fractured and incomplete (Elsner 1994, 155–156). Museums as institutions are also arbiters of authenticity and curatorial functions enforce the presumption of authenticity. The architecture of the museum plays a role in this enforcement through, for example, facades that mimic the appearance of a classical temple. This is particularly evident in large national museums.9 Both in their earlier form and modern iteration, the museum functions as a quasi-theatrical space in which the visitor becomes part of a performance envisaged by the collectors that have contributed to the archive and the curators who organize and amplify it.10 Within the space of the museum, the observer is expected to adopt a certain state of receptivity (Schramm 2005, xiii–xiv). The status accorded to the objects on display is bound up with the construction of meaning that curatorial processes and protocols projected on to them. The evolving role of museum settings and spectatorship is a widely discussed topic, but less commonly examined is the transferability of aura and affect as the status of an artifact or an entire collection moves from private to public. As antiquities once situated in a context of personal enchantment become accessible to the public, there is obviously a transition from the gaze of the few to that of the many, but do the aesthetic allusions that once propelled the amassing of personal collections transfer to that public space? This is a question that recurs in the chapters ahead and is intertwined with notions of authenticity and genuineness. In the

24  Antiquity and the Enchanted Eye

Figure 1.4  Studies of Greek architecture at Agrigento (Piranesi 1761).

Antiquity and the Enchanted Eye 25 view of Michael Shanks and Christopher Tilley, “the authenticating, romanticist presence of the museum object suggests that the artifact can be localized, that the artifact belongs to the past, to a moment in time when someone made and used it” (1992, 75–76). It is reasonable to believe that valued relics retain their charmed status when placed within a museum setting or even have it enhanced. Institutional imperatives favor the transferability of aura and the museum mission would not in any way be served by fostering a disenchanted view of the ancient past. A detailed discussion of authenticity and what it implies can be found in Chapter 6. Shipwreck of Time and the Shuffle of Culture I claimed in the Introduction that the full flowering of antiquity as muse occurred through the conjunction of antiquarianism with romanticism and this is an opportune point to assess further that conjunction related to other cultural currents. As a cultural turn romanticism emanated from a relatively small European coterie strongly allied to German idealism and, from those beginnings, diffused throughout Europe from the late eighteenth through mid-nineteenth centuries. It would eventually influence styles of picturing on a broadly international Western stage.11 Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805), whose On Naïve and Sentimental Poetry (1966 [1795]) would become a founding document of German romanticism, was convinced that subjectivity was but a branch of a more fundamental proposition about the unfettered will expressible through personal choice and self-determination. He was an advocate for the notion of free intelligence and considered artistic creativity and the work of the imagination to be the ideal expression of that freedom. He also proposed that the “mirror” model of contemplation (passive reception) be set aside in favor of the “lamp” model (active engagement) in which the mind functioned as an inquisitive “third eye” rather than as a mere receptor of impressions (Jay 1994, 108–109). Perception was deemed to be a better arbiter of understanding and sense-making because the mind could dissolve, reformulate and essentially reinvent the perceived world (Stafford 1984, 449). In this schema, creativity formed part of an overarching concept of moral order. Schiller was a highly perceptive commentator on the issue of subjective expression, but to trace the contours of romanticism since Schiller’s time is to undertake an excursion through multiple aesthetic, literary and scientific domains and it is perhaps best understood as a mix of sensibilities rather than a single explanatory logic (Lovejoy 1955, 235–236). Indeed, romanticism becomes meaningful as a term only when it is unfolded outwards, rather as one does with a map, since it influenced investigations in other time-centered fields of study by suggesting the persuasive power of aesthetically informed visual interpretation. From the late eighteenth century onward, a spectator view gradually cohered, shared by novelists, painters, scientists and poets, in which notions of visionary insight became consciously embedded (Crary 1992, 9; Herringman 2013, 244–245; Sypher 1971, 37; 74). As part of this spectator view, the picturing of antiquity was accorded special status. Rather than accepting that an unbridgeable rupture separated present and past, romanticist thought considered antiquity to be projectable onto the screen

26  Antiquity and the Enchanted Eye of the present through re-configured modes of thought, observation and pictorial expression. In his study of the cultural situation in France, Göran Blix concludes that the influence of romanticism enabled antiquity to be re-imagined as part of a broader project of memory retrieval and, through the exercise of the imagination, the gaps and erasures which afflicted the telling of coherent stories about the past could be reversed and the inroads of amnesia prevented. To the extent that the world of the past could not only be salvaged but rendered immune from the depredations of time, romanticism was capable of bestowing a form of immortality (2009, 3). So, if we were to pose the question of where we would find the romance in romanticism, we could rightly say that it resides in the pursuit of authentic sensory experience and the autonomy of the individual. Subjective individual experience was thought translatable into tools of knowledge-creation but of a kind that was based not on the complexities of an exterior existence separate from the world of lived experience, but in the internal world of the imagination (Stafford 1984, 445). The nineteenth-century writer and social critic Charles Baudelaire claimed that romanticism resided within the person as a “manner of feeling” (1925).12 This manner of feeling extended to the human relationship with both antiquity and nature. Northrop Frye, in his study of English romantic literature, notes its tendency to destabilize familiar subject-object relationships by undermining the presumed separation of nature and antiquity from human consciousness (1983 [1968], 12) and this tendency extended into the realm of visual representation. Indeed, it has been argued that romanticism, by giving the subjective eye such preeminence, destabilized objectivity in general (de Man 1984, 8; 274). It has been asserted that romanticism, by opening up new vistas of interpretation and alternative models of knowledge, created a schism between scientist and mystic (Chadwick 2003, 104), but there is much to suggest that romanticized perspectives were more inclusive than we might think. Rather than aspiring to discredit the place of science, romanticism sought to question its boundaries. Romanticism relished an essential cordiality between imagination and empirical inquiry (see Byrne 2013, 4; Frye 1983 [1968], 37; Sturma 2008, 255) and historian Eric Hobsbawm notes how work on cell theory, morphology, embryology, philology and links between magnetism and electricity were all stimulated by romanticism, indicating that intuition could coexist with hypothesis and analysis (1977 [1962], 356). It has been said that the Enlightenment period positioned scientists as the new magicians, with chemistry, biology, physics all producing their own “magi” and “high priests” (Baigent and Leigh 2005, 283; 293), but the later turn toward romanticism relished forms of conjuring that positioned artists and those involved with imaginatively conceived picturing as a new breed of magi. Romanticism emerged during a time of social and political turmoil, but to describe its influence on the formative visual culture of archaeology, we must situate it relative to the preceding cultural turn of the European Enlightenment. That period spans the seventeenth century and most of the century to follow but some scholars believe its core ideals were cohering between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries with the emergence of new modes of thought and action (see Dienstag

Antiquity and the Enchanted Eye 27 2006, 9).13 Those modes had embedded within them a paradigmatic form of visual discipline whereby a positioned human observer could, ideally, look out upon the world and assess the scene from the perspective of utility, control and knowledgeformation; an observational regime comparable to that of a surveyor (Alpers 1983, 138; Jay 1988).14 Within this regime, geometrical proportion, the power of measurement and sureness of line were reassuring and, to the extent it rendered thought and action impregnable to the inroads of fancy, could be relied upon to shape visual pathways toward ideal form. The period of the Enlightenment rested on a cultural substrate that celebrated logical inquiry and embraced the belief that immutable laws governed the workings of the world. This sense of order and its promise of predictability became a moralizing narrative that endorsed a fundamentalist understanding of authenticity and allowed firm distinctions to be drawn between information and conjecture in order to counter false appearances and protect a cultural edifice that was self-consciously systematic (Stafford 1991, 204–205; 1994, 281–282). It was an Enlightenment article of faith that empirical reasoning and scientific invention would bring about a new world of societal progress and it established a yet greater expectation that, despite the legacy of periodic wars and economic crises, progress would not only be continuous but would accelerate, inserting ever greater distance between the cultural past and prospects for the future (Koselleck 2004 [1979], 269–270). Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century minds sought to identify the constants underlying fluctuating appearances and, to the extent that such constants were thought to have been found, it seemed to confirm the presumption of regularity and order. All problems and mysteries, it was thought, could be solved by asking the right questions and if a particular answer could not be found then there must be something wrong with the question. René Descartes (1596–1650) was a central figure in shaping the intellectual roots of the Enlightenment and developed the notion of the knowing subject and the equating of knowledge with power, a concept which also influenced the reasoning of Francis Bacon; the same Francis Bacon who devised the resonant phrase, “shipwreck of time.” The ideal worldview was that law-based knowledge rather than mere appearance was the key to understanding (Daston and Galison 2007, 234; Dwyer 2010, 54–56). The Enlightenment ethos became wedded to the pursuit of visual order as a key to expanded knowledge and could not be extricated from it. But this was, in a sense, the Achilles heel of the Enlightenment. Was seeing really believing? Perversely, as experimentation and hypothesizing opened fresh perspectives, uncertainties and contradictions became more, rather than less, pronounced and threw up unsettling questions about the relationship between the construction of knowledge and ways of seeing. The seeds of doubt were sown early on in the theories of Johannes Kepler (1571–1630) who theorized that vision was a faculty that worked in conjunction with the mind and, therefore, the image meant practically nothing in itself and should more correctly be called “imagination” (see Dupré 2008, 230).15 In the century to follow, Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) also took up the issue of imagination. Rousseau is mostly associated with a back-to-nature ethic, but it was he who first used the term “moderniste” in the way it would be

28  Antiquity and the Enchanted Eye recognized and deployed in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (Berman 2010, 17). He believed that an idyllic age of humanity existed before passion and imaginatively infused nostalgic became subsumed by reason and rationality (Berlin 2001, 79; 85). Rousseau was by no means alone in claiming that the pursuit of rationality could undermine the imagination. His contemporary, Emmanuel Kant (1724–1804), stated on the first page of his Critique of Judgment that “[t]he judgment of taste … is not a cognitive judgment, and so not logical, but is aesthetic – which means that it is one whose determining ground cannot be other than subjective” (1978 [1790], 41–42). He invokes in his writings the notion of “genius” for activities, most notably artistic activities, which lay outside the boundaries of rational thought. To Kant, genius equated to originality in that it set its own rules without concept or plan and he made explicit the values upon which he believed aesthetic longings rested; longings which rendered beauty separate from the rules of order that governed other spheres of human thought and action. Subjectivity Ascendant It would seem from the foregoing summary that the ethos of the Enlightenment and that of romanticism represents a study in contrasts. Was it not the case that by foregrounding the primacy of the individual and subjective engagement romanticism challenged established visual manners? Didn’t the embrace of individual ways of seeing and the conviction that first-person point-of-view had value undermine notions of visual consensus? The response to both questions is yes, and yet the contrasts were not as sharply drawn as one might think. Some of the complexities in the relationship between romanticism and the period of the Enlightenment arise from the list of dramatis personae. Several individuals who had a major influence on the formation of romanticism were in fact children of the Enlightenment and fully familiar with its strictures and orthodoxies. Indeed, we could say that romanticism was Janus-faced, looking back at neoclassical orthodoxies and also forward to the counter-currents of visual expression that lay ahead. We can identify in romanticism what art historian Suren Lalvani calls “visual addiction” (1996, 169) but it was an addiction that overlapped with Enlightenment sobriety. Arguably, romanticism is best understood as an intermingling of sensibilities. To add specificity to Salvani’s comment about visual addiction, it is not overreaching to say that the romantic gaze was drawn to objects of almost any description if shaped by time. According to Maria Grazia Lolla, the desire driving romanticized study of the past and the picturing of that past was to “capture the original inarticulate awe that first accompanied the encounter with an object.” Inability to understand the original function of an artifact was no barrier since objects that eluded comprehension could yet yield to the searching gaze of contemplation (1999, 23).16 There was delight to be found in holding before the eye that which mediated between the world of antiquity and the lived-in world of the present, even if it were only a fragment (Crane 1999, 187; see also Pomian 1990, 7). Indeed, the melding of romanticism with antiquarianism often specifically involved

Antiquity and the Enchanted Eye 29 aesthetic embrace of fragments; every mark or fracture could suggest both the wholeness of which separated pieces once formed a part and also the inscribing processes of time.17 In considering the visual tropes of romanticism and their shaping of archaeology’s visual world, it is important to keep in mind the question of the durability of those tropes and attitudes. Were they encased in the cultural amber of the late eighteenth century or could they be passed down to later times? The words of Charles Newton, Professor of Classical Archaeology at University College London from 1851, help provide an answer, for he was of the conviction that [he] who would master the manifold subject matter of archaeology, and appreciate its whole range and compass, must possess a mind in which the reflective and the perceptive faculties are duly balanced: he (sic) must combine with the aesthetic culture of the Artist, and the trained judgment of the Historian. (1851, 25–26; original capitalization) The durability of romanticized ways of seeing was also evident in other areas of endeavor where antiquity was mined for expressive content, including through visual, pictures created in the mind. A common theme in literature, for example, was the uncanny capability of the past to return in some form to haunt the present. Disinterred objects from the distant past moving from darkness into the light of observation could be disturbing, but that reemergence could also be enchanting (Moshenska 2006, 92; 2013, 214).18 For example, in Hallam’s Constitutional History, Thomas Babington Macaulay describes the romantic impulse to “make the past present, to bring the distant near” and to invest the past with the reality of human flesh and blood (Macaulay 2001 [1828], 1–10). Indeed, it has been plausibly claimed that romantic ideas about antiquity became cousin to the Gothic, as exemplified in publications such as Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto, a Gothic Story (1769 [1764]), a tale saturated with affection for the marvelous and the supernatural (Morris 2012, 52; see also Haycock 1999, 77). The book was a favorite of Sir Walter Scott, author of The Antiquary (1816) who wrote the introduction to the 1811 edition of the work.19 To the extent that found objects and sites of archaeological interest had intimations of death, and the spirit of revenants and ghosts so readily projected upon them, it is traceable to the romantic fusing of expressly visual sensibilities with the documentary interests of antiquarianism. Given that images were vehicles for returning the past into the present, it is unsurprising that we find in many romantically inflected antiquarian illustrations a pronounced noir quality in which excavation is conflated with exhumation and ancient burial sites and other symbols of death and decay become recurring signifiers.20 As discussed in the next chapter, this had practical dimensions in terms of the attraction of burial mounds and what they might contain; an attraction which diverted attention away from sites of classical antiquity and toward local features visible on the landscape (see Adkins and Adkins 1989, 3; Thomas 2004, 43; Trigger 2008, 112–113).

30  Antiquity and the Enchanted Eye Modernity and the Muse Archaeological visuality, strongly infused with antiquarian sensibilities, managed to keep at bay many of the ruder incursions of modernity. Those incursions that it could not resist it attempted to infiltrate and redirect by placing its own visual stamp on how the remains of the past should be documented via the enchanted eye and the impulse for picturing. If we look back to the mid-nineteenth century, we can identify how this resistance was achieved and nurtured, for a key historical aspect of the antiquarian protection of tradition was its relationship with the learned societies and institutions emergent in that period. As noted in the Introduction, the supposed transition to more scientifically focused modes of inquiry in the nineteenth century rests on the presumption, accepted by many commentators, that the rise of scholarly societies signaled the end of the antiquarian phase. The explanation for this historical foreshortening lies, I believe, in a mistaken belief that the formation of such institutions represented a new direction of thought in the Western study of antiquity. That such an institutional proliferation occurred is beyond doubt: there was the founding of the Société de Antiquaires de France in 1804, the American Antiquarian Society in 1812, the Deutsches Archäologisches Institut in 1829, the British Archaeological Association in 1843, the Archaeological Institute (United Kingdom) in 1844 and the Archaeological Institute of America in 1879. This list, by no means complete, does indeed point to the nineteenth century as a time when the study of the past aspired to higher status. However, it is highly questionable whether the establishment of academies and scholarly societies is really a suitable metric by which to gauge the emergence of archaeology as a credentialed field of scientific study. The status of pictorialism as a documentary mode serves as a far more reliable metric than society formation by which to judge the direction in which the study of antiquity was going and to what extent it was, or was not, cohering as a modernized undertaking. One reason we can justifiably make this claim is the carryover of antiquarian norms of aesthetic awareness into those very same societies and academies. In those institutional settings, antiquarian notions of artistic worth and connoisseurship continued to inform descriptions and interpretations of antiquity (Daniel and Renfrew 1988, 7). Another reason that justifies the use of pictorialism as a metric is the link between antiquarian sensibilities and the rise of museum culture. As earlier described, museum holdings were often furnished (and are furnished still in many instances) with artifacts obtained through bequests and these came pre-valued by antiquarian appraisal (Gosden, Larson and Petch 2007, 64). Established visual taste was, then, maintained and even strengthened by scholarly societies and forms of pictorialism continued to infuse the study of the past in terms of documentary methods and objectives. The fact that new techniques of visualization such as photography and X-ray imaging emerged during the nineteenth century in no way weakens the validity of pictorialism as an explanatory metric; quite the reverse in fact, since those techniques, as I explain in Chapter 2, often had underlying pictorial, even artistic, features and represented a perpetuation of longestablished values rather than an overwriting of them.

Antiquity and the Enchanted Eye 31 Although the efflorescence of romanticism was coeval with the rise of institutions and scholarly societies, it served as a counterweight to intellectual orthodoxy. Within those cloistered spaces intellectual positions were staked out concerning modes of visual reporting and the vexed issue of how the rise of a cadre of specialists and new forms of expertise should (or should not) be accommodated. The fact that those debates continued for so long is a measure of how deeply heels were dug in. They are still evident in the archaeological literature mid-twentieth century. For example, in an article entitled “Archaeology and the Amateur,” Stuart Piggott distinguishes between “we professionals” and those “bewildered” others trying to make sense of the “brave new archaeological world.” He declares colorfully that the business of excavation and interpretation was now the work of experts and that the days when the history of Blankshire could be discussed chattily by the vicar are gone, never to return. (1948, 1–2) Piggott’s commentary was intended as a nail in the coffin of the antiquarians and their subjective musings. It failed in its objective and debate was still continuing two decades later, prompting archaeologist Glyn Isaac to note in an article titled “Whither Archaeology” how the “inner sanctum” of archaeology might benefit from the help and experience of biometricians, statisticians and experts in cybernetics. He also pointed out the resistance among the broader community of researchers to granting entry to these new perspectives (1971, 123–124). In noting this resistance, he perhaps had in mind the polemical comments of the widely published writer and archaeologist Jacquetta Hawkes who had earlier lamented that we have taken technology into our service to save us from labor and provide every comfort, and now are in danger of surrendering to its power. Only a conscious effort to change direction can save us from denying our best values, all that is distinctively human, to please the megamachine. (1968, 255)21 Clearly, some were foreseeing the modern era as a time of threat rather than promise, but such angst was hardly new. Discussion of the values to which Hawkes refers, and particularly the fate of imagination in a modernizing world, had been undergoing a philosophical hardening of opinion since the early twentieth century. Max Weber (1864–1920) was, for example, explicit in his views regarding the “disenchantment of the world” and was convinced that the rationalities of science and the rules of bureaucracy had displaced the role of myth, magic and ritual in the construction of meaning (2009a [1922], 148; 155; 2009b [1919], 350). Weber’s term for disenchantment was Entzauberung (to take the magic out) and referred to Entgötterung or the de-divination and “disgodding” of nature (Griffin 1988, 2–3; see also Berman 1981, 69; Greisman 1976, 496). Weber saw the world proceeding along a path at the end of which there would be no more mysteries, since all things would be explainable through empiricism and factual knowledge (see

32  Antiquity and the Enchanted Eye Jenkins 2000, 15). In his opinion, ostensibly liberating aspects of the shift toward predictability, organization and efficiency were secondary to the pernicious effects of privileging the intellect as the sole arbiter of meaning (see Greisman 1976, 495–496). Weber saw this privileging as the primary cause of the world’s divorce from a state of wonderment. Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), a near contemporary of Weber, identified what he considered to be an all-consuming will to truth taking hold of Western culture and he traced this back to the ancient Greeks, and their wish to shroud the sensible world with a “pale, grey, conceptual net thrown over the motley world of the senses” (1990 [1886], 41). Rather, he argues, the world is contingent, in flux and shrouded with a veil of appearances that knowledge cannot transcend. The human mind, as an embodied entity, cannot be separated from the phenomenal world and there can be no world beyond the mind which exists as a separate and objective entity. To the extent he speaks of joyful wisdom as an affirmation of life, he suggests a life well-lived is one which is open to the possibility of alternative interpretations (see Germain 1993, 21). Interestingly, Nietzsche offered up a rhetorical antidote to the often disparaging characterizations of antiquaries. In his essay On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life (1997 [1873]), he asserts that history belonged to those who preserve and revere it. “The trivial, circumscribed, decaying and obsolete,” he writes “acquire their own dignity and inviolability through the fact that the preserving and revering soul of the antiquarian man (sic) has emigrated into them and there made its home” (72–73). The relationship between modernity and the muse must also be situated relative to other, more recent, commentary. The thoughts of philosopher and musicologist Theodor Adorno (1903–1969) have particular relevance. His Aesthetic Theory (1984 [1970]; published posthumously) probes, together with other writings, the role of images, technology and visuality (see Roberts 1988, 270). His life overlapped with the rise of Nazism, an emergence which proved that unbridled exercise of free will and the disavowal of rational explanation can result in oppression and tyranny (Berlin 2001, 144–145). This perhaps explains the wistfulness one finds in Adorno’s writing for what romanticism once promised and the refuge that art can provide. In his writings on aesthetics, for example, he sees some aspects of innovative art as capable of pushing back against disenchantment by affirming the experience of being in the world even though alienated from it.22 He asserts that an “age of silence” had befallen art in that it no longer gave concrete expression to substantive ideas, as he considered Greek art to have done in its depictions of beauty, but he leaves open the possibility that art might yet regain its agency (1984 [1970], Appendix 1, A-64, 400). In 1944, Adorno published, with Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment in which a line of connection is drawn between the modern condition and what they saw as the disenchantment of the world through “the dissolution of myths and the substitution of knowledge for fancy” (1979 [1944], 3). But Adorno and Horkheimer identify this as but one aspect of modernity’s dark underbelly. Another aspect was a mode of thought where “the multiplicity of forms is reduced to position and arrangement, history to fact, [and] things to matter.” They see a

Antiquity and the Enchanted Eye 33 bureaucratized science, the methods and techniques of which, when harnessed to the industrial system, can create a repressive force based on domination. This, they claim, sets the stage for the rise and eventual dominance of technocratic explanation in the twentieth century (1979 [1944], 7). We can find in the writings of another German philosopher, a contemporary of Adorno, some particulars regarding the outcomes identified in Dialectic of Enlightenment. Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) applies the term Machenschaft in referring to a mode of practice in which machination and managerial control become dominant and this reference is cousin to Adorno’s reference to the risk of subjectivity being “congealed into technology” (1984 [1970]). In a published set of essays on the subject of technology (Heidegger 1970a), he claims that machination can become hegemonic, dominating how we see, describe and conceptualize the world around us (see also Dalmayr 1989). In rounding out this brief review of philosophical commentary regarding modernity’s impact on the condition of enchantment, it would be unforgivable not to mention the Marxian social critic, Walter Benjamin (1892–1940).23 He was no archaeologist in the conventional sense but one cannot read very far into his work without encountering analogies to excavation, the recovery of memory and the ephemera modernity simultaneously creates and disperses. Often these links to archaeology are merely implied, but on occasion they are more explicitly stated. For example, in Ibizan Sequence (2005 [1932]; published posthumously), Benjamin concludes that for authentic memories, it is far less important that the investigator report on them than that he (sic) mark, quite precisely, the site where he gained possession of them. Epic and rhapsodic in the strictest sense, genuine memory must therefore yield an image of the person who remembers, in the same way a good archaeological report not only informs us about the strata from which its findings originate, but also gives an account of the strata which first had to be broken through. Benjamin is well known for the status he assigned to “aura” that may be projected onto unique artifacts and he critically examines in his essay, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1969 [1936]), the potential of technology, including movie production, to destabilize the aura of originality and draws attention to how reproduction of both artifacts and the audience for viewing them can be exploited. I provide detail on the subject of aura in Chapter 6 where I situate it within the context of authenticity. Further discussion of Benjamin’s work will also be found there. The views of the various theorists and critics cited above are diagnostic of the concerns that have continued to cohere around the idea of modernity and the fate of enchantment. The connotations are frequently negative. Indeed, a fully formed pessimistic train of thought has been identified by some, uniting all those who doubt the idea of an inevitable, if uneven, journey toward a better tomorrow (Criautu 2010, 113–114). This prognosis for the human condition tends to frame the logic of

34  Antiquity and the Enchanted Eye technocratic advance as a force which commodifies and regulates the social world of lived experience, from Richard Rorty’s belief that the “de-deification” inherent in the modern age has replaced the priest with the scientist (1991, 35), to Frederic Jameson’s conclusion that sense perception has nowhere to go “in a world in which science deals with ideal quantities, and comes to have little enough exchange value in a money economy” (1981, 229). We can add to the cohort the travel writer and essayist Patrick Leigh Fermor who condemns the modern condition as an “impartial exterminator of gods and demons” (2004, 174) and the philosopher Simone Weil who concludes that in the present historical moment “most people feel, confusedly but keenly, that what was called enlightenment in the eighteenth century, including the sciences, provides an insufficient spiritual diet” (1965, 131). This strain of pessimistic thought has nurtured the belief that acts of observation and picturing are disciplined under conditions of modernity and that these conditions constrain or even disallow a role for the imagination. It has been said that the course of Western modernity, particularly as it determines the direction of science, confines legitimate facts to those that can be measured and quantified (Thomas 2004, 41). Such a world is a chilly place for those of a romanticist disposition who would position the enchanted study of antiquity high on the scale of virtuous endeavor. But might romanticist yearning in fact be a cause of this ennui? Indeed, it has been said that the very idea of free will and recovered innocence is “one of the most seductive, powerful, and deluded topoi of the idealist and romantic period” (de Man 1984, 267). If technology is complicit in the disenchantment of the world, what does that portend for the study of antiquity as the technical probing of the remains of the past has become ubiquitous? What does it imply about the identity of archaeological inquiry? Is there a middle ground between technological ascendancy and the indulgences of the imagination? Is there a terrain of description and interpretation in which the two sides become intermingled or perform complementary roles? Might new modes of explanation have created what Morris Berman calls “the creation of a post-Cartesian paradigm” (1981, 152)? I take the position that modes of pictorial explanation and documentation do not inevitably give rise to a post-enchanted archaeology but are far more likely to produce new strains of enchantment that can be richly creative. This represents a paradox insofar as new sources of wonder arise out of the old. New sources of wonder are fundamentally pictorial; they fit into a long and familiar historical story in which archaeology is best considered as an artform. Notes 1 Browne describes the discovery as follows (original spelling retained): In a field of old Walsingham, not many monthes past were digged up between fourty and fifty Urnes, deposited in a dry and sandy soil, not a yard deep, not farre from one another. Not all strictly of one figure, but most answering these described: Some containing two pounds of bones … with fresh impressions of their combustion.” Accompanying the cremated remains were substances like peeces of small boxes, or combes handsomely wrought, handles of small brass instruments, brazen nippers, and in one some kind of Opale. (1984b [1658], 274)

Antiquity and the Enchanted Eye 35 2 Because antiquarian interests traversed many different intellectual fields, distinctions between “amateur” and “professional” remained blurred until the close of the nineteenth century (Byrne 2013, 32; Shanks 2012, 16). 3 There is also a good measure of self-denigration to be found among the antiquarians. Thomas Wright, for example, sought to reassure the readers of his illustrated study of the early inhabitants of Britain, The Celt, the Roman, and the Saxon. A History of the Early Inhabitants of Britain, that “[t]he studies of the antiquary are not so dry or useless as many have been led to suppose. His science, however, is yet but very imperfectly developed” (1852, vi). 4 Different perspectives apply. For example, Marjorie Swann identifies a socioeconomic dynamic in the antiquarian focus on material acquisition and situates it relative to evolving ideas about tangible property and the rise of a culture of consumer goods and materialism. According to Swann, possessive individualism and the concept of self-as-owner would come to dominate Western culture (2001, 5; 112; 194). 5 In the Christian East, there was a tradition of direct visual and tactile relationship with icons and relics and, following the sack of Constantinople in the early thirteenth century, this tendency spread to the West and reliquaries were increasingly designed so that the contents could be seen directly (Bagnoli 2010, 141). Often only an elite few were able to take advantage of this visibility, but transparency at least held out the prospect of broader visual access. 6 Worm often went by the Latin version of his name: “Olaus Wormius.” I use here, and in the Index, the spelling found in Museum Wormianum: Olao Worm. He began collecting in the early 1620s and it became a life-long preoccupation. The museum was set up after his death in 1654. 7 Britain’s Royal Society, founded in 1660, was bequeathed the contents of various private cabinets as it aspired to become a systematic collection grounded in experimentation and observation (Hunter 2001, 221–224; Hanson 2009, 3). 8 There are 12 Piranesi engravings of the ruins of the Greek temples at Paestum (western Italy) on permanent display in the Picture Room of the Soane Museum. They are mostly by Giovanni but also include engravings by his son, Francesco. 9 A good example of architecture pushing back against the temple model is that of the Acropolis Museum in Athens, opened in 2009, suggesting that it is manifestly easier to re-think the architectural surroundings of antiquity when unencumbered by pre-existing buildings and the legacy they embody. 10 Co-performances within that space are everywhere to be seen. One thinks, for example, of the crowds milling around the Rosetta stone on display on the ground floor of the British Museum, an object that has long been promoted by the museum as being of iconic status. 11 Although it is beyond the scope of this book to examine closely romanticism’s political roots, its tendrils certainly reached into issues of national identity and Isaiah Berlin speculates that the romanticism of the German idealists was the product of “wounded national sensibility and dreadful national humiliation” (2001, 38). 12 While it is entirely valid to link Baudelaire to the aesthetics of romanticism, he found much that fascinated him in the accelerating modernity of Paris, as is clear in his essay The Painter of Modern Life (2010 [1863]). This fascination is well described by Prettejohn (2005, 102–109). 13 An additional period of cultural flux has been identified further back in time. The philosophical agenda of nominalism during the medieval period has been cited as an example, not of rationality and reason, but of resistance to universal categories of order and a widening of the space accorded to faith and wonder (Jay 2010, 69–71; 85; see also Elkins 1999, 239). This earlier emergence suggests that cultural “turns,” such as that of the European Enlightenment and the rise of romanticism, are cyclical. 14 This surveying gaze has attracted much critical attention. In The Age of the World Picture, Martin Heidegger argues that any attempt to frame the world and encompass its

36  Antiquity and the Enchanted Eye qualities is to participate not in its enchantment, but in the opposite. To so conceptualize the world is to characterize it as a stock of resources over which science and technology can exert mastery (1977b, 20; 135). 15 Kepler, in addition to his work as an astronomer, was the first to examine the role of lenses and he introduced the notion of “picture” to describe experimentally produced images capable of being projected (see Dupré 2008). 16 Lolla is referring here to the engravings in Vetusta Monumenta, the illustrated periodical of archaeological finds published by the Society of Antiquaries of London, but her comments are broadly applicable. 17 This embrace was part of a broader cultural musing expressed not only in pictures but also in literature. In literature, it was the charm of the “undressed” fragment that most appealed, such as the references to fragments in the poetry of John Keats. 18 Gabriel Moshenska (2006) imports into archaeology the term “uncanny” as Sigmund Freud understood it: Umheimlich or the “unhomely” where the alien or the frightening can arise out of familiarity. But the term also refers to that which was once secret or invisible being returned to sight (see Freud 1994 [1920–1922], 121–122; 126). 19 Scott is also known for his non-fiction writings on archaeology, including The Border Antiquities of England and Scotland (1814). 20 The trope of exhumation has proved highly durable. In the mid-1950s, long after the influence of romanticism was thought to be over, the archaeologist Mortimer Wheeler stated that archaeology was not about digging up things, but digging up people. Although he was not referring to human bodies in the literal sense but to the marks of human existence, there is arguably a noir aspect involved (see Wheeler 1954, v; 216–217). 21 The tone of Hawkes’s comments was to be echoed a few years later by Karl Popper (1972) and his description of a dystopian world of automata that threatened human values and creativity. 22 The value placed by Adorno on aesthetics evokes the words of Friedrich Nietzsche who voiced a similar kind of receptivity, but with an unlikely focus: physics. That field of knowledge, claimed Nietzsche, is founded on belief in the senses … It has the eyes and the hands on its side, it has ocular evidence and palpability on its side; and this has the effect of fascinating, persuading, convincing an age with fundamentally plebeian tastes – for it instinctively follows the canon of eternal, popular sensualism. (1990 [1886], 44) 23 Recent translations of Benjamin’s writings provide additional insights into his choice of source material and the range of his interests. These include The Arcades Project (Eiland and Mclaughlin 1999) and Walter Benjamin’s Archive (Marx et al. 2015). Benjamin became one of many millions displaced by the rise of Nazism in Europe. He attempted to flee to Spain in late 1940 following the occupation of France but could go no further than Portbou after the border was closed to refugees.

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Antiquity and the Enchanted Eye 39 Hanson, Craig Ashley. 2009. The English Virtuoso. Art, Medicine, and Antiquarianism in the Age of Empiricism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Haskell, Francis. 1995. History and Its Images. New Haven: Yale University Press. Hawkes, Jacquetta. 1968. “The Proper Study of Mankind.” Antiquity 42, 225–262. Haycock, David Boyd. 1999. “A Small Journey into the Country”: William Stukeley and the Formal Landscapes of Stonehenge and Avebury.” In Producing the Past: Aspects of Antiquarian Culture and Practice 1700–1850, edited by Martin Myrone and Lucy Peltz, 67–79. Aldershot: Ashgate. Heidegger, Martin. 1977a. “The Question Concerning Technology” In The Question Concerning Technology and other Essays, translated by William Lovitt, 3–35. New York: Harper Colophon. Heidegger, Martin. 1977b. “The Age of the World Picture.” In The Question Concerning Technology and other Essays, translated by William Lovitt, 115–154. New York: Harper Colophon. Herringman, Noah. 2013. Sciences of Antiquity. Romantic Antiquarianism, Natural History, and Knowledge Work. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hobsbawm, Eric. 1977 (1962). The Age of Revolution, 1789–1848. London: Abacus. Hunter, Michael. 2001. “The Royal Society’s Repository and Its Background.” In The Origin of Museums. The Cabinet of Curiosities in Sixteenth and Seventeenth-century Europe, edited by Oliver Impey and Arthur McGregor, 217–229. London: House of Stratus. Isaac, Glynn L. L. 1971. “Whither Archaeology.” Antiquity 45, 123–129. Jameson, Frederic. 1981. The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Jay, Martin. 1988. “Scopic Regimes of Modernity.” In Vision and Visuality, edited by Hal Foster, 3–23. New York: New Press. Jay, Martin. 1994. Downcast Eyes. The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-century French Thought. Berkeley: University of California Press. Jay, Martin. 2010. “Magical Nominalism: Photography and the Re-enchantment of the World.” In The Pictorial Turn, edited by Neal Curtis, 69–87. Abingdon: Routledge. Jenkins, Richard. 2000. “Disenchantment, Enchantment and Re-enchantment: Max Weber at the Millennium.” Max Weber Studies 1, 11–32. Kant, Immanuel. 1978 (1790). The Critique of Judgment, translated by James Creed Meredith. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Koselleck, Reinhart. 2004 (1979). Futures Past. On the Semantics of Historical Time. New York: Columbia University Press. Lalvani, Suren. 1996. Photography, Vision and the Production of Modern Bodies. Albany: State University of New York Press. Levine, Philippa. 1986. The Amateur and the Professional. Antiquarians, Historians and Archaeologists in Victorian England, 1838–1886. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lolla, Maria Grazia. 1999. “Ceci n’est pas un Monument: Vetusta Monumenta and Antiquarian Aesthetics.” In Producing the Past. Aspects of Antiquarian Culture and Practice 1700–1850, edited by Martin Myrone and Lucy Peltz, 15–34. Aldershot: Ashgate. Lovejoy, Arthur O. 1955. Essays in the History of Ideas. New York: George Braziller. Lowenthal, David. 1985. The Past is a Foreign Country. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lucas, Gavin. 2012. Understanding the Archaeological Record. Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press. Macaulay, Thomas Babbington. 2001 (1828). “Hallam’s Constitutional History.” In Critical and Historical Essays. 3 vols, 1–10. London: Electric Book.

40  Antiquity and the Enchanted Eye Marx, Ursula, Gudrun Schwarz, Michael Schwarz and Erdmut Wizisla, eds. 2015. Walter Benjamin’s Archive, translated by Esther Leslie. London: Verso. McGregor, Arthur. 2001. “The Cabinet of Curiosities in Seventeenth-Century Britain.” In The Origin of Museums. The Cabinet of Curiosities in Sixteenth and Seventeenth-Century Europe, edited by Oliver Impey and Arthur McGregor, 201–215. London: House of Stratus. Mendyk, Stan A. E. 1989. ‘Speculum Britanniae’. Regional Study, Antiquarianism, and Science in Britain to 1700. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Momigliano, Arnaldo. 1950. “Ancient History and the Antiquarian.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 13:3/4, 285–315. Morris, Richard. 2012. Time’s Anvil. England, Archaeology and the Imagination: London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. Moser, Stephanie and Sam Smiles. 2005. “Introduction.” In Envisioning the Past. Archaeology and the Image, edited by Sam Smiles and Stephanie Moser, 1–12. Oxford: Blackwell. Moshenska, Gabriel. 2006. “The Archaeological Uncanny.” Public Archaeology 5, 91–99. Moshenska, Gabriel. 2013. “The Archaeological Gaze.” In Reclaiming Archaeology. Beyond the Tropes of Modernity, edited by Alfredo González-Ruibal, 211–219. London: Routledge. Nagel, Alexander. 2010. “The Afterlife of the Reliquary.” In Treasures of Heaven. Saints, Relics and Devotion in Medieval Europe, edited by Martina Bagnoli, Holger A. Klein, C. Griffith Mann and James Robinson, 211–222. London: British Museum Press. Newton, Charles. 1851. “On the Study of Archaeology.” Archaeological Journal 8, 1–26. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1990 (1886). Beyond Good and Evil, translated by R. J. Hollingdale. London: Penguin. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1997 (1873). “On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life.” In Untimely Meditations, translated by R. J. Hollingdale and edited by Daniel Breazeale, 57–124. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Piggott, Stuart. 1937. “Prehistory and the Romantic Movement.” Antiquity 11, 31–38. Piggott, Stuart. 1948. “Archaeology and the Amateur.” Archaeological Newsletter 1, 1–2. Piggott, Stuart. 1989. Ancient Britons and the Antiquarian Imagination. Ideas from the Renaissance to the Regency. London: Thames and Hudson. Piranesi, Giovanni Giambattista. 1761. De Romanorum Magnificentia et Architectura. Rome: Romea. Pomian, Krzysztof. 1990. Collectors and Curiosities: Paris and Venice, 1500–1800, translated by Elizabeth Wiles-Portier. Cambridge: Polity. Popper, Karl. 1972. Objective Knowledge. An Evolutionary Approach. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Prettejohn, Elizabeth. 2005. Beauty and Art. 1750–2000. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Renfrew, Colin. 2003. Figuring It Out. London: Thames and Hudson. Roberts, Julian. 1988. German Philosophy. An Introduction. Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press International. Rorty, Richard. 1991. Objectivity, Relativism and Truth. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schiller, Friedrich. 1966 (1795). “On Naïve and Sentimental Poetry.” In Naive and Sentimental Poetry and On the Sublime: Two Essays, translated and edited by Julius A. Elias. New York: Unger. Schlanger, Nathan. 2010. “Series in Progress: Antiquities of Nature, Numismatics and Stone Implements in the Emergence of Prehistoric Archaeology.” History of Science 48, 343–369.

Antiquity and the Enchanted Eye 41 Schnapp, Alain. 1997. The Discovery of the Past. The Origins of Archaeology. London: British Museum Press. Schnapp, Alain. 2002. “Between Antiquarians and Archaeologists – Continuities and Ruptures.” Antiquity 76:291, 134–140. Schnapp, Alain. 2013. World Antiquarianism. Comparative Perspectives. Los Angeles: Getty Institute. Schramm, Helmar. 2005. “Introduction.” In Collection – Laboratory – Theater. Scenes of Knowledge in the Seventeenth Century, edited by Helmar Schramm, Ludger Schwarte and Jan Lazaerdzig, xi–xxvii. New York: Walter de Gruyter. Scott, Walter. 1814. The Border Antiquities of England and Scotland. 2 vols. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown. Scott, Walter. 1816. The Antiquary. 3 vols. Edinburgh: J. Ballantyne. Shanks, Michael. 2012. The Archaeological Imagination. Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press. Shanks, Michael and Christopher Tilley. 1987. Re-Constructing Archaeology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Shanks, Michael and Christopher Tilley. 1992. Re-Constructing Archaeology. 2nd edition. London: Routledge. Shelton, Anthony. 1994. “Cabinets of Transgression: Renaissance Collections and the Incorporation of the New World.” In The Cultures of Collecting, edited by John Elsner and Roger Cardinal, 177–203. London: Reaktion Books. Stafford, Barbara Maria. 1984. Voyage into Substance. Art, Science, Nature, and the Illustrated Travel Account, 1760–1840. Cambridge: MIT Press. Stafford, Barbara Maria, 1991. Body Criticism. Imaging the Unseen in Enlightenment Art and Medicine. Cambridge: MIT Press. Stafford, Barbara Maria. 1994. Artful Science. Enlightenment Entertainment and the Eclipse of Visual Education. Cambridge: MIT Press. Stewart, Susan. 1984. On Longing. Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Sturma, Dieter. 2008. “Politics and the New Mythology: The Turn to Late Romanticism.” The Cambridge Companion to German Idealism, 219–238. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Swann, Marjorie. 2001. Curiosities and Texts. The Culture of Collecting in Early Modern England. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Sypher, Wylie Feltus. 1971. Literature and Technology: Alien Vision. New York: Vintage. Thomas, Julian. 2004. Archaeology and Modernity. London: Routledge. Thomas, Sophie. 2003. “Assembling History: Fragments and Ruins.” European Romantic Review 14, 177–186. Thompson, M. 1994. “The Filth in the Way.” In Interpreting Objects and Collections, edited by Susan M. Pearce, 269–278. London: Routledge. Trigger, Bruce G. 2008. A History of Archaeological Thought. 2nd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Walpole, Horace. 1769 (1764). The Castle of Otranto. A Gothic Story. 3rd edition. London: John Murray. Walsham, Alexandra. 2010. “Introduction: Relics and Remains.” In Relics and Remains, edited by Alexandra Walsham, 9–36. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Watkin, David, ed. 2000. Sir John Soane. The Royal Academy Lectures. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Weber, Max. 2009a (1922). “Science as a Vocation.” In From Max Weber. Essays in Sociology, edited and translated by H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, 129–156. London: Routledge.

42  Antiquity and the Enchanted Eye Weber, Max. 2009b (1919). “Religious Rejections of the World and their Directions.” In From Max Weber. Essays in Sociology, edited and translated by H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, 323–359. London: Routledge. Weil, Simone. 1965. Seventy Letters, translated by Richard Rees. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wheeler, R. E. Mortimer. 1954. Archaeology from the Earth. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Wilton-Ely, John. 2012. Piranesi, Paestum and Soane. Munich and London: Prestel. Woodward, Christopher. 2002. In Ruins. London: Vintage. Worm, Olao. 1655. Museo Wormianum seu Historia Rerum Rariorum. Lugduni Batavorum (Leiden): Iohannem Elsevirium. Wright, Thomas. 1852. The Celt, the Roman, and the Saxon. A History of the Early Inhabitants of Britain. London: Arthur Hall, Virtue.

2

Picturing the Past

Picture the scene: I am looking out over the valley of a river from a small park called “The Prospect” in Ross-on-Wye, England. It is raining. Two-and-a-half centuries earlier, another pair of eyes had been cast over this same scene and, like me, the observer had thought it disappointing. For William Gilpin, clergyman and antiquarian (1724–1804), it was not the weather that was the problem for he felt that a little rain, by “throwing a veil of obscurity” over the landscape induced a pleasing sense of distance. Rather, it was the river valley itself that was at fault. “The first part of the river, from Ross, is tame” he declared in his Observations on the River Wye (1782, 28; see also Gilpin 1792), “the banks are low; and scarce an object attracts the eye, except the ruins of Wilton castle, which appear on the left, shrouded with a few trees. But the scene wants accompaniments to give it grandeur.” Gilpin went on to become a major influence on Western pictorial manners beginning in the late eighteenth century by prescribing how landscape could be framed as pleasingly “picturesque.”1 Gilpin’s gaze, privileged signs of age, decay and injury as sources of enduring charm and the appeal of a particular view, was further enhanced if it displayed elements of roughness and texture. It is regrettable that Gilpin rarely features as a subject of interest in the history of archaeology, for his influence on ways of seeing was profound. There is no shortage of examples of Gilpin’s visual preferences and prejudices in his writings. For example, a scenic tour undertaken in 1776 took him through England and into the highlands of Scotland. En route, he visited Roche Abbey (Yorkshire, England) which he found wanting as a picturesque subject due to illadvised restoration by its owner. With a ruin, he wrote “the reigning ideas are solitude, neglect, and desolation … a ruin should be left in a state of wildness and negligence [as] habitation forsaken of man and reformed by nature” (1973 [1789], 24–25). Further on in his travels he stopped at another abbey but was again disappointed, this time because it was “too perfect” in its appearance and did not present “that degree of dilapidation that gives conjecture room to wander” (31). Given that he was quick to list those vistas that fell short of his exacting standards what, then, would earn his approval? One example is shown in Figure 2.1, a scene included in the several editions of Observations on the River Wye. This plate, produced by a nephew from a sketch by Gilpin, shows a reach of the river “beyond which a bold promontory shoots out, crowned with a castle rising among trees.” This view was DOI: 10.4324/9781032646893-3

44  Picturing the Past

Figure 2.1  View of Goodrich Castle (Gilpin 1789).

of Goodrich Castle and he considered it “one of the grandest on the river [with] all the most desirable attributes of a picturesque scene” (1789, 30). Gilpin’s various publications served as guides to practicalities and promising itineraries, popularizing the idea of observational travel. Picturesque motifs were, he insisted, there to be found by anyone with the requisite leisure time and artistic sensibility. Those who gathered up their sketchbooks and ventured forth were hardly grand tourists seeking out the sites of the classical world, but we can nonetheless make a connection to the ambitions of those traveling milordi if we see such activities as excursions in pursuit of validated destinations, viewpoints and visual encounters with antiquity. Moreover, those viewpoints could, through in situ sketching, be collected and brought home. The pursuit of the picturesque, more than Gilpin and those of his ilk perhaps realized, tapped into a vein not only of British aesthetic taste but one that was more broadly European. Needless to say, this chapter is about much more than the sensibilities of an eighteenth-century clergyman. My purpose in introducing him at the outset is to announce the central theme of the discussions ahead: the role of pictorial resemblance and the associations it is capable of forging with the remains of antiquity. It has been claimed that what makes modern culture different from its pre-modern form is the tendency to picture or visualize experience (Mirzoeff 1999, 5–6), but it becomes clear as one delves through documentary accounts from that pre-modern world what a wealth of illustration was generated and the reliance placed upon it; visual information exerted a power that was often more influential than text or speech (Swogger 2000, 143; 147).

Picturing the Past 45 As stressed in the preceding chapter, the historical overlap of antiquarianism with romanticism helps explain certain favored ways of seeing, being at variance with ideas of symmetry, smoothness and regularity (Andrews 1994, 283; Mitchell 2005, 117). This scopic stance was notably sympathetic toward the remains of the past, imbuing them with charm and even exoticism. In many ways, pictorial practices invented antiquity by giving it a visually readable form that appealed to the senses as well as providing a visual record. Those records, once lodged in memory or preserved in an archive, become like Ishmael in Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, as it alone remains to tell the tale.2 In this chapter I will begin the task (carried forward in subsequent chapters) of describing how pictorial constructions of antiquity are created and how pictures derive agency from what they represent. Publication and distribution create a space for pictorial depictions to act as agents of virtual witnessing to cohere into a shared visual language of explanation (Latour 1986, 1990; Shapin 1984). Pictorialism, cemented by innovations in reproduction has enabled shared visual description to proceed at an accelerating rate, particularly over the course of the nineteenth century (Ivins 1975, 13; see also (Lolla 2003, 11–12).3 There is a wealth of theoretical opinion on the matter of picturing to be sifted through in this chapter, but I will be saving the theory until last. In that way, the examples presented can be used as points of reference against which aspects of picture theory can be better assessed. The priority is to underscore picturing as a form of story-telling about antiquity from the perspective of culturally and physically positioned observers. Acts and Outcomes of Observation The picturesque turn sowed seeds of visual expression that would influence the ways in which sites of antiquity were encountered and observed. It established a precedent for peripatetic modes of observation and the agenda of visual capture and pursuit of motifs featuring aesthetically satisfying traces of time would grow stronger over time, cohering into a context of encounter which Julian Thomas, archaeologist and fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London, refers to as the “drama of recovery” (2004, 149). As a culturally and physically positioned observer, the observations of William Gilpin favored the wandering eye and, in his opinion, [t]he first source of amusement to the picturesque traveler was the pursuit of [the] object and the expectation of new scenes, continually arising and that “when out and about, it is ideal if [w]e suppose the country to have been unexplored. Under this circumstance the mind is kept constantly in an agreeable suspense. The love of novelty is the foundation of this pleasure”. (1794, 47–48) Uvedale Price’s On the Picturesque (1842) sharpened and refined Gilpin’s prescriptive approach and we find percolating up through its 60 wood-cut engravings a

46  Picturing the Past distinctive expression of time and antiquity as expressed through material remains on the landscape. Although roughness, sudden variation and irregularity are, he tells us, agreeably picturesque qualities, with buildings, these qualities are best brought about through the passage of time which was, according to Price “the great author of such changes” (82) and capable of yielding a perfect landscape from “a thousand lucky accidents” (68). Effective drawing and subsequent transcription into print might have been capable, as Price believed, of evoking “a thousand lucky accidents,” but all were not equally adept at recording such scenes. So it was that certain visual aids became available in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, three being worthy of mention. The device which most clearly reflected picturesque sensibilities was the socalled Claude glass, named after the seventeenth-century artist Claude Lorrain whose pictorial treatment of landscape was particularly influential in shaping the antiquarian mental image of classical locales. These viewing devices were extremely popular and art historian Malcolm Andrews goes so far as to say that searchers after the picturesque often contemplated the outdoors through two framing devices, the first being the windows of the carriages in which they rode, and the second being the Claude glass (1999, 116). Indeed, to the extent that use of the glass tended to steer the act of observation toward motifs that could be viewed most advantageously, it exerted agency. It consisted of a small convex mirror that enfolded landscape features into a picture-like configuration resembling a vignette that could then be copied. The mirror, on account of its convexity, tended to enlarge foregrounds and reduced the margins, but to gain a coherent reflection the user had to face away from the scene so that the mirror confronted the focus of interest rather than the human eye. The Claude glass was, then, a device of visual husbandry, its mirror seeming to gather in a distant scene, but it also aided the sense that landscape features were visually collectible and thus it comported well with antiquarian desires (see Liu 1989, 87; Maillet 2004, 19; Pavord 2016, 16). An additional aid to copying, though far less easy to use than the Claude glass, was the camera lucida, first patented in 1806. By means of an adjustable prism and mirrors, it allowed a viewed scene to be projected downward and enabled it to be traced directly onto paper. It was particularly effective for capturing topographic features and architectural details, including ruins. A related device was the graphic telescope, patented in 1811. It was invented by Cornelius Varley, an artist and designer of optical instruments and, like the camera lucida, it aided in effective transcription of what was being observed (see Mallalieu 2005). The graphic telescope projected an image but it had the added advantage of bringing distant objects near while maintaining perspectival accuracy. Indeed, it was explicitly promoted as a tool “to give all the views strictly correct, without any care or anxiety about the perspective.” It could, it was claimed, “find numerous fine views that before were unnoticed” (Varley 1845, 53). Neither the camera lucida, the Claude glass, nor the graphic telescope was capable of producing an image; they merely assisted in the coordination of hand and eye. In all cases they exploited known properties of mirrors and lenses but, arguably, they were precursors of remote sensing in the sense that they positioned a device with vision-enhancing capabilities between eye and object.

Picturing the Past 47 Whether depicting single objects or entire scenes of interest, it is important to bear in mind that antiquarian image production often involved a triangular relationship between the artifact or scene itself, the observer and the print producer. As noted in the Introduction, only occasionally would the original observer and the creator of the final published illustration be the same person. The engraver, although responsible for producing a picture based on the observer’s reports, had considerable interpretive leeway in choice of angle and degree of emphasis accorded to specific features. However, the identity of these artisans is often unknown and, even when noted on a final picture, can be easy to overlook. The careful attention and sureness of hand and eye of the engraver in published work is clear, but in this apparent assurance one often senses an underlying element common to much antiquarian picturing, namely a concern that the remains of the past were by their nature elusive and required strict attention to detail to prevent their slipping away; so long as the material remains of the past remained centrally positioned and correctly transcribed they could not escape back to the oblivion from they were retrieved. Pictorial Product: Artifact as Portrait

Let us now turn to the specifics of image production and the way in which that production privileges or celebrates the antiquity of a subject, aprivileging and celebration best achieved by transcribing artifacts into portraits. This pursuit of portraiture could also be applied to ancient remains on the landscape though more problematically since such scenes, unlike individual artifacts, could not be moved and manipulated. In transposing a drawing or painting into a reproducible form, the methods available for antiquarian illustration were lithography, engraving and etching. Singlecolor lithography first made its appearance at the end of the eighteenth century followed by the capability for creating multi-colored prints (chromolithography) in the late 1830s. Whether monochrome or multi-colored, images were first drawn on stone blocks with a wax crayon to which the printing ink would adhere. Other areas of the stone, when wetted, would be ink-resistant. Sets of lithographs on antiquarian themes, particularly in color, often took the form of limited-edition portfolios rather than conventional books and, for reasons of cost, might have relatively restricted circulation. In contrast to lithography, engraving has a far longer and more venerable history extending back to medieval times. The basic method of engraving involved the progressive clustering of lines akin to the modeling achievable with a pencil, except the lines were physically cut into the surface of the printing block or plate. The denser the clustering, or the wider and deeper the cuts, the greater the ink retention and consequent tonal contrast in the print. The cutting process was also central to etching, a form of printing in which an image would be inscribed on a metal plate with an acid-resistant coating. When subsequently dipped into acid, the lines would be “bitten” into the metal. A significant but overlooked aspect of antiquarian illustration is how the inscribing, gouging and digging actions of the printmaker’s tools were akin to excavation in the way they revealed features by processes of removal.

48  Picturing the Past The effectiveness of an illustration hinged on a central conceit: that the contemplation of a picture could be the equivalent of first-hand observation, if not superior to it. Illustration changes the status of an artifact by converting it into an object around which reasoning can cohere and, by allowing it to be framed and admitted into a distinctive aesthetic category, it gains a two-dimensional existence on paper in addition to the existence of the material relic (see Macarthur 2007, 4; 17). Objects presented to the eye of the antiquarian illustrator were often simultaneously obvious and obscure. There was often uncertainty about what was being pictured, but though knowledge about particular artifacts and ancient sites was often vague and incomplete, style and content gave the impression of assuredness. It has been plausibly claimed by Smiles (1999, 63) that this apparent confidence was a useful affectation, using ostensibly authoritative visual depiction to efface indeterminacy and provide a sense of factual existence. By so doing, some suggestion could be conveyed of the original function of whatever was being illustrated. Considered as portraits, pictorial illustration combined resemblance and flattery and was applied to objects that were judged exceptional as well as those that, in their original role, were entirely quotidian. In all cases, we are encouraged to see even highly fractured remains, such as pottery shards, as individual and complete presences. An instructive example is shown in Figure 2.2: a page of illustrations from volume 8 of Archaeologia illustrating Roman antiquities unearthed in London in 1786 during the digging of a sewer. The published account includes five fold-out plates and, in the words of the accompanying text, comprises a “set of drawings of such earthen and other utensils as were any ways remarkable for their materials or form” (117). The picturing of several associated finds on one page conforms to a type of display known in contemporary practice, as a “field-of-fragments” format (see

Figure 2.2  Roman antiquities (Archaeologia 1786).

Picturing the Past 49 Hamann 2012). Within the two-dimensional field of the page shown in Figure 2.2, each fragment is, of course, separated from the context in which it was originally encountered, but although that spatial key has been lost a new form of positioning and readability has taken its place as, in image form, the objects are placed within an overall display readable in two separate registered as a left-to-right sequence, as confirmed by the figure numbers. Transcribed into two dimensions and placed within the frame of the page, the illustration flatters the fragments, as any competent portrait should, by emphasizing complexion and form and all possible details that might relate to an artifact’s identity. Breaks, scars and ambiguous markings suggestive of an object’s past life are artfully depicted (see Shanks 1997, 89) but whether or not all surface details, including finer cracks and fractures, were transcribed into pictorial form would, however, have been dependent on the degree of reduction from actual size. In the particular example shown in Figure 2.2, attentive transcribing of surface features appears to extend to the visual reunification of separate fragments. As with any portrait, appropriate lighting is important, and each of the individual pieces is pictured in relation to a simulated light source from the left, creating the illusion of three-dimensional mass. However, the resultant shading effectively accentuates both shape and embellishment. Given the attention paid to surface detail, it is often the case with antiquarian illustration of individual artifacts that convincing transcription often results in a certain saturation of surface detail in order to conjure up a visual sense of the original object. We see an example of this in Figure 2.3. The illustration depicts an assortment of Anglo-Saxon remains excavated in eastern England, including a bronze warrior’s helmet, a shield and heavily corroded iron spearheads or daggers. The accompanying correspondence in Archaeological Journal, from one L. Deck, recounts that the items were found in a tomb accompanied by a skeleton. Although he cites other accounts which treat such finds as somewhat unremarkable, he is convinced that the helmet-like object is “a crown to the illustrious dead” (1851, 173). Pictorial Product: Antiquity on the Landscape

As with individual artifacts, the features of ancient landscapes attracted ways of seeing and picturing among antiquarians that were distinctively sympathetic (see Burström 2013, 314). William Gilpin, that country vicar introduced in the opening pages of this chapter, was of the firm conviction that among all the objects of art, the picturesque eye was most drawn to elegant relics of ancient architecture; the ruined tower, the Gothic arch, the remains of castles, and abbeys. They are “consecrated by time” (1794, 46). Pictorial appetites were whetted by the remains of classical civilization but, over time, antiquarian interests shifted and began to focus on features found closer to home and local landscape settings became portals into the past. It has been claimed that this enhanced awareness of the local announced a new direction in the study of the past in the form of field archaeology (Piggott 1937, 32). In the geographic context of Western and Northwestern Europe, the most conspicuous of these features fall into two groups: megalithic structures, and

50  Picturing the Past

Figure 2.3  Anglo-Saxon grave goods (Archaeological Journal 1851).

Picturing the Past 51 earthworks known as barrows or tumuli. I will focus here on the latter and reserve megalithic features for discussion in Chapter 4. From Britain to eastern Germany and across Denmark, France and Belgium, barrows and tumuli are the most ubiquitous portals into the prehistoric past and some 30,000 of them are known to exist on the landscape of Britain alone. When clustered in groups they form what can legitimately be referred to as a “barrow landscape” and one that may extend over several square kilometers. Those that remain today are the partial, collapsed, decayed and overgrown remnants of what was once presented to the eye (Bourgeois 2013, 116). Those earthworks that have evaded flattening by plows or erosion constitute an important source of information about Neolithic and Bronze Age culture, but to the enchanted eye of antiquarians in centuries past, these remains represented an ungraspable mystery. As sociologist Georg Simmel remarks, such traces were “the present form of a past life, not according to the contents or remnants of that life, but according to its past as such. This also is the charm of antiquities” (1959 [1919], 265–266). Their original function was the burial of the dead and some contained grave goods of various kinds. In choosing where to locate the structure, the issue of visibility and line-of-sight seems to have been important. Those that remain often occupy higher ground above the surrounding terrain and a recent report by a team of contemporary investigators refers to them as having “a certain aesthetic” as a consequence of their sculptural form and notes how this places a greater onus on visualization than for most other types of archaeological site (Evans et al. 2015, 1). As we shall see, the visual record indicates that antiquarian illustrators were similarly struck by their aesthetic and sensory qualities. To the antiquarians, barrows and tumuli intersected with broader skeins of interest both popular and scholarly and, in Britain, they attracted a plethora of fanciful explanations and useful fictions. As noted in the preceding chapter, the sense of melancholy and noir presence, piqued by romantic sensibilities, became embedded in the antiquarian imagination and this found its way into antiquarian picturing with graves and exhumation becoming common references (see de Man 1984, 2; Shanks 2012, 91; Trigger 2008, 113). To probe ancient burial sites was to delve into the landscape of death itself and induce a sensation of sublime dread. These visual notes became such a pronounced pictorial compulsion from the late eighteenth through the mid-nineteenth centuries that they took on the characteristics of what we might today call a “meme,” propagating many copies that were marginally different but incorporating similar elements of visual rhetoric. In Figure 2.4, from an 1854 edition of Archaeological Journal (facing page 315), we see these elements of visual rhetoric clearly deployed. It illustrates the entryway into a chambered tumulus. We see propped up nearby the tools of the trade and, standing above, a figure casting an appraising eye while simultaneously inviting the reader to do the same. The figure is accompanied by a dog, but why include that in the scene? Because it connotes the idea of a successful hunt and, after all, what better to sniff out old bones? Digging into these enigmatic features on the landscape offered the possibility that valuable objects might be found. Barrow hunting attracted a diverse array of diggers, and it has been said that such

52  Picturing the Past

Figure 2.4  Entrance to a chambered tumulus (Archaeological Journal 1854).

excavations represented a novel kind of field-sport for those of means, including landowners (Hutton 2009, 388). Their methods were basic and in many cases the high-value objects thought to lie within would fail to materialize and the diggers would be rewarded with more quotidian and less remarkable finds. As a gauge of the appeal of these ancient structures, we can point specifically to the work of the antiquary Richard Colt Hoare (1758–1838) who, together with his associates, documented an extensive area of southwestern England and excavated over 300 barrows and tumuli. These ancient earthworks, he writes, “make so prominent a figure in British history, and apply so forcibly to our feelings [and] through fancy and perhaps some particular superstition, have created many varieties in their general forms and outlines” (1821a, 109). Hoare worked in partnership with William Cunnington, an experienced excavator, and also with two additional barrowdiggers, Stephen and John Parker, but it was Hoare himself who underwrote the costs of fieldwork. He was well aware of the power of picturing for documentary purposes and he had a canny sense of how to craft his narratives in such a way that static observation could be transformed into dramatic visual effect (Flaxman 1987, 9–10; see also Robinson 2003, 113). He was a proficient artist in his own right but also worked in close association with another artist: Philip Crocker (1780–1840). A watercolor painting of uncertain date by Crocker (Figure 2.5) shows two figures, most probably Hoare and Cunnington, at the site of an excavation striking a supervisory pose together with two excavators, possibly the aforementioned Stephen and John Parker. In the background are several barrow-like forms and there is no suggestion in the picture of boundaries or demarcations that might impede the

Picturing the Past 53

Figure 2.5 Painting of an excavation (Crocker c. 1820). Image reproduced courtesy of Wiltshire Museum.

work of the pickaxe and the spade. Indeed, the terrain is unpopulated and pictured in a pose of open invitation. The best known published accounts of Hoare’s investigations are the two volumes of The Ancient History of South Wiltshire (1812) and The Ancient History of North Wiltshire (1821a).4 Although the former work was authored by Hoare, it was shaped in significant ways by Cunnington (see Robinson 2003). He acknowledges his debt in both word and image and he writes, on the last page of volume 2 of Ancient History of South Wiltshire that “by constant attendance on him, so initiated in his modes of proceeding, and was so deeply infected with the mania of antiquarian discovery, that I was both enabled, and induced, to pursue, the history of the Britons in our country.” While the first volume takes as its frontispiece a portrait of Hoare himself, the second volume features Cunnington. In introducing his narrative, Hoare makes clear the value he attaches to visual illustration in noting that “so many maps and other engravings are absolutely necessary towards its proper illustration” (1812, 5). The striving for pictorial effect was central to his ways of seeing, particularly as regards landscape, and he writes of how he was gripped by “the love of drawing early in his life” and how the aesthetic muse inspired him to undertake a journey to Italy (see Hoare 1814). The illustrations in Ancient History of South Wiltshire span a wide range of subjects and perspectives, including maps and surveys, studies of recovered artifacts, landscape views and plans of earthworks, but in an article examining the aesthetic complexion of Hoare’s documentary work, Robinson (2003) notes a quality in this visual record that is underappreciated by scholars of antiquarianism, namely the variability of focus and the apparent ease with which his attention could swing between the scale of landscape and

54  Picturing the Past the that of the individual object (126). Robinson also sees in the two volumes a traveler’s love of freedom in traversing unenclosed landscape such as that pictured by Crocker. Hoare was a periodic contributor to Archaeologia, the journal of the Society of Antiquaries, of which he was a member, and these contributions often described specific excavations (see, for example, Hoare 1821b). Wherever his excursions took him, he became intent on grouping barrows and tumuli into visual categories. All those pictured in Ancient History of South Wiltshire are, he pronounces, “works of evident design, and executed with the greatest symmetry and precision” (1812, 19–20). One of the plates from volume 1 (facing page 21) is shown in Figure 2.6 and depicts four types of barrow and, by accentuating the direction of illumination at the engraving stage, the form of each is made clear and an illusion of three-dimensionality is created. The wealth of illustrations he thought worthy of publication suggests that the more complete he believed the visual inventory to be, the greater the possibility that these features on the landscape might somehow explain themselves. In some respects, particularly as regards their grouping into morphological “families,” such as in Figure 2.6, he was correct. But when it came to less obviously visible attributes, by his own admission he largely failed and in his later Ancient History of North Wiltshire he states “I am obliged, though reluctantly, to confess [that] after all our labour, and all our reflection, we are unable to determine to what class of people each barrow was appropriate” (1821a, 109–110). On the first page of the Introduction to volume 1 of Ancient History of South Wiltshire, Hoare pledges that he will “describe to you what we have found; what we have seen; in short I shall tell you the plain unvarnished truth.” In the same Introduction he states that “we speak from facts, not theory.” Various commentators have taken these pledges at face value and see in his reports a foretelling of fieldwork in the modern sense (see, for example, Bahn 1996, 56), while others, including myself, are notably skeptical of situating his endeavors as a tipping point between the antiquarians and archaeological science (see Robinson 2003, 111). He is clearly of the former group and his visual proclivities class him as a romantic, despite his eschewing of “fanciful regions of romance” (1821a, 7). In addition to his pictorial manners, it is diagnostic of his true sympathies that his accounts include a poem written by a friend accompanying him on a barrow hunting excursion. The poem invokes, in alignment with romanticized modes of description, “the spirit of the mighty dead” which purports to speak to the barrow hunters. In probing these “rude memorials of our fathers,” writes Hoare, “[t]he true antiquary will ever respect their remains; and whilst he enters into their views by endeavoring to revive their memory, he will also, as far as possible, consult their wishes, in leaving to their bones their ancient place of sepulcher” (1975 [1812], 19–20). Also, although ostensibly at a loss to ascribe the various barrow types to particular cultural roots, he attributed their construction to a pre-Roman priestly class known as the Druids.5

Picturing the Past 55

Figure 2.6  Barrow types (Hoare 1812).

56  Picturing the Past Indeed, the poem included in Hoare’s account makes specific reference to these imagined denizens: [t]he white-haired Druid Bard sublime,/Mid the stillness of the night, far/ Wak’d the sad and solemn rite,/The rite of Death, and o’er my bones/Were Piled the Monumental stones. (1975 [1812], 231) The credence given to Druidism as an explanation for enigmatic remains on the landscape was shared by many antiquarians and, even though much misinterpretation flowed from this attribution, it is not surprising that Hoare echoed the views of predecessors such as William Stukeley and John Aubrey in channeling belief in Druidism as a cultural force (see Chapter 4). But in certain other respects he revised the views of those predecessors. John Aubrey had declared that the ancient monuments of Britain were “forgotten things” and that retrieving them from oblivion “resembles the art of a conjurer” (1980 [1665–1693]; Burl 1976, 55) but Hoare and Cunnington demonstrated how picturing could ably perform that act of conjuring and render those remains less forgotten. It was a conjuring act that would become applicable to a variety of ancient remains on the landscape other than barrows and tumuli. One example is shown in Figure 2.7, a panoramic view of Roman remains in Caerleon (Wales) which

Figure 2.7  Remains of a Roman building at Caerleon (Archaeological Journal 1850).

Picturing the Past 57 was published in the Archaeological Journal in 1850. It shows the architectural footprint of the site but the scene is also suffused with affect by suggesting that the remains had lain in a state of repose beneath the trees as time passed them by. It is a charmed interpretation that the accompanying commentary, by one J. R. Smith, underscores in claiming that “there is an elegance in the sculpted fragment or the crumbling walls, the ornaments or appliances of everyday life in times long past” (97–99). Roaming Pictorialism The study of antiquity had always accommodated peripatetic leanings on the part of the observer and recognized the virtue of the “wandering eye,” but in the nineteenth century the role of travel to destinations of archaeological interest became much more formalized. The illustrated recounting of these itineraries and encounters could effectively collapse the three-dimensional “there” of travel into the format of the printed page and set encounters with antiquity within a widened geographic orbit that partially reversed the visual focus on local features of archaeological interest. By so doing, such accounts lent a heroic complexion to encounters with the past, blending tropes of exploration with the discovery of ancient remains. This helped shape the identity of archaeology as a charmed but also highly gendered field of study. We can identify earlier and later characteristics of the genre. In the earlier form picturesque manners were dominant. Flattering imagery of sites circulated widely within Europe (see Dubbini 2002, 105; Stoneman 2010, 136–140). Examples include Voyage Pittoresque de la Grèce by Marie-Gabriel-Florent de ChoiseulGouffier (1782; 1809) and Travels in Istria and Dalmatia by Joseph Lavallée (1805). The artist and antiquary Louis-François Cassas provided illustrations for the travel accounts of others and also published Voyage Pittoresque de la Syrie, de la Phoénicie, de la Palaestine, et la Basse Egypte (1799-1800) recounting his own exploits and observations. We should also include among this group Alcide D’Orbigny’s Voyage Pittoresque dans les Deux Amériques (1936 [1836]). Exploits in areas that had long piqued the Western imagination were particularly well received in their home countries, such as Dominique Vivant Denon’s observations in Egypt as a member of the Napoleonic campaign at the end of the eighteenth century. The circulation of his Voyage dans la Basse et la Haute Egypte (1802) was boosted through translation of the original French into German and English. The images had embedded within them, as did many accounts of travel in the Middle East, romantic succumbing to exoticism and cultural othering; what today we refer to as “orientalism” (see Said 1979). Toward the latter half of the nineteenth century, there emerged image-rich long-form narratives of exploration and discovery which, compared with earlier observational tours, involved a greater degree of earnestness and provided for the reader an opportunity for vicarious exploration via the publication of documentary information in a broadly accessible form (see Bermingham 1987, 71; Woodward 2002, 124). The emergence of these later characteristics should not

58  Picturing the Past be taken as a disavowal of antiquarian visual preferences but rather a blending of those preferences with a gaze that was more selective. Neither did this blending happen quickly since picturesque sensibilities were still well solidified at the end of the century. The Egyptologist Flinders Petrie provides a useful indication of this. Over the course of his career Petrie was mostly concerned with compiling an accounting of ancient Egyptian remains and fitting those remains to a chronological schema. In the Preface to his 1893 publication, Ten Years Digging in Egypt, he writes: Although the discoveries which are related in this volume have been already published, yet there is to be considered the large number of readers who feed in the intermediate regions between the arid highlands and mountain ascents of scientific memoirs, and the lush – not to say rank – marsh-meadows of the novel and literature of amusement. Those, then, who wish to grasp the substance of the results, without the precision of the details, are the public for whom this is written; and I trust that, out of consideration for their feelings, hardly a single measurement or rigid statement can be found here from cover to cover. The tropes of illustrated travel accounts could be readily identified and Petrie himself addressed their stylistic distinction.6 In referring to the “marsh meadows of the novel and literature of amusement,” Petrie is clearly discriminating between relatively florid styles documentary presentation and later concerns with “precision of the details.” In his 1893 publication he aligns himself with public taste and its 116 illustrations are allied to pictorial ways of seeing, albeit in the form of thumbnail sketches. In examining examples of nineteenth-century illustrated travel accounts, we can readily notice this blending of observation and visual story-telling. Useful points of reference include the recounting by John Lloyd Stephens of his expeditions to Mexico and Central America with the artist, Frederick Catherwood (Stephens 1841, 1843; see Chapter 5), Ephraim Squier’s Peru: Incidents of Travel and Exploration in the Land of the Incas (1973 [1877] and the documentary record of Austen Layard’s excavations in Mesopotamia in the 1840s (discussed in detail below). Each of these three examples serves to confirm how picturing of the past was shaped by notions of lost cities and civilizations, even though what remained of them on the landscape was never in fact lost to indigenous knowledge. The prospect of their discovery and return to the Western gaze exerted a powerful appeal expressible in visual form and the project of search and discovery was often characterized as the pursuit of higher purpose and the extension of an idea, established in the eighteenth century, that travel could provide an organizational substructure with specific agendas and expectations (Dubbini 2002, 102). In their later phase, the narratives, in combination with images, typically profess allegiance to factual reporting, but the published accounts nonetheless occupy

Picturing the Past 59 a fluid boundary between objectivity and imaginative picturing, as described by Barbara Maria Stafford: The quest of the romantic traveler ultimately leads back into the tangled self. Yet it was the importance of scientific exploration – seen as another form of the experimental method – that foreshadowed and even legitimized the romantic mania for contextual and stylistic innovation. The discoverers’ unimpeded freedom to penetrate outer barriers could be metamorphosed by a sleight of hand into the justification for autonomous fabrications, a kind of imaginative trespassing beyond established norms and boundaries. (1984, 444) Stafford identifies in illustrated accounts of travel a foregrounding of individually expressed romantic sentiments of curiosity and wonder. These elements are undoubtedly there as unfamiliar scenes are refracted through the sensibilities and thought processes of the observer and those who share Stafford’s view regarding the distorting influence of “romantic mania” are likely to see this as a corruption of the documentary mission. But this presupposes that undistorted disclosure on the part of the traveling observer was achievable, which is highly questionable. Found remains of the past or scenes of antiquity on the landscape encountered through purposeful travel became, according to Raimonda Modiano, professor and writer on British romanticism, the “true romantic thing” (1994, 197; see also Hofkosh 2011, 293–297; Maimon 2015, 178). Seen in this light, the impulse to find and reveal was driven by more than the hope of encounter; it was propelled by an acknowledged incompleteness of what was known about antiquity. Venturing out was motivated by the pursuit of the absence and the recovery of presence and in the pictorialism that recorded that venturing it would have been surprising indeed if speculation and fanciful depiction were not embedded in published accounts. Such embedding was a response to broader Western hankerings for narratives where challenges are either overcome or end in heroic failure. The traveling observer is often self-characterized in print as a resourceful and dogged teller of tales, both visual and textual (Whale 1994, 182; 184), but it is also characteristic of the genre that there comes a point where the author defers to the power of pictures to describe the scene as if it were an independent and unimpeachable witness. By proclaiming an image to be true testimony, it becomes the hero of the venture and capable of presenting a coherent, albeit incomplete, historical story. As the nexus among pictorialism, travel and archaeology became solidified, certain publishers, such as the London firm of John Murray, became associated with documentary travelogs. Also, certain mass-market magazines, such as Harpers Monthly in the United States and The Illustrated London News, had, as part of their editorial missions, coverage of significant archaeological events (see Brusius 2012; Weller 2008). Let us now turn to a specific example, cited earlier, where roaming pictorialism displays many of the distinguishing features listed above. The campaigns of Austen Henry Layard (1817–1894) in what is now present-day Iraq spanned a

60  Picturing the Past mere few years between 1845 and 1851 but yielded impressive results, revealing the remains of three Assyrian cities: Nimrud, Nineveh and Khorsabad. Those campaigns yielded a substantial record of publication. His Nineveh and its Remains was published in 1849 (Layard 1849a) and this was followed in 1852 by a “popular” edition, consisting of less than two-thirds of the original text but with considerably more images (see Bohrer 2003, 146; Hudson 1981, 73; Layard 1852). In 1853, Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon and The Monuments of Nineveh were published (Layard 1853a, 1853b) and, in the Preface to the former, Layard notes that the book contains “as many illustrations from the sculptures as my limits would admit.” This amounted to 16 maps and plates and over 200 engravings fitted into 664 pages, all of which helped stimulate mid-nineteenth hankering for knowledge about ancient civilizations (Bahn 1996, 104–105). The latter publication, The Monuments of Nineveh (Layard 1853b), comprise 71 plates and was one of two series of pictured monuments. The first series appeared in 1849 (see Layard 1849b). Layard took with him on his travels a deeply rooted interest in art and antiquarian visual manners. This is evident from the contents of his personal library (see Note 7) and also the importance he attached to “on-the-spot” drawings.7 He also took with him on his travels a contractual understanding that the most important finds would be made available for display in national museums, particularly the British Museum in London. However, the pictorial treatment of his discoveries, widely disseminated in published form, endowed them with a cultural life that was, arguably, of even greater significance than the recognition gained from museum display of original artifact. These published images became emblematic of Layard’s achievements in Mesopotamia. His first excavations were at Nimrud (near present-day Mosul) in 1845 and at the site of Nineveh. It was at this latter site, in and around what became known as the northwest palace complex, that monumental Assyrian sculptures of winged bulls and lions were discovered, an encounter with Assyrian antiquity that presented exceptional visual opportunities. Both volumes of Nineveh and its Remains have frontispieces that feature monumental sculptures of bulls in various stages of removal, in 1847, from the site of their discovery. The frontispiece to volume 1 (Figure 2.8) shows a winged bull being detached and lowered from the walls of the palace complex, while that of volume 2 features a scene captioned “Procession of the Bull beneath the Mound of Nimroud” and shows a winged bull placed on a cart and being pulled by several dozen laborers. In the visual rhetoric of the volume 1 frontispiece (shown in Figure 2.8), the teller fuses with the tale. The strain on the ropes is palpable and suggestive of the risk should they break under the strain as the massive sculpture was slowly lowered onto rollers and inched forward to await shipment.8 It is a highly choreographed scene to which the reader is admitted and it comes complete with an audience within the picture some of whom, as suggested by the presence of the camels, have traveled some distance to witness the event. Standing over the scene and orchestrating the action is the figure of Layard himself. As noted in earlier discussions, the inclusion of human figures in the scene, such as we see here, is a common

Picturing the Past 61

Figure 2.8  Frontispiece (Layard 1849a).

rhetorical flourish in antiquarian picturing. The standard explanation is that they provide a sense of scale, but the more likely explanation is that they help guide the reader into the scene almost as a participant.9 The visual rhetoric of the frontispiece complements the textual commentary. In the written account referring to the lowering of the sculpture, Layard writes: The men being ready, and all my preparations complete, I stationed myself at the top of the high bank of earth over the second bull, and ordered the wedges to be struck out from under the sculpture to be moved. Still, however, it remained firmly in place. A rope having been passed round it, six or seven men easily tilted it over. The thick, ill-made cable stretched with the strain, and almost buried itself in the earth mound round which it was coiled. The ropes held well. The bull descended gradually, the Chaldean propping it up with the beams. It was a moment of great anxiety. The drums and shrill pipes of the Kurdish musicians increased the din and confusion caused by the war-cry of the Arabs, who were half frantic with excitement. (1849a, 81) Illustrations of the sculptures served as visual testimony to Layard’s excavations in Mesopotamia but this testimony was not confined to his own published accounts. A significant additional contributor was The Illustrated London News which, from the time of its first appearance as a weekly magazine in 1842, both reflected and nurtured a public taste for matters archaeological.10 For a number of years, the

62  Picturing the Past magazine ran a feature called “Archaeology of the Month” (Bacon 1976, 11) and it seems, based on the range of topics, that the further the storyline of discovery took readers from the dank streets and polluted air of London, the better. The Illustrated London News of February 28, 1852 features on page 184 an illustration of “the largest monolith which has reached England from the buried city in the East” being laboriously moved up the steps of the British Museum (Figure 2.9). The accompanying caption (original spelling retained) records that amongst the recent arrivals from Nimroud, the most striking and important is a colossal lion, the weight of which is upwards of ten tons. The lion was once a guardian at the side of a door, and it will be located in a similar position in the British Museum, in the hall dedicated to the Nineveh sculptures. The images in The Illustrated London News depicting the arrival of an Assyrian sculpture in London, in combination with Layard’s own image documenting the exit of another such sculpture from Mesopotamia, represent rhetorical bookends stressing in both instances the physical challenge of moving such colossal objects. In both images the conspicuous ropes, harnesses and wooden supports underscore the sense of objects from antiquity being physically captured. In their conveyance from one geographic situation and the other, the artifacts metamorphosed from fixtures in an ancient landscape to exhibits in the institutional space of a museum.

Figure 2.9 Arrival of an Assyrian sculpture at the British Museum (Illustrated London News 1852). Image reproduced by permission.

Picturing the Past 63 The extraction of the sculptures at the direction of Layard and their reception at the British Museum extracted them from antiquity and inserted them into the present, a major physical and cultural intervention. Layard was by no means alone in exploiting the agency of pictorial illustration; he was of his time in this respect. Staying within the geography of Mesopotamia, there is also the documentary work of Paul-Emile Botta and Eugène Flandin to consider. Botta (1802–1870) was the first European to dig in that region, excavating in the same area as Layard but preceding him by a few years. Disappointed by his early results in Nineveh, Botta eventually moved on to Khorsabad where he eventually unearthed sections of a palace complex together with monumental sculptures, bas relief and cuneiform inscriptions (see Waterfield 1963, 123). Selected discoveries were pictured in a set of detailed engravings based on drawings by Flandin and which, with the assistance of the French government, became the multi-volume folio publication Monument de Ninive (Botta and Flandin 1849). Flandin’s mode of on-the-spot observation is comparable to that underpinning Layard’s The Monuments of Nineveh. As with Layard, Flandin sought to capture every visual detail of palace architecture and its various embellishments and this yielded a suite of published prints that range from close-up studies of individual artifacts to panoramic views of features in situ. In leafing through Flandin’s Nineveh, the impression one gets is of a visual fact-gathering project. However, visual reporting from exotic locales inevitably accommodated the subjectivities of the observer and, in the case of Botta, Flandin and Layard, those subjectivities became melded with the exoticism of the antiquities, all of which displayed a style and iconography radically different from those of the classical world with which Western taste was familiar. Although the recounting of incidents en route to sites of antiquity, as well as on-site, retained the power to entrance through the end of the nineteenth century, the increasingly selective modes of observation expressed in travel accounts announced a further phase in which itinerant observation gave way to one of relative immobility and intensifying scrutiny within specific geographic zones of interest. The full implications of this were profound and I will reserve full discussion for Chapters 4 and 5. What remains for now is to describe a form of imaging which this chapter has not addressed thus far: photography. Antiquity through the Lens It has been said that the emergence of certain new technologies has the potential to create the nucleus for new forms of social and cultural practice (Mitchell 1992, 20; see also Schwartz 1996), so should we not say this of photography? Does not the mechanical and optical separation the camera imposes between observer and the observed betoken modernized visuality? Shanks and Svabo claim that photographic technologies constitute “constituting moments of modernity” (2013, 90; see also Thomas 2020, 119) and, according to Sasha Colby, writer on visual modernism, is an example of “modernity’s invasion into an antique oasis” (2006, 3). Although photography has acquired over time status as a herald of

64  Picturing the Past modern imaging, my intention in what follows is to point out how rooted it is in long-established aesthetic conventions and expectations, and how it dovetailed in much of its earlier history with established antiquarian and romantic sensibilities. Artifice is a central element of the aesthetic of archaeological photography, often intended to frame the scene as a nostalgic encounter and construct a sense of the uncanny (Baird 2020, 81). Photography, as deployed in a documentary role for the study of antiquity, affirms not the encroachments of modernized visuality but the continuing power of enchanted and highly subjective ways of seeing. Photographs, along with many other forms of archaeological illustration, tend to present as “visual instants,” removed from the processes by which they were made, placed and appreciated, but when considered multi-durational and enmeshed in temporal complexity any notion that they capture a snapshot in time is disrupted (Thomas 2020, 120–128). Pre-photographic media invented a version of antiquity that was accommodating of Western cultural taste, and photography, in its treatment of antiquity, did nothing to challenge the rules of visual acceptability. Indeed, in the broader project of recording the remains of the past, photography was co-opted into that broader challenge to altered modes of picturing described in the Introduction and formed part of the resistance to relinquishing established ways of seeing. As an invention, photography affirmed the status quo of documentary pictorialism, having a symbiotic relationship with the pictorializing conventions of media such as drawing, painting and printmaking that long preceded its invention. In thinking about photography’s role in picturing antiquity, we should be mindful of the conclusion of Peter Galassi, curator and art historian, that photography “was not a bastard left by science on the doorstep of art, but a legitimate child of the Western pictorial tradition” (1981, 12). It has been said that the painter constructs but the photographer discloses (Sontag 1979, 92; 111) but early photographs were no less a work of artifice than the hand-crafted image and, similarly, were exercises in rhetorical inclusion and selective focus. The kinship between photography and earlier modes of picturing helps explain the eagerness with which it was embraced following its first demonstration in 1839. As cameras became an increasingly desirable aid for observation and image-fixing beginning in the 1840s, they became immensely important in propelling pursuit of the documentary moment and also in visually reporting that moment as photography eventually began displacing engraved illustrations. Through-the-lens picturing demonstrated that image-making was not solely the preserve of the pencil and the engraver’s burin but, at the same time, its practitioners often celebrated its potential as an expressive art medium (see Edwards 2012, 84–85; Jacobi 2016, 11). The privileging of the found object made photography a natural fit with the sensibilities of the enchanted eye and the illusions of magical conjuring and also connected seamlessly to the long history of acquisition and collection that underpinned antiquarianism. In the discussion below I review briefly photography’s emergence but it is the cultural aspects of that emergence that I emphasize; I dwell only briefly on its technicalities as that topic has been ably addressed by many others.11

Picturing the Past 65 The use of cameras in some form can be traced back to a time long before the photo-chemical properties of image-fixing were demonstrated, so it can be said that photography has both a history and a prehistory. An important instrumental component of its prehistory is the camera obscura, the basic architecture of which was box-like, with a perforation that allowed light to enter through an aperture and project an inverted image of the exterior world onto a wall or screen. Although such projections could not be fixed, they could be copied and contemplated.12 In early written descriptions, the capabilities of the camera obscura are treated as forms of natural magic (Crary 1992, 36–37; see also Benjamin 1979 [1931], 243). How much more magical it would be, then, if a projected scene and the action of light could be permanently imprinted. William Henry Fox Talbot who, along with Louis Daguerre and Joseph Niépce, was one of the key figures in the invention of image-fixing, mused about how the glass lens of the camera “throws upon the paper in its focus – fairy pictures, creations of a moment and destined as rapidly to fade away.” He goes on to say “how charming it would be if it were possible to cause these natural images to imprint themselves durably, and remain fixed on the paper” (Fox Talbot 1844-46; see also Roberts 2004, 19).13 The first fixed image was obtained by Niépce in 1826 using a plate coated with bitumen. At approximately the same time, Fox Talbot was experimenting with reproducible prints on paper using a negative/positive technique and Daguerre was pursuing the use of a light-sensitive metal plate, a method he announced and demonstrated in Paris in January 1839. During this early experimental phase, the end-product in terms of fixed image came down either to a paper print called a “calotype” or “talbotype” (after Fox Talbot) or an image on iodized silver plate referred to as a “daguerreotype” (after Daguerre). The daguerreotype quickly gained popularity and became the dominant type, but all the methods had in common a tangible end-product which, through the scene or object disclosed on its face, was capable of exerting an auratic presence (see Sassoon 2004, 190). Almost from the beginning, the photograph proved capable of suggesting fugitive visual presences. The appeal of such mysterious inclusions would have been particularly striking to anyone with romanticist leanings, including Fox Talbot. In The Pencil of Nature, his compendium of early experimental photographs, he notes how “[a] casual gleam of sunshine, or a shadow thrown across his path, a time-withered oak, or a moss-covered stone may awaken a train of thoughts and feelings, and picturesque imaginings” (1844–1846).14 Such observations chime with the view of Walter Benjamin from almost a century later when he notes the “strange weave of space and time that creates aura” (1979 [1931], 250) and the capability of photography to summon what he calls the “optical unconscious” (243; see also Smith 2013); a restoration to sight of the hidden or the indistinct suggesting that people inhabited a world to which, in daily life, they were partially blind. The monochromatic tonality of the images with their shadows and chiaroscuro shadings imparted an elegiac air and this eventually became a sought-after aesthetic quality when, by the end of the century, photography aspired to become an art form and favored amorphous and misty images heavy with atmosphere intended

66  Picturing the Past to transport viewers out of their present times and places by conjuring other realms and evoking ineffable desires (Smith 2013, 45). Early photographs were often treated as precious collectables and this valuation connected to antiquarian tropes of display and released the same archival and curatorial impulses. Beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, compilation in the form of albums or catalogs meant that the evocative power of single images could be given a collective identity and be treated with affection akin to that accorded to souvenirs and keepsakes (see Bann 2011, 9). Many of these early images, as with those of today, were of loved ones and it is perhaps for this reason that we find it disturbing, when rummaging through the bric-a-brac in an antique shop, to sometimes come across old family photographs of people now long forgotten and faces, once loved, now stained and torn. But this rhetoric of loved individuals was also transferable to what Jean Baudrillard calls “the loved object” (1994, 9; 10). The material remains of antiquity can be similarly enfolded by the camera lens as loved objects. The potential of photography to inventory those remains complemented the rise of historical consciousness in the nineteenth century which reiterated the antiquarian compulsion to reproduce the loved object while simultaneously suggesting that antiquity itself comprised loved objects; the more one looked, the more one found. Photography offered a way of getting closer to the remains of the past both aesthetically and intellectually. Indeed, when Daguerre’s discovery was announced by the French astronomer François Arago at a meeting of the Académie de Sciences in Paris in January 1839, one of the suggested benefits of the invention was the accurate visual documentation of sites of antiquity. Also, Fox Talbot is known to have investigated the use of photography for the imaging of ancient script (see Caminos 1966; Fox Talbot 1846). Later in time, and with a very different scene in mind, Eugène Atget would photograph districts of Paris soon to disappear as a result of Baron Haussman’s plans for the building of boulevards. Viewed today, the images are still capable of evoking a sense of melancholy. Remarking on Daguerre’s invention over a century after the first demonstration of image-fixing, Walter Benjamin claimed that photography fueled the urge “to get hold of an object at very close range by way of its likeness, its reproduction” (1969 [1936], 223). It is clear that the capture and enfolding of resemblance, that central tenet of pictorialism, was central to the appeal of photography. As applied to the documentation of antiquity, photography was capable of propagating what archaeologist Michael Shanks calls “the magic of the real” (1997, 80) and this was, perhaps, the stimulus for the first through-the-lens expeditions. A mere few months after the principles of photographic imaging were first demonstrated, an excursion was planned by Pierre-Gustave Joly de Lotboniere and two colleagues at the behest of the Parisian publisher and optician Noël-Marie Paymal Lerebours. The objective was to seek out and record notable sites as daguerreotype images. The results were published in the first volume of Excursions Daguerriennes (1841) which, as an album of scenes ranging from Niagara Falls to the Pyramid of Cheops, clearly revisits those sites and motifs favored by artists, particularly depictions of ancient architecture. None of the illustrations in this

Picturing the Past 67 two-volume project show the original photographs. What is shown instead are engravings derived from those photographs. The technology of the daguerreotype process thus underlies the engravings as if, in its seamless melding with ancestral forms of picturing, the invention of the daguerreotype process was an anticipated development. It has been said that photography as a process intervenes in the nature of time and antiquity in two ways: preserving a precise chronological moment but also serving as a benchmark against which visual change can be assessed (see Berger 2008, 18). This certainly applies to another example of early roaming pictorialism: the photographs produced by Maxime du Camp during a governmentsponsored mission to the Middle East in the early 1850s. A selection of these calotype images (developed on paper) was published in Egypte, Nubie, Palestine et Syrie (1852). This publication, although featuring photographic prints interleaved with text, resembles an album. One of the photographs is shown in Figure 2.10. It appears as Plate 39 with the caption “Palais de Karnak pilliers devant le Sanctuąire de Granit.” This photograph is one of many images of Nile valley monuments produced by others during the mid-nineteenth century, contributing to a valuable record of physical condition.15 Interest in that region was part of a broader seeking out and recording of in situ archaeology and we find in that early photographic archive a restatement of the sort of motifs that had dominated the aesthetic gaze since long before through-the-lens documentation became available (Shanks 1997, 76–80; see also Onne 1980, 8). Ancient cultural remains replete with marks of time held enormous visual appeal, particularly when those marks were presented in their ultimate form: ruination. To the Western eye, monuments such as these came pre-treated with visual allure and exoticism. More significantly, such images indicate that a museological and curatorial eye was being brought to bear in the picturing of ancient objects. We find, for example, photographs from the early 1850s showing colossal sculptures of the kind that so entranced Layard and Botta at Khorsabad (illustrated in Reade 1998, 16). However, there were also political factors in play, influencing where and upon what the lens was brought to bear and the intensity of the visual search for desirable scenes and objects. Many of the “antique lands” had implemented, or were in the process of implementing, laws prohibiting the removal of antiquities by Western travelers. So, if they could no longer help themselves to archaeological artifacts, the next best thing was to take pictures of them (Hamilakis 2013, 42). As I have described it in this chapter, the camera entered the domain of visual culture as a cousin to conventional pictorialism and it occupied this niche throughout the nineteenth century and into the century to follow. Charles Baudelaire, acerbic critic of mid-nineteenth-century aesthetics, was ambivalent about where photography fitted relative to the forces of modernity and the challenges they posed to the aesthetic status quo: Let [photography] save crumbling ruins from oblivion, books, engravings, and manuscripts, the prey of time, all those precious things, vowed to

68  Picturing the Past

Figure 2.10  Karnak Monolith (du Camp 1852). Wikimedia Commons.

Picturing the Past 69 dissolution, which crave a place in the archives of our memories; in all these things, photography will deserve our thanks and applause. But, if once it be allowed to impinge on the sphere of the intangible and the imaginary … then woe betide us! (2010 [1863], 111) It was the direction of public manners and tastes at a particular place and time that Baudelaire found worrisome, but his comments can be fitted with ease to the broader arc of change in how antiquity was to be described and explained. But if we fast-forward from the time of Baudelaire’s original commentary (dating to 1859), we can judge his fears about photographic visuality to be unfounded as through-the-lens imaging served to stimulate rather than stifle imagination. Early photography is best considered an outcome of romanticized antiquarian picturing and the extent to which through-the-lens imaging foretold later automated technologies is questionable. It foretold only itself and, as argued in Chapters 4 and 5, we can detect in the visual products of automated technologies strands of pictorial sense-making. Theorizing Pictorialism I have purposely deferred until now a review of pictorialism’s theoretical aspects, preferring instead to focus on specific images, but it is now time to situate the visual manners of picturing within the broader skein of ideas about Western ways of seeing and visual telling. As I stated in the opening pages of this book, documentary picturing is intended both to show and explain and the images shown thus far are selections from a vast archive that gave visual shape to the idea of a distant past. Not so very long ago, a “pictorial turn” was announced and, across the presumed divide between the sayable and the seeable, a decisive tilt was identified toward the latter (see Mitchell 1994, 11–12), but it is apparent from the evidence that, in terms of depicting antiquity, there was never a “turn” in any real sense, but rather a constancy of purpose extending back several centuries. William Blake, artist and visionary, long ago remarked, “as the eye, so the object” (1966 [1808], 456), implying that all attempts at visual resemblance lead in two directions: outward to what is being recorded and inward to the observer such that every attempt at picturing is self-referential to some degree. All pictures are authored documents and this fact, as Stephen Bann convincingly argues, changes the status of the past from that of history with a definable “pastness,” to a discourse shaped by the present (1995, 80). This renders problematic any “window-on-the world” concept of picturing with its presumption of a surveying gaze capable of compiling an inclusive and factual overview, for sensibilities intrude no matter how diligent the process of copying. We must accept, then, the any idea that framing a scene renders it inclusive. The frame, regardless of what form of visual trace it encloses, marks a provisional boundary or limit because the world beyond cannot be encompassed. The frame only suggests coherence (Sterling 2019, 16–21).

70  Picturing the Past Elements of subjectivity notwithstanding, encounters with antiquity have to be recorded plausibly, and the path to plausibility requires a certain correspondence to material reality and, as a constructed artifact, the acceptability of an image hinges on adherence to certain expectations. The philosopher Nelson Goodman, in his discussions of the “language of art,” concludes that persuasive picturing requires “observance of custom and tends to correlate loosely with ordinary judgments of resemblance, which likewise rest upon habit … a statement is true, and a description or representation right, for the world it fits” (1978, 130–132; see also Van Fraassen 2008, 16–17). While some expectations regarding visual order undergo change, others have become so naturalized over time that we have come to follow them seemingly by instinct. Although we tend not to notice them and rarely inquire as to their origins, they have historical specificity; they began somewhere. Consider, for example, Leon Battista Alberti (1404–1472) who, in his della Pittura (1436), describes the rules of perspective that enable a scene viewed in three dimensions to be depicted on a two-dimensional surface (see Williams, March and Wassell 2010). This representation of ordered space replicated human sight but transcribed what was seen into pictorial flatness. It was a seemingly magical illusion. We can point to countless examples where picturing explicitly follows such geometric ordering of space, including one already discussed in Chapter 1: the frontispiece to Olao Worm’s museum catalog (Figure 1.1). Bruno Latour, social theorist and historian of science, places great significance on the issue of how visual rationalization and “optical consistency” exerted cultural leverage. He argues that the development of a Western ocularcentric culture enabled observers to venture outward to gather whatever objects were deemed remarkable and to preserve them in image form (1990, 19; 26–27). Potentially, such images, as carefully constructed copies, could supplant and make redundant the original object from which the visual record derived. Clearly, the examples of documentary travel described earlier in this chapter, and many other forms of antiquarian illustration, embed the idea that picturing is a preservative, both in the form of original artwork and as printed publication. There is a supplementary layer to the issue of picturing, for it is not just a question of what is depicted but how it is depicted and which visual tropes are included. In the Introduction I listed visual rhetoric as particularly important: the argument undertaken through deliberate inclusions and exclusions. The whole point of argument is, of course, to elicit certain recognitions, understandings and interpretations and, just as with speech and text, this involves references that are sometimes explicit and at other times merely suggestive. As we have seen, there are images, commonly found in illustrated accounts of travel which frame the act of archaeological discovery as a physical feat or virtuous act. To project onto an image a distinctive complexion or mood requires accepting the invitation that the image is offering. As discussed earlier in this chapter, the picturing of single objects can create the sense that an artifact has been placed directly before viewers’ eyes as a portrait, inviting contemplation. Documentary picturing is not dictatorial; it solicits agreement and acceptance but cannot guarantee that agreement and acceptance.

Picturing the Past 71 Pictorial Continuities

During my walk back on that rainy day by the river that I described on the first page of this chapter, I thought again about the motivations of William Gilpin during his picturesque tours. One senses that, for him, there was no such thing as ways of seeing that went beyond the pictorial; it was enchanted vision ever-lasting. Certainly there were devices available that could help frame and accentuate a charming view but, to his mind, they emphasized the primacy of the eye rather than substituting for it in any way. The compulsion for ever closer inspection of remains from the past began with antiquarian modes of observation and reporting, but the word “record,” with its connotation of objective reporting, was uncommon as an archaeological reference until well into the twentieth century when it eventually displaced more colorfully descriptive terms such as “relics” and “vestiges” (Lucas 2005, 19–20). That this shift in terminology came so late is diagnostic of how visual sensibilities from an early time can be carried forward, but it pales in significance when compared with the carrying forward of actual pictorial tropes. Taken together, the most striking aspect of those tropes is the archaeological story-telling that they perform and the relative flexibility in how the story can be interpreted. In the didacticism of linear codes often found in present-day archaeological documentation (explored in the next chapter), pictorialism remains a structural element, but the story-telling involved is more insistent on uniform interpretation. Interpretive flexibility can render pictures unstable by channeling but not completely determining the sense of an illustration. In fact, pictures can be doubly unstable because they represent acts of resemblance to the observable world, not mimesis. This instability, and the associated plurality of pictorial meanings, runs counter to modernist notions of veracity and precision, as do the acts of observation upon which pictorialism relies: lineof-sight encounter. For many lines of scholarly inquiry, interpretive instability is unacceptable and must be expunged, but not so when it comes to the study of antiquity. There, as the explored in the chapters ahead, instability remains a valuable attribute. Notes 1 The term “picturesque” is an anglicization of the French “pittoresque” or Italian “pittoresco,” referring to scenes fit for painting or worthy of being treated as a picture. The picturesque turn is generally thought to have arisen in Britain and its cultural force has been attributed to the rapid pace of landscape change and the reaction to visual transformation of the British countryside. As an aesthetic response, it stands in contrast to the rigid formalism that had come to dominate country estates (see Bermingham 1987, 68; 84). Two theorists of the picturesque, Uvedale Price (1749–1829) and Richard Payne Knight (1750–1824), both landowners, urged the incorporation of rugged and irregular features into landscaped estates and this lends some credence to the observation by Arthur Lovejoy that the first challenge to neoclassical taste came not from literature, painting or the shifting agendas of science, but from gardening (Lovejoy 1955, 240–241).

72  Picturing the Past 2 The phrase “and I alone am escaped to tell thee” appears in the Epilogue of Moby Dick and derives from a biblical reference in the Book of Job. The allusion is to the status of Ishmael as the sole narrator of the story of the whale. 3 Ivins (1975) singles out the fields of archaeology, medical diagnosis and crime detection as exemplars of this capability. 4 In addition to surviving original copies of Ancient History of South Wiltshire, a facsimile edition was published in 1975 (see Hoare 1975 [1812]). The Ancient History of South Wiltshire. London: EP Publishing. 5 Reliable historical references to Druidism are hard to find and actual evidence of its practices is virtually non-existent. An early, though very brief, reference is to be found in Julius Caesar’s Commentaries on the Gallic War (see Cunliffe 2005; Green 1997, 8; Hawkes and Hawkes 1958, 3; Hutton 2009, 2). In Book VI of the Commentaries (1882 translation) Caesar reports that “throughout Gaul there are but two orders of men who are of any account … one is that of the Druids, the other that of the Knights. The former takes part in sacred matters, attends to public and private sacrifices, and expound the principles of religion.” Caesar speculates that the Druids, in contrast to the Knights, “are wont to absent themselves from war” (141–142). Thus, the Druids are commonly characterized as both peaceable and above the mundane order of everyday life. 6 Petrie states in the Preface to Ten Years Digging in Egypt that “several of the finest objects found appear here … for the first time in illustration; for having been kept in Egypt I only had photographs to work from, which were, as yet, unused.” The front matter in the publication makes no specific mention of the artist, but it is not unreasonable to conclude that it was Petrie himself. 7 By way of evidence of Layard’s aesthetic leanings, we can point to the inventory of his library taken after his death (Catalogue of the Library of Sir Henry Layard G. C. R. at 3 Savile Row, London). It listed numerous illustrated travelogs and pictorial works, including copies of Heath’s Picturesque Annual (1832, 1833 and 1834). Layard himself was a competent artist and he notes in his folio publication, The Monuments of Nineveh (1849b, 1853b), that each of the highly detailed plates was engraved “from drawings made on the spot.” Although the title page suggests that Layard himself was the person “on the spot,” but others, including George Schaaf and Edward Prentis, contributed artwork. The Monuments of Nineveh is an example of a publication that featured both lithographic and engraved images. The title page is notable for its saturated color (a feature of lithography) and provides a suitably exotic portal to the scenes within. The task of publication involved numerous engravers and lithographers. 8 Obviously, considerable time had elapsed between the events shown in the engraving and the arrival of the sculpture in London in 1852. Bahn (1996) dates the beginning of its journey to 1847. Layard himself, however, states that they initially had to be left “where discovered until a favorable opportunity of moving them might occur” (Layard 1849a, 74). The difficulty was the weight of the sculptures. Although they could have been cut into sections and then reassembled, Layard was resistant to the idea. 9 In antiquarian picturing, such figures can also function as ushers or guides by directing the reader inward toward a site of antiquity. Such figures also serve as intermediaries between present and past. 10 Over the period 1842–1921, there appeared in Illustrated London News 975 archaeologyrelated stories or reports, most of which were accompanied by pictures. At the time when Layard’s excavations were being reported, the circulation of the magazine was in excess of 150,000 per week. 11 Barger and White (1991) provide a thorough review of the development of early photography. A further account blending technical aspects with historical context is provided by Watson and Rappaport (2013). For photography’s role in archaeology, publications by Bohrer are essential reading. See, for example, Bohrer (2011).

Picturing the Past 73 12 Kepler, in the early seventeenth century, considered the workings of the camera obscura analogous to how the human eye gathers visual information (Dupré 2008). William Gilpin mentions the camera obscura but finds the unedited reality it projects a little too raw for his liking: [t]he imagination becomes a camera obscura, only with this difference, that the camera represents objects as they really are: while the imagination, impressed with the most beautiful scenes, and the best taste. (1794, 52) 13 Fox Talbot’s reference to “fairy pictures” is of a piece with his mentioning, in a notebook of 1839 (March 3 to April 5), “magic pictures, stamped with nitrate silver on salt paper ….” (see Schaaf 1996). 14 The Pencil of Nature (1844) was the first commercially produced book illustrated with photographs. It was intended, together with a companion project, Sun Pictures in Scotland (1845), to demonstrate that the action of light could autonomously create an image and that nature itself, therefore, was the key creative element. Nature did not, however, choose its own motifs and Fox Talbot was alert to how certain rhetorical signifiers conveyed mood. He strongly favored old buildings and objects that had an air of permanence and established usefulness about them and which projected an elegiac air (see Olsen et al. 2012, 30). 15 Photographs by Robert Murray taken between 1852 and 1855 are particularly notable (see Osman 1997 12; 144).

References Andrews, Malcolm. 1994. “The Metropolitan Picturesque.” In The Politics of the Picturesque. Literature, Landscape and Aesthetics since 1770, edited by Stephen Copley and Peter Garside, 282–298. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Andrews, Malcolm. 1999. Landscape and Western Art. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Aubrey, John. 1980 [1665-1693]. Monumenta Britannica or a Miscellany of British Antiquities, two parts, edited by John Fowles. Sherborne: Dorset Publishing. Bacon, Edward, ed. 1976. The Great Archaeologists. London: Secker and Warburg. Bahn, Paul G. 1996. Cambridge Illustrated History of Archaeology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Baird, Jennifer A. 2020. “Exposing Archaeology: Time in Archaeological Photographs.” In Archaeology and Photography. Time, Objectivity and Archive, edited by Lesley McFadyen and Dan Hicks, 73–96. London: Bloomsbury Visual Arts. Bann, Stephen. 1995. Romanticism and the Rise of History. New York: Twayne. Bann, Stephen. 2011. “The Photographic Album as Cultural Accumulator.” In Art and the Early Photographic Album, edited by Stephen Bann, 7–29. Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art. Barger, Susan M. and William B. White. 1991. The Daguerreotype. Nineteenth-Century Technology and Modern Science. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University. Baudelaire, Charles. 2010 (1863). The Painter of Modern Life, translated by P. E. Chavet. London: Penguin. Baudrillard, Jean. 1994. “The System of Collecting.” In The Cultures of Collecting, translated and edited by John Elsner and Roger Cardinal, 7–24. London: Reaktion Books. Benjamin, Walter. 1969 (1936). “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” In Illuminations, translated by Harry Zohn and edited by Hannah Arendt, 219–253. London: Jonathan Cape.

74  Picturing the Past Benjamin, Walter. 1979 (1931). “A Small History of Photography.” In One Way Street, translated by Edmund Jephcott and Kingsley Shorter, 240–257. London: New Left Books. Berger, John. 2008 (1972). Ways of Seeing. London: Penguin Books. Bermingham, Ann. 1987. Landscape and Ideology. The English Rustic Tradition. London: Thames and Hudson. Blake, William. 1966 (c 1808). “Annotations to Reynolds.” In Complete Writings of William Blake, edited by Geoffrey Keynes. London: Oxford University Press. Bohrer, Frederick N. 2003. Orientalism and Visual Culture. Imaging Mesopotamia in Nineteenth-Century Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bohrer, Frederick N. 2011. Photography and Archaeology. London: Reaktion Books. Botta, Paul Emile and Eugène Flandin. 1849. Monument de Ninive. 5 vols. Paris: Imprimerie Nationale. Bourgeois, Quentin. 2013. Monuments on the Horizon. Leiden: Sidestone Press. Brusius, Mirjam. 2012. “Misfit Objects: Layard’s Excavations in Ancient Mesopotamia and the Biblical Imagination in Mid-nineteenth Century Britain.” Journal of Literature and Science 5:1, 38–52. Burl, Aubrey. 1976. The Stone Circles of the British Isles. New Haven: Yale University Press. Burström, Mats. 2013. “Fragments as Something More. Archaeological Experience and Reflection.” In Reclaiming Archaeology. Beyond the Tropes of Modernity, edited by Alfredo González-Ruibal, 311–322. London: Routledge. Caesar, Julius. 1882. Commentaries on the Gallic War, translated by Joseph B. Owgan. London: James Cornish and Sons. Caminos, Ricardo A. 1966. “The Talbotype Applied to Hieroglyphics.” Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 52, 65–70. Cassas, Louis-Francois. 1799-1800. Voyage Pittoresque de la Syrie, de la Phoénicie, de la Palaestine, et la Basse Egypte. 3 vols. Paris: Imprimé de la Republique. Catalogue of the Library formed by Sir Henry Layard at 3 Savile Row, London. 1904. Typescript MS; anonymous author. Colby, Sasha. 2006. “The Literary Archaeologies of Théophile Gautier.” In CLWeb: Comparative Literatures and Culture 8:2, 1–12. Crary, Jonathan. 1992. Techniques of the Observer. On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century. Cambridge: MIT Press. Cunliffe, Barry. 2005. Iron Age Communities in Britain. An Account of England, Scotland and Wales from the Seventh Century until the Roman Conquest. 4th edition. London: Routledge. D’Orbigny, Alcide. 1936 (1836). Voyage Pittoresque dans les Deux Amériques. Paris: Tenré, Dupuy. de Choiseul-Gouffier, Marie-Gabriel-Florent. 1832. Voyage Pittoresque de la Grèce. Paris: Tilliard. de Lotbonière, Pierre-Gustave Joly. 1841. “Le Parthénon ou Temple de Minerve.” In Excursions Daguerriennes. Vues et Monuments les plus Remarquables du Globe. 2 vols. Paris: Rittner and Goupil, Lerebours, Bossange. de Man, Paul. 1984. The Rhetoric of Romanticism. New York: Columbia University Press. Deck, L. 1851. “Notice of Remains of the Anglo-Saxon Period Discovered at Little Wilbraham, Cambridgeshire.” Archaeological Journal 8:1, 172–178. du Camp, Maxime. 1852. Egypte, Nubie, Palestine et Syrie: Dessins Photographiques Recueillis de 1849 à 1851. Paris: Gide et J. Baudry. Dubbini, Renzo. 2002. Geography of the Gaze. Urban and Rural Vision in Early Modern Europe, translated by Lydia G. Cochrane. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Picturing the Past 75 Dupré, Sven. 2008. “Inside the Camera Obscura: Kepler’s Experiment and Theory of Optical Imagery.” Early Science and Medicine 13:3, 219–244. Edwards, Elizabeth. 2012. The Camera as Historian. Amateur Photographers and the Historical Imagination, 1885-1918. Durham: Duke University Press. Evans, Christopher, Marcus Brittain, Jonathan Tabor and Dave Webb. 2015. “Barrow Aesthetics and Fenland Monuments.” antiquity.ac.uk//projgall/evans/347. Last accessed May, 2021. Flaxman, R. C. 1987. Victorian Word Painting and Narrative: Toward a Blending of Genres. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Research Press. Fox Talbot, William Henry. 1844-46. The Pencil of Nature. London: Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans. Fox Talbot, William Henry. 1846. The Talbotype applied to Hieroglyphics. Tablet at Ibrim, translated by S. Birch. Manuscript. Galassi, Peter. 1981. Before Photography. Painting and the Invention of Photography. New York: Museum of Modern Art. Gilpin, William. 1782. “Observations of the River Wye and Several Parts of South Wales, etc.” In Relative Chiefly to Picturesque Beauty; Made in the Summer of the year 1770. London: Blamire. Gilpin, William. 1789. “Observations of the River Wye and Several Parts of South Wales, etc.” In Relative Chiefly to Picturesque Beauty; Made in the Summer of the year 1770. 2nd edition. London: Blamire. Gilpin, William. 1792. “Observations of the River Wye and Several Parts of South Wales, etc.” In Relative Chiefly to Picturesque Beauty; Made in the Summer of the year 1770. 3rd edition. London: Blamire. Gilpin, William. 1794. “Essay 2. On Picturesque Travel.” In Three Essays on Picturesque Beauty; on Picturesque Travel; and on Sketching Landscape: to Which Is Added a Poem on Landscape Painting. 2nd edition, 41–58. London: Blamire. Gilpin, William. 1973 (1798). Observations on the Highlands of Scotland. Richmond: Richmond Publishing. Goodman, Nelson. 1978. Ways of Worldmaking. Hassocks: Harvester Press. Green, Miranda J. 1997. Exploring the World of the Druids. London: Thames and Hudson. Hamann, Byron Ellsworth. 2012. “Drawing Glyphs Together.” In Past Presented. Archaeological Illustration and the Ancient Americas, edited by Joanne Pillsbury, 231–281. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks. Hamilakis, Yannis. 2013. Archaeology and the Senses. Human Experience, Memory, and Affect. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hawkes, Jacquetta and Christopher Hawkes. 1958. Prehistoric Britain. Harmondsworth: Pelican. Hoare, Richard Colt 1812. The Ancient History of South Wiltshire. London: William Miller. Hoare, Richard Colt. 1814. A Tour through the Island of Elba. London: John Murray. Hoare, Richard Colt. 1821a. The Ancient History of North Wiltshire. London: Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Maver and Jones. Hoare, Richard Colt. 1821b. “An Account of a Stone Barrow, in the Parish of Wellow, at Stoney Littleton in the County of Somerset, which was Opened and Investigated in the Month of May 1816.” Archaeologia 19, 43–48. Hoare, Richard Colt. 1975 (1812). The Ancient History of South Wiltshire. London: EP Publishing (facsimile of 1812 publication). Hofkosh, Sonia. 2011. “Early Photography’s Late Romanticism.” European Romantic Review 22:3, 293–304. Hudson, Kenneth. 1981. A Social History of Archaeology. The British Experience. London: Macmillan.

76  Picturing the Past Hutton, Ronald. 2009. Blood and Mistletoe. The History of the Druids in Britain. New Haven: Yale University Press. Ivins, William M. 1975. On the Rationalization of Sight. With an Examination of Three Renaissance Texts on Perspective. New York: Da Capo Press. Jacobi, Carol. 2016. “Painting with Light.” In Painting with Light. Art and Photography from the Pre-Raphaelites to the Modern Age, 11–22. London: Tate Publishing. Latour, Bruno. 1986. “Visualization and Cognition: Thinking with Eyes and Hands.” Knowledge and Societies. Studies in the Sociology of the Past and Present 6, 1–40. Latour, Bruno. 1990. “Drawing things Together.” In Representation in Scientific Practice, edited by Michael Lynch and Steve Woolgar. Cambridge: MIT Press, 9–69. Lavallée, Joseph. 1799. Pittoresque de la Syrie, de la Phenicie, de la Palestine, et de la Basse Egypte. Paris: Pierre Didot. Lavallée, Joseph. 1805. Travels in Istria and Dalmatia. London: Richard Philips. Lavallee, Joseph. 1805. Travels in Istria and Dalmatua. London: Richard Philips. Layard, Austen Henry. 1849a. Nineveh and Its Remains: With an Account of a Visit to the Chaldean Christians of Kurdistan, and the Yezidis, or Devil Worshippers; and an Inquiry into the Manners and Arts of the Ancient Assyrians. 2 vols. London: John Murray. Layard, Austen Henry. 1849b. The Monuments of Nineveh. 1st series. 100 plates from drawings made on the spot. London: John Murray. Layard, Austen Henry. 1852. A Popular Account of Discoveries at Nineveh. Abridged Version of Nineveh and Its Remains (1849). London: John Murray. Layard, Austen Henry. 1853a. Discoveries among the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon; with Travels in Armenia, Kurdistan, and the Desert: Being the Result of a Second Expedition Undertaken for the Trustees of the British Museum. London: John Murray. Layard, Austen Henry. 1853b. The Monuments of Nineveh. 2nd series. 71 plates from drawings made on the spot. London: John Murray. Liu, Alan. 1989. Wordsworth. The Sense of History. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Lolla, Maria Grazia. 2003. “Monuments and Texts: Antiquarianism and the Beauty of Antiquity.” In Tracing Architecture. The Aesthetics of Antiquarianism, edited by Dana Arnold and Stephen Bending, 11–29. Oxford: Blackwell. Lovejoy, Arthur O. 1955. Essays in the History of Ideas. New York: George Braziller. Lucas, Gavin. 2005. The Archaeology of Time. London: Routledge. Macarthur, John. 2007. The Picturesque. Architecture, Disgust and other Irregularities. London: Routledge. Maillet, Arnaud. 2004. The Claude Glass. Use and Meaning of the Black Mirror in Western Art. New York: Zone Books. Maimon, Vered. 2015. Singular Images, Failed Copies. William Henry Fox Talbot and the Early Photograph. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Mallalieu, Hugh. 2005. “Varley the Optician.” In Cornelius Varley. The Art of Observation, edited by Lowell Libson, 25–32. London: Lowell Libson. Melville, Herman. 1851. Moby Dick, or The Whale. New York: Harper Brothers. Mirzoeff, Nicholas. 1999. An Introduction to Visual Culture. New York: Routledge. Mitchell, William J. T. 1992. The Reconfigured Eye. Visual Truth in the Post-photographic Era. Cambridge: MIT Press. Mitchell, William J. T. 1994. Picture Theory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Mitchell, William J. T. 2005. What Do Pictures Want? The Lives and Loves of Images. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Modiano, Raimonda. 1994. “The Legacy of the Picturesque Landscape: Landscape, Property, and the Ruin.” In The Politics of the Picturesque. Literature, Landscape and

Picturing the Past 77 Aesthetics since 1770, edited by Stephen Copley and Peter Garside, 196–219. New York: Cambridge University Press. Olsen, Bjørnar, Michael Shanks, Timothy Webmoor and Christopher Witmore. 2012. Archaeology. The Discipline of Things. Los Angeles: University of California Press. Onne, Eyal. 1980. Photographic Heritage of the Holy Land. Manchester: Manchester Polytechnic Institute of Advanced Studies. Osman, Colin. 1997. Egypt: Caught in Time. Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press. Pavord, Anna. 2016. Landskipping. Painters, Ploughmen and Places. London: Bloomsbury. Petrie, W. M. Flinders. 1893. “Preface.” In Ten Years’ Digging in Egypt 1881-1891. 2nd edition. London: Religious Tract Society. Piggott, Stuart. 1937. “Prehistory and the Romantic Movement.” Antiquity 11, 31–38. Price, Uvedale. 1842. On the Picturesque, with an Essay on the Origin of Taste. Edinburgh: Caldwell, Lloyd. Reade, Julian. 1998. Assyrian Sculpture. London: British Museum. Roberts, Russell. 2004. “Image and Artefacts: William Henry Fox Talbot and the Museum.” In Presenting Pictures, edited by Bernard Finn, 4–20. London: Science Museum. Robinson, David. 2003. “A Feast of Reason and a Flow of Soul: The Archaeological Antiquarianism of Sir Richard Colt Hoare.” Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Magazine 96, 111–128. Said, Edward. 1979. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books. Sassoon, Joanna. 2004. “Photographic Materiality in the Age of Digital Reproduction.” In Photographs Objects Histories. On the Materiality of Images, edited by Elizabeth Edwards and Janice Hart, 186–202. London: Routledge. Schaaf, Larry J., ed. 1996. Records of the Dawn of Photography. Talbot’s Notebooks P and Q. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schwartz, Joan. 1996. “The Geography Lesson: Photographs and the Construction of Imaginative Geographies.” Journal of Historical Geography 22:1, 16–45. Shanks, Michael. 1997. “Photography and Archaeology.” In The Cultural Life of Images. Visual Representation in Archaeology, edited by Brian Leigh Molyneaux, 73–107. New York: Routledge. Shanks, Michael. 2012. The Archaeological Imagination. Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press. Shanks, Michael and Connie Svabo. 2013. “Archaeology and Photography: A Pragmatology.” In Reclaiming Archaeology. Beyond the Tropes of Modernity, edited by Alfredo González-Ruibal, 89–102. London: Routledge. Shapin, Stephen. 1984. “Pump and Circumstance: Robert Boyle’s Literary Technology.” Social Studies of Science 14, 481–521. Simmel, Georg. 1959 (1919). “The Ruin.” In Georg Simmel, 1858-1918. A Collection of Essays, translated by David Kettler and edited by Kurt H. Wolf, 259–266. Columbus: Ohio State University. Smiles, Sam. 1999. “British Antquity and Antiquarian Illustration.” In Producing the Past. Aspects of Antiquarian Culture and Practice 1700-1850, edited by Martin Myrone and Lucy Peltz, 55–66. Aldershot: Ashgate. Smith, R. J. 1850. “Roman Remains found at Caerleon.” Archaeological Journal 7, 97–99. Smith, Shawn Michelle. 2013. At the Edge of Sight. Photography and the Unseen. Durham: Duke University Press. Sontag, Susan. 1979. On Photography. New York: Penguin Books. Squier, Ephraim G. 1973 (1877). Peru: Incidents of Travel and Exploration in the Land of the Incas. New York: AMS Press.

78  Picturing the Past Stafford, Barbara Maria. 1984. Voyage into Substance. Art, Science, Nature, and the Illustrated Travel Account, 1760-1840. Cambridge: MIT Press. Stephens, John Lloyd. (1841, 1843). Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas and Yucatan. 2 vols. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Sterling, Colin. 2019. Heritage, Photography and the Affective Past. Abingdon: Routledge. Stoneman, Richard. 2010. Land of Lost Gods. The Search for Classical Greece. London: Tauris Parke. Swogger, John-Gordon. 2000. “Image and Interpretation: The Tyranny of Representation?” In Towards a Reflexive Method in Archaeology: the Example at Çatalhöyük, edited by Ian Hodder, 143–152. Cambridge: McDonald Institute. Thomas, Antonia. 2020. “Duration and Representation in Archaeology and Photography. 117-137. In Archaeology and Photography. Time, Objectivity and Archive, edited by McFadyen, Lesley and Dan Hicks. London: Bloomsbury Visual Arts. Thomas, Julian. 2004. Archaeology and Modernity. London: Routledge. Trigger, Bruce G. 2008. A History of Archaeological Thought. 2nd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. van Fraassen, Bas C. 2008. Scientific Representation: Paradoxes of Perspective. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Varley, Cornelius. 1845. A Treatise on Drawing Instruments. London: Horne, Thornthwaite, and Wood. Vivant Denon, Dominique. 1998 (1802). Voyage dans la Basse et la Haute Egypte pendant les Campagnes du général Bonaparte, edited by Hélène Guichard and Adrien Goetz. Paris: Promeneur. Waterfield, Gordon. 1963. Layard of Nineveh. London: John Murray. Watson, Roger and Helen Rappaport. 2013. Capturing the Light. London: Macmillan. Weller, Toni. 2008. “Preserving Knowledge through Popular Victorian Periodicals: An Examination of the Penny Magazine and the Illustrated London News, 1842-1843.” Library History 24.3, 200–207. Whale, John. 1994. “Romantics, Explorers and Picturesque Travellers.” In The Politics of the Picturesque. Literature, Landscape and Aesthetics since 1770, edited by Stephen Copley and Peter Garside, 175–195. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Williams, K., L. March and S. R. Wassell. 2010. Leon Battista Alberti. Elementi de Pittura. Basel: Springer. Woodward, Christopher. 2002. In Ruins. London: Vintage.

3

Visualizing Time

The more one looks for objects shaped by time, the more one finds. Depending on geographic location, they are sometimes ancient but more often are forgotten and abject remains from a more recent period. Regardless of age and provenance, they are the closest we can get in material form to time as memory. Some geographic locales are particularly rich in what can properly be called ancient remains and one such locale is not very far from where I now sit in Norfolk (eastern England). If one were to construct a league table of English landscapes to determine which is the most productive in terms of found archaeological objects, the flatlands of the area known as East Anglia would probably rank highest. The marshland soils hereabout have been described as “black with richness” (Wallace 1943, 6) but they have also proved to be an excellent preserver of the past. Industry and agriculture regularly bring traces of that past to light, while metal detectors continue to locate small finds discarded or lost long ago.1 Here, in 2015–2016, gravel dredgers exposed the remains of a Bronze Age settlement (2500–700 BCE) preserved in the deoxygenated mud. These remains included the charred and collapsed timbers of a roundhouse destroyed by fire some 3,000 years ago, and objects reflecting the routines of daily lives, including household goods, log boats, fish traps, swords and daggers. Preserved footprints of people and animals were also discovered and, judging by the way various remains appear to have been abruptly discarded suggests panic as fire spread through the settlement. Even though this was far from being the first discovery of archaeological remains in this region, the find was greeted with great excitement.2 Unsurprisingly, the cliché that informed much of the popular commentary was antiquity as time capsule, and comparisons were inevitably drawn to the remains of Pompeii (see, for example, Knapton 2016). As we might expect given the differences in audience and reportorial protocol, there was a clear contrast between the press accounts in which the find represented a compelling storyline of inadvertent discovery, and the documentation found in specialist reports where the rhetoric centered on issues of stratigraphy, paleohydrology, context and conservation.3 Time, a concept central to archaeological inquiry, would seem to be readily rendered into visual form, but the rendering of time in its fullest sense is a problematic task. We can see the effects of time in the way material objects and surfaces have been abraded and fragmented and we are habituated into considering DOI: 10.4324/9781032646893-4

80  Visualizing Time such marks of time’s passage as surrogates for time itself. But the element of time itself is invisible. We are aware of time’s progression and all time-centered fields of investigation have become accomplished at demarcating duration and fitting it to chronological frameworks. Archaeology, and the study of antiquity in general, has led the way in this temporal structuring, including on occasion the ability to assess the date of origin of artifacts based on stylistic features. In some instances, including a celebrated nineteenth-century case discussed later in this chapter, assessment based on the visual evidence of objects can expand the known timeline of human activity. As was made clear in the preceding chapter, the role of resemblance in the formation of a picture is clear: appearance which conforms to human perceptions of three-dimensional reality. But there is an additional form of resemblance where processes of inscription yield images that mimic processes invisible to the eye, tracing time as it elapses independent of human perceptions and expectations. The investigations ahead will, then, deal with the visualization of time in both these modes: time in the form of a visible object and, secondly, time as a process detectable in instrumental traces but invisible to the eye. The emphasis is on the latter and probes the role played by pictorialism when applied to instrumentally inscribed traces which seek to reveal time itself rather than its outcomes. To make sense of those traces, they are induced to fit a spatial schema incorporating specific forms of visual rhetoric, as all images are, but a key question is whether such traces can accommodate aesthetic references, or whether they are altogether hostile to antiquity as muse. There is little doubt that marks of time visible to the eye can be transcribed into a conventional image format, but can the same be said of the invisible processes of time itself? In the chapter ahead, discussion of these abstract linear constructions and the processes they represent is anchored in the story of radiometric (carbon-14) dating and its successor technologies, emphasizing the cultural context out of which those inventions have arisen. Investigations begin with a review of various concepts of time, emphasizing how culture-bound those concepts are. I will make the case that pictorial time needs to be considered alongside other accepted signifiers, bearing in mind that our own eyes and perceptions are also artifacts of time, shaping what we choose to notice and the sense we make of it. I will then move on to describing the visualization of time in the form most often presented to us: time as object where we find visually rich content in conventional pictorial form often supported by photographic records. The images presented in that section have been deliberately chosen to contrast with the investigation to follow: time as process where we encounter visual richness in its unconventional form as inscribed by instrumental and laboratory-based procedures. Concepts of Time One way of guarding against any mischief the passage of time might cause is to impose orderly demarcations of chronology that allow precise statements to be made about duration and periodicity. If time is configured as measurable and

Visualizing Time 81 subdividable, it can function rather as a container or frame within which human actions and events can be positioned in terms of before-and-after relationships, while time itself remains unaffected by those actions and events (Adam 1990, 30; Gardner 2001, 36–37; Witmore 2013, 131–132; 2006, 278–279). Within Western culture, the turning hands of the clock reflect a striving for synchronicity that can be traced back to the later Middle Ages in Europe, a striving that later became exemplified in time-keeping devices produced between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries and the perceived need to align and coordinate activities across differing locations (Lucas 2005, 33; see also Jay 1994, 195–196). The role of time as a regulator of behavior is a linear construct and one which acquired a particularly hegemonic complexion during the period of the European Enlightenment as it became twinned to ideas of human-driven progress (see Thomas 2004, 31). As the concept of linear time grew more dominant, it made alternatives harder to contemplate, and it has been plausibly claimed that this was inevitable since it dovetailed with the socioeconomic logic of capitalism and routinized patterns of behavior (see Gonzáles-Ruibal 2013, 10–11; McGlade 1999, 141). However, such chronological ordering, though integral to modernist notions of progress, irrevocably separated past from present; the further back that past extended, the more alienated it seemed from present experience. In this schema, the passage of time comprises sets of completed events expressible only in past perfect tense, as if points of grammar. The grammar of time’s passing can have a remorseless logic. Concepts of time and the assiduousness with which they are enforced are, of course, outcomes of broader and deeper cultural metanarratives. This is also true for the roles assigned to time in the specialized study of antiquity which, in the mid-to-later nineteenth century was increasingly impacted by what archaeological theorist James McGlade calls “evolutionary ferment” and the burgeoning of new insights and expectations (1999, 144) The application of linear time to the study of antiquity developed into an increasingly insistent regime as structured and measurable time was erected on superstructures of theory. One example of this was the “three-age system” in which artifacts, and the choice of materials of which they were composed (stone, bronze, iron), were considered indicative of technological sequence.4 One can also point to the proven utility of linear time in the recording of stratigraphic superposition which can be logged as data and fitted to graphical constructions indicative of sequence and succession. Whether linear time was expressed in terms of extended periods or simply as passing moments, it enabled the allocation of dateable positions and this had consequences for the visual expression of time as dates could be fitted to the geometry of a coordinate system (a mathematic schema used to fix the position of a point, line or plane). Thus, the passage of time could be tamed and any wayward tendencies subdued in favor of phases, directions and progressions. This offered clarity and seemingly unassailable logic while connecting seamlessly to notions of utility. However, it also represented a divergence from time as envisaged by the antiquarians for whom, as Anne Bermingham reminds us, signifiers of time were a spur to the imagination rather than simply chronological indicators (1987, 85).

82  Visualizing Time Western cultural imperatives tilt decisively toward the understanding of time as both a measurable and useable component of daily life and, as noted above, the ubiquity of clocks, timetables and standardized workday regimes signal this (Calinescu 1996, 41). But within that same cultural history, a detectable counter-current has flowed at certain times and in response to a particular mix of circumstances. Resistance to the linear model from romantically inspired antiquarianism pushed back against orthodoxies that characterized time as a separator of past from present and this resistance was in part an acknowledgment that the material remains of antiquity often bore no date and inference, so speculation and visual commentary were required to fill the gap. Set within the scope of antiquarian sensibilities, time thus interpreted could appeal both to the intellect and the senses. However, for an extended period, arguably extending to the present day, less formalized and more flexible notions of time endured in residual form despite the adoption of increasingly diagrammatic depictions of chronology. Arguably, this persistence reflected increasing knowledge about cross-cultural variability in how time was structured. Additional support for flexible interpretation accrued as the state of historical awareness expanded in the nineteenth century and the concept of time underwent dimensional change. The notion of time as expansive or bottomless would eventually inform a range of scholarly areas, from the study of human origins (see Schnapp 2013, 321) to geological processes.5 Time as applied to the question of human beginnings is particularly diagnostic since, in the space of a few decades, the presumption that those origins must accord with biblical descriptions weakened and then fell away as evidence mounted that beneath the thin surface layer of recorded history lay an abyss of immemorial time (see Rowley-Conwy 2007, 37–39). This expanded awareness of time-depth is commonly attributed to the growing explanatory power of empirical science, but less acknowledged is the role played by romanticized thought. Consider, for example, the influential writing and theorizing of the French naturalist Comte de Buffon (1707–1778) whose ideas about time as both deep and capacious informed his influential work Histoire Naturelle, Générale et Particulière (1769), a work considered an important source for romantic thought (see Jolles 1999, 50). Although, in archaeology, time as a measurable entity is conventionally treated as unidirectional (Trigger 2008, 41), it has led the way in accommodating alternative approaches to questions of time and duration. As a field of scholarly study inflected by a rich archive of visual documentation, it was realized early on that if time itself was undergoing dimensional change, the apparent certainties of unidirectional positioning were undermined. This implied that past, present and future could change their relative positions and that a more nuanced dialectical relationship between notions of past and present was required in order to accommodate what Martin Jay describes as the “eccentric temporalities of personal experience” (1994, 195; see also Gardner 2001, 36; 40). This conceptual re-adjustment comported with antiquarian sympathies to the extent that it established an active role for memory and the imaginative recalling of the past into the present. It helps explain, for instance, the sense of absence one might experience when walking among the ruins of an archaeological site that was once a vibrant scene of daily

Visualizing Time 83 commerce; a sense that Susan Stewart calls “a felt lack” (1984, 23). Such notions of non-linear time challenge the idea that time is made up of a sequence of events or constant rates of change, problematizes notions of continuity and presents the possibility that events in time are inseparably intertwined with lived experience in the present. It has been asserted that a revised notion of time as fluid would enable nonmodern or pre-modern notions of time to be reclaimed and allow events rendered distant by linear positioning to become proximate again through their simultaneous entanglement with contemporary perceptions. This would be difficult given how embedded the concept of structured time is in daily life and thought, but we can fairly say that antiquarianism attempted just such a reclamation. The enigmatic comment by Jorge Luis Borges in “A New Refutation of Time” that “time is the substance I am made of” (1973 [1964], 171–187), though opaque to us today, would have been in no way puzzling to antiquarians of centuries past. Conversely, they would probably be perplexed by L. P. Hartley’s oft-cited aphorism that “the past is a foreign country” (1953).6 To them, the past was eminently knowable, spoke their language and, through the exercise of the imagination and rendering into pictorial form, could be made familiar rather than alien. The model of time as a fluid entity had the added virtue of ascribing identity to antiquarians via association with the objects they collected and studied. They considered themselves time-travelers capable of moving between present and past as they wished, restoring to sight that which had been thought lost. Relics of the past were celebrated for their time-bearing qualities which, transposed into drawings and prints, formed part of a broad and enduring archival compulsion in which time in the historical sense was enfolded with time as sensed through the desires of the individual (Leask 2004, 45). Pictorial Time

In the context of documentation we need to recognize the importance of pictorial time and place that concept alongside the other presumptions about time that have become so naturalized that we hardly question them. Since archaeology has proved relatively adept at accepting alternative understandings of time, pictorial time would represent a further mark of acceptance. As we have seen in the preceding chapter, observable fractures, gougings, abrasions, erasures, patination and burnishings can be read as testimony of age and become transposed into the rhetoric of images. To the extent that pictorial treatment effectively foregrounds these qualities, it allows them to serve as visual allusions to time itself. But the depiction of time in pictorial form can potentially go further than this. The passage of time is uncaring, working in combination with physics and chemistry to fragment, dissolve and erase. We find at the beginning of Chapter 5 of Thomas Browne’s seventeenth-century essay Hydriotaphia, Urn Burial, a reference to “[t]ime which antiquates Antiquities hath an art to make dust of all things” (1984 [1658]). To the attentive reader, this line of thinking will be familiar for intersects with Francis Bacon’s musings on the “shipwreck” of time, described in Chapter 1. But the pictorial recording of artifacts can make the reversion to dust far from

84  Visualizing Time inevitable although in some cases it can represent the last reference to an object’s material existence. By placing pictorial time in historical context, it establishes a connection to the subjectivities of antiquarianism and the presumption that the visual documentation of ancient remains in the present can stir the imagination and invite speculation. The historical evidence suggests that pictorial time is a distinctive documentary category where we find a broad range of expressly temporal elements intertwined with aesthetic judgment. Time and the Visible Object Antiquity, and time itself, is shaped to conform to beliefs about how the past should look, and traces of the past become meaningful when they fit particular cultural expectations and agreed recognitions and anticipations. The meaning of antiquities is negotiated via processes of visualization. Those processes can celebrate the object itself but can also amplify the time-centeredness of particular events. Ancient objects found in context often present as a palimpsest of successive overwriting. It is a term that retains validity in contemporary archaeology (Lucas 2005, 37). To the enchanted eye of times past, it carried particular semiotic force and allowed artifacts bearing such marks to serve as agents of conveyance, permitting the past to enter into the present and we can say of present-day visualization and picturing that it tends to reiterate these same sensibilities. The display of recovered objects may also embed these values. In the collection of the Acropolis Museum in Athens, for example, there is a marble Kouros (male statue) which, in its spalled and pitted state, bears the marks of fire from the burning of the Acropolis by invading Persians in 480 BCE. Although the carving of the figure is exquisite, it is the scorch marks which pique the imagination. Age is the close cousin to time; a wide range of rhetorical elements can be summoned to the task of expressing it in visual form. As discussed in the preceding chapter, antiquarian depiction was surface oriented and that fixation on surface features comported with the portraiture aesthetic as well as the belief that the biography of an ancient object was disclosed through its complexion. A publication by the antiquarian, numismatist and geologist John Evans (1823–1908) is exemplary in this regard. The works consist of commentary and illustrations of prehistoric flint tools examined and grouped together. These artifacts were discovered embedded in river sediments in the vicinity of Abbeville and Amiens in the Somme valley of France and were investigated beginning in the later 1830s by one Boucher de Perthes. He theorized that, given their undisturbed stratigraphic position, that riverine area must once have been occupied, or at least used as a place of temporary refuge, long before recorded history. Under the auspices of the Royal Geological Society, Joseph Prestwich, author of The Ground Beneath us, its Geological Changes and Phases (1857), was sent, together with John Evans, to inspect the finds and assess their authenticity. In a paper presented and read at the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1859 and published in Archaeologia shortly thereafter, the flints were declared authentic and, given the fact that they were found in “superficial beds of drift … furnish[ed]

Visualizing Time 85 the earliest relics of the human race which we can hope to become acquainted” (Evans 1860, 281). Evans went on to publish, in 1872, The Ancient Stone Implements, Weapons and Ornaments of Great Britain, followed by a revised edition of the book in 1897. Both editions built on the evidentiary record of the stone tools and reiterated the conclusions first presented by Evans in his 1860 paper. In chapters 23–25 in the second volume of the 1897 publication, Evans restates his account of the finds in France and presents illustrations of individual flints. Plate 1 from that publication is shown in Figure 3.1 and, with the exception of one (at far left, bottom row), all the pictured artifacts were found in the vicinity of Amiens and Abbeville. We see in the illustrations a striving for individualized three-dimensional presence and an attention to surface detail characteristic of antiquarian picturing, here indicating the topography of the objects and the knapping which gave them their distinctive tapering shapes and sharp cutting edges. We also see some of the tropes of portraiture described in the preceding chapter. Although the individual artifacts are reproduced in the work at one-half actual size, they are pictured in face view and in profile and share a visual “family association” by virtue of shape and the fact that all were created from the same chipping action of stone on stone. The specimens also share an implied tactility. Indeed, a haptic quality suffuses the illustration, as if we could draw blood if we ran our fingers along the edges of the flints. John Evans’s primary interest was in numismatics and it has been convincingly argued that his concern with illustrating face and side views of the worked flints in painstaking detail was carried across from his close scrutiny of coins where minor variations in coin strikes were often important indicators of a coin’s history and authenticity (Schlanger 2010, 353). In his account of the history of archaeology, Bruce Trigger asserts that the “sound stratigraphic observations” of Boucher de Perthes, the original discoverer of the flints, foretold the scientific imperatives of fieldwork in later times (2008, 143–144), but he is less impressed with John Evans, describing him merely as an “accomplished amateur” (146). This understates the significance of his visual documentation. Flints had a long history of attracting erroneous or fanciful explanation, including the possibility that were the remnants of thunderbolts, but close scrutiny and picturing, such as that by Evans, in association with Boucher de Perthes, presented them as evidence of human presence and purposeful tool-making from a time previously beyond reckoning (see Thomas 2004, 43). His 1897 publication confirms Evans’s visual leanings and aesthetic sentiments in words as well as in pictures when, in his concluding remarks, he muses on the epochs that have passed since the stone tools of the Somme valley were discarded, musings that are strongly inflected by romanticist and antiquarian sentiment: We must judge of the antiquity of these deposits rather from the general effect upon our minds by the vastness of the changes which have taken place … than by any admeasure of years or of centuries. To realize the full meaning of these changes, almost transcends the powers of imagination. (708)

86  Visualizing Time

Figure 3.1  Prehistoric flint tools (Evans 1897).

Visualizing Time 87 There is a precursor to this statement in Evans’s (1860) article in Archaeologia in which he quotes from Joseph Prestwich’s earlier publication (1857, 6) and positions it relative to the scopic priorities of antiquarianism. “The antiquary as well as the geologist” he writes “has from a few detached facts to fill up a living picture; so as to identify with the past and to describe and follow, as though an eyewitness, the changes which have at various periods taken place upon the earth” (Evans 1860, 280). Evans’s antiquarian mode of illustration marks a particular form of aesthetic judgment, returning material remains from past time to the present via pictorial confirmation. His work is indicative of how semiotic and aesthetic power can be projected onto individual artifacts in general, but the pictorial treatment of stone garnered from an ancient landscape and modified by human hand held particular appeal almost equal to the visual thrill of detecting the fingerprints of a long-ago potter on a shard of fired clay. The awareness of temporal depth can work at this scale as an animating medium for thought via the sensibilities of the observer (see Clifford 1994, 262; Olivier 2011, 31). As noted earlier, the very dimensions of antiquity underwent profound revision over the course of the nineteenth century. Elizabeth Edwards notes in her discussion of “the culture of the historical past” a vital visual element was apparent in this process that contributed to a rising tide of time-consciousness (2012, 8). The importance she attributes to visual elements is based on trends in historical time rather than the deep time of prehistory but it is nonetheless applicable. The desire to capture the “look” of antiquity helped make the nineteenth century a period of remarkable documentary intensity with both print media and photography functioning as important agents of awareness about antiquity just as the availability of publication formats was increasing markedly. It is also the case, however, that from the mid-nineteenth century onward pictorial manners were expanding to include the details of subsurfaces. This was an important shift because it encouraged the picturing of not only excavated objects but the contexts in which they were found. By returning briefly to the role of Boucher de Perthes, we can identify an example of this expanded pictorial scope. In 1847 he published Antiquités Celtiques et Antédiluviennes, a three-volume account of his finds. This publication conforms to antiquarian imperatives in terms of scope, with engraved illustrations (mostly in volume 2) of some 4,600 artifacts fashioned from stone and bone that were indicative of past human presence. The publication also includes, on page 253, a profile of which depicts an array of stratigraphic layers within which the original positions of individual flint axes (hâches) and knives (couteau) are marked (Figure 3.2). This diagrammatic image extends the scope of antiquarian picturing into the domain of the subsurface. It lacks the illusion of three-dimensionality that so typifies antiquarian pictorialism but compensates for this by deploying a revised set of rhetorical signifiers that direct our eyes downward and guide the reader, by means of horizontal dividing lines, through the various stratigraphic levels. The visual proclivities of de Perthes marked him out as an antiquarian. A small but telling inclusion within the image signals an acknowledgment by de Perthes

88  Visualizing Time

Figure 3.2  Stratigraphic position of flints (de Perthes 1847).

of long-standing antiquarian pictorial tropes of resemblance and association: tufts of grass growing in the topsoil. But the image of terrain deluvien can be read as a statement on his part of which way the pictorial manners of antiquarianism were heading as the ancient regime of picturing time adjusted to the less visible domain of subsurfaces. Thus, the amended suite of rhetorical elements we find in the image by de Perthes did not mark a disavowal of pictorialism but an expansion of its scope. Underground visual excursions had already acquired a colorful history on account of eighteenth-century diggers (see Chapter 2), but the suggestion in de Perthes’s image is that the extraction of meaning from what lay beneath the surface needed to be re-negotiated. The work of de Perthes has been categorized as a foretelling of modern methods of site recording and in his account of the history of archaeological thought, Bruce Trigger praises as “lavish” and “exemplary” the diagrammatic visual frame he constructed (Trigger 2008, 293; see also Gardner 2001, 35; Lucas 2005, 33; Shanks and Tilley 1992, 7). A more nuanced appraisal is that the image represents an intermediate stage of depiction between time in the form of a visible object and time as process.

Visualizing Time 89 Time as Process: Picturing Radiocarbon Throughout the era of antiquarianism, the assignment of age was based on observable surface features. Comparisons with like remains often involved reference to incomplete or contestable records and, with objects to which Western eyes were unfamiliar, inscrutable aspects of style had to be resolved. The way in which time and age are measured has undergone major change over the course of the twentieth century, reflecting broader cultural expectations about meaning, veracity and facticity and the journey towards certainty followed a very different course than that available a century earlier. In this section, focus turns to a class of methodologies reflective of the desire to restrict the range of speculation and conjecture in our dealings with the past and which center on inducing antiquity to inscribe its own story (see Thomas 2004, 157). The visual outcomes, transposed into linear form, turned a specific variety of visual encounter with antiquity into a documentary imperative and confirmed how space for the visual enfolding of archaeological remains can become so miniaturized that the unaided eye is denied admittance. Having breached that sensory barrier, the negotiation of meaning with the remains of the past moved into ever smaller visual domains, down to the scale of the atomic and sub-atomic. As was made clear in Chapter 1, antiquarian visual manners thrived on interpretive uncertainty because it opened space for conjecture and subjective appraisal and it privileged the judgment of the cognoscente. These visual manners would, however, become an uneasy fit with modernist conceptions and depictions of time before eventually resolving into a situation of coexistence whereby pictorial elements would retain their validity but in altered forms. The development and broad-scale adoption of radiometric (carbon-14) dating is a particularly thought-provoking example of this expanded ability to detect the previously undetectable. Colin Renfrew, who has long been an authoritative figure in British archaeology, has referred to the development and rapid adoption of this means of determining age as a “radiocarbon revolution” which dealt “a decisive blow at the whole framework of thought which … dominated archaeological discussion until very recent times” (1973, 17; 53).7 The technique (later to comprise a suite of techniques) reduced and often eliminated chronological puzzle-solving and has, in this regard, been cited as a force for emancipation by freeing up archaeologists to think more about theory-building and the development of quantitative methodology (see Taylor 1992, 353). However, the broader historical and cultural context of radiocarbon dating was one of unease, shaped by the exigencies of the Second World War and the Cold War that followed, this period of conflict and geopolitical rivalry brought together institutions, machines and models into hybrid forms (see Barnes 2008, 3). The methodology of radiocarbon dating was developed in the United States principally under the leadership and research direction of Willard Libby (1908–1980) but also in close collaboration with James Arnold (see Arnold and Schuch 1992, 3). There was a clearly defined arc to Libby’s professional interests. He was a contributor to the Manhattan Project, helping develop the technique for separating

90  Visualizing Time uranium-235 as a necessary step toward the production of atomic weapons (Berger, Knopoff and McMillan 1981), but in something of a moral reversal, he later became a participant in the “Atoms-for-Peace” initiative and advocated uses for nuclear physics far less malign than those which haunted popular consciousness. He specifically points out the choices that could be made regarding societal uses of radioactivity and he describes how radioactivity forms part of life itself insofar as it installs a “ticking clock” inside all organic matter, including ourselves, since “cosmic rays (in contact with atmospheric nitrogen) make our food radioactive and, of course, our own bodies” (1981a, 2). Libby was, then, working from the proposition that radioactivity was not necessarily destructive, but essentially neutral, and the uses to which it could be put were a matter of human decision-making. The interconnection between Libby’s lines of research and broader cultural anxieties and ambitions can be gauged from his collected papers and a compilation of the talks he gave between 1960 and 1980 which, in addition to remarks about radiocarbon, included topics such as “The Citizen and the Atom,” “The Atomic Space Ship” and “The Prospects for Plowshare” (1981b, 1981c). To describe adequately the development of radiocarbon dating, we must consider not only the life of Willard Libby but also the life of carbon-14 with which his career and those of his associates intersected. The carbon element has 15 known isotopes of which carbon-14 (hereafter abbreviated to C14) is one. It is rare in comparison with some of its more stable cousins such as of C12. Radiocarbon dating is predicated on counting this elusive presence where it has come to reside within organic remains. Libby’s method involved incineration to release carbon dioxide followed by the use of a Geiger counter sensitive enough to record the radioactive decay of C14 as it reverted to nitrogen, an event that Libby describes lyrically as its “death cry” (Libby 1981a, 2–3). An article published in the journal Science by Libby, Anderson and Arnold (1949) presents the methodology, describes the concepts underlying it and reviews preliminary results. The article discusses how cosmic radiation receipts in the upper atmosphere interact with carbon dioxide, resulting in the production of a radioactive form of carbon that would remain resident in the biomass of organisms through the life cycle (227). After synthesis of carbon dioxide ceases at death, C14 content slowly decreases at what was then believed to be an unvarying rate unaffected by climate, environment or variations in cosmic radiation receipts. Some organic remains could be so old that they had lost all of their radiocarbon, but given that the “half-life” of C14 (the point at which 50 percent has decayed) was pegged by Libby and his colleagues (at 5,720 years ± 47 years), a vast amount of organic material remained that could be productively sampled in order to compute age. The implications for archaeology of what Libby, Anderson and Arnold laid out in their 1949 paper were immediately made clear: assuming the radioactive decay in organic remains proceeds at a constant rate, the extent of decline can be used as a marker of elapsed time (Bayliss 2009, 123; Lucas 2005, 4; Renfrew 2009, 121; Taylor 2000, 16). Radiometric dating, although applicable to organic remains, promised chronological certainty vouchsafed by laboratory techniques that were simultaneously objective and diagnostic. It could confirm the value accorded to

Visualizing Time 91 artifacts or bring that valuation into question. For the first indication of how the complexities of carbon counting were to be illustrated, we must turn to another paper published in 1949 (Arnold and Libby 1949, 679). The information yielded by radiometric measurement required forms of visual rhetoric that squared with mathematical and instrumental procedures and the “externalized retina” of apparatus (see Lynch 1988). That rhetoric had to fit with archaeology’s revised relationship with age and time. The illustration that accompanied the 1949 article by Arnold and Libby was widely reproduced and circulated over subsequent decades: it appeared with slight variation in Libby’s later book-length discussion of radiocarbon dating (1952, 9) and was reproduced in a publication by Renfrew (1973, 53), and by Aitken (1990, 58). It takes the form of a graph and plots the predicted values against the observed radioactivity values of samples of known age. The graph is shown in Figure 3.3 and I refer to it for purposes of discussion as the “Arnold/Libby graph,” but it was, of course, the outcome of much collaboration, including with committees of the American Anthropological Society and the Geological Society of America that “advised … what samples of known age to use for testing and greatly assisted … in procuring them” (Arnold and Libby 1949, 680). Six samples of wood were selected for testing, and four of the six were archaeological artifacts acquired via museum curators (Libby, Anderson, and Arnold 1949, 227). These artifacts ranged in known age from a Ptolemaic-period fragment of a coffin from Egypt (332–330 BCE), to remains of acacia wood from the tomb of Zoser at Saqqara, Egypt (2,700 BCE ± 75 years). The remaining samples were taken from trees of known age and were included as a test of accuracy. The central

Figure 3.3 Radiometric versus Historical age (Arnold and Libby 1949). Image reproduced by permission.

92  Visualizing Time proposition of the graph is that C14 decay serves as a marker of elapsed time which can be plotted with mathematical precision. Arnold and Libby conclude that “the agreement between prediction and observation is seen to be satisfactory” and the results “sufficiently encouraging to warrant further investigation and application of the method” (1949, 679). The correlations evident in the graph suggest the utility of using C14 dating in cases where chronology is unknown or uncertain. This was despite a discrepancy later identified between the conventionally assigned age of the Zoser sample and its radiometric age (see Johnson 1952, 102).8 As visual products, graphs use highly linear forms of visual rhetoric, conforming to axes which impose order and positional framework. They inevitably have embedded within them Western presumptions of linear correspondence and we are well accustomed to such visual schemas (Elkins 1999, 223). In this case, visual thought from the world of sense perception has been replaced by a graphical inscription that generates its own reality from a strictly circumscribed array of graphical elements that suggest a landscape of dates in visual form (Gardner 2001, 35–36). Specifically, linear correspondence coheres around a timeline as the dominant element. Established via laboratory testing and analysis of atomic-scale processes, time so expressed has an authority against which the artifacts of culture (in this case archaeological remains) can be sequentially ordered. Chronological discipline is imposed as the fragmentary remains are ordered and aligned according to measured radiocarbon age and, when reduced to labels and measured attributes of age, the samples are tethered to the timeline. Although this graphical construction embedded certain expectations about linear correspondences, it was nonetheless radical in its implications. Prior to the inception of radiocarbon dating fragments of antiquity, the likes of which Libby and his team were testing, had been residing in museum collections and storerooms and the possibility that they might be anything other than chronometrically inert was not considered. Certainly there was keen awareness of their stylistic referents and how they tethered artifacts, however loosely, to events in time, but there was no realization of the invisible clocks ticking within them. The introduction of radiocarbon dating weakened the authority of the eye and the role of conjecture in attributing age (see Bayliss 2009, 124; Weiner 2010, 18) but it would be incorrect to see this as a complete displacement of pictorialism in the depiction of time. Here we have a graphical construct that is almost clinical in its complexion bearing no outward trace of subjectivity, but it is still an image intended to convey information and is more pictorial than it might seem. As a visual statement of age, it meshes with established imperatives of archaeology in bringing the hidden and the obscure to light and it is an example of how data obtained via instrumentation can be induced to cross the boundary from the invisible to the observable (Humphreys 2004, 122; see also Arnold 2000, 75; Lynch 1988, 225). The radiometric inscription of age had to be instrumentally induced, but the fact that inscription was an outcome of physics allowed it to be readily accepted as a purely objective statement of age and measured time and such interpretation was consonant with broader modernist acceptances of temporality as linear and unidirectional.

Visualizing Time 93 It has been said that graphs function as “autonomous surfaces of explanation” (Lynch and Woolgar 1990, 155) but this overlooks the role of human choice in their construction. To take this one step further, the selection of purposeful linear elements to advance a particular proposition establishes an intriguing link between the Arnold/Libby graph and elements of aestheticism and artistic visuality. There is no evidence that such linkage was a conscious inclusion but it nonetheless enables us to read additional sense into the graph. By way of example we could turn to the early 1920s and the German artist Paul Klee (1879–1940). At that time he was exploring in his Pedagogical Sketchbook what he believed to be the fundamental elements of picture construction. He describes and illustrates “an active line on a walk, moving freely” but also notes how such a line is “limited in its movement by fixed points” (1972 [1953], 16; 18). This combination of movement and restraint is further described in an introduction to Klee’s reasoning as “the transformation of the static dot, the line, being successive dot progression, walks, circumscribes, creates … planes” (Moholy-Nagy 1972 [1953, 9]; see also Szatabińska 2015, 129). To conceptualize in this way the construction of linearity as a dynamic force enriches the way we look not at all graphs but has particular relevance both to the Arnold/ Libby graph and two subsequent graphs described below in this chapter; one published by Hessel de Vries (1958) and another by Bonani et al. (1992). Interestingly, during the early years of its application, radiocarbon dating often confirmed dates that had been previously assigned by more conjectural methods and enabled the status quo of inferred age to remain relatively undisturbed (Renfrew 1973, 54). Meanwhile, the laboratory in which Libby and his associates worked became the first to produce a list of radiocarbon dates, unleashing a cascade of further tests in laboratories elsewhere and generating a robust traffic in fragments offered for analysis. The potential heralded by the method eventually prompted the publication of a new scientific journal: Radiocarbon. The inaugural issue of which, in 1959, was devoted to the reporting of dates and the listing of laboratories undertaking the work.9 At the time the Arnold/Libby graph was first published, it was presumed that rates of radioactive decay were unvarying over time and “immutable” (Libby 1952, 9). However, the 1949 article reveals a hint of uncertainty in referring to the two basic assumptions of the radiocarbon method – namely, the constancy of the cosmic radiation intensity and the possibility of obtaining unaltered samples – are probably justified up to 4600 years. (679; italics added) It was assumed that any fluctuations in cosmic radiation receipts would average out over time and “smooth” the data, but this assumption was challenged when it was eventually demonstrated that concentrations of atmospheric radiocarbon assimilated into organisms were surprisingly variable.10 The challenge came in a publication by Hessel de Vries who identified “wiggles” in the trend line of radiocarbon content (de Vries 1958; see also Aitken 1990, 66; Stuiver and Pearson 1992; Weiner 2010, 20). Visual expression of this variability was later presented in a

94  Visualizing Time paper by Minze Stuiver and Hans Suess in the journal Radiocarbon in 1966. Their illustration was based on radiocarbon data cross-referenced with samples of known age spanning a period of 1,000 years, allowing true age and radiocarbon age to be compared. The data were presented in the form of a graph (Figure 3.4), the visual rhetoric of which represents a refinement of that presented by Arnold and Libby almost 20 years earlier. The graph shows the relationship between radiocarbon age (solid black line) and true age (dashed line) with the zero mark corresponding to 1950 CE. Stuiver and Suess understatedly comment that the data indicated a “more complicated relationship” between radiocarbon age and exact calendar age (534). Indeed it does; were we to convert antiquity into a fever chart, I imagine it would look rather like this graph. Singling out specific complications, the authors point to the deviation around 1700 CE: the calendar age was 250 years but radiocarbon measurement indicated an age of 80 years (536–537). A further anomaly is evident slightly to the right of where radiocarbon age and actual age intersect at the 320-year mark: at that point the radiocarbon-age line dips sharply and the calendar-year age of around 400 years corresponds to a radiocarbon age of a little over 240 years. Complications are also apparent in the M-shaped signature of data at the lower left of

Figure 3.4 Radioactive decay anomalies (Stuiver and Suess 1966). Image reproduced by permission.

Visualizing Time 95 the graph, producing calendar-age deviations of at least 100 years from radiocarbon age. The variability during this time-period is now known to reflect a period known as the “Maunder minimum” when the sun’s magnetic field is markedly reduced, allowing relatively greater releases of cosmic radiation into the earth’s atmosphere and producing an increase in C14 fluxes (Stuiver and Suess 1966, 536; see also Gove 1999, 9). The divergences between calendar ages and radiocarbon ages, first reported by de Vries and later expressed in visual form by Stuiver and Suess, showed that the clock of radioactive decay did not tick with complete regularity for, as they put it: “[although] for each calendar year there is only one radiocarbon age, the reverse is not true … in some instances a series of true ages exists for one radiocarbon age” (1966, 538). The findings of de Vries and their incorporation of those findings into the graph compiled by Stuiver and Suess posed a dilemma: how could the evidence of radiocarbon variability be squared with the earlier persuasive portrayal of chronometric constancy in the rate of decay rate. Such was the authority that had accrued around the Arnold/Libby graph from two decades before that the possibility of anything other than a smooth linear signature for radiocarbon decay seemed implausible. Suess later attributed this implausibility to a state of denial on the part of scientists and implied that the visual rhetoric of the earlier graph, together with other data displays, had been seductive. Scientists had, in Suess’s view, succumbed to the “beauty of the smooth line” (1992, 15), a phrase rich in pictorial allusions. However, if the dilemma was expressed through visual means, could it not be addressed and resolved through comparable visual means? Although the graph published by Stuiver and Suess challenged a key presumption that weakened the earlier (Arnold/Libby) graph, it did so using the same suite of rhetorical devices as we find deployed in that earlier illustration, notably the positioning of time and process as trend lines within a coordinate system. Such rhetorical commonality allowed the later (Stuiver and Suess) graph to revise what was known about chronometric relationships but without doing violence to the concept of time as essentially orderly and sequential. The eventual realization that the deviations, although disruptive to the idea of strict linearity, displayed a degree of regularity within certain revised boundaries further validated the concept of temporal order (see Suess 1992, 15). Indeed, acknowledging the need for corrections introduced elegance into the visual proposition; it enhanced accuracy without prejudicing the integrity of radiocarbon analysis as a demonstrable and visually expressible conformation of age (see Becker 1992, 34). It was clear by the late 1960s that translation from C14 measurement to calendrical timescale required cross-checking with samples of organic material of known age. Compared to the technicalities of radiometric analysis, confirmation based on visible evidence, particularly tree rings (dendrochronology), represents a melding of instrumentally induced visuality with the power of the eye and the scrutiny of visible appearance. Such analog procedures represented a supplement rather than a challenge to the documentary power of the graphical format. Just as the analysis of radioactive decay was a demonstration of precise measurement, so too was dendrochronological cross-referencing and such work was readily accepted

96  Visualizing Time as a refinement of earlier laboratory research. By 1969 a continuous series of treering dates had been established extending back over 7,000 years and this form of calibration had become an accepted part of age determination (Becker 1992, 37; Stuiver and Pearson 1992, 19; Suess 1992, 14).11 Archaeological objects can be defined as objects that possess pastness (Holtorf 2013, 431) and the published announcement of the feasibility of radiocarbon dating and its subsequent adoption offered absolute authenticity and proof of pastness. It also established a trend toward instrumental determinations of age by processes invisible to the unaided eye. This trend was further propelled by successor technologies to that pioneered by Libby and his associates, the most important of which was accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS), a technique that obviated the need for counting rates of radioactive decay. AMS involved directing very high voltages toward atomic nuclei in order to disassemble them, allowing the presence of rare isotopes to be detected and measured directly through their mass rather than inferring their presence through decay. This capability rendered archaic and whimsical Libby’s musings on the “death cry” of C14 (Libby 1981a, 2–3). AMS delivered enhanced accuracy, reduction in the time required to obtain viable measurements and better identification of significant traces diagnostic of actual age. Both decaycounting and AMS procedures were destructive of their samples, but AMS could detect as little as 1 percent of the total C14 content in a sample, greatly exceeding what the decay-counting method could achieve. Moreover, it required only a fraction of the specimen size needed for decay measurement and thus could be used to date artifacts considered particularly precious (Beukens 1992, 230; Hedges 1990, 428). AMS could also readily detect contaminants; a useful capability since the detritus of the present has a tendency to adhere to the residues of the past. Relatively recent sources of carbon can be introduced, for example, and skew results. Other possible culprits include castor oil, gelatine or residues of glue and such organic contaminants could affect the results by yielding either older or younger apparent ages (Bonani et al. 1992, 848). Even more exotic sources of contamination could also be overcome, such as distinguishing between N14 and C14 despite their having very similar mass. It is, then, unsurprising that by the 1990s over 10,000 radiocarbon dates had been determined using AMS instrumentation and the measurement of radiocarbon by decay-counting had become almost wholly superseded (Hedges 1990, 428). By that time AMS had become a powerful forensic tool for adjudicating on the age of archaeological specimens. As noted above, the methodology of AMS and the capability of dating very small samples made it the technique of choice for dating very rare and auratic remains. Two notable cases are the dating of the Turin Shroud and the testing of the Dead Sea Scrolls. In the case of the shroud, the AMS data showed that the flax from which the artifact was woven dated to between 1260 and 1390 CE. The relic, therefore, dated to medieval times and could not have been, as many claimed, the burial cloth of Christ (Damon et al. 1989). The case of the Dead Sea Scrolls is of greater relevance to this chapter’s discussions than that of the Turin Shroud and warrants detailed discussion.

Visualizing Time 97 The scrolls, as prized relics, were situated within an archaeological context where reverence and faith intersected with attributions of age and calculations of elapsed time. The fragments were discovered in 1947 in caves near Khirbet Qumran in the Judaean desert and although, strictly speaking, the term “Dead Sea Scrolls” refers to these specific remains, it is often extended to other ancient manuscripts found in that general region. The scroll fragments are said to have been discovered serendipitously by local Bedouin boys. What is known with certainty is that in one cave alone there were some 800 scroll fragments bearing Hebrew and Aramaic script on papyrus and parchment. However, the scrolls lacked any written indication of date (Benoit, Milik and de Vaux 1961; Bonani et al. 1992). The significance of the remains centered on their connection to early religion in the region and, in particular, their link to the establishment and early diffusion of Judaism. Their discovery in the later 1940s added a particular historical potency to the scrolls and the evidence that might be disclosed by them.12 In 1951, the remains of textiles found in the vicinity of the scrolls, but not intermingled with the scrolls themselves, had been tested by Libby and his colleagues using conventional decay-counting techniques and yielded an age of 1,917 years ± 200 years, but it was not until almost 40 years later, in 1990, that samples from the scrolls themselves were analyzed by means of AMS. The team undertaking the work, led by Georges Bonani, noted the past success of paleographers (those who study of old documents and texts by traditional non-instrumental means) in determining the dates of ancient documents to within a few decades. However, Bonani et al. also note how a number of scholars had challenged the conclusions of the paleographers. Given this challenge and the lingering uncertainty, Bonani and his associates “felt it was necessary to check on the paleographically-determined ages by using an independent method” (1992, 843). Fourteen scrolls were selected for testing. Of these, four were date-bearing documents from elsewhere and introduced into the batch as a control to test the methodology. The scroll fragments, being so ancient, could have been in contact with many different forms of contamination over time and whatever might have adhered to them was a potential interference. Were AMS a sentient force we could legitimately call it single-minded, and traces of contamination (gelatine residues for example) were assiduously avoided in case it corrupted the data. Precautionary measures were clinical in nature and Bonani et al. report, for example, that their samples were “first treated in an ultrasonic bath. This was followed by hot acid, base, then acid treatments.” Between various steps, the samples were rinsed to pH 7 with distilled water (846). The results of the testing were presented and discussed in a 1992 article by Bonani et al. in the journal Radiocarbon. In the article, the results of the testing are first presented in tabular form before being displayed graphically “for ease of comparison” (847). That graphical display is shown in Figure 3.5. Samples 2–6 and 9–11 from the Qumran site together with other undated samples are represented by horizontal black bars indicating C14 ranges. The four samples of known age are included in the graph as horizontal black bars indicating that they were of confirmed age. Hatched blocks are based on “the estimates of the paleographers” (847).

98  Visualizing Time

Figure 3.5 Radiocarbon age of the Dead Sea Scrolls (Bonani et al. 1992). Image reproduced by permission.

In effect, these hatched blocks, being constructed from human judgment and direct inspection, represent sites of potential challenge and AMS technology was being used as the ultimate authority by means of which those estimates could be overwritten by certainty. The technology served as judge and jury. In terms of the published account of the analysis, we see a graphical display of highly abstracted indicators of elapsed time. The results presented by Bonani and his team are broadly in line with those obtained by Libby in dating the scrolls to between 100 BCE and 100 CE, and the majority of the samples tested also show general agreement between paleographically estimated age and radiocarbon age. The 200-year discrepancy evident with Sample 2 was caused, according to the report’s authors, by variability in sample preparation and de-contamination procedures (848). As with the graphs discussed earlier in this chapter, such as that of Stuiver and Suess (Figure 3.4), the visual rhetoric of the graph is persuasive by appearing to expunge subjectivity from any judgment about age and positioning a spread of numerical values within a coordinate system. Its rhetoric hinges on overlaps and intersections where conjecture is overwritten, literally so to the extent that the black bars of instrumental dating eclipse the hatched bars of paleographic estimate. Between the time of the instrumental testing and the present day, the scroll fragments underwent additional processing of a different kind, focusing not on determination of age, but on the complexion of antiquity. High-resolution digitization of the scrolls was undertaken by the Leon Levy Foundation beginning in 2012 and

Visualizing Time 99 made available as an online library for scholars and the general public to browse. Each set of fragments has been processed in multiple spectrums, including infrared, to enhance contrast, accentuate fine detail and allow what remains of the Aramaic script to be read. As of 2023, the library includes over 900 images from the Qumran caves, with 666 specifically from Cave 4. Scroll remains are also archived in other locations. Figure 3.6, for example, is from the Jordan Museum in Amman. It is remarkably intact and has, as a consequence, particular pictorial resonance as a document. It conveys the story of time, as we would expect, but it also serves as a model of memory inscribed onto a single artifact where age has punctuated material existence and the written record with erasures, dissolutions and discontinuities; each tear and gap mark an event in history, just as the text itself does. The digital restoration to sight of the fragments prompts additional thoughts about the visual journey of the scrolls had undergone over time and one cannot help but wonder how the visualization of their antiquity would have differed had they been discovered in 1847 rather than 1947 before radiocarbon or other forms of instrumental measurement of age became available, or before high-resolution imaging was possible. How might antiquarians have responded to them? Were we able to summon an antiquarian and solicit an opinion about the Dead Sea Scrolls, chronometric ordering would likely be critiqued for causing the past to recede further and further back from the present. The modernist regime of visual ordering, to the extent it aided and abetted this recession, would also be judged unfavorably.

Figure 3.6  Qumran cave scroll fragment. Wikimedia Commons.

100  Visualizing Time As we know, antiquarian imagination was stimulated by surface appearance and became enhanced through speculation and picturing. Their aesthetic sensibilities held little place investigation that might diminish the mystery of an artifact. What was considered to be, in the context of AMS testing, contaminating or corrupting would likely have been treated by the enchanted eye of antiquarians as part of the scrolls’ identity and biography as objects embodying pastness; the inscriptions of time superimposed upon the work of scribes. Those ancient fragments, as displayable curiosities, would be saturated with multiple layers of potential meaning and sensual allure to which the human retina alone offered entry. Moreover, the discovery of the scroll fragments in the near-darkness of a cave would have chimed with notions of mystery and seamlessly connected to the affect and marveling projected more broadly onto ancient sites in the Levant and the Middle East. The task of establishing the date and content of the scrolls would have been undertaken by those with a specialist interest in ancient texts (the paleographers to which Bonani and his team refer), but for the antiquarians whose interests focused on the stories that objects might tell, the aura of the scrolls stemmed from their visual power as relics of the past returned to contemplation in the present. In the absence of any more certain methods, the rarity of the remains would have been acknowledged and celebrated through conjecture, fanciful interpretation and the visual enfolding of them as enchanted fragments worthy of accession into museum holdings or private collections. As the relics circulated, observing eyes could penetrate no further than the surface of the parchment, but this would in all likelihood have been sufficient. Re-Telling Time On the opening page of this book, I confessed to my failure to identify a break-point between pictorial modes of documentation in archaeology and a successor regime where instrumentally driven processes became dominant, ushering in new temporal dimensions where the direction of scrutiny would increasingly be expressed in two principal directions: inwards and through. My central error was to underestimate the staying power of pictorialism. It is true that in the course of the twentieth century the arc of visual depiction curved toward the documentation of that which lay beyond the power of the unaided eye. To this end, the instruments of most value were those capable of detecting the otherwise undetectable and enabling their presence (whether actual or inferred) to be auto-inscribed. What I misjudged was the capability of pictorial modes of visual reporting to retain utility alongside and in partnership with increasingly forensic techniques. In this concluding section I will lay out some features of this regime of auto-inscription where we can identify a continued role for picturing. The visual contrasts between efflorescent pictorialism and the scopic practices of the present seem, at first encounter, to be vast. What possible relationship could exist between, say, John Evans’s illustrations in The Ancient Stone Implements, Weapons and Ornaments of Great Britain (1897; Figure 3.1) and the graphical display of the radiocarbon age of the Dead Sea Scrolls (Figure 3.5)? It would seem from the evidence that the pursuit of a rare isotope effectively demolished

Visualizing Time 101 the shelter against modernity that antiquarianism had assiduously constructed, but microvisual investigations should be considered part of a longer visual-cultural story. They do not represent a complete rupture from past modes of observation and reporting but they raise the central question of how nanoscale processes and their depiction in linear form can accommodate archaeology’s modes of scrutiny that were developed and deployed in more conventional contexts. Firstly, the instrumentally produced visual traces share with pictorialism a desire for plausibility on the part of their authors. Both forms of documentary visuality have woven into their structure the need to shape and constrain the range of interpretation, although this is more insistent with linear constructions and codes in the form of didactic captions and diagrammatic visual notation for the presentation of findings and to guide interpretation (Latour 1990, 39; 1986, 16; Price and Feinman 2001, 491–492). Secondly, documentary accounts from the past as well as those produced in modern time have visual forms and complexions that reflect broader cultural factors in play at a particular moment in history. As laid out in an earlier discussion, the work of Evans helped propel an awareness of prehistory, while the graphical depiction of antiquity in the case of the Dead Sea Scrolls embeds the desire for absolute objectivity and authority. As visual theorist James Elkins reminds us, although graphs were invented as early as the fourteenth century, the disciplinary geometry of vertical and horizontal axes did not come into use until the beginning of the nineteenth century (1999, 229), and art historian Rosalind Krauss sees in their visual logic a picture of modernity in that they incorporate into their geometry a “frame of exclusions” encouraging the contents to be read as “ideological closure” (1993, 24). In both instances the need to establish plausibility and shape interpretation is conveyed through the choice of rhetorical devices: linearity in the case of the graph and three-dimensional portraiture in the case of Evans’s flints. Thirdly, although the graphs illustrated in this chapter appear aesthetically emaciated, they share with fully fleshed modes of picturing the advancing of a proposition. As visual statements of age both forms of depiction mesh with established imperatives of archaeology in bringing the hidden and the obscure to light. This shared objective is, I would argue, evidence of coexistence between ancestral modes of documentation and the changed conditions of today. As I will be describing in the next two chapters, pictorial inclusions often facilitate the read-out of information from instrumental interventions and color the conclusions drawn from that information, particularly with remote-sensing applications. To the extent that coloring of conclusions occurs, it reprises an earlier time of encounter with the remains of the past. We can identify further points of coexistence in the relationship with visual referents, that is to say, the particular focus of attention which, in archaeology, has always been strongly orientated toward the material object. Instrumental traces are never entirely abstract and can, in a sense, be engineered. Were we to do this, we would always arrive back in the domain of object-based materiality; the same domain which served as the starting point for antiquarian picturing. Again, the case of the Dead Sea Scrolls is exemplary.

102  Visualizing Time It is important to bear in mind that entry into ever smaller domains to gain information is a reversible condition and that, as we have seen in the various examples, a return to eye contact is required for the resulting data to be scrutinized and published. Visual documentation cannot be entirely divorced from their referents because, if it were, it would lose its documentary status. It is clear, however, that the final form of visual correspondence varies depending upon the degree to which aesthetic elements are highlighted. That enigmatic comment by Hans Suess, cited earlier in this chapter, about how we can succumb to the “beauty of the smooth line” (1992, 15) alerts us to the moment when the eye asserts itself and also accords with my own personal view that a certain visual elegance is often to be found whether what is being read is an instrumentally inscribed trace or a conventionally naturalistic picture produced from the coordination of hand and eye. It has been said that the rapid-fire introduction of “sense-extending machines” since the mid-twentieth century represented a new era of techno-constituted expression of time’s passage (Clarke 1973, 9, 10; Ihde 1998, 163), but it has also been claimed that archaeology has always been “a prisoner to archaic schemas” (Olivier 2011, 33). The first assertion is well founded, but the second one is false; there is little evidence of any imprisoning. Indeed, the chapters ahead are replete with examples of mutual intentions and instances where antiquity is refracted through individual sensibility even when instrumentally induced visual order appears dominant. Romantically inclined antiquarians deemed perception to be a matter of personal inventive effort by means of which the mind could dissolve and reformulate the visible world (Stafford 1984, 449). There is sound reason to think that this creativity and reformulation is not limited only to the probing of time but continues on as a documentary journey toward multiple destinations propelled by instrumental techniques and pictorial ways of seeing working in combination.

Notes 1 Now, as in antiquity, the easternmost lands of England seem to be within touching distance of continental Europe. Being so low-lying there was easy access from the sea and the environment offered great advantages to those who might wish to stay and leave their mark. The most celebrated example of such a mark is the discovery of an interred Anglo-Saxon ship at Sutton Hoo in 1938 (excavated in 1939). 2 Preliminary excavations in this region of eastern England predate these finds, but it was the discovery of the collapsed roundhouse that triggered sustained media attention. Discoveries at both Must Farm, and at a comparable site at nearby Flag Fen, provide a sense of marshland life in this region during Saxon times. Descriptions of the various excavations can be found online at mustfarm.com, together with pictures of work in progress and artifacts discovered. 3 Investigations of the site are ongoing but have at the time of writing entered the postexcavation phase. All moveable material has been extracted and continues to be recorded and studied prior to some selected objects becoming museum exhibits. The actual excavation has now been sealed with immoveable structures while remains too fragile to relocate have been left in situ in the waterlogged ground where their condition will be monitored instrumentally (Malim, Morgan, and Panter 2015, 30).

Visualizing Time 103 4 This theory was formulated by Christian Thomsen as an outcome of his reorganization, in the early nineteenth century, of the collection of prehistoric remains belonging to the Royal Commission of Danish Ancient Monuments in Copenhagen. Peter RowleyConwy (2007) provides a comprehensive history of the three-age system and its acceptance (see also Thomas 2004, 35). 5 The principles of uniformitarianism, as conceived by James Hutton (1726–1797) and Charles Lyell (1797–1875), were highly influential in setting concepts of earth formation and morphology within a temporal frame of slow but profound change. The comprehension that great change can accrue given sufficient time had become widely accepted by the mid-nineteenth century and the publication of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (1859) further emphasized connections between time and outcome. 6 This aphorism was coined by L. P. Hartley in 1953 and appears on the first page of his novel The Go-Between. David Lowenthal later used it as the title of a book. (Lowenthal 1985). 7 In using the word “revolutionary,” Renfrew perhaps had in mind the features of scientific paradigm shift as identified by Thomas Kuhn in the 1960s (see Kuhn 1996). Radiocarbon dating emerged at a time of relative dissatisfaction with established procedures and a degree of doubt sufficient to make alternative methods of puzzle-solving ripe for consideration. 8 This discrepancy is not explained by Libby, or by Johnson. Johnson suggests, however, that it may have been due to errors in the date assigned to the sample by archaeologists and curators, or by some problem with the sample itself (see Johnson 1952, 102). 9 Radiocarbon remains the pre-eminent journal in the field. While date-listing still features, it also publishes articles on testing methodologies and refinements and occasional celebratory reviews of radiocarbon’s scientific history (see, for example, Radiocarbon 2009 51:1). 10 Anomalies could be caused by changes in receipts of cosmic radiation, variations over time in concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and its availability for cosmic-ray interception in the upper atmosphere, differing rates of atmospheric mixing, and changing rates of sequestration in terrestrial and oceanic sinks (see Stuiver and Suess 1966). Libby’s favored explanation for the variability was cosmic-ray variability (Libby 1981b, 1), but it could also be reflective not only of chemistry and physics but also of culture and the contribution of human activity to C14 fluxes. By the end of the 1960s, for example, the testing of nuclear weapons had effectively doubled the amount of the isotope in the atmosphere since fission products react with nitrogen in the same way as fluxes induced by cosmic radiation (Currie 2004, 192). 11 By extending back in time through successive samples of living and dead wood, it was possible to construct a running sequence. Research in the later 1960s focused on data from Californian Bristlecone pines, a species capable of living for several thousands of years. 12 Israel became an independent state in 1948.

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104  Visualizing Time Arnold, Kenneth. 2000. “Between Explanation and Inspiration.” In Strange and Charmed. Science and the Contemporary Visual Arts, edited by Siân Ede, 68–83. London: Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. Barnes, Trevor J. 2008. “Geography’s Underworld: The Military-industrial Complex, Mathematical Modeling and the Quantitative Revolution.” Geoforum 39, 3–16. Bayliss, Alex. 2009. “Rolling out Revolution: Using Radiocarbon Dating in Archaeology.” Radiocarbon 51:1, 123–147. Becker, Bernd. 1992. “The History of Dendrochronology and Radiocarbon Calibration.” In Radiocarbon after Four Decades: An Interdisciplinary Perspective, edited by Ervin Taylor, Austin Long and Renee S. Kra, 34–49. New York: Springer-Verlag. Benoit, P., J., T. Milik, and R. de Vaux. 1961 Discoveries in the Judaean Desert, II, 93–95. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Berger, C. Rainier, Leon Knopoff and W. G. McMillan. 1981. “Willard Frank Libby.” In Talking to People. Willard F. Libby Collected Papers volume 7, edited by Leona Marshall Libby, 1–4. Los Angeles: University of California at Los Angeles. Bermingham, Ann. 1987. Landscape and Ideology. The English Rustic Tradition. London: Thames and Hudson. Beukens, Roelff P. 1992. “Radiocarbon Accelerator Mass Spectrometry.” In Radiocarbon after Four Decades: An Interdisciplinary Perspective, edited by Ervin Taylor, Austin Long and Renee S. Kra, 230–239. New York: Springer-Verlag. Bonani, Georges, Susan Ivy, Willy Wölfli, Magen Broshi, Israel Carmi and John Strugnell. 1992. “Radiocarbon Dating of Fourteen Dead Sea Scrolls.” Radiocarbon 34:3, 843–849. Borges, Jorge Luis. 1973 (1964). “New Refutation of Time.” In Other Inquisitions 1937–1952, translated by Ruth L. C. Simms, 171–187. London: Souvenir Press. Browne, Thomas. 1984 [1658]. “Hyrdriotaphia. Urne-Buriall or, A Discourse on the Sepulchral Urnes lately found in Norfolk.” In Sir Thomas Browne. The Major Works, edited by Contstantinos Apostolos.Patrides, 263–315. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Calinescu, Matei. 1996. Five Faces of Modernity. Durham: Duke University Press. Clarke, David. 1973. “Archaeology: The Loss of Innocence.” Antiquity 47, 6–18. Clifford, James. 1994. “Collecting Ourselves.” In Interpreting Objects and Collections, edited by Susan M. Pearce, 258–268. London: Routledge. Currie, Lloyd A. 2004. “The Remarkable Metrological History of Radiocarbon Dating (II).” Journal of Research of the National Institute of Standards and Technology 109:2, 185–217. Damon, P. E., D. J. Donahue, B. H. Gore, A. L. Hatheway, A. J. T. Jull, T. W. Linick and P. J. Sercel. 1989. “Radiocarbon Dating of the Shroud of Turin.” Nature 337: 611–615. de Buffon, Comt. 1769. Histoire Naturelle, Générale et Particulière. Paris: L’imprimerie Royale. de Perthes, Jacques Boucher de Crèveccoeur. 1847. Antiquités Celtiques et Antédiluviennes. 3 vols. Paris: Treuttel and Wurtz. de Vries, Hessel. 1958. “Variation in the Concentration of Radiocarbon with Time and Location on Earth.” Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen. Series B 61, 935–938. Edwards, Elizabeth. 2012. The Camera as Historian. Amateur Photographers and the Historical Imagination, 1885–1918. Durham: Duke University Press. Elkins, James. 1999. The Domain of Images. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Evans, John. 1897. The Ancient Stone Implements, Weapons and Ornaments of Great Britain. 2nd edition, 2 vols. London: Longmans, Green. Evans, John. 1860. “On the Occurrence of Flint Implements in Undisturbed Beds of Gravel, Sand, and Clay.” Archaeologia 38, 280–307.

Visualizing Time 105 Gardner, Andrew. 2001. “The Times of Archaeology and Archaeologies of Time.” Papers from the Institute of Archaeology 12, 35–47. London: University College Institute of Archaeology. Gonzáles-Ruibal, Alfredo. 2013. “Reclaiming Archaeology.” In Reclaiming Archaeology. Beyond the Tropes of Modernity, edited by Alfredo González-Ruibal, 1–29. Abingdon: Routledge. Gove, Harry E. 1999. From Hiroshima to the Iceman. The Development and Applications of Accelerator Mass Spectrometry. Bristol: Institute of Physics Publishing. Hartley, L. P. 1953. The Go-Between. London: Hamish Hamilton. Hedges, R. E. M. 1990 “A Review of the Application of AMS-14C Dating to Archaeology.” Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section B: Beam Interactions with Materials and Atoms 52:3–4, 428–432. Holtorf, Cornelius. 2013. “On Pastness: A Reconstruction of Materiality in Archaeological Object Authenticity.” Anthropological Quarterly 86:2, 427–444. Humphreys, Paul. 2004. Extending Ourselves. Computational Science, Empiricism and Scientific Method. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ihde, Don. 1998. Expanding Hermeneutics. Visualism in Science. Evanton: Northwestern University Press. Jay, Martin. 1994. Downcast Eyes. The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-Century French Thought. Berkeley: University of California Press. Johnson, Frederick. 1952. “The Significance of the Dates for Archaeology and Geology.” In Radiocarbon Dating, by Willard F. Libby. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 97–111. Jolles, Frank. 1999. “German Romantic Chronology.” In Time and Archaeology, edited by Tim Murray, 49–60. London: Routledge. Klee, Paul. 1972 (1953). Pedagogical Sketchbook. New York: Praeger. Knapton, Sarah. 2016. ““Peterborough Pompeii” Emerges from the Fens.” The Daily Telegraph, January 12th 13. Korff, Serge A. 1941.. Krauss, Rosalind E. 1993. The Optical Unconscious. Cambridge: MIT Press. Kuhn, Thomas S. 1996. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Latour, Bruno. 1990. “Drawing things Together.” In Representation in Scientific Practice, edited by Michael Lynch and Steve Woolgar. Cambridge: MIT Press, 9–69. Latour, Bruno. 1986. “Visualization and Cognition. Thinking With Eyes and Hands.” Knowledge and Societies. Studies in the Sociology of the Past and Present 6: 1–40. Leask, Nigel. 2004. Curiosity and the Aesthetics of Travel Writing, 1770–1840. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Leon Levy Foundation Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library. [email protected] Jerusalem: Israeli Antiquities Authority. Last accessed June 2023. Libby, Willard F. 1952. Radiocarbon Dating. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Libby, Willard F. 1981a. “Radiocarbon Dating.” In Talking to People. Willard F. Libby Collected Papers volume 7, edited by Leona Marshall Libby. Los Angeles: University of California at Los Angeles. Libby, Willard F. 1981b. “Radiocarbon Dating and Calibration with Tree Rings and Lake Sediments.” In Talking to People. Willard F. Libby Collected Papers volume 7, edited by Leona Marshall Libby. Los Angeles: University of California at Los Angeles. Libby, Willard F. 1981c. “The Prospects for Plowshare.” In Talking to People. Willard F. Libby Collected Papers volume 7, edited by Leona Marshall Libby. Los Angeles: University of California at Los Angeles.

106  Visualizing Time Libby, Willard. F., E. C. Anderson and James R. Arnold. 1949. “Age Determination by Radiocarbon Content: World-Wide Assay of Natural Radiocarbon.” Science 109:2827, 227–228. Lowenthal, David. 1985. The Past is a Foreign Country. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lucas, Gavin. 2005. The Archaeology of Time. London: Routledge. Lynch, Michael. 1988. “The Externalized Retina. Selection and Mathematization in the Visual Documentation of Objects in the Life Sciences.” Human Studies 11, 201–234. Lynch, Michael and Steve Woolgar, eds. 1990. Representation in Scientific Practice. Cambridge: MIT Press. Malim, Tim, David Morgan and Ian Panter. 2015. “Suspended Preservation: Particular Preservation Conditions within the Must Farm and Flag Fen Bronze Age Landscape.” Quaternary International 368, 19–30. McGlade, James. 1999. “The Times of History: Archaeology, Narrative and Non-Linear Causality.” In Time and Archaeology, edited by Tim Murray, 139–163. London: Routledge. Moholy-Nagy, Sibyl. 1972 (1953). “Introduction and Translation.” In Paul Klee. Pedagogical Sketchbook, 7–12. New York: Praeger. Olivier, Laurent. 2011. The Dark Abyss of Time. Archaeology and Memory, translated by Arthur Greenspan. Lanham: AltaMira Press. Prestwich, Joseph. 1857. The Ground Beneath us, its Geological Changes and Phases. Three Lectures. London: John Van Voorst. Price, T. Douglas and Gary M. Feinman. 2001. “The Archaeology of the Future.” In Archaeology at the Millennium. A Sourcebook, edited by Gary M. Feinman and T. Douglas Price, 475–495. New York: Kluwer Academic. Renfrew, Colin. 1973. Before Civilization. The Radiocarbon Revolution and Prehistoric Europe. London: Jonathan Cape. Renfrew, Colin. 2009. “Archaeology. Introduction.” Radiocarbon 51:1, 121–122. Rowley-Conwy, Peter. 2007. From Genesis to Prehistory. The Archaeological Three-Age System and its Contested Reception in Denmark, Britain and Ireland. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Schlanger, Nathan. 2010. “Series in Progress: Antiquities of Nature, Numismatics and Stone Implements in the Emergence of Prehistoric Archaeology.” History of Science 48, 343–369. Schnapp, Alain, ed. 2013. World Antiquarianism. Comparative Perspectives. Los Angeles: Getty Institute. Shanks, Michael and Christopher Tilley. 1992. Re-Constructing Archaeology. 2nd edition. London: Routledge. Stafford, Barbara Maria. 1984. Voyage into Substance. Art, Science, Nature, and the Illustrated Travel Account, 1760–1840. Cambridge: MIT Press. Stewart, Susan. 1984. On Longing. Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Stuiver, Minze and Gordon W. Pearson. 1992, “Calibration of the Radiocarbon Time Scale, 2500–5000 BC.” In Radiocarbon after Four Decades. An Interdisciplinary Perspective, edited by Ervin Taylor, Austin Long and Renee S. Kra, 19–33. New York: Springer. Stuiver, Minze and Hans E. Suess. 1966. “On the Relationship between Radiocarbon Dates and True Sample Ages.” Radiocarbon 8, 534–540.

Visualizing Time 107 Suess, Hans E. 1992. “The Early Radiocarbon Years.” In Radiocarbon after Four Decades. An Interdisciplinary Perspective, edited by Ervin Taylor, Austin Long and Renee S. Kra, 11–16. New York: Springer. Szatabińska, Pauline. 2015. “The Performative Turn in the Visual Arts. The Art of Paul Klee.” Art Inquiry. Recherches sur les Arts 17, 129–144. Taylor, R. E. 1992. “New World Archaeology. Preface.” In Radiocarbon after Four Decades. An Interdisciplinary Perspective, edited by Ervin Taylor, Austin Long and Renee S. Kra, 353–354. New York: Springer. Taylor, R. E. 2000. “The Contribution of Radiocarbon Dating to New World Archaeology.” Radiocarbon 42:1, 1–21. Thomas, Julian. 2004. Archaeology and Modernity. London: Routledge. Trigger, Bruce G. 2008. A History of Archaeological Thought. 2nd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Trigger, Bruce G. 2008. A History of Archaeological Thought. 2nd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wallace, Doreen. 1943. East Anglia. London: Batsford. Weiner, Stephen. 2010. Microarchaeology. Beyond the Visible Record. New York: Cambridge University Press. Witmore, Christopher L. 2006. “Vision, Media, Noise and the Percolation of Time. Symmetrical Approaches to the Mediation of the Material World.” Journal of Material Culture 11:3, 267–292. Witmore, Christopher L. 2013. “Which Archaeology? A Question of Chronopolitics.” In Reclaiming Archaeology. Beyond the Tropes of Modernity, edited by Alfredo GonzálezRuibal, 130–144. London: Routledge.

4

Pictorial Meanings Avebury and Knossos

Like many others, I am in the habit of pocketing found objects during visits to unfamiliar places. These items are capable of transporting my thoughts back to locales and landscapes that seemed special in some way, such as a tuft of sheep fleece and a sprig of heather brought back from a sketching trip to the Orkney Islands of Scotland where clusters of Neolithic standing stones are conspicuous against the low hills, or nodules of lava gathered during a journey from Pompeii up to the summit of Vesuvius in Italy. Each item in this odd miscellany is able to serve as a material marker of that ineffable something that impresses certain places permanently in one’s memory: their genius loci, and its relationship with visual impressions. Although the term genius loci has an antiquated ring to it, it is relevant to contemporary archaeology for few archaeologists would dispute that the sense that is made of the past reflects sensibilities exercised in the present moment. The role played by such sensibilities is central to this chapter’s investigations. Highly selective visual interpretations, such as those described in the pages ahead, can shape the way sites of antiquity are studied and documented. They can, in addition, drive physical interventions at those sites, overlaying the motivations of the present on the material remains of the past. Yannis Hamilakis, for example, describes how “the spirit of a place may be held to reside in a landscape” and can be carried forward to become constitutive of memory (2013, 168; see also Tilley 1994, 26; Trigger 2008, 472, 474). Though less used today, references to genius loci or “spirit of place” are common in nineteenth-century literature. In a popular Victorian-era travelog, for example, Vernon Lee defines it as “the substance of our heart and mind” and claims that its visible embodiment lies in place itself (1898, 5).1 Henry James, in an 1873 essay reflecting on the monuments of Rome that most enchanted him, speaks of “the classic or historic spots where you have dreamt of pervading the shy genius loci into confidential utterances” (2016, 150). His use of the word “shy” is apt, for references to genius loci tend to characterize it is as being easily disturbed and contingent on things being left unchanged. The line taken in this chapter is to treat places as verbs rather than nouns and explores how the experience of ancient places influences thought, observation and documentary agendas in the present, shaping the range of presumptions, expectations and interventions that are brought to bear. This perspective allows us to DOI: 10.4324/9781032646893-5

Pictorial Meanings 109 connect archaeology’s enduring concern with materiality to visually expressed sensibilities of the observer. By contrast with the previous chapter’s exploration of time and chronology as ordering concepts which eventually involved an excursion into nanoscale domains, this chapter returns us to the world of capacious, lived space. Such a concept of place is highly flexible, connoting occupancy and action, and also histories of action. When issues of memory and subjectivity are added to the mix, the idea of place becomes replete with symbolism and the projection of affect on the part of observers. The long history of visualization has enabled archaeologists to foster, if not manufacture wholesale, what art historian Simon Schama calls the “ferocious enchantment” with territorial mystique (1995, 15). The visual evidence I will present takes us into two sharply differing locales at specific moments in history: rural England and the eastern Mediterranean island of Crete. Both locales have served as screens upon which the archaeological imaginations of specific individuals have been projected. With the English setting, a key presence among the dramatis personae is the antiquarian William Stukeley (1687–1765) and the visual narrative he constructed around the subject of stone circles, particularly those at Avebury in southern England which date to the fourth millennium BCE. The second presence is Alexander Keiller (1889–1955) who became involved with the site of Avebury some 200 years after Stukeley and whose sensibilities he channeled in his restoration of the site. With the eastern Mediterranean setting of Crete, the key individual is Arthur Evans (1851–1941) whose longterm restoration of the Bronze Age site of Knossos was fired by his belief that it was once the seat of ancient Cretan royalty and was ancestral to later Greek culture. It was a site which he believed lent credence to ancient mythological accounts. The activities of all three of these individuals involved projects of visual reinvention in pictorial form. With these three we also find intriguing points of biographical symmetry despite their activities being widely separated in time. Stukeley and Evans, in particular, were amply credentialed and able to influence documentary agendas, while Keiller sought similar influence via professional connections and by virtue of his considerable personal wealth. Stukeley was appointed first secretary of the Society of Antiquaries of London upon its foundation in London in 1717, while Evans was keeper of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, England, from 1884 to 1908. We find in Evans’ writings a specific acknowledgment of Stukeley’s work from two centuries earlier, work which he declared ingenious (1895, 12). Evans would later become a focus of criticism for the reconstruction he and his team undertook at Knossos in the early twentieth century and for his over-reliance on fragmentary evidence to tell a carefully crafted and self-validating archaeological story (see Papadopoulos 2005; Shaw 2004). Keiller’s reinstatement of the Avebury site has not escaped criticism either, including from one of his principal associates, the archaeologist Stuart Piggott, who faulted him for his erroneous conclusions regarding the origin and function of stone circles (see Piggott 1935, 1985 [1950]). Both Stukeley and Evans sought to give form to an imagined antiquity characterized by a benign and aesthetically informed spirituality engendered by a priestly class (see Bintliff 1984, 36) and sought to project through primarily visual means the original form of ancient places that deeply impressed them on a subjective

110  Pictorial Meanings level. As I will show, recent investigations of both Avebury and Knossos have built upon rather than overwritten the pictorial frames of reference established by Evans and Stukeley and which, in the case of Avebury, were reiterated by Keiller. Before proceeding, there is an important housekeeping matter to be dealt with. The principal players discussed in this chapter intermingled seeing things with the tendency for seeing things and for that reason the visual record they bequeathed has been much critiqued. However, I believe this makes their work more, rather than less interesting. It is in the nature of the enchanted eye to be at the service of imagination and it is important to accept both the factual and the fanciful as being facets of a single optic. Interestingly, mistaken interpretation and misalignments of visual meaning can be, and often are, more revealing of the power of visual engagement than more guarded investigations. In exploring how meaning has been projected onto the remains of Avebury and Knossos and how that meaning derives from genius loci and the admixture of fact and fantasy. The chapter divides into roughly two halves: the first half having to do with standing stones still holding firm on the landscape, while the second half deals with a fallen city that had collapsed in upon itself. Standing Stones and Antiquarian Sightlines While stone circles are to be found in France and in Scandinavia, they are most numerous in Britain where they range from a modest 15 meters up to100 meters in diameter and may be accompanied by encircling earthworks in the form of an embankment or ditch to create a “henge” (see Burl 1976, 20; Ucko et al. 1991, 247). Many more once existed than are found today, and some once-remarkable sites have been lost as the land on which they stood has been reworked since the late seventeenth century.2 Whether encountered as single monoliths or as part of a larger circular assemblage, these features are visually insistent but also enigmatic, and reaching a precise determination of original function is problematic. Circularity has long been associated, rightly or wrongly, with astronomical or cosmological frames of references, while other lines of inquiry have sought to explain their position relative to shared “sight-lines” between monuments or natural features or as conspicuous territorial markers (Bradley 1993, 2; see also Fleming 2005).3 On the other hand, perhaps it was predominantly social factors which prompted their creation, using collective muscle-power as a means of fostering community cohesion or giving material form to notions of status (Piggott 1937, 35; Tilley 2004, 33). The lack of evidence of occupation within encircling arrays while displaying thoughtful placement of the stones suggests some form of ritual function. What we can say for sure is that, in many cases, the shear mass of the stones far exceeds the demands of practicality and willfully violates the principle of least effort in terms of resource conservation and economy of labor (see Trigger 1990, 122–124). But perhaps that was the point. Historically, uncertainties as to age and function have incubated fertile strands of imaginative interpretation. In their investigations of megalithic monuments and associated rituals, Aubrey Burl and Neil Mortimer claim that “[s]tone circles have

Pictorial Meanings 111 no thought of deception. Their ravaged remains … are just that: ruined rings of inorganic stone without life, tongues or telepathy” (2005, 3). But, in fact, the richly visual documentation of these monuments has imbued them with life and tongues a-plenty. It has been asserted by Stuart Piggott that the great stone circles have been the “victims of romanticism” (1937, 35), but a more reasonable judgment is that our awareness of them and the interest that has cohered around them was made possible by romanticism in conjunction with antiquarian sensibilities (see Thompson 2003, 67). Moreover, based on the visual record, the status of such monuments has proved durable, suggesting that genius loci, once read into an ancient site and cemented by the rhetoric of picturing, is hard to dislodge, no matter how erroneous the interpretation of a site’s meaning or function. A range of explanations flowed in to fill the gaps in knowledge that existed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries regarding standing megaliths, particular those comprising a circle. The work of William Stukeley was a principal gap-filler. Being an antiquarian, medical doctor and later clergyman, he was a biographical composite, but that was not atypical for his time. Unusually, though, in the vast body of literature dealing with various aspects of his investigations, Stukeley has the rare distinction of emerging as both exemplar of early field observation and as a crackpot. In order to resolve long-standing questions of his observational veracity, heroic efforts have been made by various commentators to separate the objective elements in his work from those that are creative or suggestive of representational sleights of hand (see Ucko et al. 1991). Stukeley is often considered an intellectual product of the Enlightenment and his year of birth (1687) fits with this notion, but his projection of scopic enchantment and archaeological imagination indicates a strain of cultural sense-making that is counter-rational. Many of his documentary visual records are notable for their precision and, from the perspective of the present day, seem to bear the marks of a surveying eye informed by metrics and sense of spatial order, but we also find in those same visual records not the intimation of modern fieldwork and the end of an earlier tradition as some have claimed (see for example Peterson 2003, 399) but the projection of imaginatively informed valuejudgments with all their foibles and delights. These apparently contrasting qualities have much troubled later commentators. As arguably the most noted scholar of Stukeley’s record, Stuart Piggott has been assiduous in celebrating aspects of his work that meshed with modern conceptions of documentary probity while tending to dismiss what remained as puzzling curiosities (1935, 1985 [1950]). Nonetheless, he is often left bemused, declaring that, in Stukeley, “[w]e find an odd and incongruous mixture.” “Who,” he asks, “shall apportion praise or blame to so contradictory a character?” Well, Piggott does, for one, by concluding that “Stukeley’s archaeological career, though pursued with enormous vigour, is the melancholy record of the decay of a once-sound mind” (1935, 31–32). Though less abrasive in their comments, the archaeological duo of Jacquetta and Christopher Hawkes describe Stukeley as “one of the most fanatical of romantics” (1958, 160). Yes, he was, but we should not treat this as a character flaw. Stukeley’s observations and interpretations were motivated and informed by a profound religiosity, but his intellectual life cannot be understood as a division between rationality

112  Pictorial Meanings and objectivity before his ordination, and a speculative and fantastical period afterward (Hutton 2009, 102). His excursions into counter-rationalism sprang from an accepted set of eighteenth-century aesthetic and intellectual permissions and expectations. That he should have displayed simultaneously both a romantic sensibility and an embrace of empiricism says less about the person than it does about the intellectual tenor of his times and the nebulous distinctions that then applied between modes of thought and visual interpretation. Stukeley offered answers to some persistent questions. He reasoned that the megalithic monuments of Britain, including Stonehenge (Stukeley 1740), were first erected not by the Romans or the Danes as some surmised, but by a pre-Christian priestly caste known as Druids. After all, did not the configuration of stone circles resemble the groves of trees that the Druids were said to have held sacred and within which they practiced their rites? Stukeley was far from alone in attributing agency to Druidism but he was arguably the most insistent commentator of his time in assigning to this sect the origins of stone circles as well as burial mounds (see Trigger 2008, 111).4 His thinking on the matter was intertwined with his own personal convictions about the nature of religious faith, for if Druidism foretold the later rise of Christianity, then linking its emergence to visible monuments on the landscape had the dual benefits of aligning those mysterious structures with established faith and countering the arguments of religious skeptics. William Stukeley’s Avebury The stone circles of Avebury dominated Stukeley’s imagination. He visited on several occasions between 1718 and 1725 and, whilst there, his eighteenth-century visual sympathies melded with those of another antiquarian who had made his own observations in September 1663: the antiquary John Aubrey (1626–1697). Prior visual documentation had also been carried out by Walter Charleton (1619–1707), a contemporary of Aubrey (see Ucko et al. 1991, 3–4). For Aubrey, and later for Stukeley, initial visual appeal would have derived from the striking geometry of the site, comprising a roughly circular henge of approximately 425 meters in diameter inside which stood a number of sarsen (hardened sandstone) megaliths. In addition, there were two concentric inner circles also demarcated by standing stones. His enthusiasm fired by Aubrey, Stukeley set out to make his own drawings, map the site’s principal features and inspect individual sarsens. By 1722 he began to apply an overall theoretical schema to the layout of the site taking into account those megaliths which had fallen or been displaced, and others which no longer existed. He eventually reported on his observations and interpretations in Abury, a Temple of the British Druids (1743). Given the title of the work it would be surprising indeed if Druidical references were not central to Stukeley’s schema. We find in his Abury, a claim that a “staff of cubits” was “the measuring rod of these ancient philosophers … when they laid out the ground plots of these temples.” He converts these “Druid cubits” into feet and inches and tells us that forty-one and a half inches equals two cubits (1743, 19–20). According to Stukeley, it was through judicious layout of the ground-plan that “the

Pictorial Meanings 113 founders wisely contrived that a spectator should have an advantageous prospect as he approached within view” (18). Site surveying had been a teachable skill in Britain since the beginning of the seventeenth century and Aubrey is said to have used a plane table in his mapping of Avebury (Piggott 1978, 40) and Stukeley may have also have done so. What is more certain, based on the published evidence, is Stukeley’s attraction to views from above. In favoring this perspective he was possibly emulating the scopic stance of John Aubrey, for in Aubrey’s, Monumenta Britannica, we find 15 drawings and sketches of stone circles as viewed from above, and only five that show them at ground-level (see Aubrey 1980 [1665–1693]). The frontispiece to Abury, reproduced in Figure 4.1, forms the visual introduction to Stukeley’s observations. Bearing the caption “a ground-plot of the British Temple,” this image was a product, Stukeley tells us, of “innumerable mensurations” (1743, 19). It is a commonly reproduced illustration in modern discussions of Stukeley’s work and one reason for that is the untroubled version it seems to present an observational stance familiar to us today, underpinned by the scopic imperatives of the surveying gaze. As we shall see, however, such a gaze formed, for Stukeley, a portal into the creative re-imagining of Avebury.

Figure 4.1  Frontispiece (Stukeley 1743).

114  Pictorial Meanings Stukeley explicitly states that his observations were conceived and executed as pictures and should be read as such (1742, 18). Introducing Abury he extols the value of such picturing and expresses his hope that the written commentary “shall be very much helped by the engraven designs, which at one view give the reader a better notion of the things, than the most elaborate descriptions” (2). He later enthuses that “[t]he whole temple of Abury may be considered as a picture, and it really is so” (18). Using the vernacular of the time, he refers to the various views at the site as “prospects” showing principal monuments or points of visual interest in their topographic setting. Abury is dominated by such prospects, numbering 32 in total. It is with these prospects or lines-of-sight that we can most clearly identify Stukeley’s affection for views constructed from a mix of fact and fancy, imbued with a sense of mystical antiquity. In some of these pictorial constructions he juxtaposes the megaliths with distant horizons, as if laying out rights-of-way for our eyes to follow. A particularly remarkable example is found in Table 8 in Abury (shown in Figure 4.2). This engraved print focuses on the circular configuration at the center of the megalithic complex but also traces the course of the Beckhampton and West Kennet avenues to which, according to Stukeley’s observations, it was connected. The course of the West Kennet branch (extending toward Overton Hill) was probably indicated in Stukeley’s day by marker stones, and Stukeley’s inclusion of Beckhampton Avenue in the illustration (at lower left in Figure 4.2 extending toward Beckhampton) suggests that its course was similarly evident. However, as later discussed, it was not until the late twentieth century and the results of geophysical surveys that its actual existence was determined.

Figure 4.2  Avebury and Vicinity (Stukeley 1743).

Pictorial Meanings 115 In examining this picture, we are ushered into an imaginative landscape in which Stukeley distinguishes between various types of “temples:” those “with the form of a snake annext, as that of Avbury” are “serpentine temples or Dracontia” (1743, 9). Some pages later he comments on the avenues and declares that To give the reader at once a foreknowledge of this great and wonderful work, and the magnificence of the plan upon which it is built. I have design’d it iconographically. At length I discovered the mystery of it, properly speaking, which was, that the whole figure represented a snake transmitted thro’ a circle. This is an (sic) hieroglyphic or symbol of highest note and antiquity. (18) It is reasonable to believe that it was this “iconographic” illustration created by Stukeley that prompted Stuart Piggott, two centuries on, to condemn “that Hydra-headed, tortuous monster of perverse ingenuity that is so much in evidence in [Stukeley’s] published accounts” (1935, 25). As we shall later see, however, one particular structure included in the landscape view (the remains of Beckhampton Avenue) would eventually take on an afterlife that would challenge Piggott’s opinion. Interestingly, it was an afterlife that would straddle the scopic divide between enchanted picturing and the post-enchanted world of modern archaeology. Alexander Keiller’s Avebury Even as Aubrey and Stukeley were recording the site, some of the stones of Avebury were being broken up, often with the use of fire, while others were incorporated into buildings or buried where they fell. This depredation continued into the early twentieth century by which time Avebury had also fallen victim to the infillings of modernity, including encroachment by building development. But Avebury eventually became a site of push-back against dereliction and decay as attempts were made to reinstate the original form of the site. This would come to involve forms of restoration where physical intervention intersected with wishful thinking and the subjectivities of enchanted visuality. The net result was a re-invention of the site to conform to the long-ago gaze of William Stukeley. The central player in this re-invention was Alexander Keiller (1889–1955) who, as a boy, had a precocious interest in the megalithic remains (mainly of recumbent stones) nearby the family estate in Aberdeenshire, Scotland (see Murray 1999, 13; Piggott 1965). As the term “family estate” connotes, Keiller was born into wealth; specifically wealth built from the business of candy and marmalade production to which he became heir at an early age. So, to the extent that Keiller had both the time and resources to devote to his later archaeological musings, we can rightly say that the restoration of Avebury had its beginnings around the breakfast tables of Britain. By the early 1920s Keiller had turned his eye away from Scotland and toward ancient remains on the chalklands of southern England. He eventually purchased part of a Neolithic complex at Windmill Hill, near Avebury and, in 1935, acquired the site of Avebury itself. Extravagant indulgence? Absolutely, and we can justifiably

116  Pictorial Meanings say that he brought a possessive instinct to bear which others less well-heeled could not hope to emulate. His purchases were explainable not just by the robust health of his bank account but also by a compulsion to own a physical piece of the past and imprint it with his own visual sensibilities. This, of course, was hardly a novel impulse; it was a reiteration of antiquarian compulsions to collect and display, but in Keiller’s case these acquisitive impulses took an unusual form that was simultaneously visual and performative. Keiller’s archaeological investigations and his status as an investigator rested more on his links to established professionals in the field rather than his own researches. He was, for example, an early advocate of aerial surveying as a means of compiling photographic archives of ancient sites and to this end worked in collaboration with Osbert Crawford, archaeology officer with the British Ordnance Survey (see Crawford and Keiller 1928).5 Keiller collaborated with Stuart Piggott on the Windmill Hill and Avebury investigations beginning in 1933 and Piggott later described him as a person of “boundless energy, and invariably possessed of some splendid (if unrealizable) dream” (1965, xix). The impulse for acquisition and ownership and his pursuit of unrealizable dreams, as noted by Piggott, placed Keiller squarely within a cohort of investigators for whom antiquity was a muse to be pursued by predominantly aesthetic means. Particularly diagnostic are the strong elements of enchanted visuality in his reports stemming from the spirit of place he projected onto the Avebury megaliths. It was a muse conjured from the observations and interpretations of Stukeley with which he was intimately familiar, both through the pages of Abury and also through another of his purchases: a cache of papers from Stukeley’s family estate that came onto the market in 1924 (see Piggott 1965, xx). He was, perhaps, also familiar with the words of the antiquarian John Aubrey from his investigations of Avebury centuries earlier: “I was inclin’d by my Genius from my childhood to the love of antiquities: and my Fate dropt me in a countrey most suitable for such enquiries” (quoted in Long 1858, 3). For Keiller, it was the layout of the site itself which constituted a picture, just as it had for Stukeley but, unlike Stukeley, he carried forward his sense of pictorial order into material intervention. He and his associates intensively excavated and visually reconfigured the site between 1934 and 1939, a physical reshaping that, if not exactly conforming to Stukeley’s representations, certainly worked in sympathy with them. For example, Stukeley claimed to have identified an obelisk at Avebury in 1740 and this prompted Keiller to have his workers install Egyptian-themed concrete obelisks along the course of the West Kennet Avenue and position an additional single obelisk at the spot where Stukeley claimed to have seen one almost 200 years before (Wickstead and Barber 2015, 206). These archaeological implants are still to be seen today. In his report on the 1937–1938 fieldwork season, published in the journal Antiquity in 1939, Keiller describes the task of matching up fallen stones with the holes they once occupied; a necessary first step toward securing footings with cement. He also describes a system he devised of making plaster casts of fractured surfaces to reconstruct as much of the broken stonework as possible. This project of reinstatement required devising a form of inventory and in this he consulted the observations of both Stukeley and Aubrey and keyed them to a numerical schema.

Pictorial Meanings 117 He notes, for example, that “Stukeley … shows nos. 1, 12 and 14 as fallen, the remains of the first of which were found to have been destroyed by fire. Nine stones, but whether standing or fallen is not indicated, appear on Aubrey’s plan” (Keiller 1939, 230). Included in Keiller’s report (facing page 224) is a site plan (shown in Figure 4.3) by means of which he transcribes his inventory into visual

Figure 4.3  Avebury reconstruction plan (Keiller 1939). Image reproduced by permission.

118  Pictorial Meanings form, recording the locations of “stones standing,” “stones fallen,” “stone holes excavated” and “ground covered by buildings.” He was assiduous in applying this form of archaeological triage and in 1937 he even dug a trench to find evidence of a single stone reported by Stukeley as lying in the inner part of the outer circle of the site (Ucko et al. 1991, 246). This striving to pin down the status of every megalith has been described by contemporary investigators of Avebury, Mark Gillings and Joshua Pollard, as a reaction to the “inherent slipperiness and contingency of many of the interpretations tendered” (2015, 119), but that characterization overlooks the scale of Keiller’s visual re-imagining of the site which was essentially panoramic, as it was for Stukeley. It is notable in this regard how Keiller’s site plan (Figure 4.3) conforms to the frontispiece to Abury (Figure 4.1). In his striving for pictorial reiteration Keiller must have been aware of “contingency” and “inherent slipperiness” given his association with Piggott who was a dyedin-the-wool skeptic when it came to romanticist allusions and a stout advocate of expert-led procedures and interpretations. For Keiller, any concerns would have been outweighed by the satisfaction gained from reassembling a pictorial prospect that Stukeley once looked upon. Keiller’s report on the 1937–1938 campaign is diagnostic of the genius loci he projected onto the site and which he sought to enhance through visual reinstatement of once-upright stones, but there was another form of reinstatement he felt was needed to protect that spirit of place. So it was that he began his report, not with progress made on re-establishing the stone circles, but by lamenting the general condition of the site and the abuse that had occurred over time. He complains of the refuse which “contributed ungenerously towards rendering the once majestic site of Avebury that it is has been for centuries, the outstanding archaeological disgrace of Britain” (1939, 223). On his map of the site there is a centrally located cross-hatched area labeled “ground covered by buildings etc.” and, turning to specifics later in the report, he notes that “two derelict cottages…were demolished, together with attendant outbuildings” (230) as part of a general push toward freeing the monument and its various lines-of-sight from encroachment. Final landscaping included the laying of new turf and removing “obstructing hedges” (229). The similarities between Keiller’s restorations and the aesthetics of landscape gardening are hard to miss and in this regard his sympathies reflect a sense of visual order from a much earlier time. In the mid-eighteenth century there was a strong desire when it came to the design of landscaped parks and gardens to control of viewers’ aesthetic experiences. This often justified the removal of extraneous features considered visually insulting (Haynes 2013, 169). Keiller took photographs of the site as it underwent reinstatement, including a pair of before-and-after pictures (Figures 4.4 and 4.5). These are reproduced in Keiller (1965) as Plate 30 (a and b) labeled, respectively, as “Avebury: South-west Sector, 1937” and “Avebury: South-west Sector Restored.” However, in Keiller’s original description of the landscaping (Plate 3 in volume 50 of Antiquity, 1939) only the restored view is included. The photograph was reproduced as a full-page image. We can clearly see, as Keiller intended, the extent of the work undertaken to re-erect fallen stones and restore the sightlines of the southwestern sector and

Pictorial Meanings 119

Figure 4.4 Photograph of Avebury site before landscaping (Keiller 1937). Image reproduced courtesy of Alexander Keiller Museum, Avebury Papers Project.

various buildings on the site appear to have been demolished. Since 1939, both the before-and-after photographs of the Avebury site became widely circulated. One of them appeared as Plate 100 in Grahame Clark’s Prehistoric England (1940) captioned as the “southwestern sector after treatment,” as if it were a sickly patient

Figure 4.5 Photograph of Avebury site after landscaping (Keiller 1939). Image reproduced courtesy of Alexander Keiller Museum, Avebury Papers Project.

120  Pictorial Meanings returned to health. He reports that “its rehabilitation has happily been taken in hand … and the stones of Avebury are beginning to regain their former dignity” (107). In 1958, image “b” from the original pair of before-and-after shots was published in Prehistoric Britain (1958), a book produced for the popular market by Jacquetta and Christopher Hawkes. As emphasized above, Keiller was concerned with a certain aesthetic harmony that reiterated the particular notion of picturing to which Stukeley referred and the informational value he saw in the “advantageous prospect” (1743, 18). Gillings and Pollard note insightfully that intensive investigations in modern archaeology usually exchange physical substance for archive, but at Avebury in the 1930s, the reverse was the case (2015, 131), and it is on this point of transmutation between materiality and visual record that Keiller’s sympathies eventually exceeded those of Stukeley. Stukeley was an intensely engaged observer and his work hinged on visual impressions but, as far as is known, he never undertook any physical rearrangement to support his speculations. Ironically, given the extent to which Keiller’s reinstatement of Avebury aligned with Stukeley’s highly subjective scopic sensibilities, the changes he introduced struck some commentators at the time as disquietingly modernist. Spirit of place was, for many, contingent on things being left alone. The artist Paul Nash was one who saw the subsequent restorations as a violation and he describes how, before the project was undertaken, “the great stones were in their wild state, so to speak … Very soon afterwards the big work of reinstating the circles and avenues began, so that to a great extent that primal magic of the stones’ appearance was lost” (1951, 11). Avebury Post-Keiller

Alexander Keiller, in seeking to reinstate the appearances which had presented themselves to Stukeley, was in pursuit of antiquity as muse, but he would have been aware that the meaning he projected onto the site was not the only one and that dispassionate adherence to accuracy was also important. Prompted by Stuart Piggott, he would have been mindful of how nebulous ideas competed with the objective of dispassionate probing. It is unsurprising, then, that the association with Piggott was less than harmonious at times. Piggott notes Keiller’s pursuit of “accuracy for the sake of accuracy, however irrelevant” and much later went on to lament how, for him, “the theodolite, the slide-rule, and the drawing board could be made instruments of discipline as well as precision; the tools of penitence for one by nature no lover of ordered restraint” (1965, xxii). Instruments of discipline would become increasingly important as Keiller’s involvement ended in the later 1930s and the tasks of investigation at Avebury eventually passed to others in a context of intensified theory-building that ranged from the study of astronomical alignments as possible rationales for the construction of stone circles to the development of so-called visibility studies where landscape features were considered linked by line-of-sight (see Lake and Woodman 2003, 689–690). Some avenues of investigation introduced data-driven statistical reasoning, perhaps

Pictorial Meanings 121 best exemplified by the obstruse mathematics presented by Alexander Thom in the early 1960s to support his theory that the ancient builders of stone circles were capable of designing complex geometric shapes and had an erudite comprehension of the movement of the sun and the stars (see Burl 1976, 17; Heath 2007; Thom 1967).6 In line with broader methodological and epistemological shifts in archaeology, post-Keiller investigations at Avebury emphasized precision measurement, objective verification and increased reliance on instrumentally assisted visual detection. Ground-surface methods of sensing constituted the majority of the investigations but there was also some aerial photography carried out in 1950 which revealed traces of Neolithic ditches near the Avebury site (Whittle 1997, 53–54). In all cases, the importance of the site demanded that only non-destructive and minimally invasive forms of sensing and geophysical survey be used (David et al. 2008, 3; Ucko et al. 1991, 158). A specific example of suitable instrumentally aided means of detection was earth resistivity, used for the first time at Avebury in the mid-1970s. Such imaging derives from the differing signatures obtained from electrical probes used to measure the conductivity of the shallow soil environment. Relatively dense material such as stone presents a tonal pattern that contrasts with less dense surroundings.7 These new interventions seem far removed from the spade work introduced by Alexander Keiller, and yet we cannot say they wholly displaced the role of romanticized, muse-pursuing pictorial priorities. Neither did they sever historical points of reference to William Stukeley. Indeed, the earlier endeavors of Keiller served as a lynchpin between the observations of Aubrey and Stukeley and the intensified theory-building of later times and we can say in general that the investigations since the mid-twentieth century were able to accommodate not only analytical lines of inquiry but also approaches in which pictorial interpretation played an important role. There have been two phases of modern investigation of the Avebury site, one dating to the later 1980s, and another that followed two decades later. In both instances published accounts describe technological information-gathering consistent with archaeology’s shift in visual focus from surface to subsurface observation. The first phase is discussed by Ucko et al. (1991) and describes results obtained from instrumental surveys of selected areas, Fully aware of the visual precedents set by Aubrey and Stukeley, they situate their investigations relative to those early antiquarian records, but, in doing so, also state their allegiance to objective verification: We make no pretence that such up-to-date technology is not affected by the interpretive preconceptions of the operator/investigator. We do, however, maintain that such objective techniques should be of value in discriminating between some of the varying, and often conflicting, evidence and claims of over 300 years of enquiry. (1991, 160) One such objective technique was earth-resistivity surveying. Damp soil or fill, which yields a relatively lower resistance reading, will vary in visibility by season.

122  Pictorial Meanings Stone, by contrast, always has relatively high resistance and is a strong reflector of the energy directed toward it. Contrasting densities can present a distinctive tonal pattern, essentially a picture of subsurface conditions, and this may be suggestive of buried archaeological remains. Of course, modes of visual and textural rhetoric had changed utterly over the course of centuries. Stukeley was enchanted by the prospects that Avebury delivered to the eye and saw his documentary task as one where “[t]he subject of antiquities must be drawn out with such strong lines of verisimilitude and represented in so lively colours, that the reader sees them as in their first ages” (1743, 2). Compare such comments to the rhetoric prompted by the visualizing technology deployed at Avebury in the early twenty-first century: [a] 60 x 60m square was established over the area and surveyed…with a Geoscan RM15 instrument using the Twin Probe configuration, mobile probe spacings of 0.5 and 1.0m and with readings taken at 0.5m intervals …. Negative anomalies were re-located with great clarity and, in addition, a positive anomaly (weakly present in the 1989 data) was located. (David et al. 2008, 64) However, the case of Avebury suggests that visual impressions from past times have a way of converging with contemporary ways of seeing. The results from investigations in the later 1990s showed that the advantageous prospect that so impressed Stukeley and fueled his imaginings was not wholly fanciful. Earlier in this chapter I described Table 8 in Stukeley’s Abury and how it showed the serpentine course of two avenues across the landscape and their connection with the site of the stone circles (see Figure 4.2). As earlier noted, Stukeley attached considerable significance to these features with the West Kennet Avenue supposedly forming the neck of a snake.8 Remains of that particular avenue were still evident on the landscape in the 1930s and were excavated in 1934 by Keiller and Piggott to date its construction, map its course and take the opportunity to re-erect fallen stones (Keiller and Piggott 1936, 418). Beckhampton Avenue, on the other hand, had long been thought either lost or to have existed only as a figment of Stukeley’s imagination. The specific visual evidence for the existence of that causeway turns on geophysical subsurface anomalies as earlier described. Figure 4.6 shows the pattern of traces from an area where the course of Beckhampton Avenue may once have been marked out by standing stones in the same manner as the course of the West Kennet Avenue. The significance of these anomalies was laid out in a 1990 technical report by Andrew David (in David et al. 2008, 62–70): [T]ogether, these four anomalies fell at the corners of an approximate rectangle of sides … roughly similar to equivalent distances between stone spacings on the West Kennet Avenue … [A] pair of previously overlooked weak high-resistance anomalies present in the 1989 data to the southwest might perhaps represent a further pair of stone positions. Happily, excavation of

Pictorial Meanings 123

Figure 4.6 Avebury geophysical anomalies (David et al. 2008). Historic England Archive. Image reproduced by permission.

all six anomalies subsequently confirmed that they did indeed represent a sequence of former uprights, setting the scene for returning the Beckhampton Avenue to credibility. (64) That three of the anomalies are low-resistance rather than yielding the high resistivity typical of stone is presumably because they are the depressions (post holes, in effect) formerly occupied by stone markers but now occupied by fill or damp soil. The instrumental readings did not constitute proof positive of the causeway’s existence, but rather were indicators of likelihood, the veracity of which needed to be confirmed by excavation. By considering the earthresistivity data and the results of subsequent shallow excavation in combination, the existence of Beckhampton Avenue was confirmed and subsequently revealed to be, at 1.3 kilometers in length, one of Europe’s great megalithic constructions (David et al. 2008, 3). Geophysical prospecting at the Avebury site married antiquarian observations from centuries past with the technical visual probing of current times. Subsurface surveying in the 1980s succeeded in uniting eighteenth-century speculation and imagination with twentieth-century observations as a combination of earth-resistivity measurements and shallow excavation returned the remains of Beckhampton Avenue to visibility. But fully instrumental forms of imaging insert distance between the observer and the observed and this suggests it would be inhospitable to notions of genius loci. What might Stukeley, were he to return to the present day, have to say on the matter? We can readily envisage him dismounting from his horse to record the correct position of a fallen megalith. He would be quick to note how his own unaided eye showed the direction of Beckhampton

124  Pictorial Meanings Avenue but where, he might ask, in the traces produced by geophysical surveys are the “prospects” that made Avebury so like a picture? Alert to visual evidence, it is reasonable to think that Stukeley would consider them as supplements to his own above-ground powers of observation to be added to the other visual features that constituted spirit of place. He might also conclude that Avebury, as an ancient monument, had more than one visual presence; there were also prospects hidden underground. Such visual reports from the subsurface, enfolded as they with modernist understandings and presumptions about visual presence, are also a morality tale, the plot of which turns on the tension between imagination and technological confirmation. Which tells the real story? It will serve us well to keep this morality tale in mind as the geographic focus of this chapter shifts from the chalklands of southern England to the eastern Mediterranean island of Crete. Fallen Cities and the Muse of Ancient Origins Despite the geographic shift, the second half of this chapter examines a case cognate to that of Avebury. The individual of central interest is Arthur Evans (1851– 1941), the son of John Evans whose documentary illustration of prehistoric flints was described in Chapter 2. As we shall see, the scopic practices of Evans the antiquary and numismatist would have a profound influence on the ways of seeing of Evans archaeologist. Arthur Evans’ studies of Bronze Age archaeology over the course of half a century indelibly stamped studies of early Mediterranean culture and his influence remains dominant (Papadopoulos 2005, 90; Shaw 2004, 34), but he also deployed the pictorial rhetoric we associate with antiquarianism in its most romanticized form. In a memoir by his half-sister Joan Evans he is described as “a romantic who needed escape from the present,” implying that he sought a kind of envelopment in the spirit of place that he himself projected. She goes on to say that Knossos on the Mediterranean island of Crete “provided him with enigmas to solve and oracles to interpret, and opened a new world for eye and mind to dwell in” (1943, 350). His mode of escapist visuality elided the conditions of modernity in significant ways and characterizing Evans as a late romantic fits with his own occasional turns of phrase. A speech he gave in 1906, for example, was titled “The Magic of the Spade” and his notes for that illustrated talk refer to excavation as being capable of calling up a forgotten world (cited in Brown 1994, 35). Visual creativity was integral to his sense-making about antiquity and came to dictate the direction of his investigations. Was Evans in the business of spinning archaeological fairy tales as some have suggested (see Giere 2009, 56)? As we know from past discussions, it was certainly well within the compass of the romantic antiquarian mindset to do so, but Evans’ scholarship and the substance of his published investigations over the course of decades suggests deeper-seated and more complex motives. Evans was one of a cohort of scholars whose lives bridged the nineteenthcentury Victorian era of burgeoning industrialization and the cultural reordering and troubled modernity of the century to come. In terms of ancient cultures, the

Pictorial Meanings 125 dominant archaeological perspective of that earlier period was diffusionism: the spread of culture across space and time with a presumed east-to-west vector (MacEnroe 1995, 3–7). Within this schema, the numerous islands of the Mediterranean region were often conceptualized as geographic stepping-stones between the Near East and southern Europe, with culture cohering at different points along the way as diffusion solidified into settlement. By the time Evans became active in the field of archaeology, the accepted model of Greek antiquity held that the classical culture that would eventually evolve centered on Mycenae, on the Greek mainland, but Evans came increasingly to question this presumption of Mycenaean origins and inclined more to the view that there had been an island-based precursor in the Aegean region. In the course of his tenure as keeper at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford he acquired and studied some artifacts provided courtesy of the Egyptologist Flinders Petrie, and also some intricately carved sealstones bearing pictographic and linear symbols. The examples that were offered to him might, he thought, have originated in Crete, given the island’s long tradition of producing such objects for use as tamper-proof stamps, identity markers or even magic-working charms (see Myres 1941, 14). While traveling in Greece, Evans acquired additional examples inscribed with symbols which he thought might be part of an ancient writing system and were suggestive, he believed, of a cultural source beyond mainland Greece. By 1912 Evans was citing Crete as the geographic source of all subsequent Geek culture (see Papadopoulos 2005, 97) but his movement toward complete ownership of that viewpoint was incremental, sometimes hesitant, and underpinned by material evidence that was often suggestive rather than compelling. Confirmation of the formative role of Cretan culture could best be found, he concluded, in iconographic inscriptions and fragments of ancient text. To happen across such evidence at market stalls during foreign travels was one thing, but discovering them in situ was quite another. As we shall see, the course of that campaign of discovery would come to involve far more than just sealstones, but before describing that involvement, there are other important contextual elements to consider. Evans was extremely near-sighted and was rarely without his cane to help guide his steps. In her memoir, Joan Evans describes him as a reluctant wearer of glasses. Without them, he could see small things held a few inches from his eyes in extraordinary detail, while everything else was a vague blur. John Linton Myres, an associate of Evans and author of his obituary for the British Academy, notes that “unusual short-sight did not debar him from keen enjoyment of country-life and natural beauty, nor night-blindness and acute sufferings at sea from persistent travel ….” In a treatise on gemstones Evans himself remarked that “Nature … had given me microscopic vision” (1938, 1). Joan Evans was of the opinion that the details he saw with such exactitude screened out the distractions of the outside world and had greater significance for him than they had for others (1943, 264) and this squares with the opinion of Myres that he “made wonderful use” of his “nearsightedness,” including the identification of important but barely visible markings on ancient coins (1941, 3; 13).

126  Pictorial Meanings Putting the remarks of John Myres, Joan Evans and Arthur Evans himself together strongly suggests that peculiarities of eyesight influenced his archaeological observations and lead him to focus on diminutive but telling fragments that could be held in the hand and presented to the eye for close-up appraisal. It has been plausibly argued by historian Nathan Schlanger that Evans’ focus on diminutive features was also influenced by his father’s interest in coins; an interest that marked out the elder Evans as a particular kind of antiquary: a numismatist of archaeological remains (2010, 351). John Evans, as described in Chapter 2, gave shape to prehistoric archaeology through illustration and description of ancient worked flints and Arthur was recruited to assist in the task when, as a boy, he accompanied his father to the Somme valley in 1859 (Bahn 1996, 146). It is reasonable to think that astigmatism and numismatic antiquarianism worked in combination to shape the ideation that Evans applied to the site of Knossos. A seal’s impress is, after all, akin to that of a struck coin, the fine detail of which could provide clues to its origin. Evans was a practitioner of the diminutive and the microscale, not the massive and grandiose. But it is also evident from the restorations that Evans and his team undertook at Knossos that his attention to the minute and the fragmentary was capable of being scaled up by visual imagination into full-blown material expression. The result has been critiqued as “one of the most eccentric archaeological reconstructions ever to achieve scholarly acceptance” (Giere 2009, 5). Walking around the site of Knossos today, with its imaginatively reconstructed palatial quarters, it is easy to gain the mistaken impression that Evans’ motivating vision was grandiose in scale from the outset, but I will endeavor to show in the discussions ahead that the reverse is true; the roots of his visual compulsions lie in the miniature, whether in the form of seals and sealstones, flakes of fresco, inscribed clay tablets preserved by fire, or the marks left long ago by masons’ chisels. Arthur Evans’ Knossos Evans knew that Knossos was a promising site since it had already undergone preliminarily investigation in the late 1870s (Harrington 1999, 34) and, as he made additional trips to Crete to gather additional artifacts, he negotiated purchase of the site. After much bargaining, he eventually acquired the land in 1900, an act of possession that marked the beginning of a highly intimate relationship with the place. His excavations began that same year and he was hopeful they would confirm his speculations regarding an ancestral Cretan civilization. The romanticized eye he brought to bear was evident from the beginning. There being no evidence of defensive walls, he presumed that those who built and inhabited Knossos between 1700 and 1400 BCE were of a peaceable nature and, upon the armature of this presumption, he assembled an imaginary picture of benign royal occupants of the palace chambers. However, in his early fieldwork reports, Evans remained unsure about where Cretan culture stood in relation to that of Mycenae and whether, and to what degree, it really was ancestral to the later mainland Greek civilization. This uncertainty comes across in his writing whenever he

Pictorial Meanings 127 uses the conjunction “Myceanean Knossian” (see for example Evans 1901, 94–96). Arguably, it was the accounts of the German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann from the preceding century that helped solidify Evans’ thoughts regarding Cretan antiquity. Schliemann (1822–1890) was strongly propelled by personal imagination in his excavations during the 1870s at Mycenae and Tyrins in the Peloponnese and, most famously, at the supposed site of ancient Troy (see Giere 2009, 18). His belief that Greek myths had foundations in historical fact was remarkably congruent with Evans’ line of wishful thinking, and to support his own version of royal tenure Evans dubbed a particular complex of structures at Knossos the “Palace of Minos,” after the mythical King Minos. By the early 1920s he was fully convinced that Knossos was, in antiquity, the architectural, ceremonial and administrative locus of a hitherto unknown “Minoan” civilization. By so concluding, he essentially invented the Minoans (Papadopoulos 2005, 97). The choices Evans made when assembling his team at Knossos were key to operationalizing and giving visual form to his ambitions for the site. The range of skills he recruited also sheds light on his documentary priorities he lists these roles in a publication from 1921. Duncan Mackenzie, as supervising field archaeologist, compiled the day books and Evans’ own accounts would draw heavily on these records (Papadopoulos 2005, 99). Theodore Fyfe, an architect, photographed and sketched details of the site at various stages and was praised by Evans for his “brilliant work” in illustrating the decorative designs of the wall paintings. He reports that “the elaborate architectural plans of Mr Fyfe … have been the result of years of expert labour” (1921, vi–vii; see also Evans 1900, 5). He also credits the work of Christian Doll and, in referring to the restored “anatomy” of a building, suggests that it was returned to some form of corporeal wholeness by the visual interventions of both Fyfe and Doll (1921, vi–vii). A further addition to the team in 1910 was Noel Heaton with the responsibility to carry out chemical tests on fresco fragments and who, in the process, found that gypsum surfaces extended well beyond the walls to include stairwells and floors (Brown 1994, 75). Other associates of note were the pair of Swiss artists (father and son) who, as later discussed, came to play a central role in restoring pictorial wholeness to the remains. Their talents, Evans gushed, involved a “fine artistic sense of archaeological intuition … constantly at my disposal” (1921, vi). Not mentioned in Evans’ (1921) listing of team members, since he was not appointed until 1922, was the architect and artist Piet de Jong. As I later describe, drawings by de Jong were a major contribution to the visualization of Knossos. They purport to show the site as it might once have appeared as an occupied space in antiquity and these drawings, as pictorial statements, mesh seamlessly with Evans’ imaginings. Sensitivity to spirit of place is often fired by initial impressions, so Evans’ early reporting of ongoing investigations is of particular interest. He published accounts in the Annual of the British School of Athens, a society of which he was a founder member (see specifically Evans 1900, 1901). It is his retrospective accounts, however, that provide the best evidence of his scopic enthusiasms. Evans’ The Palace of Minos (hereafter PM) runs to four volumes and is the key publication in this respect, reflecting settled judgment on Evans’ part about which visual evidence was

128  Pictorial Meanings most significant. The first volume appeared in 1921, two decades after he began work at the site and the work comprises, as we are told by way of introduction, “542 figures in the text, plans, tables, coloured and supplementary plates.” Across the several volumes of the work, the last being published in 1936, there are also numerous documentary photographs of archaeological artifacts together with styles of visual portraiture that not only depict, but flatter, those finds Evans thought exemplary. The narrative is basically chronological in form, recording the moments when the most important discoveries were first made, but PM has been described as a strange work for its picturesque discursions and digressions that run against the grain of depersonalized, empirical, data-driven reports of professionalized archaeology (MacEnroe 1995, 13–14). However, by placing the work where it belongs, within a class of romanticized antiquarian description, it is not at all strange and its apparent oddities and flights of fancy are explained and reconciled. One would expect a site of such antiquity as Knossos to be in a state of utter ruin. Evans himself refers to “earthquake shocks … [as]a constant scourge of the site” and “the vicissitudes of damp and heat [that could] rot woodwork in an incredibly short space of time” (1927, 260, 262). The structure that Evans referred to as a palace was constructed in the second millennium BCE from an erodible local limestone known as poros, sections of which were once supported by wooden columns. In the final days of its occupation the site suffered a major fire that should have been its coup de grace, but much had in fact survived, and in the first of his reports for the British School at Athens (1900) photographs show substantial areas of pavement and gypsum wall still firmly in place (see for example 1900, 13). In this early appraisal, Evans reports that the most striking feature of the remains, where they had not suffered from natural denudation, was the very small traces of later disturbance. Over parts of the site not even a ploughshare can have passed … The wall paintings had been preserved as in no other remains of ancient Greece. The tablets of sun-baked clay, of all the objects found most perishable, were themselves in many cases unbroken. (1900, 68–69) According to Evans’ accounts, the issue of stratigraphy was of relatively minor importance at Knossos because so much lay close to the surface.9 Rather like a ship stranded on a headland, the spaces “below decks” were surprisingly intact and it is perhaps for this reason that, in discussing the physical work undertaken onsite, Evans’ favored terms were “reconstitution” and “reconstruction” rather than excavation. This was flat-pack archaeology; using reassembly to restore past form rather than digging down. The reconstruction process began at the scale of the fragment before being amplified to the size of habitable space composed of intersecting chambers. Thus, the early promise of the site lay not in the idea of grandiose rebuilding schemes but in the discovery of small but telling finds to which his nearsightedness alerted him; it was as if the site itself was dictating the course of action. By way of example, he notes that in “fashioning supports for collapsed masonry”

Pictorial Meanings 129 there was a “desire to avoid the introduction of any incongruous elements [but an] exact model of both for shape and the colouring was happily at hand in the small fresco of the temple facade” (1901, 2). Initial work at the site revealed nothing that could be classed as stylistically archaic in the sense of being unaccomplished. Indeed, the reverse was true as evidence mounted of artistic and architectural creativity in the form of fragmentary wall paintings (frescos) and stucco (modeled plaster). As we would expect, seals and their impressions feature prominently among the small finds of interest to Evans, especially where they perform a puzzle-solving role. For example, Figure 9 in his report from 1901 (reproduced in Figure 4.7) shows in enlarged form a Goddess flanked by lions; to the left is the outline of a shrine and to the right stands a male votary. The seal was of special interest to him as it “completes and amplifies the evidence I had collected of a series of Mycenaean seal types referring to a Goddess” (29). We should note that Evans, at this time, was still referencing Mycenaean types rather than an indigenous Knossian iconography. In addition to seals and sealstones, some 3,000 fragments of clay tablets were recovered during early excavations, many bearing traces of ancient script. Evans grouped these into two classes: Linear A and Linear B. In addition, remains of hieroglyphic inscriptions were discovered. In the 1901 account he describes these as “clay documents” (1901, 18) and presents photographs of several examples. In the archaeological museum in Heraklion today one can see a selection of these documents and clear signs of the fire that baked the clay and serendipitously preserved

Figure 4.7  Goddess sealstone from Knossos (Evans 1901).

130  Pictorial Meanings them. Evans believed the tablet fragments might provide evidence of a written language native to Crete and predating that of mainland Greece, thus validating his long-held hypothesis. But in this he was mistaken, for when decipherment was eventually accomplished by Michael Ventris and colleagues in the early 1950s, Linear B was shown to be a form of Greek (see Ventris 1950; also Dow 1954; Melena and Palaima 2001, 316–317). Although only partially deciphered, Linear A has revealed no evidence to the contrary. Attention to small detail is, of course, vital for all archaeological fieldwork, but Evans’ attentiveness bordered on compulsion and extended to the repeated sifting of waste heaps. The earth … went through a triple examination, namely, when it was first dug, when it was riddled, and finally the rejected heaps. Owing to this minute examination many small objects of great value were recovered which would otherwise have been irretrievably lost. (1900, 69) Clay tablets and seals comprise one of two groups of small finds onto which Evans’ observational and documentary interests were focused. The other group consisted of fragmented fresco and stucco sculpture. Although both groups are given prominent visual play in the volumes of PM and in his various reports, it is his interest in fresco and stucco fragments that is most diagnostic in explaining his particular strain of imaginative visuality. Indeed, we can reasonably say that such remains were, for him, the most important material contribution to the site’s genius loci; whatever memory of place was inscribed by the ancient Knossians it was, for him, expressed most clearly in those painted and carved surfaces. In his 1901 account, Evans takes the reader on a walk-through of the various areas of the palace complex and stopping at certain points to explain the more important finds and present speculations about them. He describes surviving areas of fresco found in the “Corridor of the Processions,” a structure which was, he surmised, part of the state entrance to the palace. There, “[f]rescoes were still adhering to the lower part of the wall, while others had collapsed in a calcined heap.” Though partly disintegrated, it did not prevent him from reassembling in his mind’s eye a scene of “princely, priestly or official personages” (13). Certain pieces packed particular visual force, such as two large sections of relatively intact fresco which were found in April 1900 in an area of the South Propylaeum. They depicted a figure, minus legs, carrying a funnel-shaped cup. It was the first life-size image of an ancient Knossian to be discovered and in an entry in his notebook for April 5, 1900, Evans exclaims: A great day. Early in the morning the gradual surface uncovering of the Corridor … revealed two large pieces of Mycenaean fresco … the figure was life-size [and] far and away the most remarkable human figure of the Mycenaean Age that has yet come to light. (Quoted in J. Evans 1943, 331)

Pictorial Meanings 131 In his initial description of the figure, latter dubbed “the Cupbearer,” Evans noted that “[t]he legs below the thighs were wanting, but in this case the head and face were preserved, affording the first real portraiture of a Mycenaean man” (1900, 15). A color plate in PM volume 2 (1928; Plate 12 opposite page 706), accompanied by a drawing (page 707), shows the fresco reconstituted from fragments and incorporated into a processional scene. The outline drawing from PM is shown in Figure 4.8 and we can see that a relatively small area of the figure derived from actual fragments, indicating that a substantial degree of guesswork was involved in the reconstitution, but the discovery of the Cupbearer fed seamlessly into his imaginative repopulating of Knossos. The same can be said of other fresco finds to which his eye was drawn, including one depicting female toreadors (1901, 94–96), and another, dubbed “Ladies in Blue,” which was, in Evans’ view “the most exquisite examples of the Knossian limner’s art” (1921, 547). The find that most impressed him, however, was a low-relief fresco which included parts of a figure, the head of which might once have borne a crown. He named this figure the “Priest-King” and his description of it in PM volume 2 suggests that, when it was originally found over two decades earlier, it was the single most decisive artifact in confirming Evans’ belief in the existence of an ancient King Minos: We have here, surely, the representative on Earth of the Minoan Mother Goddess – himself her adopted son – a Priest-king after the order of Minos. In other words, we recognize Minos himself in one of his mortal incarnations. (1928, 778–779) Despite the missing head, Evans was impressed by the “extraordinarily advanced style of modelling.” He speculated that recovered sections of leg, thigh and torso might once have formed part of several figures (1901, 16), but subsequent restoration combined this melange of anatomical fragments into a single individual (see Shaw 2004; Sherratt 2000). For the Priest-King fresco a vibrant visual afterlife awaited in which reassembly, replication and copying would play a conspicuous role, beginning with Evans’ report in The Antiquaries Journal (1927) that “the painted relief of the Priest-king with a crown of lily crests and peacocks’ plumes that had fallen from the wall of a corridor leading up to the Central Court from the South has been replaced by a stucco facsimile in the place that it had occupied” (266). For Evans himself, the image of the Priest-king was a powerful agent for reintroducing the ancients into an early twentieth-century Knossos. He chose it as the frontispiece to PM Volume 2, Parts 1 and 2 (shown in Figure 4.9) and included two photographs of it: on page 797, and as Plate 24. The frontispiece image has subsequently been carried forward and reproduced and copied in a range of different forms from postcards to scholarly articles, and this continuing prominence of the restored Priest-king fresco, often in full color, has made the striding figure an iconic signifier of ancient Knossos despite being essentially a modern creation (Mitsopoulou 2018).10 Meanwhile, the copy to which Evans refers (1927, 266) was eventually moved to a museum and the first facsimile was replaced by another.

132  Pictorial Meanings

Figure 4.8  Cupbearer fresco reconstruction (Evans 1928).

Pictorial Meanings 133

Figure 4.9  Frontispiece (Evans 1928).

134  Pictorial Meanings In all of the above descriptions of fresco and stucco fragments the connecting link is restoration to visual wholeness and this returns us to the work of the Gilliérons and also to the architectural studies of Piet de Jong. Let us turn first to the Gilliérons. Their restorations involved embedding fragments within specially constructed plaster surfaces and then filling-in missing sections with new painting, including the restoring of courtly scenes thought to have been pictured in the original panels. As noted earlier in relation to the Cupbearer fresco, guesswork and speculation played an essential role given the degree of fracturing and erasure that had occurred over time. Nonetheless, Evans pronounced their work “admirable” (1935, 5) for they not only restored some form of pictorial wholeness but applied an aesthetic complexion that conformed to Evans’ own imagination. For example, Gilliéron fils (pére and fils were both named Emile) was able to reconstruct three panels discovered in 1923 northwest of the Palace complex which featured scenes that Evans thought redolent of Egyptian motifs, including birds, monkeys and papyrus fronds. While the Gilliérons sought to reinstate a pictorial whole based on figures and interior scenes, other images produced at Evans’ behest by Piet de Jong focused on recreating a coherent architectural mise-en-scène of ancient Knossos. Evans was first introduced to de Jong’s work by Alan Wace, an investigator of Mycenaean archaeological sites who had commissioned de Jong in the early 1920s to draw Mycenaean grave circles as they were thought to have looked in antiquity (see Wace 1923). The drawings de Jong went on to produce at Knossos were inflected by a nineteenth-century sense of pictorial order with the added illusion of antiquity presented as diorama in which the viewer feels able to enter and become part of the scene.11 In Volume 4, Part 1 of PM, for example, we find a drawing of a section of the main palace (shown in Figure 4.10) complete with ancient Knossians to animate and enliven the scene. Volume 4, Part 2 of PM, as originally published, includes a fold-out view of a partly reconstructed “temple-tomb” at Knossos together with two plan views which Evans also judged to be indicative of de Jong’s “fine work” (1935, xxiv). For Evans, the archaeology of the palace complex was inhabited by idealized presences (MacEnroe 1995, 12–13) and the visual rhetoric of pictorial scenes such as those produced by the Gilliérons and by Piet de Jong blended imagination and documentary impressions in order to convert those idealized presences into works of art. This conversion, based on highly fragmentary remains, presented ancient Knossos as a highly cultured and orderly civilization (Castleden, 1990, 36). Arguably it is this artistic repopulation and reanimation of Knossos that most worries critics and moves them to claim that PM is a “strange” piece of work. Certainly, Evans’ ideational re-peopling of the palace, stimulated by the work of pictorial illusion undertaken by his team, could take uncanny turns, such as when, during an attack of fever, Evans claims he looked down an ancient staircase and sensed people moving in the space below. As he recounts in PM volume three: [T]he whole place seemed to awake awhile to life and movement. Such was the force of the illusion that the Priest-King with his plumed lily crown, great

Pictorial Meanings 135

Figure 4.10  Imagined palace scene (Evans 1936).

ladies, tightly girdled, flounced and corseted, long-stoled priests, and, after them, a retinue of elegant but sinewy youths … passed and repassed on the flights below. (1930, 301)

136  Pictorial Meanings This passage by Evans has been much cited (see for example Bintliff 1984, 35; Brown 1994, 35). Being so florid, it sits uncomfortably with any modern style of scholarly narrative. It is more akin to the writing and visual expression one might find in antiquarian accounts from the mid-nineteenth century (see Chapter 2, this volume) and, indeed, such visual and textual inclusions are best understood as fitting this earlier genre rather than the documentary tropes of later times. Knossos Post-Evans

There has been a wealth of scholarly debate and criticism concerning Evans’ fanciful restorations of the Knossos ruins and the frescoes and painted relief sculptures that once adorned its walls (see for example Giere 2009; Papadopoulos 2005; Shaw 2004). Evans himself claimed that devotees of the picturesque might be shocked by his reconstructions (1927, 258), but the reverse would more likely be the case: free-standing half-columns interspersed with truncated section of flooring artfully distressed and incorporating carefully constructed observational conceits would, to those steeped in the tenets of picturesque observation, be every bit as appealing as the artful ruination of follies was to the eighteenth and early nineteenth-century eye. Walking through the site of Knossos today, dodging the crowds on the walkways, Georg Simmel’s essay on ruins comes to mind, particularly his claim that “a pillar crumbled – say, halfway down – can generate a maximum of charm” (1959 [1919], 265–266). But, if popular acclaim rather than scholarly acceptance is any measure, then the reconstruction of Knossos has been a resounding success. According to David Lowenthal, [t]he wider public … unabashedly enjoys reconstructions. Few have the taste or training to appreciate the past simply from fragmentary remains. Heaps of fallen stones convey nothing to the ordinary spectator; only reconstruction makes them coherent and evocative. (1985, 280) He concludes that Evans’ reconstruction may have been wrong, “but boatloads of tourists have been grateful to him” (282; see Figure 4.11).12 Perhaps tourists find it relatively easy to slip into the enchanted reverie that Evans often felt for Knossos but for the community of archaeologists, the issue of visual reception has very different dimensions. In the first volume of PM (1921) Evans refers to the “Atlantean task of raising and supporting the sunken elements of the upper stories” (1921, vi–vii), but over time the ferrocement used to reinstate and reinforce collapsed structures has now cracked and fragmented in places, exposing lattices of rusting ironwork.13 Such disintegration has ushered in a new phase in the archaeology of Knossos; the reconstruction of a reconstruction. It is a phase that presents difficult choices for conservators, but Evans might well be sympathetic to the project. Whether he would be similarly sympathetic to de-romanticized lines of recent research and conservation that downplay and tend to overwrite the ineffable qualities of genius loci is open to question. Much of that post-Evans research

Pictorial Meanings 137

Figure 4.11  Tourists at Knossos (2021). Image reproduced courtesy of Cheryl Gowar.

does not seek to do this and in fact serves to perpetuate the spirit of place that so impressed him. In introducing Evans’ visual approach to Knossos, I claimed that his visual scale of interest began with the diminutive before expanding outward to the architecturally monumental. By the time of his last visit, in 1935, the building-out of the site had reached its maximum extent. From that point, curiously, the scale of investigation began to revert back to the diminutive and fragmentary from which it first emerged. The transition was gradual, however. Post-1945 excavations were undertaken by the British School at Athens, uncovering fragmentary remains not just from Knossos but ranging across virtually the entire Cretan chronology. Much of the published record centered on pottery fragments, but also included articles on seals and sealstones. Meanwhile, interest in the reassembly of remains into a pictorial whole was still evident and would remain so into the later half of the twentieth century as agendas of pictorial reconstitution operated alongside more forensic modes of observation. The work of the archaeologist and illustrator Mark Cameron is an early example of the shifting role of pictorialism as it aligned with more analytical approaches. His work has been praised for combining scholarly analysis and artistic vision (Hood 2005, 45; Morgan 2005, 24). An example of his work, published in 1968 (Figure 4.12) depicts fresco fragments of a monkey (drawings A to E) and the neck of a bird (F), all hand-drawn for publication in gray-scale. Therefore, the issue of

138  Pictorial Meanings

Figure 4.12  Drawing of fresco fragments (Cameron 1968). Image reproduced by permission.

color which for Evans, was so central to the visual character of Knossos, is here reduced to a “general colour key” where the various colors are each assigned a linear or stippled signature as a form of visual shorthand. This, plus the jigsaw-like sections of fresco and the inclusion of dotted lines to indicate missing pieces, gives

Pictorial Meanings 139 an overall impression of pictorialism combining with data. Later work by Cameron extends this form of visual combination, including experimental replication of fresco scenes under controlled studio conditions, melding iconographic elements with instrumentalized visual investigation. An article published by Cameron, Jones and Philippakis in 1977 is indicative of the direction such melding would take. It describes how fragments were examined with the aid of a stereomagnifier and pigments analyzed by means of a spectrometer (1977, 139–140). The technology captures the spectral signatures of pigments via X-ray fluorescence (XRF), a technique that induces colors derived from metals to fluoresce in response to intense short-wave bombardment. The term is apt, for “esce” in the word “fluoresce” means “to exhibit.” A more recent edited volume by Morgan (2005) further underscores the importance of instrumental methods and imaging techniques to probe the Knossos frescos, including photomicrography and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). High magnification and enhanced resolution provide information about the bonding between surface and substrate and help explain the relative durability of pigments. SEM is described in the article as “color blind” since the image is formed from the electrons ejected from the surface of a fragment rather than the light emitted from it (224). To the unaided eye, however, such specimens, having once formed part of a fresco wall, would be color-rich. Forensic modes of observation such as these, though deriving from technologies unavailable to Evans and his co-workers, build on Evans’ accounts from decades and reference his occasional hankering for as yet unavailable types of microscale analysis. For example, one of the puzzles of the Knossos fresco fragments as Evans encountered them was how the paint surface could have remained so intact and chromatically radiant for so long (see Jones 2005, 199) and to shed more light on the matter he assigned to Noel Heaton the task of analyzing the chemical composition of the plaster onto which the frescoes were painted. Heaton could provide only a partial explanation, reporting that the plaster was composed of pure caustic lime. Evans found Heaton’s conclusions unsatisfying since they did little to explain matters of craftsmanship. The methods of the Minoan craftsmen, Evans laments, “remain a matter of conjecture. The traditions of their craft have vanished with them” (1921, 535). Although the need for scientific study of Cretan wall paintings and the nature of the plaster substrate was recognized by both Evans and Heaton, it could be undertaken only when suitable laboratory facilities became available and it would not be until the mid-1970s that images of the physical and chemical connections between plaster and pigment could be undertaken. Documentary accounts post-dating Evans’ work at Knossos have reconfigured the visualization of pigmentation and luminosity of fresco fragments. The contrast between XRF and the brilliance to which Evans was drawn as he recovered shattered remains of fresco from the dust of the palace of Minos could hardly be sharper. Yet, I think he would appreciate the power of SEM to magnify minute detail as a validation of his insistence on intensive scrutiny and pictorial impressions. Indeed, it is reasonable to think that he would examine graphical traces as carefully as he would any picture or fragment of artifact, holding them close to overcome his extreme near-sightedness. Although he would likely consider the visual rhetoric of

140  Pictorial Meanings SEM a challenge to the kind of visual expressiveness he favored, the ability to penetrate visually the interior of a fragment would undoubtedly have appealed to him. Avebury and Knossos: Pictorial Commonalities Keiller chose to channel the spirit of place projected by Stukeley, while Evans did so by giving physical heft to ancient myth at Knossos. The pictorial stories of Knossos and Avebury help us understand how romanticized modes of observation can be passed down to influence action in later times. The investigations and restorations carried out at both these sites were enabled by strains of entrepreneurial zeal, reflecting a long history of individual enterprise in the study and ownership of antiquity. In both cases the sites of interest were purchased outright and the carrying forward of the work greatly depended on personal wealth. Also evident was the individual drive of Evans and Keiller, propelled by their respective imaginations and the mental pictures each formed of how the sites should look. Both at Avebury and at Knossos, concrete was used to either stabilize what remained or to rebuild it wholesale. As Wickstead and Barber persuasively argue, poured cement is a modern phenomenon par excellence (2015) but the use of cement at both Knossos and Avebury actually represented part of the push-back against the visual agendas of modernity. At Avebury, cement provided a stable foundation for re-erected stones and, as noted earlier, was used to fashion obelisks marking the possible position of those Stukeley claimed to have observed. At Knossos, cement facilitated full-scale rebuilding but the modernist signature that cement displays was turned in on itself and recruited to the task of giving visual form to an imagined past. Inevitably built into these material responses were highly personalized relationship with place and the role of self-actualization in dictating the shape and appearance of antiquity. In other words, sense of place is an outcome of sense of self. There is, however, a further issue that must be factored in: the moment-in-time. The endeavors at Avebury and Knossos took place during the interwar years and, given the destructiveness of the World War of 1914–1918, acts of restoration were considered inherently virtuous. By extending those efforts into what the poet W. H. Auden describes as the “low, dishonest decade” of the 1930s, a conception of antiquity in which courtly manners shaped daily life would have had intrinsic appeal. For a world capable of being eviscerated by war, rebuilding the past was a mark of hopefulness (Bintliff 1984, 36).14 The pictorial manners of archaeology run deep when fused with notions of genius loci and can engender distinctive forms of visual etiquette. The case of Avebury and that of Knossos, and also the examples investigated in the next chapter, indicate that subjective interpretations colored by wishful thinking are capable of adhering to later modes of observation. This adhesion can be identified whenever, in the contemporary literature of archaeology, attention is drawn to the history of observational and documentary practices at particular sites. The back-casting and historical scene-setting often extend well beyond parenthetical references to provide a framework for discussion. Reports by David et al. (2008) of surveys

Pictorial Meanings 141 undertaken at Avebury, cited earlier in this chapter, is a good example of such framing. More generally, it is intriguing to think that there might be a little bit of Stukeley and Keiller in every modern investigator of stone circles, and a little bit of Evans in every account of Knossos. Notes 1 Vernon Lee was the pseudonym of Violet Paget (1856–1935). She was a prolific author best known for her writings on hauntings, the supernatural, psychological effects of place, and travel. She combined these interests into her own individual theory of aesthetics. 2 Some landowners considered the megaliths and stone circles to be expressions of paganism and thus deserving of removal by any feasible means (see Thorpe 2014, 36–39). 3 In an eighteenth-century poem post-dating Stukeley, John Ogilvie wrote: “Timehallow’d pile, by simple builders rear’d! / Mysterious round, through distant times rever’d! / Ordain’d with earth’s revolving orb to last! / Thou brings’t to light the present and the past” (1887 [1787], 4). In an accompanying footnote the poet adds: “The druidical fanes, or temples, we may give them that name, are all of orbicular form. I think it is not improbable that this was an imitation of the figure of the heavenly bodies; a conjecture which acquires strength from that attention, with which…the Druids appear to have studied astronomy.” 4 The presumed role of Druidism in prehistory has had a distorting effect on archaeological interpretation, but the presence of a pre-Roman priestly sect in Britain, perhaps originating in continental Europe is not entirely to be dismissed (see Cunliffe 2005, 572; Haycock 1999, 77; Piggott 1985, 79; 104). According to Stuart Piggott, antiquarian interest in Druidism was an outgrowth of a broader interest in the prehistoric (1937, 35) but it was the combination of that interest with romantic musings that produced such a heady mix. From the perspective of the present day we know that megalithic remains may have been periodically “repurposed” for priestly functions but that Druids had no hand in constructing them. 5 Crawford would go on to become founding editor of the journal Antiquity and the foremost early proponent of aerial archaeology (see Balm 2016; Hauser 2007). 6 By the mid-1970s, in something of a backlash, complaints were being aired regarding over-emphasis on technical explanations of the origin and function of stone circles. According to Aubrey Burl, the introduction of “scientific techniques to compute and analyze the patterns of the past” too often involved “obfuscating word patterns” and, if not based on firm data, differed little from the Druid fantasies of the eighteenth century (1976, 17). 7 An additional means of instrumental sub-surface investigation is magnetrometry. Magnetometry can detect surfaces that have been exposed to heat sufficiently intense to induce any resident iron oxides to become aligned to the earth’s polarity. This alignment contrasts with the relatively weak and random magnetic orientation of surrounding materials that have had no history of heating (see Aspinall, Gaffney and Schmidt 2009). 8 The West Kennett Avenue extends approximately two miles to the southeast of the main monument and terminates at a small stone structure on Overton Hill (clearly marked on Plate VIII in Avbury, but later demolished by a local landowner). This structure Stukeley took to be the head of the snake. 9 Evans reports that traces of Neolithic occupation were found beneath remains from the later palatial periods and these remains were still located more or less at their original level relative to the ground surface (1927, 259).

142  Pictorial Meanings 10 The visual afterlife bestowed on the wall paintings reflects the importance they held for Evans as pictorial testimony of a past age, but there also was a less noted expression of that importance. Following his death, some 500 sets of plates featuring color reproductions of frescoes were being held by Evans’ publisher (MacMillan, London). Evans had intended to publish several “atlases” illustrating his finds from Crete, and a compilation of wall-painting reproductions was evidently to be the first in this series. The project was abandoned for reasons unknown but, as a concept, it serves as a marker for the significance that Evans attached to the mural fragments. For a description of the project, see Cameron and Hood (1967). 11 De Jong is one of several illustrators active in the first half of the twentieth century whose work, collectively, represents a late resurgence of the pictorial tradition in archaeology. In addition to de Jong, the work of Alan Sorrell stands as an example (see Sorrell 1981). 12 In the late 1950s, the arrival of throngs of tourists from a cruise ship docked in the nearby city of Heraklion would have made local news, but it is now commonplace. By the late 1990s Knossos was drawing the most visitors of any site in Greece with the exception of the Acropolis and as many as 5,000 people would arrive within a three-hour period (Harrington 1999, 36). 13 In a 1926 address to the Society of Antiquaries of London, Evans justified his widespread use of ferrocement (iron-reinforced concrete) as an entirely utilitarian exercise in conservation essential for stabilizing key parts of the site (see Evans 1927). 14 Bintliff (1984) plausibly argues that this romantic and idealistic vision survived and became a controlling model into the 1960s where it chimed with a rejection of the materialist 1950s and a fascination with alternative mystical worlds.

References Aspinall, Arnold, Chris Gaffney and Armin Schmidt. 2009. Magnetometry for Archaeologists. Lanham: AltaMira Press. Aubrey, John. 1980 [1665-1693]. Monumenta Britannica or a Miscellany of British Antiquities. 2 parts. Edited by John Fowles. Sherborne: Dorset Publishing. Auden, W. H., 1940. “September 1, 1939.” In Another Time. New York: Random House. Bahn, Paul G. 1996. Cambridge Illustrated History of Archaeology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Balm, Roger. 2016. Archaeology’s Visual Culture: Digging and Desire. Abingdon: Routledge. Bintliff, John L. 1984. “Structuralism and Myth in Minoan Studies.” Antiquity 58, 33–38. Bradley, Richard. 1993. Altering the Earth. The Origins of Monuments in Britain and Continental Europe. Edinburgh: Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. Brown, Ann. 1994. Arthur Evans and the Palace of Minos. Oxford: Ashmolean Museum. Burl, Aubrey. 1976. The Stone Circles of the British Isles. New Haven: Yale University Press. Burl, Aubrey and Neil Mortimer. 2005. Stukeley’s “Stonehenge.” An Unpublished Manuscript. New Haven: Yale University Press. Cameron, Mark A. S. 1968. “Unpublished Paintings from the House of the Frescoes at Knossos.” The Annual of the British School at Athens 63, 1–31. Cameron, Mark and Sinclair Hood. 1967. Catalogue of Plates in Sir Arthur Evans’ Knossos Fresco Atlas. Farnborough: Gregg Press. Cameron, Mark. A. S., R. E. Jones and S. E. Philippakis. 1977. “Scientific Analyses of Minoan Fresco Samples from Knossos.” The Annual of the British School at Athens 72, 122–184. Castleden, Rodney. 1990. The Knossos Labyrinth. A New View of the “Palace of Minos” at Knossos. London: Routledge.

Pictorial Meanings 143 Clark, Grahame. 1940. Prehistoric England. London: Batsford. Crawford, Osbert G. S. and Alexander Keiller. 1928. Wessex from the Air. Oxford: The Clarendon Press. Cunliffe, Barry. 2005. Iron Age Communities in Britain. An Account of England, Scotland and Wales from the Seventh Century until the Roman Conquest. 4th edition. London: Routledge. David, Andrew. 2008. “Geogphysical Survey and the Beckhampton Avenue and Longstones Cove.” In Landscape of the Megaliths. Excavation and Fieldwork on the Avebury Monuments, 1997-2003, edited by Mark Gillings, Joshua Pollard, David Wheatly and Rick Pearson. Oxford: Oxbow Books, 63–70. Dow, Sterling. 1954. “Minoan Writing.” American Journal of Archaeology 58:2, 77–129. Evans, Arthur J. 1895. “The Rollright Stones and their Folklore.” Folklore 6, 6–51. Evans, Arthur J. 1901. “The Palace of Knossos. Provisional Report of the Excavations for the Year 1901.” Annual of the British School at Athens 7, 1–120. Evans, Arthur. 1921. The Palace of Minos. A Comparative Account of the Successive Stages of the Early Cretan Civilization as Illustrated by the Discoveries at Knossos volume 1. London: MacMillan. Evans, Arthur J. 1927. “Work of Reconstitution in the Palace of Knossos.” The Antiquaries Journal 7:3, 258–267. Evans, Arthur J. 1928. The Palace of Minos. A Comparative Account of the Successive Stages of the Early Cretan Civilization as Illustrated by the Discoveries at Knossos volume 2, 2 parts. London: MacMillan. Evans, Arthur J. 1930. The Palace of Minos. A Comparative Account of the Successive Stages of the Early Cretan Civilization as Illustrated by the Discoveries at Knossos volume 3. London: MacMillan. Evans, Arthur J. 1930. “Knossos. Summary Report of the Excavations in 1900. 1. The Palace.” Annual of the Britsh School at Athens 6, 3–85. Evans, Arthur J. 1936. The Palace of Minos. A Comparative Account of the Successive Stages of the Early Cretan Civilization as Illustrated by the Discoveries at Knossos volume 4. 2 parts. London: MacMillan. Evans, Arthur J. 1938. An Illustrative Catalogue of Gems. Oxford: Ashmolean Museum. Evans, Joan. 1943. Time and Chance. The Story of Arthur Evans and his Forbears. London: Longmans, Green. Fleming, Andrew. 2005. “Megaliths and Post-modernism: The Case of Wales.” Antiquity 79, 921–932. Giere, Cathy. 2009. Knossos and the Prophets of Modernism. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Giere, Ronald N. 1996. “Visual Models and Scientific Judgment.” In Picturing Knowledge. Historical and Philosophical Problems Concerning the Use of Art in Science, edited by Brian Baigrie, 269–302. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Gillings, Mark and Joshua Pollard. 2015. Authenticity, Artifice and the Druidical Temple of Avebury. In Landscape Biographies. Geographical, Historical and Archaeological Perspectives on the Production and Transmission of Landscapes, edited by Jan Kolen, Hans Renes and Rita Hermans, 117–142. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Gillings, Mark, Joshua Pollard, David Wheatly and Rick Pearson. 2008. Landscape of the Megaliths. Excavation and Fieldwork on the Avebury Monuments, 1997–2003. Oxford: Oxbow Books. Hamilakis, Yannis. 2013. Archaeology and the Senses. Human Experience, Memory, and Affect. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Harrington, Spencer P. M. 1999. “Saving Knossos.” Archaeology 52:1, 30–40.

144  Pictorial Meanings Hauser, Kitty. 2007. Shadow Sites. Photography, Archaeology and the British Landscape 1927-1955. New York: Oxford University Press. Hawkes, Jacquetta and Christopher Hawkes. 1958. Prehistoric Britain. Harmondsworth: Pelican. Haycock, David Boyd. 1999. ““A Small Journey into the Country:” William Stukeley and the Formal Landscapes of Stonehenge and Avebury.” In Producing the Past: Aspects of Antiquarian Culture and Practice 1700-1850, edited by Martin Myrone and Lucy Peltz, 67–79. Aldershot: Ashgate. Haynes, Sue. 2013. “Constructing Eighteenth-century Meaning in a Prehistoric Landscape: Charles Bridgeman’s Design for Amesbury Abbey.” Landscapes 14:2, 155–173. Heath, Robin. 2007. Alexander Thom. Cracking the Stone Age Code. St Dogmaels: Bluestone Press. Hood, Sinclair. 2005. “Dating the Knossos Frescoes.” In Aegean Wall Painting. A Tribute to Mark Cameron, edited by Lyvia Morgan, 45–81. London: British School at Athens Studies. Hood, Sinclair and Gerald Cadogan. 2011. “Knossos Excavations 1957-1961. Early Minoan.” London: The British School at Athens Supplementar 46. Hutton, Ronald. 2009. Blood and Mistletoe. The History of the Druids in Britain. New Haven: Yale University Press. James, Henry. 2016 (1873). “The After-season at Rome.” In Travels with Henry James. New York: Nation Books, 147–155. Jones, R. E. 2005. “Technical Studies of Aegean Bronze Age Wall Paintings: Methods, Results and Future Prospects.” In Aegean Wall Painting. A Tribute to Mark Cameron, edited by Lyvia Morgan, 199–224. London: British School at Athens Studies. Keiller, Alexander. 1939. “Avebury: Excavations 1937 and 1938.” Antiquity 13:50, 223–233. Keiller, Alexander. 1965. Windmill Hill and Avebury. Excavations by Alexander Keiller 1925-1939. Prepared for publication by Isobel F. Smith. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Keiller, Alexander and Stuart Piggott. 1936. “The Recent Excavations at Avebury.” Antiquity 10:40, 417–427. Lake, Mark. W. and Patricia E. Woodman. 2003. “Visibility Studies in Archaeology: A Review and Case Study.” Environment and Planning B, Planning and Design 30:5, 689–707. Lee, Vernon. 1898. Genius Loci. Notes on Places. London: Grant Richards. Long, William. 1858. “Abury Illustrated.” Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Magazine 4, 1–72. Lowenthal, David. 1985. The Past is a Foreign Country. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. MacEnroe, John. 1995. “Sir Arthur Evans and Edwardian Archaeology.” Classical Bulletin 71, 3–18. Melena, José and Thomas G. Palaima. 2001. “100 Years of Linear B from Knossos.” American Journal of Archaeology 105, 316–320. Mitsopoulou, Christina. 2018. “Creation, Diffusion, Perception and Re-Evaluation of Archaeological Knowledge: the Case of the Gillieron artists.” Heraklion: International Committee for Documentation (CIDOC). Morgan, Lyvia. 2005. In “New Discoveries and New Ideas in Aegean Wall Painting.” In Aegean Wall Painting. A Tribute to Mark Cameron, edited by Lyvia Morgan, 21–44. London: British School at Athens Studies. Murray, Lynda J. 1999. A Zest for Life. The Story of Alexander Keiller. Swindon: Morven Books.

Pictorial Meanings 145 Myres, John L. 1941. “Sir Arthur Evans 1851–1941.” Proceedings of the British Academy 27, 3–36. London: Humphrey Milford. Nash, Paul. 1951. Fertile Image. London: Faber and Faber. Ogilvie, John. 1787. The Fane of the Druids. London: John Murray. Papadopoulos, John K. 2005. “Inventing the Minoans: Archaeology, Modernity and the Quest for European Identity.” Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 18:1, 87–149. Peterson, Rick. 2003. “William Stukeley: An Eighteenth-Century Phenomenologist?” Antiquity 77: 3, 394–400. Piggott, Stuart. 1935. “Stukeley, Avebury and the Druids.” Antiquity 9, 22–32. Piggott, Stuart. 1937. “Prehistory and the Romantic Movement.” Antiquity 11, 31–38. Piggott, Stuart. 1965. “Alexander Keiller 1889-1955.” In Windmill Hill and Avebury. Excavations by Alexander Keiller 1925-1939. Oxford: Oxford University Press, xix–xxii. Piggott, Stuart. 1978. Antiquity Depicted. Aspects of Archaeological Illustration. London: Thames and Hudson. Piggott, Stuart. 1985. William Stukeley. An Eighteenth-Century Antiquary. London: Thames and Hudson. Schama, Simon. 1995. Landscape and Memory. New York: Knopf. Schlanger, Nathan. 2010. “Series in Progress: Antiquities of Nature, Numismatics and Stone Implements in the Emergence of Prehistoric Archaeology.” History of Science 48, 343–369. Shanks, Michael and Christopher Tilley. 1987. Re-Constructing Archaeology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Shaw, Maria C. 2004. “The “Priest-King” Fresco from Knossos: Man, Woman, Priest, King, or Someone Else?” Hesperia Supplements 33, 65–84. Sherratt, Susan. 2000. Arthur Evans, Knossos and the Priest-King. Oxford: Ashmolean Museum. Simmel, Georg. 1959 (1919). “The Ruin.” In Georg Simmel, 1858–1918. A Collection of Essays, translated by David Kettler and edited by Kurt H. Wolf, 259–266. Columbus: Ohio State University. Sorrell, Mark, ed. 1981. Reconstructing the Past. London: Batsford. Stukeley, William. 1740. Stonehenge. A Temple Restored to the British Druids. London. Innys and Manby. Stukeley, William. 1743. Abury, a Temple of the British Druids. London: Innys, Manby and Brindley. Thom, Alexander. 1967. Megalithic Sites in Britain. Oxford: The Clarendon Press. Thompson, Ian. 2003. “What Use is the Genius Loci?” In Constructing Place. Mind and Matter, edited by Sarah Menin, 66–76. London: Routledge. Thorpe, Adam. 2014. On Silbury Hill. Toller Fratrum: Little Toller. Tilley, Christopher Y. 1994. A Phenomenology of Landscape: Places, Paths, Monuments. Oxford: Berg. Tilley, Christopher Y. 2004. The Materiality of Stone. Explorations in Landscape Phenomenology. Oxford: Berg. Trigger, Bruce G. 2008. A History of Archaeological Thought. 2nd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Trigger, Bruce G. 1990. “Monumental Architecture: A Thermodynamic Explanation of Symbolic Behaviour.” World Archaeology 22, 119–132. Ucko, Peter. J., Michael Hunter, Alan J. Clark and Andrew David. 1991. Avebury Reconsidered: From the 1660s to the 1990s. London: Unwin Hyman.

146  Pictorial Meanings Ventris, Michael. 1950. The Languages of the Minoan and Mycenaean Civilizations: MidCentury Report. London: Published privately as photocopy. Wace, Alan. 1923. “Excavations at Mycenae.” Annual of the British School at Athens 15, 1–504. Whittle, Alasdair. 1997. Sacred Mound, Holy Rings, Silbury Hill and the West Kennet Palisade Enclosures. A Late Neolithic Complex in North Wiltshire. Oxford: Oxbow Books. Wickstead, Helen and Martyn Barber. 2015. “Concrete Prehistories: The Making of Megalithic Modernism.” Journal of Contemporary Archaeology 2:1, 195–216.

5

Pictorial Meanings Ancient Maya and Ancient Khmer

I have long considered drawing to be an inherently virtuous activity and that close, time-consuming scrutiny was capable of revealing details that might otherwise go unnoticed. Looking at the results always brings back memories of time spent in remarkable places such as the Maya site of Copán, on the border between Guatemala and Honduras, sketching the altar of Stela D (Figure 5.1). But since those muggy days years ago, I have become much more mindful of the equally virtuous and no less pictorial choices available for capturing elusive details instantaneously and with greater fidelity than eye and hand alone could achieve. Questions of visual choice permeate this chapter, particularly in the relationship between closeness and distance. Embedded within that relationship are decisions about appropriate technology and also decisions about duration; slow-looking versus fast-looking. Archaeology has devised relatively few bespoke methods of capturing resemblance, but this lack of inventiveness has been more than made up for by eagerness to adopt and adapt innovations introduced in other fields of visual documentation. Many of the innovations developed since the mid-twentieth century exploit the advantages of inserting distance between observer and the observed and it is paradoxical that in many instances it is only through distance from the object of scrutiny that the resolution required for useful documentation can be gained. Through this visual stepping-back, ground-surface patterns can be revealed and delivered that have equal or greater informational value than those gained from direct inspection (Chase and Chase 2017, 464–465; see also Olsen et al. 2012, 82). Issues of closeness and distance go to the heart of the visual relationship with antiquity. For the antiquarians, there could be no enchantment without closeness. Their understanding of closeness was multifaceted but began and ended with surface appearance and it was there that it usually ended. As discussed in Chapter 1, a corporeal connection was expressed through covetousness, curatorial display and the projection of aesthetic allure. It also embraced the frisson of travel when antiquity was sought out in situ at sites of interest and, on occasion, through excavations in local terrain (see Chapter 2). The practices of pictorialism cemented all these impulses and as it did so enchantment came to occupy the space between retina and reality and yielded documentary perspectives that were antithetical to distant, uninvolved recording (see Stafford 1984, 486). DOI: 10.4324/9781032646893-6

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Figure 5.1  Altar of Stela D at Copán, Honduras (author sketch).

Such scopic positioning seems to stand in sharp contrast to contemporary documentary practices where it is the word “remote” in the term “remote sensing” that has particular implications, and which is often presented as emblematic of modernized ways of seeing based on spatial metrics and abstract signifiers of proximity. It has been said that the contemporary archaeologist operates not as a lone human, but as a collective of optical instruments and visual media, ready to transform objects and sites of interest (Witmore 2006, 283). The “lone human” to whom Witmore refers was a romantic, pre-modern presence, readily recognizable to antiquarians but likely to be a misfit in contemporary practice where visual acuity is often a team effort delivered through distantly situated instrumental sensors. It should be a relatively straightforward task to describe how, as a result of the modified visual relationship with antiquity, close contact between eye, hand and object has been rendered redundant. But it is not straightforward and, indeed, it is not possible. In what follows, the eclipse of retinal contact and corporeally sensed “storytelling” in favor of more abstract forms of visual representation is treated as a partial and incomplete process which, by its very incompleteness, has shaped the identity of archaeology into a hybrid in which links to the embodied eye coexist with instrumental imaging. That coexistence is itself an outcome of archaeology’s distrust of a fully modernized relationship with antiquity; on the one hand, there is a recoil from physical touch and a distrust of unaided vision, while, on the other,

Pictorial Meanings 149 there is reluctance to relinquish the embodied gaze and the layers of subjectivity and creativity that it brought to bear on observed artifacts and sites of archaeological interest. The result renders the domain of antiquity not as one comprised exclusively of seeable and touchable monuments, artifacts and artistic works but one that also includes dematerialized or fugitive presences which, as if by magic, are made visible again. Acts of observation and visual capture involve a scopic stance of inspectional scrutiny, but the origins of that scopic stance and the desire to re-shape, re-size, or otherwise adapt what is seen has a history that extends back many centuries, as we know from earlier discussions in Chapter 2. Nonetheless, by the end of the nineteenth century, a downgrading in the status of direct observation was already becoming apparent, as was the Western cultural attraction to devices that could produce images autonomously (Jay 1994,). Such devices, beginning with early photography, expanded the interpretive role of the observer but reduced the role of the observer in the recording process. With this revision objects and sites were never just naively or simply observed; they were prepared and reconstituted via technological intervention. Any visualizing device positioned between retina and object represents a “mode of revealing” and “unconcealment” (Heidegger 1977, 13). In the study of the past this has very practical implications when the intention is to remove the material traces of antiquity from concealment and return them to visibility. All the visual evidence presented in this chapter exemplifies this desire for recovering concealed antiquity and endowing it with pictorial readability. The Challenges of Concealment In terms of the history of visual documentation in archaeology, the removal or erasure of concealment and the visual reward for doing so has long been a central preoccupation and source of enduring appeal. Concealment comes in a variety of forms, of course, but each involves some kind of envelopment. The ground itself is one such enveloping medium and its unsealing by excavation has long functioned as both theme and objective in the study of antiquity while helping to characterize archaeology as a craft (see Cherry 2011, 13; Edgeworth 2011, 44–45). Other forms of concealment include overrunning vegetation, submergence in the freshwater or marine environment, agricultural encroachment and the covering over by concrete and asphalt through expansion of urbanization and industry. Although the task of penetrating concealing elements to give visual form to what lies beneath has been a long-standing objective, the means of achieving that objective have altered radically over time. A medium of envelopment particularly diagnostic of visual impulses is the forest canopy and associated vegetation and this is the form of concealment which links the cases discussed in this chapter. Focus on that particular barrier to visibility connects both to early regimes of exploration and the investigations of recent time and has the added virtue of transporting us away from the European geographic context. Specifically, it takes us into the cultural domain of the ancient Maya that flourished in what is now Mexico and Central America. It also connects to the

150  Pictorial Meanings Angkor region of southeastern Asia which, at its zenith, extended over extensive areas of present-day Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam. Widely separated though these areas are geographically and notwithstanding fundamental differences in the nature of their archaeological remains, investigations of indigenous cultural remains have undergone the same shift in modes of visual sense-making over the course of time and the same retreat from closeness. This retreat to a position of scopic distance can best be highlighted by comparing historical visual records with contemporary or near-contemporary examples from the same locales. It allows us to take the speculations of earlier times and overlay their distinctive aesthetic coloration with later motives and methods in order to draw comparisons. In an earlier chapter I described alternating modes of documentary picturing as relatively static and formulaic scopic positioning gave way to the traveling eye and also how the middle word in “illustrated travel account” began to drop away in the later nineteenth century to be replaced by a more stationary observational stance directed toward specific sites scrutinized over extended periods of time or through repeated visits. In that respect, the in situ recording of archaeological remains began to resemble fieldwork in the form we know it today. The eventual eclipse of the itinerant observational stance represents an important step-change in scopic priorities but one which retained the appetite for antiquarian and romanticized picturing. Each of the two cases I describe in this chapter encompasses the various phases of visual negotiation and which, in both geographic areas, occurred in the same sequence. Close-Up Antiquity and the Ancient Maya Let us begin with the visual record of Western encounter with antiquity in the cultural region of the ancient Maya. The Classic Period of the southern lowland Maya which marks the efflorescence of their artistry is generally dated from 250 to 900 CE and this cultural presence came to encompass most of present-day southeastern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Honduras and El Salvador before declining and eventually collapsing in the eleventh century for reasons still not fully understood (see Sharer 1994, 44–48; 340–342). The concealment of ancient cultural remains by forests has long presented a barrier to exploration of the region still not fully overcome today. The impulse to go beyond the presentation of the unfamiliar and the exotic as enigmatic curiosities meant that specific archaeological site could become, in a sense, a home-base for documentary encounter and visual details would become increasingly familiar as the time spent on-site increased. The inspectional scrutiny of locales and individual artifacts that this encouraged represented an affirmation of antiquarian impulses via close contact with the remains of the past and the insinuation of the subjective self into acts of observation. The Visual Records of Alfred Maudslay

The scopic stance and visual records of Alfred Percival Maudslay (1850–1931) encapsulate the emergence of a post-itinerant mode of visual encounter. Maudslay’s

Pictorial Meanings 151 first foray into the backcountry of Mesoamerica began in late 1882 and by his own reckoning was something of a jaunt and an excuse to escape the chill of the English winter. He describes it as a “journey of curiosity” without any “intention of making a study of American archaeology” (1899–1902, iii). It would, however, be followed by seven other expeditions to the region and a major publication on regional archaeology: Biologia Centrali-Americana or Contributions to the Knowledge of the Flora and Fauna of Mexico and Central America. From the 1820s onward, the cultural legacy of the ancient Mexico and Central America, particularly its architecture and sculpture, was increasingly commented on in text and illustration.1 Maudslay’s investigations, as they took shape, explicitly referenced earlier accounts while at the same time contrasting them with his own documentary priorities and modus operandi. Of particular interest to him were the published writings of John Lloyd Stephens and illustrations by Frederick Catherwood from their travels together in the late 1830s and early 1840s. Stephens’ Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas and Yucatán (1841) and Incidents of Travel in Yucatán (1843) attracted great interest in their day (see also Stephens 1854). They were among the first accounts to claim that the ancient architecture, sculpture and murals of Mexico and Mesoamerica were indigenous rather than a cultural import (see Evans 2004, 11).2 The numerous engravings that enliven the text seem to have fired Maudslay’s imagination well before his more academic interests in the region took shape since Maudslay’s biographer notes that he carried a copy of the book(s) with him (see Graham 2002, 80). Of the two, the first (1841) would have been the most useful since it describes at length the antiquities of Guatemala where Maudslay first disembarked on his “journey of curiosity.” Frederick Catherwood, the artist who accompanied Stephens, was an architect by training and his work reflected antiquarian influences during his days as a student in London (see von Hagen 1974, 1–5). In 1820, he took classes at the Royal Academy and attended lectures given by John Soane, the architect and collector whose museum was described in Chapter 1. Stephens’ text and Catherwood’s illustrations were addressed to a readership interested in the strange and the exotic but, as was typical with publications of this kind no matter how fanciful, claims of veracity are threaded through the narrative. “From the beginning” Stephens writes “our great object and effort was to procure true copies of the originals, adding nothing for effect as pictures.” He pronounces the illustrations to be “as true copies as can be presented and, except for the stones themselves, the reader could not have better materials for speculation and study” (1949 [1841], 107–108). One of the engravings in the 1841 publication which would have been familiar to Maudslay is shown in Figure 5.2: a depiction of fallen stelae at the Classic Maya site of Copán. For Catherwood to make eye-contact with the remains of ancient Maya culture required clearing a way through dense tropical vegetation and this image shows sculptural remains in the grip of encroaching vegetation. As we would expect for an antiquarian account, the allure of the ruin is clear and the entanglement with tropical vegetation is often presented in full picturesque style. At far right in the illustration we see a commonly used rhetorical flourish where the stature of architecture (in this case a carved stela) competes with the stature of

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Figure 5.2  Fallen Stone Idol at Copán, Honduras (Stephens 1949 [1841]).

nature (here in the form of a tree) in an uneven trial of strength. In the revised edition of Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas and Yucatan (1854), Stephens describes the problem that the forested terrain posed for visual access: The whole country for miles around is covered by a dense forest of gigantic trees, with a growth of brush and underwood unknown in the wooded deserts of our own country, and impenetrable in any direction except by cutting a way with a machete. What lies buried in that forest is impossible to say of my own knowledge; without a guide, we might have gone within 100 feet of all the buildings without discovering any of them. (414) Based on his reading of earlier accounts, Maudslay himself would have been aware of the difficulties posed by the terrain even though travel through the backcountry had become vastly easier over the latter half of the nineteenth century. Maudslay sympathized with the antiquarian ethic that informed Catherwood’s illustrations, particularly in the carryover of three-dimensional visual spectacle onto the printed page. But rather than being intended as a re-experiencing of Catherwood’s “visual diary” (see Shields 2015, 32), the observations and investigations that Maudslay subsequently undertook were an attempt to amend or correct those earlier observations by applying updated media. He noted how improvements in visual reproduction had made it possible to produce “copies of Indian carvings even more exact than those traced by the skillful hand of Catherwood” (1899–1902, 3). According to Ian Graham’s Alfred Maudslay and the Maya, there was a central problem in the visual investigations of Catherwood; no matter how talented an artist he was, his mode of traveling observation denied him the opportunity to record more than a general impression, particularly of sculptural remains (2002, 82).

Pictorial Meanings 153 It is likely that Maudslay himself came to the same conclusion and his observations of the ruins of Quiriguá (Guatemala) are diagnostic in this regard as he describes ruins which “lie hidden in the forest near the banks of the Motagua river” (1883, 185). Although the carved stelae and zoomorphic sculptures found there greatly interested Catherwood, he visited the site only once and then briefly. By contrast, Maudslay returned on four separate occasions including an initial stay of several days (Graham 2002, 82). It is possible, however, that Catherwood overcame the constraints of time by producing daguerreotype photographs (long since lost) from which later detailed engravings could be produced for publication, for it is known that he took the necessary equipment with him (see Bohrer 2011, 58–59).3 Perhaps the most eloquent visual confirmation of how Maudslay liked to move into a site for an extended stay comes not from time spent at Quiriguá but from a late Maya site much further north: Chichén Itzá, on the Yucatán peninsula of Mexico. It was there he was photographed by one Henry Sweet whom Maudslay met on-site. It shows Maudslay camped within one of the ancient structures and attending to his field notes (Figure 5.3). It is a notably domestic scene and one that Maudslay himself was happy to have circulated, it being published in Maudslay and Maudslay (1899; facing page 202). This image has since been widely reproduced, including as a jacket image for Ian Graham’s biography of Maudslay. However, it commonly appears without the caption that Maudslay originally appended to it: “My Room – Chichén Itzá, 1889,” and those few words are diagnostic. They allude to the latter-day physical occupation of a space constructed in antiquity and the projection of enchanted affect onto the surroundings; a projection that amounts to a form of pictorial ownership. In general, the visual rhetoric of the image (clothes line notwithstanding) reiterates a centuries-old Western trope of characterizing a notable person by picturing them in portrait form accompanied by indicators of their status, endeavors or achievements. Time mattered to Maudslay, and not just in terms of extended stays at sites of interest. In pursuit of visual documentation, he knew that obtaining accurate records was not just a question of extended close scrutiny and careful recording, fundamental though that was, but also the question of how productive the scrutiny and means of recording would prove to be in relation to the time invested. Photography worked in his favor, yielding results that drawings could equal only through much greater expenditure of time and effort and, after initial difficulties, he used a camera extensively to document the architecture, sculptures and inscriptions at several sites. In addition to Copán, Quiriguá and Chichén Itzá, he also spent time at Yaxchilán (Guatemala) and Palenque (Mexico).4 Figure 5.4 shows a photograph of a mid-eighth-century zoomorphic sculpture at Quiriguá that he describes as part dragon and part human and which he thought worthy of publication (see Maudslay and Maudslay 1899, facing page 150). At the time of Maudslay’s fieldwork the veracity accorded to photography was rarely questioned and he believed that the camera, whether used exclusively or in combination with other visual media, could advance the documentary project by preserving a moment in time and serving as a witness for the visible condition of the ancient artifacts, particularly those that were free-standing.

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Figure 5.3  Alfred Maudslay at Chichén Itzá, Mexico (Maudslay and Maudslay 1899).

Maudslay’s attention to capturing detail is apparent in photographs such as that of the humanoid dragon and such capture was certainly warranted given the enigma that sites such as Quiriguá represented. Indeed, a fuller, scientifically based explanation of the inscriptions and sculptural motifs of the ancient Maya would not be published until the period of epigraphic “code breaking” in the 1960s (see Proskouriakoff 1960). Each time Maudslay reached for his camera it was a reiteration

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Figure 5.4  Zoomorphic Sculpture at Quiriguá, Guatemala (Maudslay and Maudslay 1899).

of his belief that photographs could preserve visual form and identity. They were certainly a more reliable source of reference than his own field notebooks which he himself conceded were disorderly (see Maudslay and Maudslay 1899, ix). He describes inscriptions and other carvings concealed by vegetation, but by peeling this back and using the largest photographic plates available, he could produce pictures of sufficient clarity that they could be used for later reference by himself and others. He resolved to devote as much time as necessary to producing copies of inscriptions and sculptural details which, archived in the museums of Europe and America, would be “likely to survive the originals” (Graham 2002, 82). This hoped-for outcome has at least partially come to pass as over 800 of his glass-plate negatives now reside in the British Museum. In addition to photography, the other significant documentary medium Maudslay used for recording pictorial form was one that crossed the boundary between twodimensional and three-dimensional recording: the making of molds. This could be accomplished either by applying plaster directly to the surface of an artifact section by section or by papier maché impressed into the carved stonework to produce a negative form which could later be converted into a positive copy of a sculpture when cast in plaster.5 The technique of producing squeezes was first demonstrated to Maudslay by the French archaeologist and explorer Désiré Charnay when the two met in March, 1881, at the Maya site of Yaxchilán (Guatemala). Maudslay was immediately impressed, squeezes being just as effective as direct plaster-casting for capturing sculptural details but much lighter and easier to transport. At the time

156  Pictorial Meanings of their meeting, as noted in the transcript of a talk Maudslay gave to the Royal Geographical Society (Maudslay 1883), Charnay had already “for two years been at work on the antiquities of Mexico and Yucatán” (201) and such extended investigations provide a further indication of how archaeological inquiry had moved away from its formerly itinerant observational mode into a regime of investigatory fieldwork season, and not just in the case of Maudslay (see Charnay 1862–1863).6 With the addition of mold-making to his documentary toolkit, Maudslay established a four-way relationship between photographs, molds, drawings and original objects. Notwithstanding the value he saw in photography he considered drawings as important for purposes of transcribing selected details for inclusion in later published accounts, transposing his own often-hasty field sketches into something resembling clarity. Thus, we find represented in Biologia Centrali-Americana the work of Annie Hunter, a professional artist commissioned to produce drawings from cast impressions. The caption to Plate 8 (shown in Figure 5.5) tells us the object of focus is the north face of Stela A at Quiriguá, as illustrated by a photograph but shown side-by-side with “a drawing made from a plaster cast.” Similarly, we find included in Maudslay and Maudslay (1899) drawings copied either from photographs or from casts. In looking over the full range of his documentary methods, it becomes clear that Maudslay was overwriting rather than reiterating the challenges of concealment that had featured so prominently in earlier accounts. Overcoming barriers to visual revelation during his fieldwork had little to do with the brandishing of machetes to cut through dense vegetation and everything to do with capturing the visual record of what lay concealed on the surfaces of the ancient remains themselves. Despite this overwriting of earlier accounts, his record of visual documentation is aligned with the sensibilities of antiquarianism and the perpetuation of the enchanted eye. Although one could characterize his enthusiasm for making copies as a shift away from closeness by demoting the status of an original as a one-and-only, it was really an affirmation of the visual charm he saw in the ancient remains he encountered. Such was the force of that charm that he sought to propagate it through methods of visual doubling to capture both the appearance and the tactile character of carved surfaces in graphic and three-dimensional form. There is little evidence of the dematerializing tendency in his documentary practices and they appear to us today as pre-modern, including the medium of photography which, in the later nineteenth century, was still associated with producing aesthetically pleasing likenesses (see Chapter 2). In his published accounts, he refers to the utility of copies as didactic entities capable of serving as surrogates for the objects themselves (see for example 1899–1902, 3) and we can readily see the techniques involved, whether the impressing of features into wet plaster, imprinting them as a photographic plate or transcribing them onto paper, as extensions to pictorialism whereby affection for the original remains of antiquity was transferred from three-dimensional remains to copies of those remains. The hundreds of his glass-plate negatives in the British Museum are indicative of Maudslay’s visual objectives and sensibilities, but the 400+ plaster casts also stored there are equally indicative and have taken on a visual presence that even Maudslay himself would find surprising; by preserving

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Figure 5.5  Photograph and drawing of a Maya Stela (Maudslay and Maudslay 1899).

features of an object destined to erode over the course of time, the casts have become death masks of antiquity.7 Maudslay’s principal revision to the modus operandi of earlier expeditions involved standing still and observing closely and persistently rather than being compulsively mobile, but given his sympathetic reading of those earlier accounts, it would be surprising if he did not revert on occasion to the baser impulses that

158  Pictorial Meanings occasionally feature in those accounts and, by so doing, reiterated antiquarian acquisitiveness. Molds and photographs had the virtue of leaving the original object intact and in-situ, but he was by no means averse to removing sculptural remains and, if necessary, cutting them down to reduce weight for ease of shipment. At the site of Yaxchilán, for example, he detached and shipped to the British Museum sections of “some of the finest examples of Maya art and technique in stone” (1899–1902, 42–43; see also Joyce 1923, 81). In his accounts we also find occasional hankerings after the once-popular documentary mode: the romanticized illustrated travel narrative. In 1894 he again journeyed to Central America, this time with his wife Anne Cary Maudslay, and they collaborated in publishing an account of their journey. In the Preface to A Glimpse at Guatemala (1899), he notes that Biologia Centrali-Americana with its 200-plus plates was “a costly work which [was] not likely to find its way into many private libraries.” He therefore decided to produce “a less ambitious and less expensive volume giving a general account of my travels as well as some description of the ruins visited” (ix). He goes on to confess a hopeless inability to keep a regular journal, and my note-books are for the most part full of measurements and compass and sextant observations, and would furnish but a poor basis of a book of travels. When…my wife accompanied me to Central America, a splendid opportunity offered of avoiding all responsibility in the matter. She should keep a diary and write the book, and I would add some archaeological notes! (ix) His evident objective was to marry within one publication two separate modes of reportage: travelog and investigative documentation. The Revelations of Distance Maudslay’s set of documentary tools and methods did not include a crystal ball. If it had, he could have foretold changes to come that would challenge the extended close contact with the remains of the past that he relished. The forests of Mesoamerica are noisy places where the calls of howler monkeys add a bass line to the movement of the wind through the trees, but the crystal ball would have directed Maudslay to a source of noise far above the treetops and toward something mechanical and futuristic: an aircraft. Maudslay’s visual records mark him out as someone alert to how image-making in the present moment can inform the observers of the future and the coming documentary turn via aerial survey would lend validity to Jules Michelet’s resonant declaration from 1929: “Chaque époque rêve la suivante” (every epoch dreams its successor). The allure of breaking free of the ground and having the panorama of landscape be presented to the eye had long been a matter of artistic musing but did not become demonstrable until 1783 when a hot-air balloon ascended near Paris with two pioneer pilots aboard.8 However, antiquarian imagination had already ascended above the ground since surveying and mapping to produce a bird’s eye view had been an established technique since the beginning of the seventeenth century.

Pictorial Meanings 159 Michelet’s words appeared in print in same year as the first flyover of the tropical forests of the Yucatán peninsula took place. The advent of aerial observation, coming shortly before Maudslay’s death in 1931, announced a stepping-back from direct close-up encounter and also the adoption of a wider visual field. This wider field-of-view shifted the focus to broader patterns on the ground rather than individual details and this revised scopic stance is evident in accounts of the earliest aerial surveys. Alfred Kidder was a participant in one such survey, and in an article titled “Five Days over Maya Country” in Scientific Monthly (1930) notes how in spite of the fact that archaeologists have for many years been pushing their way into the region, they have been so buried in the welter of forest, their outlook has been so stifled by mere weight of vegetation, that it has been impossible to gain a comprehensive understanding of the real nature of this territory. (1930, 194–195) The early surveys demonstrated how terrain which would once have taken months to traverse on the ground could be covered from the air in a matter of hours. To record what was seen cameras were hoisted skyward, and it has been claimed that this made photography the first example of remote sensing (Wiseman and ElBaz 2007, 1). However, this claim overlooks the fact that in the late 1920s the camera was still a vehicle of enchanted imaging that validated the pursuit of close contact. What was different, and what announced the advent of remote visuality, was not the camera lens but the technology of flight. As the visual relationship with whatever lay beneath the forest canopy changed, the paradox of distance asserted itself, whereby observation from above could reveal certain features that would be elusive at ground-level, such as ruins and causeways. From above, certain architectural structures might show through the forest canopy or alteration in the tonality of tree foliage might be detectable, indicative of ancient human settlement and terrain alteration. As successive technological developments came into play both the textual and visual rhetoric of observation underwent profound revision compared, for example, with that found in early expeditionary accounts. Consider, for example, the following description written almost 80 years after the first aerial survey of the Yucatán region: [T]he ability to carry radar instrumentation along several flight lines results in multiple observation geometries, providing multiple image perspectives. This ability can be used to overcome a major problem in the interpretation of radar images and data: shadowing …. To fill in the gap that produces the shadow, the surface must be illuminated from another direction … Multiple illuminations produce several images, each having areas of no data unless they are merged … software merges data collected during multiple flight lines, thereby mosaicking the imagery produced by the data. (Comer and Blom 2007, 105)

160  Pictorial Meanings Clearly, these were innovations that, for all their fluent imaginings, the antiquarians could never have envisaged. Where machetes and fire was once used to clear a line-of-sight, remote-sensing technology used “removal algorithms” (Chase et al. 2017, 90) and digital “post-processing” to detect and accentuate topographic and architectural features despite their being enveloped by forest. Autonomous sensors have long since displaced not only retinal appraisal but also through-the-lens imaging, and numerous locations have been surveyed, from the Classic Maya center of Caracol (Belize) in the south, to the site of Chichén Itzá (Mexico) in the north (see Chase and Chase 2017; Hutson et al. 2016). The latter location being where, over a hundred years before, Alfred Maudslay had sat in his room, hung up his pith helmet and attended to his notes. RaDAR and LiDAR Landscapes of Mesoamerica

Since the 1990s, imaging capabilities via aircraft or from earth orbit have been borrowed from other areas of scientific investigation and adapted for use in archaeology. The data streams generated are tagged with various acronyms identifying specific sensing “platforms,” such as LANDSAT or IKONOS, or technology type, such as RaDAR (radio detection and ranging) or LiDAR (light detection and ranging).9 Differently purposed sensors will collect differing types of data but almost all see the ground surface not as we see it since the electromagnetic spectrum available to the sensors, expressible through a range of wavelengths, is much broader than the relatively narrow slice of visible light to which the human eye is biologically adapted. In this technological context in which picturing melds with pixilation, the parameters for image coherence and resolution are defined by the so-called instantaneous field of view (IFOV): a linear measure of surface area of a visual target. In other words, the altitude of instrumental sensors above a ground-surface target largely determines the capability to record features at a scale of detail useful for analysis. Sensors are critical elements within technologically exotic campaigns of visual capture, but so too are post-processing methods for enhancing visual resolution and coherence; “pan sharpening,” for example, can greatly improve visual clarity. The observational potential of aircraft and orbiting platforms has incubated new fields of archaeological inquiry. One such field, landscape archaeology, focuses on relationships between past occupation and the natural environment and the marks on terrain produced by this occupation. Landscape archaeology now comprises a distinctive strand within Maya studies but the concepts and methodologies are readily transferable to a wide range of locales and cultural regions around the world. To sustain research, images are required that are both expansive enough in their field-of-view to reveal patterns extending across terrain, but also capable of showing the outlines of specific human-made structures despite being imaged from a platform high above the earth (see Saturno et al. 2007). The documentary potential of remote sensing is particularly apparent in the imaging of spectral differences in ground-surface vegetation. It is a truism that dense forest obscures visibility, but the sensing of variations in the reflectance

Pictorial Meanings 161 of tree cover can actually serve as a proxy for what lies beneath. In other words, the forest can be induced to disclose that which it envelopes and conceals. As mentioned above, the explanation for this turns on the nature of the terrain underlying the trees and the degree to which eroded remains of ancient structures and earthworks forms part of that underlying terrain. Limestone, the dominant bedrock of eastern Mexico and portions of Central America, is synthesized in tree biomass and causes alterations in leaf tonality, but that synthesis is not everywhere equal. Some vegetation may be more deeply rooted than that adjacent to it, and the presence or absence of moisture in subsoils of differing depths may produce variations in tonality. Crucially, with vegetation that directly overlays ancient limestone ruins, differing tonality can create a trace outline of what lies beneath; a form of ghost image.10 Confirmation of the visual clues disclosed by forests came in 2003 when data gathered by an IKONOS satellite during overflights of the Petén region of northeastern Guatemala were analyzed and it was noticed that distinctive spectral signatures correlated with the known locations of archaeological sites beneath the forest canopy. Those signatures also indicated possible locations of other sites hitherto unknown. In combination with global positioning systems (GPS) location data and on-the-ground survey, the existence of these physical remains was confirmed to within a few square meters of where the satellite sensors indicated they should be. In the context of landscape archaeology, repeated flyovers also had the potential to reveal the connective features of the cultural landscape once inhabited by the ancient Maya, such as the causeways (sacbe) which linked certain population and ceremonial centers. The ability of sensors to discriminate between degrees of reflectance and yield clues to what lay beneath has the obvious potential of greatly reducing the time and effort involved in ground-surface investigations. Much exploratory work could be done from a desk without any on-site deployment at all and this represents the most extreme example of observation from distance where the visual connection becomes so attenuated that the object of scrutiny is presented only as a digital trace. In addition to the visual utility of sensing variations in spectral reflectance, another variety of remote sensing has been applied to the forested terrain of Mexico and Central America which demonstrates equally well the value of observational distance. It was first deployed on a proof-of-concept basis in 2009 and involves the repetitive downward projection of laser pulses from repeated flyovers to register variations in topography.11 The technique, known as LiDAR, is most useful if controlled for the distorting influence of vegetation cover to yield a picture of bareearth conditions at various elevations, including differences in elevation produced by ancient ruins. In obscured and relatively unexplored regions, LiDAR brings a high degree of topographic discrimination to the task of landscape imaging. Just as with sensing devices capable of registering differences in reflectance patterns, it can reveal lines of connectivity within ancient landscapes, capturing the microtopography of linear features higher or lower than the surrounding terrain. Early explorers involved in the search for ancient remains have a distinguished history of producing and using paper maps. Set within the broader context of

162  Pictorial Meanings archaeological visuality, LiDAR represents an updating of cartographic principles that have long underpinned the Western concept of landscape and how it could best be pictured. The visual rhetoric of certain types of remote sensing, including LiDAR, delivers to the eye convincing simulations of solid three-dimensionality via immaterial data and such images, despite the exotic underlying technology, revitalized old perceptual habits normalized by the surveying gaze of the Western scopic regime. An example of this can be found in algorithms that add hill-shading accents to an image, referencing artistic renderings that convey the three-dimensional form of topography. An example is shown in Figure 5.6. This image is an outcome of research into the applicability of LiDAR to the mapping of ancient Maya sites. It features the principal ceremonial structures at the ancient Maya site of Caracol, Belize, but also causeway markings at lower center of the image. Vestigial visual connections to analog mapping detectable in remote-sensing images of landscape reiterate elements of pictorialism found in past ways of seeing. We can find in those images elements of what antiquarians were fond of calling “prospects”; a wide-angle view across visually promising terrain (see Chapter 4). More fundamentally, the instrumentally enabled detection of concealed traces of ancient cultural remains comports with that quasi-magical restoration to sight of the invisible which was found so entrancing in centuries past. If we look beyond the supporting technology to the pictures alone, there is no simple division to be drawn between the charmed object of scrutiny that is the hallmark of romanticantiquarianism and instrumentally mediated imagery. Both transpose threedimensional features within a defined visual frame into two-dimensional form and thus meet the documentary imperatives of enabling virtual witnessing via tropes of resemblance. Indeed, remote sensing is more thorough in implementing this dimensional transposition than Alfred Maudslay was in the forests of Mesoamerica, for he could never fully relinquish the documentary value, as he saw it, of threedimensional copying. The specific capabilities of the data-capturing technology and the application of post-processing can enhance or suppress particular details, but picture creation has always involved such attempts at enhancement and suppression. The final product is an impression of reality within which recognizable points of interest can be identified and the fact that the final product is composed of pixels is largely irrelevant. It is the case that instrumentally mediated imagery undercuts the role played by retinal contact and close physical encounter. It is also true that the medium of distance, to the extent it is captured as data, is a force for abstraction. However, the resulting document, most likely viewable as a screen display, is still essentially a picture and, in the context of landscape archaeology, embodies elements of that enduring desire for the eye to rise unaided above that to which it is drawn. This represents a connection to aestheticism and the power of the muse for even though a scene has been captured within a technological context, it may well have been visualized within the mind long before that context existed. We know that the antiquarian imagination relished such envisaging. With remote-sensing images the notion that “chaque époque rêve la suivante” is especially fitting and as we move on to the next section of this chapter we shall see that it is generalizable to other archaeological settings and not just the cultural sites of the ancient Maya.

Pictorial Meanings 163

Figure 5.6 LiDAR image of Caracol, Belize (Chase and Chase 2017). Image reproduced courtesy of Arlen F. Chase.

Close-Up Antiquity and the Ancient Khmer In the depiction of antiquity, Western tropes of observation are highly adaptable and exportable. Thus, we find modes of visual documentation deployed in Mesoamerica also operating half a world away in southeastern Asia where concealment by dense

164  Pictorial Meanings forest posed similar challenges. We also find the same transition over time from peripatetic visual encounter, to lingering inspectional and detail-oriented engagement and, finally, the substitution of distance for closeness through the adoption of instrumentation as a prosthetic, extra-retinal aid to observation. In southeastern Asia, as with the ruins that lay obscured beneath the forest canopy of the tropical Americas, visual impressions of an ancient civilization have long been widely shared via publication, helping shape both expert and popular understandings (see Evans 2004; Norindr 2006). The geographic focus in the discussions ahead is on a region that once formed part of the Khmer empire. The terms “Angkor” and “Khmer” are often used interchangeably, but to align with published historical accounts, I use “Angkor” in referring to places, locations and areas over which the empire extended, and the term “Khmer” when describing cultural features such as temple architecture and sculpture. Khmer also refers to the indigenous language of Cambodia. The word “Angkor” is derived from an ancient Sanskrit word for city and refers to the establishment of a succession of urban centers on the Siem Reap floodplain between the ninth and thirteenth centuries CE. In the Western imagination the material remains of this civilization have long been exemplified by the temples of Angkor Wat, but these buildings are but single points within an area stretching across some 2,000 square kilometers of hinterland and which, at the apex of empire, took in a vast range of communities extending into what is now present-day Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam and Laos (see Evans and Traviglia 2012, 198–199). Given this geographic expansiveness, one gets the sense from contemporary investigations, as one does with the archaeology of the Yucatán peninsula of Mexico and Petén region of Guatemala, that the more intensively scrutinized the terrain, the more features are revealed; as if the very act of looking conjured up ancient remains. With both the region of ancient Angkor and that of the ancient Maya, the visual reporting of early investigators, although drawn to the most alluring sites, provided a portal to the broader environmental setting and what it might disclose about the landscape changes and adaptations introduced in antiquity. The Visual Records of Henri Mouhot and Louis Delaporte

The iconic status accorded to specific sites of ancient Angkor had its beginnings in the visual documentation presented to Western eyes beginning in the 1860s as an outcome of exploration both by individuals and via quasi-military campaigns Two sets of documentary accounts are particularly significant: those of Henri Mouhot (1826–1861) and observations made between 1858 and 1860, and those of Louis Delaporte (1842–1926) who was a member of the French Mekong River mission of 1866–1868. In the annals of Anglo-American archaeology, these are not familiar names; neither Mouhot nor Delaporte has been lauded in the way that Stephens and Catherwood have been and we find no index entry for them in Trigger’s A History of Archaeological Thought (2008). The main reason for this relative neglect is that they undertook their investigations within a French sphere of influence, Cambodia becoming a French protectorate in 1864. Their accounts were also first published in French. An additional reason, in Mouhot’s case, is the diversity of his interests,

Pictorial Meanings 165 ranging from biology to philology. The records of both Delaporte and Mouhot deserve to be appreciated more fully within the context of archaeological thought. Let us turn first to Mouhot whose several texts recount his travels through Cambodia, Laos and what was then known as Siam. Through his sketches, later reworked into engravings, the cultural remains of Khmer civilization enabled sites such as Angkor Wat to become lodged in the Western imagination and shrouded in colonial desire (Hauser-Schäublin 2011, 40; Norindr 2006, 56). Mouhot’s ways of seeing were rooted in the enchanted gaze and expressed via the aesthetic conventions of the picturesque. Indeed, he uses the very word “enchantment” in recording his impressions of “Ongcor” (Angkor): he tells us that when the best preserved of the remains are presented to the eye, it makes the traveler “forget all the fatigues of the journey, filling him with admiration and delight. Suddenly, and as if by enchantment, he seems to be transported from barbarism to civilization, from darkness to light.” He then resorts to hyperbole in describing one of the temples as “… a rival to that of Solomon, and erected by some ancient Michael Angelo (sic) – [that] might take an honorable place beside our most beautiful buildings” (1864, 282). He was fully aware of the type of observational regime that could be shaped into an illustrated travel account and it is diagnostic that the two-volume edition of his Travels in the Central Parts of Indo-China (Siam), Cambodia, and Laos, during the Years 1858, 1859, and 1860 (1864) was published by John Murray of London, a firm specializing in the travel and exploration genre.12 It quickly becomes clear, however, that the conditions he encountered were an obstacle to his making sense of the form and layout of the ruins he encountered: Unluckily, the scourge of war, aided by time, the great destroyer, who respects nothing, and perhaps also by the earthquakes, has fallen heavily on the greater part of the other monuments; and the work of destruction and decay continues among those which still remain standing, imposing and majestic, amidst the masses of ruins all around. (1864, 27) From among the range of hindrances, it is the envelopment of the forest that Mouhot repeatedly mentions. Trees and other vegetation obscured many of the ruins and the further he wandered away from Angkor Wat the more troublesome this became. In the opening pages of volume 2 of his 1864 account, he describes the region of Bakheng and the remains of Angkor Thom and notes the frustration he felt, since within this vast enclosure, now covered with an almost impenetrable forest, are a vast number of buildings, more or less in ruin, which testify to the ancient splendor of the town …. On visiting this place you behold on every side the tops of these enormous towers, and the roofs of the galleries, intermingled with large trees, creepers, and thistles, which invade the courts, the terraces, and other parts: and you have at first some difficulty in comprehending the arrangements of the different buildings. (2; 5–6)

166  Pictorial Meanings He goes on to describe “ruins in the province of Battambong” and again finds a site so ruinous that one might suppose an enemy had done his utmost to demolish it, or that one gazed at the results of an earthquake. A thick vegetation, the haunt of fierce animals, has sprung up, and we found it quite impossible to discover the plan of the buildings. (15) However, when we turn to the visual records of Mouhot’s encounters in the form of his sketches and their later transcribing into engraved images, we find the obscuring effects of the forest turned into advantage. He was fully aware, as would have been the engraver who transcribed his sketches into publishable pictures, that mysterious ruins set within encroaching forest were a persuasive rhetorical combination and one that powerfully reiterated the all-important lost-but-found storytelling expected of mid-century encounters with the past (see French 1999). Thus, we find trees repeatedly appearing as counterpoint to ruination. Consider, for example, the illustrations shown in Figures 5.7 and 5.8, captioned, respectively, in volume 1 of Mouhot’s Travels (207; 208) as “Temple of Ongcor Wat, North Side” and “Central Portico of the Great Temple of Ongcor Wat.” These published images were produced by a professional engraver based on sketches by Mouhot. Both have a theatrical flair: the trees are pictured as if they are curtains being pulled aside to reveal the mis-en-scéne and there is a sense that the observer

Figure 5.7  Temple of Ongkor Wat, North Side (Mouhot 1864).

Pictorial Meanings 167

Figure 5.8  Central Portico of Ongkor Wat (Mouhot 1864).

is the sole member of the audience looking in at the spectacle. Indeed, Mouhot remarks on the ruins being utterly deserted, with the only sounds coming from the animals of the forest. In Figure 5.7 we see trees competing in stature with the temple architecture and its distinctive towers and such issues of scale and visual juxtaposition do not go unremarked in Mouhot’s narrative as he notes that “within the enclosure of Ongcor Thom … there are to be seen through the trees the tops of the high towers of buildings” (2). We can, then, position the images in Mouhot’s (1864) publication within the established mid-century pictorial conventions of documentary travel. Mouhot’s itinerant scopic agenda led him to construct a map of archaeological sites in the vicinity of the Siam Reap River (see Dagens 1995, 38; Fletcher et al. 2008, 659). It is an annotated sketchmap dated 1860, a year in which he spent several weeks examining the overgrown ruins of Angkor Wat and those of Angkor Thom which are situated less than two kilometer to the south. The location of Angkor Wat is marked showing with a temple-like symbol, while the site of Angkor Thom is shown within an inset at the top left (Figure 5.9). In the context of this chapter’s focus on envelopment and concealment, a significant feature of the map is the conspicuous labeling of forêts. By marking within that forested terrain hydrological features and structures created in antiquity, such as reservoirs and step pyramids (denoted by rectangular and linear symbols), Mouhot was unwittingly charting the origins of landscape archaeology in Cambodia.

168  Pictorial Meanings

Figure 5.9 Map of Ongkor Thom, Ongkor Wat and Vicinity by Henri Mouhot, c. 1860 (Mouhot).

Mouhot was a pioneer Western observer and his choice of scenes to illustrate served as targets for others to pursue. A prime example of this is an undertaking which, organizationally, stood in sharp contrast to Mouhot’s own relatively solitary exploits: the Mekong mission of 1866–1868, under the direction of Doudart de

Pictorial Meanings 169 Lagrée and Francis Garnier. It was a quasi-military project with clearly imperialist motives and a documentary agenda built around modes of visual capture dating back to the days of Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign of the late 1790s with its entourage of luminaries and savants.13 The full account of the mission’s objectives and accomplishments was published as Voyage d’exploration en Indo-Chine (Garnier 1885). This was a posthumous publication as Garnier died in 1873, but the work has been described as the first scientific monograph ever produced on the unexplored regions of Indochina (Baptiste and Zéphir 2013, 113). Characterizing the work in this way implies that it belongs in a different documentary category from the 1864 publication by Mouhot but, in reality, there are clear stylistic overlaps. In its first iteration it was accompanied by two portfolios: a compendium of informational documents such as maps, and an Album Pittoresque. Some of the illustrations in Voyage en Indo-Chine were engravings from daguerreotypes produced by the expedition’s resident photographer Emile Gsell, but over 200 of the engravings on wood are based on the work of another member of the entourage: the artist and antiquary Louis Delaporte. One of these engravings is shown in Figure 5.10. Captioned in the original publication as “Ruins of Mont Bakheng,” it forms one of a class of depictions in which the familiar trope of ruins juxtaposed with trees and cultural remains is reiterated as a mysterious liminal state between nature and culture and revelation versus concealment. A near contemporary Garnier was Louis Delaporte (1842–1925). Delaporte initially created documents which explicitly embody the visual manners of the picturesque turn, as did the work of Mouhot, but it is the later evolution of his

Figure 5.10  Ruins of Mont Bakheng (Garnier 1885).

170  Pictorial Meanings observational stance into a regime of close scrutiny that is significant. Specifically, the published records of Khmer art and architecture produced after his tenure with the Mekong mission reveal a shift away from peripatetic observation and toward a highly focused and detail-oriented scopic stance foretelling later modes of visual documentation while continuing to embody pictorial tropes. Delaporte undertook several of his own expeditions to Indochina between 1873 and 1885 with the principal objective of collecting examples of ancient Khmer statuary and sculpture; work that he believed represented a distinctively different aesthetic form from that of the classical world of Europe with which European eyes were most familiar. He was hopeful that selected examples would eventually be displayed in Paris alongside exhibits from Greece and Italy. This did eventually come to pass, but when first exhibited in Paris at the Palais du Trocadéro in 1878 during the Paris World’s Fair, the display fell short of the recognition he had hoped for. Later, though, the exhibit enjoyed an afterlife of some distinction when installed in the newly created Musée Indochinois du Trocadéro (Baptiste and Zéphir 2013, 114). There, original artifacts were interspersed with plaster casts and Delaporte clearly considered such facsimiles to be valid substitutes for originals. As with Alfred Maudslay’s use of copies described earlier in this chapter, we can consider Delaporte’s casts as outcomes of close visual and tactile contact and their installation in Paris as comparable to Maudslay’s decision to consign casts to museums; in both cases there was a strong didactic impulse at work. The initial display in Paris, despite its mixed reception, indicates a move away from authenticity being vested exclusively in the original and, as in Maudslay’s case, an acceptance that replication was no barrier to the projection of charm and visual delight so long as details were carried across intact. Delaporte’s documentary production, in addition to casts, consists of drawings and engravings. A notable example of which is his folio publication, Monuments of Khmer Art and Architecture (1914), which constituted a comprehensive inventory of Khmer temple plans, architectural facades, bas reliefs and sculptures. The Visual Records of George and Bernard-Philippe Groslier

Delaporte’s enthusiasms helped introduce the Western eye to the finer detail of Khmer art and architecture and the intensely aesthetic optic he brought to bear would be taken up by others, with major practical implications for the documentation of antiquity in southeastern Asia. In this regard, we can single out the work of George Groslier (1887–1945) who was active in Cambodia in the early twentieth century at the same time that Delaporte’s Monuments of Khmer Art and Architecture came into print. He established in the city of Phnom Penh the first national museum (originally known as the Musée Albert Sarraut) where he served as curator. His interest in the archaeology of the Khmer period was expressed not only through conservation work and advocacy (see Abbe 2015) but also through publications such as A l’Ombre d’Angkor (1918); the two-volume Arts et Archéologie Khmèr (1921–1926); La Sculpture Khmèr Ancienne (1925) and Angkor (1933). Judging from his Preface to Angkor, George Groslier saw the fate of the enchanted eye

Pictorial Meanings 171 through a distinctly subjective lens and he adopted a wistful tone that combined sentimental and romanticized view of antiquity with misgivings about the intrusions of modernity: It is true that the ancient capital is no longer isolated as in an obscurity suited to its reticence. The motor-car already draws up at the gates to its buildings; telegraph wires have invaded its walls; while hotels are now rising in view of its spires. This is perhaps the last chance of obtaining a view of the past, shrouded in mystery no doubt, but as yet free from the inevitable disfigurements of the present. As an artist himself, George Groslier had a particular interest in picturing ancient remains. Through this line of pictorial documentation, and in combination with his conservation work, Groslier’s enthusiasms connected to those of Louis Delaporte but also helped vector them into the mid-twentieth century. Indeed, during the first three decades of that century, the antiquarian traditions of pictorialism seemed to find a natural home in the documentation of Khmer antiquity. When the challenge came to update the visual enthusiasms of George Groslier, it was taken up by his son Bernard-Philippe (1926–1986) whose work would go on to become foundational to later twentieth-century assessments of the region’s archaeological remains. Unsurprisingly given the intellectual legacy, his visual perspective was bifurcated; he embraced modernized approaches to recording the remains of antiquity but also relished the familiarities of aesthetically informed documentation and the enchantments of close contact. One finds in B-P Groslier’s writings, particularly when accompanied by photographs, an engagement with the past that is unabashedly sensual. In Angkor, Art and Civilization, he claims that to express fully “the regal majesty and calm repose of Angkor Wat” required the engagement of all the senses: [We] need more than words, something better than pictures: we need to add the dawn breaking over the forest, the sun’s ray suddenly piercing the clouds – and the silence. Rare breezes and shifting lights; a heavy coolness, indefinable scents … All these make up the beauty of the stones of Angkor and the memory of the men who wrought them. (1957, 198; cited also in Moore 1987) In that same publication he dismisses the “romantic nonsense” through which the abandonment of the Angkor Wat had sometimes been described before but, in his closing remarks, seems to endorse that same brand of “nonsense”: Angkor Wat was swallowed up in the green silence of the forest. Yet strangely enough it was to the temples themselves that the tallest trees and the most riotous festoons of creepers paid their last respects, as if even in the grave they preserved their fallen grandeur. (196)

172  Pictorial Meanings Bifurcated sensibilities dictated the course of B-P Groslier’s career. He clearly endorsed the value of direct visual contact with antiquity and, emulating his father, he became both connoisseur and custodian of Khmer art and architecture and the distinctive world view that informed it. Through his appointment as official conservator of Khmer architecture in 1959, he put his particular form of visual trusteeship to practical use by overseeing the reconstruction of a number of sites in order to reverse the worst cases of depredation and restore them to some degree of visual wholeness. His curatorial work and efforts to promote Khmer artistic and architectural heritage built upon the inspectional power of the observer but also technical decision-making about how the cultural remains might best be visually understood via modernized means of investigation. The result was a twinning of his aesthetic leanings and relishing of the enchanted eye with technologically supported, ways of picturing. The most significant expression of this was his advocacy of aerial survey as a means of interpreting visual evidence of ancient landscape change. The first aerial photographs of Cambodian terrain were taken in the 1930s when B-P Groslier was still a boy but almost 30 years on his enthusiasm for this means of looking at landscape is fully evident. From the skies above Cambodia, he encountered views as interesting and beguiling as those at ground-level and concluded that “southern Indochina is a paradise for archaeology from the air…[i]t is easy to spot the ancient field grid, the irrigation works, and so forth … The forest is not often a handicap, and very few other natural phenomena have altered the face of the earth” (1960, 21). With this downward-looking scopic stance, the terrain took on the appearance of a map. Some foundational work on this change in perspective had already been done in the early decades of the twentieth century by Lunet de Lajonquière, whose surveying of the position of reservoirs and temple structures remained an important source of reference for many decades (Evans and Traviglia 2012, 208). Also foundational was the cartographic work of one Henri Parmentier, a person whose visual enthusiasms were as bifurcated as those of B-P Groslier. Parmentier compiled what can best be described as an inventory of ancient cultural remains in his richly illustrated L’Art Khmèr Primitif (1927) where we find a mix of architectural studies and cartography. This mix implies that the publisher of L’Art Khmèr Primitif and probably Parmentier himself saw an essential compatibility between the illustration of architectural detail and maps. A later publication, L’art Khmèr Classique (1939), includes a survey of the archaeological site of Koh Ker, Cambodia, an ancient site located 80 kilometers northeast of Angkor Wat. According to Evans and Traviglia, this map (shown in Figure 5.11) has “remained fundamentally unchanged and unchallenged until the present day” (2012, 208). In accordance with cartographic convention, temple structures are reduced to graphic notations and stripped of their three-dimensionality. But if we accept the view of visual theorist James Elkins, it still qualifies as a picture since “a map … is usually a picture with some writing superimposed” (1999, 85). If this is so, and I would not argue otherwise, we can establish a link between the ground-survey mapping of the Cambodian terrain and the newly emergent

Pictorial Meanings 173 picturing obtainable by aerial photography. L’art Khmèr Classique was published at about the same time that aerial photography was being deployed in Cambodia and expansive views of the landscape from above were becoming all-important. Indeed, it has been plausibly claimed that the production of the 1939 Koh Ker map was prompted by this new means of observation (see Evans 2010, 92).

Figure 5.11  Map of Koh Ker (Parmentier 1939).

174  Pictorial Meanings The early aerial photographs of Cambodian terrain were largely opportunistic and the outcome of hopeful searching. Bernard-Philippe Groslier, however, had an agenda. He was possessed of a provocative idea that has come to inform, even dominate, the understanding of ancient Khmer civilization. He theorized that a socalled hydraulic culture had developed in antiquity and that evidence of intensive manipulation of water resources in the distant past could be found on the presentday landscape, albeit obscured by vegetation and agricultural expansion. Such theorizing was part of a broader mid-century focus in anthropology on the nature of hydraulic adaptations (see for example Price 1994; Wittfogel 1956) and the methods applied to the testing of his hypothesis were similarly products of mid-century enthusiasms. The part played by Groslier in such visual investigations of ancient landscape patterns seems to represent a sudden swerve in sympathies away from close contact through hand and eye but it meshes with Groslier’s bifurcated scopic enthusiasms in which romanticist yearnings coexisted with modernist impulses. The scale and extent of the ancient infrastructure network on the landscape indicated, in Groslier’s view, a coordinated long-term management of effort and indigenous skill in antiquity to maximize irrigation and rice production in a climate regime where rainfall was highly seasonal. To confirm his hypothesis, he advocated rigorous investigation of the settlement archaeology of ancient Angkor and he himself took the initial steps toward this by working in collaboration with the École Française d’Extreme-Oriente (then based in Hanoi) through the 1950s to produce “systematic air surveys” (Groslier 1960, 15–16; Moore 1987, 176). He felt sure that he and his team would be able to reconstruct the layout of ancient hydraulic systems by combining such surveys with previous research and mapping campaigns which had extended beyond Cambodia and into neighboring Vietnam. Subsequently, he reports that “over 600 sites [were] surveyed, three-quarters of them hitherto unknown, connected by several hundred canals or roads, not to mention the ancient rice fields and the tanks which amount to several thousands” (1960, 21–22; 23). Revealed mound-and-moat settlements were judged to be features of a prehistoric water management system first put in place on a local scale but which might have served as models for the implementation of later, larger scale endeavors (Stubbs and Mckee 2007, 525). During these overflights, Groslier notes that forest cover was “not often a handicap” and attributes that to the visual schema applied to the investigations: One must bear in mind that absolutely nothing was visible on the ground because all these sites had been entirely destroyed and covered up. However, from the air, we have established a repertory of the typical shapes, and “aerial landscape” interpretation, together with the already known historical facts, and have made suppositions as to the nature and even possible dates of these remains. (1960, 23) The visual evidence on the landscape required collation into an archive, but one that contrasted with close-contact investigations by emphasizing a more distant

Pictorial Meanings 175 surveying gaze and a widening of the depth-of-field away from single sites and toward patterns on the land. Groslier’s reporting on what he calls the “spaceorganization” of Khmer culture (1960, 24) and about how once-successful regimes of water management might have collapsed if hydrological control and management became over-stressed for some reason (1960, 27). Groslier’s pursuit of visual evidence was unflagging. However, it is a sad fact of recent history that the “disfigurements of the present” to which BernardPhilippe Groslier’s father refers in 1933 would take on a wholly different and more lethal complexion in Cambodia and southeastern Asia in general. War, genocide and political repression beginning in 1970 put paid to B-P Groslier’s grand projet, and it would be another quarter-century before relative calm returned and methods would become available to verify or refute the hydraulic culture hypothesis.14 Those methods would be neither implemented nor assessed by B-P Groslier but his influence helped shape the intentions behind them. They involved a further stepping back from the land surface. Radar images of the Cambodian terrain were acquired in 1994 by the NASA space shuttle, followed in 1996 by three overflights to capture images via Airborne Synthetic Aperture Radar (AIRSAR).15 A further survey in 1999 revealed, via NASA radar data, networks of ponds, settlement mounds and other evidence of ancient water management systems (see Evans and Traviglia 2012, 198–199; Moore, Freeman and Hensley 2007, 185–187; 194). Extensive areas of forest cover and agricultural encroachment enveloped and concealed paleohydrological features from the unaided eye and radar imaging proved critical in detecting features all but invisible at ground-level.16 Technological sensing of proven value in Mesoamerican surveys was generally applicable to the Cambodian case, but in some instances, a methodological reversal was required. Specifically, rather than analyzing satellite data for patterns of tonal variability that could serve as proxy indicators of what lay beneath the vegetation cover, there was deliberate suppression of the sometimes inchoate signal that forest cover can produce. Evans and Traviglia note the importance of software programs and digital post-processing to obtain visual coherence: The process … removes the spectral signature of vegetation…without requiring any specific a priori knowledge of the scene. The method, by suppressing the expression of the vegetation component, facilitates an improved analysis of the underlying geological and archaeological features. (2012, 219) It is a valuable attribute of remote sensing, no matter where deployed in the context of landscape archaeology, that discrete features can be enhanced and essentially restored to visual coherence. A satellite image of the area mapped by Henri Parmentier in 1939 is described by Evans, Hanus and Fletcher (2015, 41) and we are informed us that it was “digitally enhanced to exaggerate discrete features such as rice-field boundaries or water management infrastructure.” But Parmentier’s map displays its own version of visual focus and suppression of extraneous detail

176  Pictorial Meanings and it is common to all pictorial constructions that some features are emphasized while the prominence of others is reduced. With satellite imaging this can either be an artifact of sensing limitations, human intervention via post-production processing, or both. In the Cambodia case, some of the cartography and field surveys produced in the early decades of the twentieth century retained their usefulness for many decades, indicating that those documents, including the map produced by Parmentier, complemented the adoption of remote-sensing images. However, this visual afterlife was predicated on digital metamorphoses that would reconfigure those illustrations into new visual forms often fitted to a geographic information system (GIS) and integrated with other sources of geo-referenced data.17 This reconfiguration represents a radical shift away from the papery world of past imaging into digital documentary formats of the present, but it does not necessarily represent a shift away from pictorialism. Visual investigations of the Cambodian landscape continue under the auspices of The Greater Angkor Project (GAP). As a research project, it employs a suite of methods and objectives that B-P Groslier would immediately and which serve, if not fully to substantiate his theorizing about hydraulic civilization, at least underwrite its plausibility. Picturing the Concealed Past The cases discussed in this chapter, despite the differences in geographic locations, have elements in common. Of particular significance is how they reveal the trajectory of visual investment and the nature and pace of three distinctive observational phases. Early investigations of ancient remains beneath the forest canopy were often fitted within peripatetic modes of observation which were essentially travel itineraries. A successor mode of observation then replaced the traveling eye with one that was more focused and inspectional and required longer term visits whereby sites of archaeological interest turned into base camps. This phase was followed by a move away from documentation of ground-surface finds and toward aerial observation; a trend that is still in train today and remains driven by technological innovations and refinements. Accompanying this progression of observational phases was a shift from individual, or what we might call entrepreneurial expeditions toward ventures that were expressly team efforts reliant on behindthe-scenes expert judgment to convert observations into visual form. The evidence for these three phases is suggestive rather than definitive but becomes most apparent if we compare the first Western forays, such as those of Stephens and Catherwood in the tropical Americas, with the most recent ventures as described in this chapter. In terms of pace, it bears remembering that less than 50 years before the first aerial surveys, there were still observers on the ground in southeastern Asia and the tropical Americas sketching, mold-making and producing large-format glass-plate photographs. That the displacement of close contact progressed so quickly was indicative of the persuasive power of alternative ways of seeing but, judging by the visual outcome, also indicative of the continuing role of picturing.

Pictorial Meanings 177 The allure of direct encounter was one of the basic characteristics of the enchanted eye and one which has been passed down into relatively recent times; certainly into the 1930s and often later. But comparison of the first Western observations in the tropical Americas and southeastern Asia reveals a shift away from direct physical contact with antiquity. At the beginning of this chapter, I offered a definition of closeness that emphasized a relationship with antiquity based on sensory contact rather than spatial metrics. If closeness is displaced by distance, it suggests that archaeological visuality, at least in the documentary contexts described in this chapter, might have transitioned to a different relationship with the ancient past. The technologies of remote sensing not only dissolve object-centered ways of seeing but also allow the cultural remains of the past to the delivered to the observer rather than requiring the observer to go in search of them, thus inverting long-established presumptions about the role of archaeological discovery. Those involved in investigations of the landscape archaeology of ancient Maya and Khmer civilizations would probably endorse a continuing role for on-site survey and traditional excavation to ground-truth selected targets, but in an increasing number of cases, the justification for direct encounter or physical investigation becomes questionable. Despite the phases and transitions and the emergence of a reconfigured relationship with antiquity, the visual record indicates that the value of pictorial description has remained largely intact. Arguably, the reason for this resilience is the flexibility of pictorial modes of documentary reporting and its capacity for partnering with non-pictorial information that may exist only as data streams. This chapter has inducted maps and satellite images into the category of pictures and picturing. Elkins (1999, 85) argues persuasively that maps are pictures, but maps populated by abstract notations, symbols and linear outlines are resistant to being categorized in this way. Satellite imagery such as that from Cambodia offers no such resistance as it presents greater information to the eye and also a sense of the texture of the ground surface; the picture it represents is more rhetorically powerful and adheres more obviously to the principal of resemblance that distinguishes documentary pictorialism.. The marriage of pictorialism and technology creates elite ventures with their own distinctive logic of pioneering exploration, albeit a logic at variance with exploration in which human sensing provided the portal to documentary encounters. Ironically, this variance, rather than displacing pictorialism, creates a role for it. Because satellite sensors are often intended to detect wavelengths invisible to the unaided eye, picturing is needed to convert the traces of those extra-retinal traces and make them eye-friendly. With traditional pictorialism, such as that deployed by the antiquaries of times past, the artifice inherent in documentary picturing was driven by the pursuit of resemblance to visible appearances. By contrast, the agendas of pictorialism in recent times include the pursuit of visual penetration and the capture of otherwise elusive detail. Pictorial forms of interpretation favor the identification of patterns and the tracing of connections by means of a broad overview, even in situations of extreme concealment. Recalibration of the visual field can yield significant benefits for specific subfields of archaeology including,

178  Pictorial Meanings as discussed, landscape archaeology. However, geographer John Pickles renders a more pungent critical judgment about the status of this recalibration, concluding that “the auratic nature of the fixed-image object is destabilized … forms of electronic reproduction have the character of resituating and reconfiguring the object” (1995, 226). The fuller dimensions of this reconfiguration are explored in the next chapter but one point can usefully be made here. It has been said of digital imagery that it is the freest of all representations since it has never borne the burden of an original materiality (Sassoon 2004, 186) and this free-floating and shape-shifting quality colors the way we speak of its products. Rosa Lasaponara and Nicola Masini in their investigations of technical aspects of remote sensing refer to it as “digital light technology” (2012, 5), alluding to the distanced, non-tactile, non-invasive and yet all-revealing nature of its capabilities and how the role of light can be manipulated for image production. They also assert that [t]he use of effective data processing procedures … opens the possibility to set up an automatic (without human intervention), or at least semiautomatic (with human intervention), approach for the reconnaissance of archaeological features and site/landscape change detection. (2011, 1995–2002) In bringing this chapter to a close, it is interesting to speculate what a romantically inspired antiquary from the past would think if shown an example of what this digital light technology can produce? Although the image would provoke a good deal of curiosity, it might not be thought necessarily an object of charm or allure and given that, in the visual rhetoric of antiquarian imagery, there is an expectation of mystery, obscurity and ambiguity; satellite imaging might well be critiqued an act of de-mystification. But surely, we insist, satellite imagery seems to reprise the promise of magical revelation that lays at the heart of antiquarian sensibilities. Our antiquary, mystified by the idea of earth-circling devices and admitting to never venturing further from home than Italy, may well accept that some form of magical revelation was involved but also conclude that such imagery was simply so different it could not be valued aesthetically in the same way as pictures obtained through direct contact. Our visitor from past times might also baulk at the fact that judgment, formerly based on individual visual acuity and liberal doses of speculation, was being cast aside. Having led our antiquary back to his carriage and bid good day, a final note is in order to bring this chapter to a close. We should be aware that instrumental sensing from above the ground represents only one aspect of how, in the context of archaeology, distance from original materiality is evident in many different contexts. Past discussion of radiocarbon dating revealed, for example, how the search for evidence and meaning can represent a documentary journey through dematerialized data, probing subsurfaces for details so small that they are off-limits to the unaided eye. We saw it also in the researching of fresco fragments from Knossos. Earthcircling, data-capturing journeying is the counterpoint to laboratory-based probing

Pictorial Meanings 179 of inner space, actually shares the same visual continuum. It also shares the objective of overcoming concealment. In the next chapter we will see how excursions into inner space can be the arbiter of authenticity as the study of the past engages with skepticism about what is real and what is simulation and to what extent the distinction matters. Notes 1 Explorations of the Yucatán peninsula extend back to the sixteenth century but greatly increased in the two decades following Mexico’s independence from Spain in 1821. 2 The accounts of Stephens and Catherwood are still cited in the archaeological literature of today as early examples of objective documentary fieldwork (see, for example, Coe 2005, 236; Evans 2004, 44–45; Hammond 1994, 31). But it has been plausibly argued that the acclaim accorded those accounts when first published was based on their adherence to antiquarian tropes of encounters with the exotic rather than the belief that they were a dispassionate record (see Evans 2004). Supporting this argument is the fact that another foray in the region undertaken at virtually the same time but which adhered less to antiquarian tenets (the Walker-Caddy expedition) has been largely ignored by historians. The fact that the images in particular have been enthusiastically conveyed into the orbit of modern archaeological thought by contemporary Mayanists suggests a degree of nostalgia for pre-modern tropes of picturing. 3 During the second of the two Stephens and Catherwood expeditions, daguerreotype photography was used in conjunction with drawing and painting (Bohrer 2011, 58–59). Unfortunately, these photographs would have been destroyed when the building in which they were being exhibited in New York was destroyed by fire in July 1842. 4 The sites Maudslay described and documented in visual form spurred interest in Maya archaeology more generally. Copán (Honduras), for example, subsequently became the focus of investigations by the Peabody Museum of Harvard University between 1891 and 1894 (see Sharer 1994, 298). 5 In skilled hands plaster casting could capture the fine detail of even the most complex stone carving. It was a slow and painstaking procedure, however, and Maudslay hired an expert for the task. Specifically, it was the skills of one Lorenzo Giuntini that enabled stelae at Quiriguá and Copán to be successfully reproduced. 6 Charnay undertook two expeditions to both Mexico and Central America in 1857–1861 and 1880–1882. His photographs were predominantly of sites in Mexico, however, and Keith Davis credits him with being “unquestionably the first important photographer in the Yucatán” (1981, 104). His photographs comprise the first volume of Charnay (1862-1863). 7 The Mayanist, Peter Mathews, undertook an inventory and pilot study of the casts in 1998 and describes them as “one of the greatest collections of objects relating to Mesoamerican archaeology” (1999, 6). He makes clear, however, that they had suffered from some rough handling over the course of time, noting that “virtually all the casts in the collection have been broken, chipped, and abraded. This is perhaps to be expected in a collection of large but delicate objects that have endured several installations, dismantlings, and moves” (9). The British Museum collection was originally donated to the Victoria and Albert Museum in London before later being transferred. Additional casts were donated to Cambridge University, the Musée de l’Homme in Paris, and the Museum of Natural History in New York. 8 The two balloonists were Francois Pilâtre de Rozier and Francois Laurent. The use of hot air to provide lift was rapidly superseded by hydrogen gas, a more controllable though highly flammable fuel. 9 IKONOS is a commercial satellite system for high-resolution imagery and the first was launched in 1999, making available a suite of earth-surface images.

180  Pictorial Meanings 10 Lasaponara and Masini (2006) describe how these near-surface archaeological deposits can influence surface vegetation patterns, forming distinctive marks depending on sun-angle and soil moisture (214), but the significance of such marks and awareness of the auto-imaging capability of the land surface have a long history, being first noticed during overflights of the Middle East in the early years of the early twentieth century. Identification and aerial survey of such marks became an accepted method of archaeological detection in the early 1920s. 11 The point-cloud raw data are compiled in LASer (LAS) file format. This is a public file format for the interchange of three-dimensional data between producers and users. 12 This was a posthumous publication. Mouhot died of Malaria in Laos in 1861. The work bears a dedication from his brother who was partly responsible for placing Mouhot’s papers and journal in sufficiently good order for publication and for having his sketches re-drawn. According to the Dedication, “[t]he journal of the unfortunate traveler shows his…devotion to science, art, and the progress of civilization” (1864, 7–8). Mouhot was an intrepid traveler and keen observer, but he was also intensely racist. For evidence of this, see Mouhot (1862). 13 Included in the entourage was Dominique Vivant Denon whose observations were presented in the 1802 folio publication, Voyage dans la Basse et la Haute Egypte (see Chapter 2). 14 The ideology of the Khmer Rouge was enforced on the populace with great cruelty but, as noted by Henri Locard (2015, 213), the concept of a hydraulic culture rooted in antiquity was embraced by that regime as an example of revolutionary power through indigenous effort and communal sharing. The Khmer Rouge conducted tours of selected sites of hydrologic interest but were not sympathetic to the involvement of non-Cambodian individuals and organizations. 15 Radar (an acronym for “radio detection and ranging”) is categorized as an “active” sensing system, generating data through measuring the return travel-time of a pulse of microwave energy directed toward a target (see Goodman el al. 2007, 375; Moore, Freeman and Hensley 2007). 16 Evans and Traviglia report that imaging obtained via Quickbird was particularly useful (2012, 216). Quickbird is a commercial platform for satellite imagery and is able to deliver very high-resolution (VHR) visual data down to a scale at the ground surface of 0.6 meters. The advantages of VHR satellite imagery are its synoptic view, the multispectral properties of the data and the capability to extract geo-referenced information from site level up to the scale of entire archaeological landscapes (see Lasaponara and Masini 2011, 1995–2095). 17 A GIS categorizes and overlays mapped and geo-referenced landscape features. Such systems can then be queried on points of landscape significance and relationships between specific features such as water sources and patterns of settlement.

References Abbe, Gabrielle. 2015. “Decadence and Revival in Cambodian Arts and the Role of George Groslier (1887-1945).” In Cultural Heritage and Civilization. From Decay to Recovery, edited by Michael Falser, 123–147. Heidelberg: Springer. Baptiste, Pierre and Thiery Zéphir. 2013. “Angkor: Birth of a Legend – Louis Delaporte and Cambodia.” Orientations 44:8, 113–114. Bohrer, Frederick N. 2011. Photography and Archaeology. London: Reaktion Books. Charnay, Désiré. 1862-1863. Cités et Ruines Américaines: Mitla, Palenqué, Izamal, Chichen-Itza, Uxmal, Receuillies et Photographiées par Désiré Charnay avec un Texte par M. Viollet-le-Duc. 2 vols. Paris: Gide.

Pictorial Meanings 181 Chase, Adrian S. Z., Diane Z. Chase and Arlen F. Chase. 2017. “LiDAR for Archaeological Research and the Study of Historical Landscapes.” In Sensing the Past. From Artifact to Historical Site, edited by Nicola Masini and Francesco Soldovieri, 89–100. Springer. Chase, Arlen F. and Diane Z. Chase. 2017. “Detection of Maya Ruins by LiDAR: Applications, Case Study, and Issues.” In Sensing the Past. From Artifact to Historical Site, edited by Nicola Masini and Francesco Soldovieri, 455–468. Springer. Cherry, John F. 2011. “We still have to Excavate – But Not at Any Price.” Archaeological Dialogues 18: 10–17. Coe, Michael D. 2005 (1966). The Maya. London: Thames and Hudson. Comer, Douglas C. and Ronald C. Blom 2007. “Detection and Identification of Archaeological Sites and Features using Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) Data Collected from Airborne Platforms.” In Remote Sensing in Archaeology, edited by James R. Wiseman and Farouk El-Baz, 103–136. New York: Springer. Dagens, Bruno. 1995. Angkor. Heart of an Asian Empire. London: Thames and Hudson. Davis, Keith F. 1981. Désiré Charnay Expeditionary Photographer. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Delaporte, Louis. 1914. Les Monuments au Cambodge. Études d’Architecture Khmére. Paris: Ernest Levoux. Edgeworth, Matt. 2011. “Excavation as a Ground of Archaeological Knowledge.” Archaeological Dialogues 18:1, 44–48. Elkins, James. 1999. The Domain of Images. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Evans, Damian. 2010. The Archaeological Landscape of Koh Ker, Northwest Cambodia. Evans, Damian and Arianna Traviglia. 2012. “Uncovering Angkor: Integrated Remote Sensing Applications in the Archaeology of Early Cambodia.” In Satellite Remote Sensing. A New Tool for Archaeology, edited by Rosa Lasaponara and Nicola Masini, 197–230. New York: Springer. Evans, Damian, Kasper Hanus and Roland Fletcher. 2015. “The Story beneath the Canopy: Airborne LiDAR Survey over Angkor, Phnom Kulen and Koh Ker, Northwestern Cambodia.” In Across Time and Space. Papers from the 41st Conference on Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology, edited by Arianna Traviglia, 38–69. Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam Press. Evans, R. Tripp. 2004. Romancing the Maya. Mexican Antiquity in the American Imagination 1820-1915. Austin: University of Texas Press. Fletcher, Roland, Dan Perry, Damian Evans, Christopher Pottier, Mike Barbetti, Matti Kummu, Terry Lustig and the Authority for the Protection and Management of Angkor and the Region of Siem Reap, Department of Monuments and Archaeology. 2008. “The Water Management Network of Angkor, Cambodia.” Antiquity 82, 658–670. French, Lindsay. 1999. “Hierarchies of Value at Angkor Wat.” Ethnos 64:2, 170–191. Garnier, Francis. 1885. Voyage d’Exploration en Indo-Chine. Paris: Librairie Hachette. Goodman, Dean, Kent Schneider, Salvatore Piro, Yasushi Nishimura and Agamemnon G. Patel. 2007. “Ground Penetrating Radar Advances in Subsurface Imaging for Archaeology.” In Remote Sensing in Archaeology, edited by James Wiseman and Farouk El-Baz, 375–394. New York: Springer. Graham, Ian. 2002. Alfred Maudslay and the Maya. London: British Museum Press. Groslier, Bernard-Philippe. 1960. “Our Knowledge of Khmer Civilization. A Re-appraisal.” Journal of the Siam Society 48:1, 1–28. Groslier, Bernard-Philippe and Jacques Arthaud. 1957. Angkor, Art and Civilization, translated by Eric Ernshaw Smith. London: Thames and Hudson.

182  Pictorial Meanings Groslier, George. 1918. L’Ombre d’Angkor. Notes et Impressions sur les Temples inconnus de L’anciennes Cambodge. Paris: Challamel. Groslier, George. 1921-26. Arts et Archéologie Khmère. Revue de Recherches sur les Arts, les Monuments at l’Ethographie du Cambodge depuis les Origen jusqu’á nos Jours. 2 vols. Paris: Challamel. Groslier, George. 1925. La Sculpture Khmère Ancienne. Paris: G. Crés. Groslier, George. 1933. Angkor, translated by Paule Fercoque du Lelay. Paris: Henri Laurens. Hammond, Norman. 1994. Ancient Maya Civilization. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Hauser-Schäublin, Brigitta. 2011. “Vihar Preah: From Object of Colonial Desire to Contested World Heritage Site.” In World Heritage. Angkor and Beyond. Circumstances and Implications of UNESCO Listings in Cambodia. Göttingen: University of Göttingen, 33–56. Heidegger, Martin. 1977. “The Question Concerning Technology” In The Question Concerning Technology and other Essays, translated by William Lovitt, 3–35. New York: Harper Colophon. Hutson, Scott R., Barry Kidder, Celine Lamb, Daniel Vallejo-Cáliz and Jacob Welch. 2016. “Small Buildings and Small Budgets: Making LiDAR Work in Northern Yucatan, Mexico.” Advances in Archaeological Practice 4:3, 268–283. Jay, Martin. 1994. Downcast Eyes. The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-Century French Thought. Berkeley: University of California Press. Joyce, Thomas Athol 1923. Guide to the Maudslay Collection of Maya Sculptures (Casts and Originals) from Central America. London: British Museum. Kidder, Alfred V. 1930. “Five Days over the Maya Country.” The Scientific Monthly 30:193–205. Lasaponara, Rosa and Nicola Masini. 2006. “Detection of Archaeological Crop Marks by Using Satellite QuickBird Multispectral Imagery.” Journal of Archaeological Science 34:2, 214–221. Lasaponara, Rosa and Nicola Masini. 2011. “Satellite Remote Sensing in Archaeology: Past, Present and Future Prospects.” Journal of Archaeological Science 38:9, 1995–2002. Lasaponara, Rosa and Nicola Masini. 2012. “Remote Sensing in Archaeology: From Data Interpretation to Digital Data Manipulation.” In Satellite Remote Sensing: A New Tool for Archaeology, edited by Rosa Lasaponara and Nicola Masini, 3–16. New York: Springer. Locard, Henri 2015. “The Myth of Angkor as an Essential Component of the Khmer Rouge Utopia.” In Cultural Heritage as Civilizing Mission, edited by Michael Falser, 201–222. Heidelberg: Springer. Mathews, Peter. 1999. Pilot Study of the Maudslay Casts in the British Museum, 1998. Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies (FAMSI). Maudslay, Alfred P. 1883. “Explorations in Guatemala and Examination of the NewlyDiscovered Indian Ruins of Quiriguá, Tikal, and the Usumacinta.” Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society and Monthly Record of Geography 5:4, 105–204. Maudslay, Alfred P. 1899-1902. Biologia Centrali-Americana or Contributions to the Knowledge of the Flora and Fauna of Mexico and Central America. Archaeology, edited by F. Ducanne Goodman and Osbert Salvin. 2 vols. London: Dulau. Maudslay, Anne Cary and Alfred P. Maudslay. 1899. A Glimpse at Guatemala, and Some Notes on the Ancient Monuments of Central America. London: John Murray. Michelet, Jules. 1929. “Avenir! Avenir!” Europe 19:73, 6. Moore, Elizabeth. 1987. “Bernard-Philippe Groslier 1926-1986.” Asian Perspectives 28:2, 173–180.

Pictorial Meanings 183 Moore, Elizabeth, Tony Freeman and Scott Hensley. 2007 “Spaceborne and Airborne Radar at Angkor: Introducing New Technology to the Ancient Site.” In Remote Sensing in Archaeology, edited by James Wiseman and Farouk El-Baz, 185–216. New York: Springer. Mouhot, M. Henri. 1862. “Notes on Cambodia, the Lao Country, etc.,” translated by Thomas Hodgkin. Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London 32, 142–163. Mouhot, M. Henri. 1864. Travels in the Central Parts of Indo-China (Siam), Cambodia, and Laos, during the Years 1858, 1859, and 1860. 2 vols. London: John Murray. Norindr, Panivong. 2006. “The Fascination for Angkor Wat and the Ideology of the Visible.” In Expressions of Cambodia. The Politics of Tradition, Identity, and Change, edited by Leakthina Chau-Pech Ollier and Tim Winter, 54–70. London: Routledge. Olsen, Bjørnar, Michael Shanks, Timothy Webmoor and Christopher Witmore. 2012. Archaeology. The Discipline of Things. Los Angeles: University of California Press. Parmentier, Henri. 1927. L’art Khmér Primitif. 2 vols. Paris: Éditions d’art et d’histoire. Parmentier, Henri. 1939. L’art Khmèr Classique: Monuments du Quadrant Nord-est. 2 vols. Paris: Éditions d’art et d’histoire. Pickles, John. 1995. “Conclusion. Towards an Economy of Electronic Representation and the Virtual Sign.” In Ground Truth: the Social Implications of Geographic Information Systems, edited by John Pickles, 223–240. New York: Guildford Press. Price, David H. 1994. “Wittfogel’s Hydraulic/Hyrdroagricultural Distinction.” Journal of Anthropological Research 50:2, 187–204. Proskouriakoff, Tatiana. 1960. “Historical Implications of a Pattern of Dates at Piedras Negras, Guatemala.” American Antiquity 25:4, 454–475. Sassoon, Joanna. 2004. “Photographic Materiality in the Age of Digital Reproduction.” In Photographs Objects Histories. On the Materiality of Images, edited by Elizabeth Edwards and Janice Hart, 186–202. London: Routledge. Saturno, William A., Thomas L. Sever, Daniel E. Irwin, Burgess F. Howell and Thomas G. Garrison. 2007. “Putting us on the Map: Remote Sensing Investigation of the Ancient Maya Landscape.” In Remote Sensing in Archaeology, edited by James R. Wiseman and Farouk El-Baz, 137–160. New York: Springer. Sharer, Robert J. 1994. The Ancient Maya. 5th edition. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Shields, Duncan. 2015. “Multiple Collections and Fluid Meanings: Alfred Maudslay’s Photographs at the British Museum.” In Photographs, Museums, Collections. Between Art and Information, edited by Elizabeth Edwards and Christopher Morton, 27–46. London: Bloomsbury. Stafford, Barbara Maria. 1984. Voyage into Substance. Art, Science, Nature, and the Illustrated Travel Account, 1760-1840. Cambridge: MIT Press. Stephens, John Lloyd. 1854. Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas and Yucatan. Revised edition. London: Arthur Hall. Stephens, John Lloyd. 1949 (1841; 1843). Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas and Yucatan. 2 vols. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Stubbs, John H. and Katherine L. R. Mckee. 2007. “Application of Remote Sensing to the Understanding and Management of Cultural Heritage Sites.” In Remote Sensing in Archaeology, edited by James Wiseman and Farouk El-Baz, 515–540. New York: Springer. Trigger, Bruce G. 2008. A History of Archaeological Thought. 2nd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. von Hagen, Victor. 1974. Search for the Maya. The Story of Stephens and Catherwood. Farnborough: Book Club Associates.

184  Pictorial Meanings Wiseman, James and Farouk El-Baz. 2007. “Introduction.” In Remote Sensing in Archaeology, edited by James Wiseman and Farouk El-Baz, 1–8. New York: Springer. Witmore, Christopher L. 2006. “Vision, Media, Noise and the Percolation of Time. Symmetrical Approaches to the Mediation of the Material World.” Journal of Material Culture 11:3, 267–292. Wittfogel, Karl A. 1956. The Hydraulic Civilization. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

6

Visual Replication and the Muse

Discussions thus far have focused on the transcription of three-dimensional materiality into two-dimensional picturing, but this provides only a partial understanding of pictorialism’s influence because transcription can also work in reverse, converting pictures back into three-dimensional form. This chapter describes this conversion and how it underpins the physical production of replicas and copies of ancient objects. The study of antiquity has been called a once-upon-a-time field of inquiry because it must constantly deal with what is incomplete, uncertain and unknown, and its documentary practices are, as a consequence, inherently given to fabrication (Olivier 2011, 31). Copies and replicas are the literal expression of that fabrication. Antiquity is rich in substitutes, and understandably so since the demand for genuine originals vastly exceeds supply. The creation of replicas and copies underscores the fact that Western visual culture seeks to reproduce that which it covets (see Jones 1990, 11).1 Replication and substitution is predicated on the pursuit of resemblance: the same pursuit that lies at the heart of pictorial documentation. This pursuit also perpetuates notions of magical sense-making about antiquity via forms of doubling and visual breeding; taking the remains of the past that are inevitably scant and multiplying them. As a pursuit it hearkens back to the covetousness of the antiquarian gaze as it has been described in earlier chapters. For those of a romantic bent, the production of copies, whether as three-dimensional objects or as artworks on paper, was never far removed from the original referent around which enchantment and aura cohered. The investigations ahead hinge on the proposition that, in visual terms, originals and reproductions are conjoined entities and this closeness is displayed whenever objects from antiquity are used as models. This is so in whatever context those copies are produced, whether it is the precise three-dimensional printing of individual artifacts, the replacement of damaged or missing components of architectural monuments, or the work of forgers producing replicas masquerading as originals. Regardless of scale or motive, copies of the antique serve as agents of negotiation with the past and, although inherently mute, every copy is a comment on its other: the unique. No matter what aspects of replication we choose to examine we are confronted by varying notions about how antiquity should look. Over the course of centuries, Western visual culture has established a range of charmed spaces where remains deemed to be genuinely of the past could be installed or enclosed, from DOI: 10.4324/9781032646893-7

186  Visual Replication and the Muse museums to monuments (see Chapter 1). This provision of charmed spaces extends to the publishing and archiving of images. The secret desire of all copies, were they capable of revealing their intent, would be to gain entry into such charmed spaces and become validated (see Pinheiro-Machado 2010, 113). Despite the capability of forensic probing to provide a “birth certificate” for material remains (see Chapter 2), perceptions of originality and genuineness remain porous, and for this reason, I take the issue of authenticity as a point of departure for the discussions ahead. In Pursuit of Authenticity As a way of easing into the issue of authenticity as a negotiable quality, it might be helpful if I share an experience from my travels in South America several years ago. In a street market in Bolivia, I came across a set of dolls fashioned from tightly woven remnants of cloth. It was, I was assured by the stall-holder, genuine Inca cloth and very rare. I am no connoisseur of Inca weaving, but given the shear abundance of these dolls available for sale and the inherent fragility of fabric, this was clearly a lie. I happily bought them anyway, valuing them as one would value any souvenir, authentic to that particular time and place rather than as legitimate remains of Inca culture. The customs inspector at the airport in La Paz had other ideas, however. To her, these objects were the real thing and therefore part of Bolivian patrimony. Why, she asked accusingly, were they in my possession? I explained, but it would have been counterproductive in the extreme to argue with her over the genuineness or otherwise of purchases from a street market. My flight was boarding, and since trafficking Inca artifacts was not my career of choice, I handed over the dolls. They were duly placed in an evidence bag, and I was ushered on my way with a warning. In retrospect, I think of this incident as an example of how variable valuejudgments can be in encounters with the past. The verisimilitude we confer may rest less on inherent properties of what we see before us than on our presumptions in the moment. Various yardsticks can be applied to betoken authenticity but the passage of material remains through time renders those yardsticks unstable. Historically, the relationship between original and copy was contingent on discourses within the social context of connoisseurship, and, under this regime, authenticity was pliable rather than necessarily expressible as an absolute condition. This condition of pliability has prompted some to conclude that physical objects are never inauthentic, only the claims made about them and that a politics of plausibility often determines what is and is not accepted as authentic (Holtorf 2013, 434; see also Geurds 2013, 2; Piccini 2007, 227; Pinheiro-Machado 2010, 111; Price 2013, 138; 147). Attempts to pin down the identifying hallmarks of authenticity include precedence, or the attribute of being first; remoteness, or the fact of being far back in time; primordiality, or the indication of an object being the source of later innovation, and primitiveness or the appearance of being unspoilt by modernity (Lowenthal 2015, 111). The firstness of an object is valued by collectors and by museum curators, particularly if there are records of ownership (provenance), accurate documentation of the original location of a find (provenience) and records

Visual Replication and the Muse 187 of confirmed sightings attesting to the travels or biography of an object or an image across time and space (see Cameron 2007, 57; Eco 1990, 178). The issue of authenticity touches a nerve and remains a topic of debate in the contemporary literature of archaeology and it has been estimated that between 5 and 10 percent of published papers dealing with dating methods, artifact studies, mathematical methods, remote sensing, heritage studies and conservation science touch on questions of authenticity (see Craddock 2009, 6). Anxieties around the issue are hardly new and involve matters of trust that arguably extend back to the earliest days of human interaction. We know, for example, that in the distant past the attachment of impressed seals was a mark of authentication certifying that that which was under seal was genuine and unadulterated (see Schwartz 2014, 182). Fast-forwarding to the late 1940s, radiocarbon dating emerged as a technology that promised to bypass the social alchemy of conjecture, as discussed in an earlier chapter. The preferred story that archaeology chooses to tell is one in which genuine objects have inherent visual qualities by virtue of their movement through time and across space and that those qualities cannot be willfully conjured up. There is, however, increasing capability for copies and simulations to reproduce those same qualities and within the contemporary visual culture of archaeology; given the trend toward greater distance from original referents that has been evident over many decades (see Chapters 4 and 5), it is inevitable that this would affect the relationship between artifacts and their simulation and creates tensions. Arguably, the reason notions of authenticity are of concern because we feel the lack of it in an increasingly globalized and commodified world (Jokilehto 2010, 25). The values we attach to the genuine are shot through with nostalgia and concern about the perceived falsity or alienation of the present (Sanders 2009, 194), giving rise to a broad-based skepticism about what, in the context of modern life and its tide of visual simulation, is real. Consider, for example, the view of geographer David Lowenthal that replicas lack the marks of felt relationships. He cites the experience of entering sacred space when “[a]scending worn steps to an ancient cathedral links visitors to the long history that wore and smoothed them. A copy may afford an historical experience as true as the original … since it reflects the past, but it is a different experience” (1985, 293). However, a longer view of history suggests that the issue of felt relationships is no new thing for in that longer view we find concerns about the material authenticity of holy relics and the respect to be accorded to the remains of saints (Tomaszewski 2010, 214; see also Chapter 1). Given how central issues of falsity and trust are to notions of authenticity, the wealth of theoretical opinion on the matter is unsurprising. By way of example, no discussion of originality can go very far without citing the views of Walter Benjamin, in particular his much cited essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1969 [1936]) in which he ponders the notion that original objects have the ineffable quality of “aura” (222). The essay is concerned principally with the arts of photography and cinema but it also has applicability to archaeology. Indeed, he refers specifically to the reproducibility of Greek bronzes, pottery and coins (218; see also Rabinowitz 2015, 30). The implication is that the passage time creates a distinctive identity and applies a seal of validation

188  Visual Replication and the Muse (see Donath 2012, 301). The following passage from Benjamin is illustrative of his thinking on this point: The authenticity of a thing is the essence of all that is transmissible from its beginning, ranging from its substantive duration to its testimony to the history which it has experienced. Since the historical testimony rests on the authenticity, the former, too, is jeopardized by reproduction when substantive duration ceases to matter. And what is really jeopardized when the historical testimony is affected is the authority of the object. (1969 [1936], 221) He underscores the point a few lines on in claiming that “[t]he whole sphere of authenticity is outside technical – and, of course, not just technical – reproducibility.” What Benjamin describes is a form of gravitational order for the remains of the past, at the center of which lies the “substantive duration” and testimony of the original object. Benjamin’s comments about testimony align closely with those of the art historian Alois Riegl as laid out in the essay The Modern Cult of Monuments: Its Character and Its Origins (1903), and Benjamin himself acknowledges the influence of Riegl in his early writings (see Levin 1988, 78).2 In this work, Riegl discusses how relics from antiquity form part of either an intentional or unintentional legacy and become inscribed with authenticating marks of their passage through time (Arrhenius 2003, 52; Riegl 1903). Riegl identifies the quality of “Age-value” but also claims it can never be guaranteed since it is an outcome of culture and aesthetic taste, a view that anticipates Benjamin’s concerns about the appropriation of visual expression for totalitarian ends. Moreover, and more controversially to those concerned with issues of archaeology and the conservation material remains, he implies that age-value accrues as part of an unintentional legacy and that monuments thus inscribed with the marks of time should be allowed to continue on a path to decay and eventual disappearance (Riegl 1982 [1903]; also see Jokilehto 2010, 31–32; Lamprakos 2014). With intentional monuments, on the other hand, restoration to a pristine condition is the only way of maintaining visual reference to the commemorative function that the monument was intended to express down through the ages. Over the course of the last half century, Riegl’s theorizing has become enfolded in Western debates around conservation and has informed institutional responses to heritage preservation (see Tomaszewski 2010). Riegl’s The Modern Cult of Monuments and Benjamin’s The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction have great explanatory power but they also pose a problem. That neither Riegl nor Benjamin could have fully anticipated, although both come close, the modern capability to create convincing replicas of ancient artifacts in the abundance seen today and the extent to which those replicas would come to occupy space in the visual arenas of archaeology in the way they have within a cultural context in which authenticity, as an outcome of negotiation and consensus, can be amended or even reversed. References to “aura” and “age-value” characterize antiquity as a virtue, for observers and those who seek to document

Visual Replication and the Muse 189 that antiquity; the negotiation of meaning has increasingly to take account of faux authenticity. A sound case could be made that, in thinking about the work of art in the age of archaeological reproduction, we need to apply a modified term to how we appraise copies, as distinct from originals in the modern era of visual proliferation. We could, for example, usefully distinguish between aura as applied to the original and “displaced aura” applicable to a reproduction and this would go some ways toward resolving the dilemma. Our reaction to a convincing replica of a cuneiform tablet created as a three-dimensional print? Displaced aura. Our interest in that exquisite stone carving artfully inserted alongside ancient masonry? Displaced aura. The visual impact of the original scorch marks on a Greek sculpture inflicted during the torching of the Acropolis by invading Persians in 480 BCE? Aura. To tinker with the theorizing of Benjamin and Riegl is asking for trouble but the notion of displaced aura serves to confirm rather than critique the reasoning. The notion of displaced aura concedes that aesthetic charm can be read into a copy as well as its original, but it is not the true aura described by Benjamin and implied by Riegl. Although authenticity can never be guaranteed to go unchallenged forever, displaced aura is inherently unstable and contingent and the status of an object in terms of the assumptions we make about it will change if – or more likely when – it is revealed to be other than original. To avoid the potential disappointments that accompany the experience of displaced aura, it would be ideal if copies were always announced as such. In fairness, this is often done, and, in the domain of archaeological conservation, agreed protocols address this issue, but only in a perfect world would conventions be universally adhered to. We will return briefly to this question at the conclusion of this chapter. Meanwhile we should snap into place one further aspect of theory as it relates to authenticity. While Benjamin and Riegl sought to situate notions of authenticity within a broad cultural frame, others have identified the formation, in recent times, of more circumscribed epistemological camps that distinguish between “constructivist” and “materialist” perspectives (see Holtorf 2013, 428–430). To those in the materialist camp, a discernible basis of authenticity resides in an object’s substance and that substance can be induced to yield definitive information about its “biography.” If authenticity is inherent in the object, it can, given appropriate tools and expertise, be confirmed through forensic detection. The deployment of such tools in pursuit of absolute answers to questions of authenticity reiterates a tendency found across many areas of archaeology in favor of autonomous means of observation and documentation and the discounting of surface appearance in favor of information about structure and chemistry. Such forensic inquiry applies a form of habeas corpus to artifacts as confirmation of age. In contrast, the “constructivist” view focuses on specific social and cultural contexts in which meaning is constructed and involves the inevitable pluralities of interpretation that can arise (Foster and Curtis 2016, 138; Fyfe and Law 1988, 1–14; Holtorf 2013, 428; Schwartz 1996). In the constructivist camp, it is accepted that, because archaeological artifacts circulate within a universe of belief and presumption and undergo shape-shifting from material object to image, originality can be affirmed or disavowed. Furthermore,

190  Visual Replication and the Muse as they move through time and space, the authoritative status of antiquities can be enhanced, reduced or even eliminated entirely (Pinheiro-Machado 2010, 112–114). Epistemologies arise out specific directions in intellectual reasoning which can either further concretize particular scholarly positions, leave them intact or weaken them and it is clear that debates in the 1960s and 1970s on issues of cultural theory advanced the constructivist view and the belief that pronouncements about the past were always pronouncements about the present (Jones and Yarrow 2013, 4). Despite the apparent contrasts between epistemological perspectives, there are areas of mutual agreement. Both constructivists and materialists would concur that the provenance of an artifact can be lost, forgotten, incorrectly or fraudulently reconstructed (see Jivén and Larkham 2003, 76) and the contest between certainty and doubt increases with time as artifacts are moved about for exhibition and are debated, published, challenged, interrogated and cataloged in different ways (Joyce 2013, 54; Shanks 1997, 79). According to anthropologist Rosemary Joyce, all of this suggests that it is easier to dispute the “originary moment” or the “when of an object” than it is to be sure of it (2013, 39–55).3 Because both materialists and constructivists are cut from the same cloth of Western modernity, there would, arguably, also be general agreement on the role of doubt, skepticism and suspicion in providing impetus toward opening up an artifact, or fragment of an artifact, to technical probing if it could provide certainty. The Allure of the Copy Ancient artifacts are coy creatures. They frustrate the desire for closeness through their very scarcity and restricted accessibility for, as Benjamin points out, “[e]very day the urge grows stronger to get hold of an object at very close range by way of its likeness, its reproduction” (1969 [1936], 223). Originals and copies are bound together by a shared desire for closeness with antiquity, except that an original object is from the past, while the replica is about the past. Originals and copies need each other and the search for the original is driven by the amount of passion generated by its copies (Latour and Lowe 2011, 278). Every copy is an index of desire and it is diagnostic that the word “copy” comes from the same root as “copious” or a source of abundance and it is because of that abundance that we increasingly appraise originals through a looking glass of facsimiles (Schwartz 2014, 183). Copies are interchangeable so long as they each satisfy whatever visual or material characteristics are sought after (Eco 1990, 177) and if those desired characteristics are convincingly produced, the illusion is created of material presence being doubled with the magical effect of making the past fecund and convertible into a standing reserve of reproducible objects. The virtues of replicas as visual substitutes are well known. Although a replica does not have the biography of an ancient artifact, it can be the final reference to a lost original, and we need only think of the wealth of Roman statuary which references long-lost Greek models to confirm this. Copies can keep the archaeological record safe while also restoring visual integrity to it (Stanco and Tanasi 2011, 18) and we have seen from discussions in Chapter 5, for example, how the casts taken

Visual Replication and the Muse 191 from Maya artifacts during Percival Maudslay’s ventures during the late 1800s have endured as visual records. In addition, replicas can acquire legitimacy as objects of interest in their own right while serving as examples of ancient craft techniques by restoring detail that has been lost through weathering or human-inflicted damage (Foster and Curtis 2016, 127; Gould 1991, 42). Despite the recognized utility of replicas, certain conceptual questions tend to get overlooked, the principal one being whether a sense of closeness to the past can be wholly consummated by a visual substitute. Given the plethora of facsimiles, each being a commentary on the past, it is easy to overlook the fact that the acceptance of an object’s antiquity is determined not only by the object itself but from the expectations that an observer brings to the encounter. What is true of the encounter with a replica is also true of the encounter with an original: much depends on the visual context within which ancient remains are encountered and how elements of that context influence plausibility. A personal recollection from some years back serves as a good example of this plausibility and visual context. During a visit to the site of Monte Albán in Mexico, I noticed that several panels of bas relief sculpture featuring motifs from the site’s early history had been positioned adjacent to some of the original architectural structures. So convincing was their appearance that only a knuckle rapped on their surfaces revealed them to be fiberglass replicas. Curatorial best practice is to explicitly state the extent to which displayed objects are original or reproductions, but judging by the photographs being taken the lack of verification was of little consequence for the tourists. Though merely a casual observation, what I noted that day at Monte Albán was that, for the non-specialist, what is taken to be authentic may have less to do with the artifact itself than the degree to which it dovetailed with expectations about how antiquity should look. A case which sheds further light on this question is that of the Lascaux caves in the Dordogne region of France. The atmospheric chemistry within the caves had, prior to modern times, been remarkably stable and allowed the scenes depicted on the walls in prehistoric times to remain well preserved but this stability became increasingly impaired as the numbers of viewers multiplied, exhaling carbon dioxide and inadvertently introducing biological contaminants.4 As the threats posed by visitors became clear, it was decided to close the original site and construct a facsimile close by. Known as Lascaux II, the project replicated the original motifs (mostly wild fauna) and the pigments used. After its opening in 1983, the visual appeal that drew the curious public to the original site from the time of its first discovery in 1940 has, judging by visitor numbers, been carried over undiminished to the facsimile: Lascaux II attracted some 7.5 million viewers during its first 25 years of operation (Bahn 2016, 339). The caves of Lascaux and the hill-top structures of Monte Albán present to the eye vastly different aspects of antiquity, but both locations function as spaces of display and support the proposition that the presumption of originality can be induced and the key to inducing it lays in the creation of a sense of “pastness,” rather than evidence of antiquity itself (Holtorf 2013, 427). Inserting replicas into a set of specific visual references establishes a context of plausibility (Latour and

192  Visual Replication and the Muse Lowe 2011, 285). That insertion could also be misleading if a replica does not fit with the known chronology of the setting into which it is introduced, though to the non-specialist this would not necessarily impair acceptance. For plausibility to be established much depends on the suspension of disbelief and a persuasive context can facilitate this. If an audience is sufficiently swayed, it is indicative that any deficiencies in the “stage set” of visualization have been overcome (Jeffrey 2015, 150). This stage-set issue can loom large when it comes to the conservation and restoration of iconic monuments, the antiquity of which can pose challenging questions about the integration of new materials and which model of visual appearance is deemed suitable when the passage of time has overwritten the marks of aesthetic taste that applied in the ancient past. Replication and the Monument

When we think of replicas, we tend to think small and in terms of individual artifacts such as sculpture, ceramic vessels, or objects of worked metal or wood. Pursuit of the archaeological muse has commonly involved the construction of miniature replicas of monuments (see Opgenhaffen, 2021, 370). Visual substitutions at this scale can indeed be of great interest; the Soane models, for example, were described in Chapter 1. The muse of reconstruction has proven flexible, however, and can be invoked through life-size reassembly in material form or as virtual creations (see Beale and Reilly 2017). Visual substitution extends to monumental architectural structures and entire sites of antiquity. There is considerable interest currently in the creative use of technology to produce replicas of monuments destroyed or seriously damaged through conflict in certain regions, such as Iraq and at the site of Palmyra (Syria). In the case of Iraq, Assyrian remains were targeted for destruction by Daesh and the cultural losses were further magnified through the looting of museum collections. In the case of Palmyra, a World Heritage Site since 1980, the site was overrun and briefly occupied by Daesh forces in 2015 and many of its structures and embellishments, influenced by Greco-Roman civilization and combining Western and Eastern traditions, were systematically demolished. Remarkably, less than one month after the retaking of Palmyra, a replica of Palmyra’s Triumphal Arch had been recreated with the aid of visual information in digital form (Munawar 2017, 42). In Chapter 4 we saw, in the case of Knossos, how reconstruction was undertaken in response to individual visual sensibilities, but in the pages ahead we will consider how substitutions displaying both a physical and visual component intersect with institutional protocols, and how interventions of the present day attempt to reconcile engineered solutions with visual expectations which are often rooted in romanticized depictions. In contemporary context, visual substitution at the scale of the monument forms part of a regime of safeguarding with the objective of shielding or recovering archaeological fabric from the destructive effects of pollution, time, natural disasters and conflict. In the argot of cultural heritage, this regime is often described in terms of “interventions” (see for example Jones and Yarrow 2013) and it represents a significant role-reversal given that

Visual Replication and the Muse 193 excavation, as a core activity in archaeology, was inevitably destructive rather than constitutive. An additional role-reversal involves the sensibilities of those planning and implementing the introduction of substitute features by switching attention from marks of age to the prospect of rejuvenation and the task of rendering ancient architectural fabric young again by simulating its original condition (see Scopigno et al. 2011, 54). The prospect that monumental complexes could be thus restored not only conforms to Western notions of health and vitality but re-affirms archaeology’s capacity for invoking the uncanny by turning back the effects of time and reviving the lost. Intervention in the material remains of the past has an almost irresistible siren-call to preservationists but current debates on matters of authenticity and preservation generally acknowledge that sites of archaeological importance have a continuing history of damage, repair and restoration, and that their present state records not only the moment of their establishment but a whole subsequent sequence of events (Jerome 2008, 4; Jones 1990, 14). But how does the legitimacy granted to these successive adaptations square with the necessity, or more often the compulsion, to restore and renew? The discussions ahead will shed light on this question. Arguably, the Athenian acropolis is the world’s most iconic signifier of antiquity but now stands as an exemplar of modernity in disguise. Explaining how it came to occupy this position involves consideration of enchanted picturing as well as mechanization. At the site of the Roman Agora below the Plaka district on the north slope of the Acropolis, one finds, fastened to the fence adjacent to the first-century CE horologian5 or “Tower of the Winds,” a placard bearing the following statement from the General Directorate of Antiquities and Cultural Heritage: The materiality of monuments includes individual and collective memories of historic and everyday circumstances connecting people and places with their past. Time alters material and memory for ever. Decay is unavoidable and drifts memory into oblivion. Against ephemerality, the conservator of the Ephorate of Antiquities of Athens conserve and protect the ancient monuments of the city, delay the consequences of time, defend the lifetime of the monuments and the memory of all of us. The statement is well meaning, if a trifle pedantic, and there is no doubting the outcome of such rhetoric for its results are in plain site just a short uphill walk away in the remains of the Parthenon. As first conceived between 447 and 432 BCE, the Parthenon comprised colonnades, at the center of which stood a statue of Athena.6 As an architectural statement the Parthenon is considered the supreme signifier of the city’s history and that of broader Greek heritage, but the Parthenon and the Acropolis in general have effectively been a building site for long periods of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Temple of Athena Nike, for example, has been dismantled and rebuilt three times (Jenkins 2006, 112–113). The first interventions came during the early period of Greek independence from Turkey beginning in 1830 and were infused

194  Visual Replication and the Muse by patriotic pride and the convenient fiction that an unbroken cultural lineage existed between the present day and the age of Periclean Athens. Further reconstruction was undertaken in the 1870s, 1880s and between 1923 and 1930. These latter works during the interwar period saw some of the fallen columns, displaced drums and entablature partially reinstated, though not necessarily in the correct position (Lambrinou 2015, 52). The works also used construction materials that were less than durable and that later dictated a complex scheme of remediation.7 Thus, the ongoing activity that we see today, in train since 1975, represents just the latest of many phases of restoration and has no specified completion date.8 Scaffolding and cranes are often to be seen at the site, and, for this visitor at least, it was not the remains that impressed but what has been made new, and the immense effort devoted to that cause. It is effort that enfolds a particular visual rhetoric and an energetic and highly physical engagement in order to redress the effects of time and historical circumstance. What architectural historian Thordis Arrhenius calls the “soft forgetfulness of time” (2003, 62) has not been so soft in the case of the Parthenon. Both as a structure and as a symbolic presence on the landscape of Athens, it has faced a multitude of threats over the course of its 2,500 year-history. The uses and abuses form a sorry list: conversion to a Christian church in the sixth century; the insertion of a mosque around 1700 and the dismantling of the Temple of Athena Nike in order to strengthen the defensive bastions set up by occupying Ottoman forces. In the same period, the Parthenon was used as a gunpowder magazine which, in 1687 during the Venetian siege of Athens, exploded, felling 14 columns. This event has long been woven into the Acropolis narrative, but so too have the events of 1802 when Britain’s Lord Elgin systematically detached prime examples of marble sculptures from the Parthenon frieze and had them shipped to London. Calls for their repatriation have shrouded them in controversy for many decades. To complete the tale of woe, we should also note the damage inflicted by a major earthquake in 1981 and by the insidious effects of local atmospheric pollution. The Acropolis complex represents what Alois Riegl would call an “intentional monument” (1982 [1903]) insofar as it was originally commemorative and intended to withstand what architectural historian Thordis Arrhenius calls “the soft forgetfulness of time” (2003, 62). To believe in such cultural longevity was a mark of trust but also of hubris on the part of the ancient builders. Today, the intentional monumentality of the site is fully embraced as justification for the ongoing restoration work. Nikos Toganidis, as of 2009 Head of the Parthenon Restoration Project, declared that “there will always be scaffolding around the monument” (2010, 358). Another member of the project team echoed that view and concluded that “[t]here must always be an army of conservators and technicians” (Tanoulas 2010, 366). The need for conservators and technicians will, it seems, extend far into the future if funds permit. There are complex institutional underpinnings to the restoration effort in terms of established principles of restoration and international agreements on best practice. These include the NARA document of the mid-1990s which was an outcome of the Nara (Japan) Conference on Authenticity and it acknowledges and takes

Visual Replication and the Muse  195 into account cultural and contextual differences in defining and understanding the concept of authenticity (see Holtorf and Schadla-Hall 1999, 234–235). The guiding principles informing the Acropolis restorations also include the protocols laid out in the Venice Charter of 1964, as applied under the auspices of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the International Council of Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS). The Venice Charter is a loosely worded document that allows for considerable flexibility of interpretation. The preface to the various components of the Charter states: Imbued with a message from the past, the historic monuments of generations of people remain to the present day as living witnesses of their age-old traditions … It is our duty to hand them on in the full richness of their authenticity. (ICOMOS 1965) Moving on from this vague though well-intentioned statement, the wording of Article 9, as transcribed in ICOMOS 1965, is more specific: The process of restoration is a highly specialized operation. Its aim is to preserve and reveal the aesthetic and historic value of the monument and is based on respect for original material and authentic documents. It must stop at the point where conjecture begins, and in this case moreover any extra work which is indispensable must be distinct from the architectural composition and must bear a contemporary stamp. The President of the Committee for the Conservation of the Acropolis Monuments, Charalambos Bouras, has claimed that “along general lines,” the principles underlying the Charter echo Riegl’s distinction between intentional and unintentional monuments (2015, 3). To renew the commemorative intention of a monument such as the Parthenon and other structures within the Acropolis complex, a central role has been proscribed for copies and replicas and, despite the high regard for the views of Riegl among those specifically involved with heritage and material preservation at the site (see, for example, Tomaszewski 2010), the restorations adhere less to Riegl’s precepts than to the views of the cultural critic Umberto Eco and the distinction he draws between “aesthetic authenticity” and “archaeological genuineness.” In his opinion, the former is compromised when original parts of the whole are lost or disfigured, while the latter remains uncompromised provided that its “material support – or at least part of it – stays indiscernibly the same through the years” (1990, 184). What, however, does “at least part of it” mean in the context of the Acropolis restorations? The belief that incompleteness can be rectified by substitution and that substitution can have an aesthetic wholeness all its own has come to play a central role in internationally adopted principles and practices of conservation (see Stanley-Price 2009, 32). To avoid reconstruction that uses mostly new material, and to avoid decisions based purely on conjecture, the prescribed route is via “anastylosis,” a

196  Visual Replication and the Muse protocol dating to the beginning of the nineteenth century whereby structures are rebuilt using dismembered or displaced original materials. New components are employed only when necessary and with the stipulation that new insertions into the historic fabric should be visually distinguishable from original features. Those material components and their methods of fabrication must also be replaceable should better substitutes or techniques later be developed (see Lobell 2015). So it is that we find, in the case of the Acropolis, that recent work to restore the colonnades has incorporated “ancient fragments dispersed on the Sacred Rock, appropriately supplemented” (Bouras 2010, 374). According to Maria Ioannidou, a civil engineer and director of the Acropolis Restoration Project, between 2001 and 2010, over 1,000 masonry blocks from the various structures on the Acropolis were removed, repaired and re-positioned during that time and 158 blocks were carved from new marble (2015, 14). This statement of metrics by Ioannidou overlays a long history of subjective pictorialism and romanticized engagement with the site that no quantitative tallying can overwrite, for there has long been a powerful metanarrative at work that informs not just the remediation of decay but also the restoration of an idealized image of the monument as it is thought to have appeared in antiquity. This is not one particular fixed image, but rather a pastiche of scopic expectation and aesthetic preferences accreted over time. During the European Renaissance and the period of the Enlightenment to follow, affection for the standing monuments of the classical world was a statement of belief in beauty and the visual ideal and the continuing use of the term “classical” today is a reflection of this status. As David Lowenthal reminds us, such remains have often been visualized as bright and clean and, via the visual rhetoric of pictorialism, “antiquities corroded by time were restored to the wholeness of lovely youth” (2015, 241–243). This pursuit of “lovely youth” explains much, such as the “re-skinning” of the Parthenon marbles on display in the British Museum to a pristine whiteness they never displayed in their original multicolored existence. Today, we see it expressed in the drums of reinstated columns of the Parthenon fresh from the masons’ chisels, and also in the visual substitutes for ancient relief sculptures inserted into the Parthenon frieze in 2004. High on the agenda of modernity, it has been claimed, is physical control over materials and conceptualizing the world as matter in motion (Slater 1995, 220–221). The scaffolding and cranes at work on the Acropolis exemplify this modernist imperative of control over materiality and represent the iteration of a long visual story (See Figure 6.1). It is an imperative artfully concealed, but it is important to realize that the pursuit of “lovely youth” highlights a point of tension with antiquarian picturing where the enchanted eye often sought out time-worn ruin and dereliction (see Chapter 2) . For those involved in the conservation of monuments, this tension, although acknowledged, is not easily resolved. The pictorial focus expressed in the portfolios of artist-travelers, particularly those who visited Greece in the early nineteenth century, have provided useful points of reference for both assessing changes over time together with the visual judgments that have informed perceptions of antiquity. Edward Dodwell (1777–1832), Simone Pomardi (1757–1830) and William Gell (1777–1836) were three such

Visual Replication and the Muse 197

Figure 6.1 Parthenon under restoration 2007. Image reproduced courtesy of Lena Lambrinou, Acropolis Restoration Service.

artist-travelers. Dodwell himself was a classical scholar and both he and those accompanying him brought to their depictions a sympathetic approach to the classical monuments they encountered and incorporated into those depictions romanticized codes of visual expression. They also included documentary observations since Dodwell’s stay in Athens in 1801 overlapped with that of Lord Elgin (Thomas Bruce) and the first removals of selected sculptures from the Parthenon frieze; an event around which controversy has swirled to the present day.9 In the case of the Acropolis, pictorially informed sensibilities about the rightness of appearance, coupled with particular historical events, have served as justification for other erasures and selective modification of the site, such as the clearance of any remaining medieval structures and, in the mid-nineteenth century, demolition of the mosque. Today, the issue of visual correction helps guide decisionmaking about which aspects of restoration should have priority. The choice of the north colonnades of the Parthenon, for example, was based on the fact that it was the aspect most visible from the city (Lambrinou 2015, 49). There is logic to such judgments, for few would argue that past scenes of despoliation should be used as a guide for contemporary restoration. However, in reaching decisions about overall appearance, the archaeological mise-en-scène presented in historical images has considerable influence. In order to integrate past appearance with contemporary sensibilities and values, choices have to be made about which of those past visual statements should be privileged and which discarded.

198  Visual Replication and the Muse Replication and the Object

The preceding section focused on large-scale replications and substitutions, but we will now turn to the issue of visual substitution as it relates to individual artifacts. The history of fashioning copies to multiply what is singular and considered special is intertwined with cultural recognition of the presumed virtues of handcrafting and the aesthetic pleasures of contemplating the result (Daston and Galison 2007, 139). The production of copies for European museums in the nineteenth century was, for example, part of an artisanal enterprise based on the reproduction of admired originals (Scott 2016, 364) and in some countries, including Britain, observers, commentators and collectors operated within a cultural ecosystem of copies and replicas. Even some processes that we might assume to have always been mechanized, such as electroforming and electroplating, began as craft enterprises producing visually convincing replicas of antiquities. Just as notions of authenticity vary with time and cultural circumstance, so too does the value accorded to hand-crafted copies of ancient objects and works of art. For example, casts of Romano-British antiquities, produced as early as the 1830s, were particularly popular (Craddock 2009, 78) and plaster casts of classical sculptures were considered important foci of study. But such casts now either gather dust in museum storerooms or have suffered an even worse fate.10 This decline in status suggests that the aesthetic and informational value accorded to hand-fashioning and artisanal production can be satisfied from alternative sources. Current stateof-the-art replication often incorporates autonomous image-capture and represents a shift to hands-off engagement with ancient objects. Technologically enabled production of facsimiles has been proved capable of virtually unlimited reproduction while retaining or exceeding the fidelity to the original that hand-crafting once provided. Recent commentary tends to treat this relational shift as a positive development in the documentation of antiquity, suggesting that a new age of replication in archaeology’s visual culture is now well underway (see Forte 2014; Neumüller et al. 2014; Olson et al. 2013, 260; Shanks and Webmoor 2013, 88). Digital reproduction has been said to represent a fundamentally different means of representation, with technology at its core, capable of revolutionizing archaeological recording, presentation and preservation through the substitution of facsimiles for original artifacts (Jeffrey 2015, 145; Olson et al. 2013, 244). It is anticipated by some that these “new originals” will eventually comprise a virtually limitless digital repository capable of taking on a didactic role as an informational resource and imposing visual order on large and disparate archives. Some commentators point out the utility of such methods for engaging wider audiences without specialized archaeological knowledge (see Morris, Peatfield and O’Neill 2018, 52). In this visual transaction, three-dimensional materiality will not necessarily be preserved. Gareth Beale and Paul Reilly, in their work on archaeological data visualization, comment on the perceived virtues of virtual archaeology and its potential to disrupt “disciplinary discourses and narratives” because direct access to “e-cultural entities” can be granted to almost anyone, anywhere and thereby “disintermediates the opinions, interpretations and authority of archaeologists and cultural resource

Visual Replication and the Muse 199 managers” (2017, 128). Some commentators point out that digital algorithms have no substance, exist nowhere, can be infinitely deployed, never degrade and cannot be owned in the conventional sense, only consumed under license (see Jeffrey 2015, 146). Professor of computer science Lev Manovich describes digital imaging as a form of visual morphology whereby an object “has become computer data that can be modified by software” (2001, 133). Other commentators, while not disputing the centrality of data production, argue that algorithms have their own form of substance; archaeologist Michael Shanks, for example, asserts that “data are material” (2007, 288), while Judith Donath, whose research interests lie in media and human-computer interconnections, characterizes the “sterile cleanness of the digital” as “refreshing” (2012, 303–304). The production of three-dimensional replicas of ancient objects broadens visual access to rarely seen artifacts and that production reiterates a fundamental aspect of the archaeological imagination: the desire to reproduce the visible world through the power of resemblance and to have that reproduction shared through what is essentially a form of publication. With this in mind, a brief review of some technical aspects is in order. Computer modeling, in combination with high-resolution photography, is able to create a topographic profile of an object, a form of imaging akin to photogrammetry and comparable to procedures used in computer-aided design. The compilation of multiple laser-scanned or photographically captured points is used to construct a “point cloud” that allows an artifact to be viewed as an object that can be readily rotated, size-adjusted and visually edited in order to detect subtle but important surface details such as lines, cuts and markings, all without the need of direct physical or retinal contact with the original (see Manovich 2001, 184). Because the three-dimensional attributes of an object are encoded as digitized spatial information, a two-dimensional digital copy can be obtained via post-processing for on-screen viewing. For three-dimensional replication, assuming the necessary devices are available, the digital portrait can be transposed into material form via cumulative sprays of resin, a method akin to printing. Such three-dimensional replication redirects visual attention from the original to a convincing facsimile as surface detail, including tool marks and use-wear, can now be captured and reproduced down to the scale of one micron (see Harrison 2010, 6; Jeffrey 2015, 145).11 It is also possible to add a convincing simulated patina suggestive of age. One example of such replication is a project undertaken at Columbia University’s Creative Machines Lab that produced printed replicas of cuneiform tablets capable of capturing the look and much of the feel of the originals. With text-bearing ancient artifacts such as these, the issue of readability is a key consideration and it is reasonable to ask whether a person familiar with cuneiform would be able to translate from the replica as well as they could from the original. I put this question to Hod Lipson, Director of Columbia University’s Creative Machines Lab (formally based at Cornell University) and he was unequivocal in his response: by enlarging the artifact, or applying color enhancement, not only was readability maintained, but the replica could actually accentuate it by revealing

200  Visual Replication and the Muse

Figure 6.2 Printed copies of a cuneiform tablet. Image reproduced courtesy of Hod Lipson, Columbia Creative Machines Lab.

“patterns that would not be accessible without destroying the original” (Lipson 2020, personal communication). A visual comparison of an original inscriptionbearing tablet with its printed replica is shown in Figure 6.2; the original artifact is in the left hand, its reproduction in the right and a reproduction in enlarged form is placed between the two. Those who favor a Benjaminian perspective would protest that digital replication violates the aura of originality. When considered in terms of “testimony to the history it experienced” (Benjamin 1969 [1936], 220–221), reproduction challenges the tenets of authenticity. The capability to produce replicas of ancient objects in unlimited numbers seems symptomatic of the modernist tendency to commodify the past. Indeed, such means of reproduction have been described as “terrorist” insofar as they can overturn presumptions of authenticity (Cameron 2007, 50–51).12 Such replication also challenges some fundamental aspects of archaeology’s visual culture since the documentation of antiquity has historically been a matter of transcribing the three-dimensional world and the objects that comprise it onto a flat surface (see Latour 1990, 22; see also Witmore 2006, 268) Three-dimensional replication, by contrast, brings copying into closer alignment with the material world in which original artifacts are encountered (Beale and Reilly 2014, 122) but, in doing so, reduces the necessity for transcription onto a flat surface and the aesthetic involvement of eye and hand. There are persuasive countervailing arguments that must be taken account, however. Innovations in the production of replicas also embed long-established visual preferences, including the algorithms underpinning point-cloud photography and digital modeling. These processes foreground objective precision but also reference ancestral visual preferences by retaining elements that are essentially

Visual Replication and the Muse 201 pictorial and object-centered. At the same time, haptic qualities and sense of corporeal closeness are implicitly acknowledged whenever three-dimensional printing captures and reproduces the topographic qualities of an original artifact (see Jeffrey 2015, 145; Joyce 2013, 44; Newhard 2015, 15). Indeed, the physical presence of a digitally produced archaeological artifact encountered at close quarters can seem uncannily “real,” creating an effect not dissimilar to that provoked by waxworks (Neumüller et al. 2014, 126). Even with the increasing reliance on digital imaging, we cannot say that the documentary objectives of archaeology have entered a post-pictorial phase and ongoing projects confirm this. For example, in their work on the three-dimensional digital modeling of Bronze-age Cretan figurines, Morris, Peatfield and O’Neill (2018) explicitly consider such technological capabilities as complementary to traditional methods of visual representation such as drawing and photography. We should also be mindful that, whenever photographic procedures are part of the documentary project, it reiterates long-established modes of conjuring resemblance and providing the illusion of three-dimensional form (see Chapter 2; also Beale and Reilly 2014, 122). Rather than dissolving the object, one could argue that an object’s qualities as an observable thing are simply being revised through digital manipulation and it is in this context that Michael Shanks’s comment (cited earlier) about data being material is particularly relevant. It is worth remembering that in the pictorial tropes of romantic-antiquarianism, there are abundant examples of the physical world being rendered into pliable form, so the pliability in the form of data manipulation may not be as innovative as we might think. In producing a precise replica of a unique artifact, digital processes may be seen as exercises in artifice, just as countless other visual documents from archaeology’s earlier history were products of artifice. Indeed, we could plausibly claim that digital duplication represents a latter-day holdout against modernist visuality insofar as fidelity and resolution is keyed to visible surfaces. A replica, as a substitute for an original artifact, can never entirely break away from the original referent and the replicas created through digital modeling are no exception. The copy needs the remains of antiquity as a foundation for its methods. Enchanted Forgery Preceding discussion has focused on the use and reception of replicas for informational or educational use or manufactured for purposes of conservation, but not all copies are this virtuous. So, we will now turn to examine a practice commonly considered the malign twin to legitimate reproduction: forgery, and the dark arts of creating imitations intended to deceive. The word “forgery” connotes counterfeiting of a document but it is equally applicable to objects purporting to be original; a physical document from the ancient past. Like birds descending for pickings onto freshly turned earth, forgers have never been far behind the excavators, and there are many instances of uncomfortably close connections between the two. Questions of provenience and bona fide certification are of central importance to archaeologists, curators and dealers, but the potential for fraud will never be entirely overcome. The

202  Visual Replication and the Muse first copies of ancient artifacts appeared as soon as originals first became valuable. Styles of Aegean pottery, for example, were widely imitated during the second millennium BCE and circulated widely around the Mediterranean region. As described in Chapter 1, a complex weave of faith, hope and charm often accompanied the circulation of copies masquerading as holy relics which, as they passed forward through time, accrued presumptions of authenticity. Copies of small antiquities such as coins, medals and carved gemstones grew in popularity through the Renaissance and extended into later times, and the skillful crafting of imitations was necessarily based on the appearance either of real antiquities or other convincing replicas already accepted as genuine (Craddock 2009, 62). Copies of indigenous pre-Hispanic artifacts were already circulating in Mexico by the 1820s and became a major trade by late in that century, while in Europe a similarly robust trade developed to meet the aesthetic desires of British antiquarians, such as those undertaking the Grand Tour. Wherever the economy of fake antiquities took root, techniques of simulated age formed part of the visual transaction, often via methods of patination, surficial distressing or artful fragmentation. Unless unmasked as fakes (or, sometimes, even if they were), affection for such objects remained undiminished and helped both drive and satisfy the passion for collecting (see Craddock 2009, 1; 9; 78; Craddock and Bowman 1991, 150–152; McGregor 2001, 201; 208). Occasionally, however, interest in issues of genuineness became focused not on a class of objects but on one object in particular. For example, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, there was a burgeoning interest in paleontological, geological and ethnographic material, stimulating the production of fakes in each of these categories and culminating in what is probably the most cited of all hoaxes when the discovery of a cranium and ape-like jawbone in the gravel beds of a site in southern England in 1912 was claimed to be evidence of a “missing link” in human evolution. Pictorial evidence from the time included deceptive reconstruction drawings (see Bahn 1996, 127; Moser 1996) and it was not until 1953 and the availability of laboratory testing procedures that the deception was finally revealed. The study of objects of antiquity occupies a visual domain where the boundary between legitimacy and illegitimacy is malleable (see Whittaker and Stafford 1999, 204) and intersects with the deep-seated human desire to believe what one sees. If we think of the crafting of fake artifact as a skill, it is one that derives from visual commonality with legitimate excavation and, as noted earlier, there has always been this connection between the forger’s workshop and the archaeologist’s trowel. However, fakes are universally taken as insults by archaeologists for their pretense of veracity and uniqueness and are considered threats to legitimate research, disruptive of fieldwork and an impediment to the interpretation of finds by casting doubt on issues of style and chronology and subverting conclusions based on site surveys and record-keeping. Doubt, once sown, can initiate a prolonged period of contestation (Scott 2016, 221). Unsurprisingly then, boundaries between real and replica are policed assiduously by the expert community and supported by an impressive array of detection techniques, as discussed below. The cordon is far from being impermeable, however.

Visual Replication and the Muse 203 Neuralgic reaction to forgery is entirely understandable, but condemnation is not a profitable intellectual path to follow. Yes, there is often a strong pecuniary motive behind the deception, but the issues and aspirations involved are far more complex, for the relationship to ancient objects that drives the dark arts of fakery is uncomfortably akin to that of antiquarian collectors. From Renaissance humanists through to the collectors of more recent times, there have always been those who were aware that they were purchasing something that was probably not genuine but enchantment trumped doubt. As we know from discussion in Chapter 1, antiquarian collectors have long been thought particularly gullible, but underlying an antiquarian collector’s mistaking of a fake for an original was a voluntary willingness to suspend disbelief and any buyer’s remorse that might follow could be mitigated by undiminished esteem for an elusive original that lay just beyond reach. Art theorist Thiery Lenain coins the term “radical aestheticism” to describe the motivation of aesthetes who value an object unreservedly for its charm even if it is later exposed as a fake (2015, 48). It is a provocative term but one that helps us see how the acceptance of a compelling replica (both by its producer and its consumer) could be driven by compulsions about how antiquity should look and the extent to which a specific object matched that imagined appearance (see Jones 1990, 11). The implications of this are profound for the study of the past would not have organized itself the way it has without the enshrouding of observed objects, whether fake or genuine, within cocoons of allure. While condemning the minting of imitations with intention to deceive, geographer David Lowenthal concedes that the results can be domesticated into acceptability and for this reason they “deserve to be cherished as much as chastised, for they are in many ways highly instructive. They can be beautiful at the same time as they testify to the fallibility of human judgment” (1992, 79). For obvious reasons, those involved in the crafting of such objects prefer to remain anonymous but some have nonetheless achieved a degree of adulation as their work has become accepted as art and, ironically, acquired its own stamp of authenticity. A skillful replica may be disqualified as an original antiquity, but that does not preclude it from yielding evidence about the ideology informing its manufacture and the restatement of ancient history that it represents (Piepper, Maarleveld and Jull 1992, 94; Sweet 2004, 175). Two particular examples where the stamp of authenticity has been applied intersect with the documentary accounts described in earlier chapters. For example, Boucher de Perthes, whose mid-nineteenth century collecting and recording of prehistoric flints helped push back the timeline of human cultural presence (see Chapter 2), was deceived by some of his workers into buying fake flints (Whittaker and Stafford 1999, 203). There is also the case of Arthur Evans (see Chapter 4) whose discoveries at Knossos fueled a demand from collectors for Cretan artifacts that far outstripped supply. The case of Evans and the restorers that worked in association with him deserves a particularly close look for it represents an important back-story underscoring the complex relationship between legitimate excavation and archaeological deceit. The publication of the first volume of The Palace of Minos led to a surge of forgeries, and, while some were of poor quality, others were excellently crafted

204  Visual Replication and the Muse (Marinatos 2015, 75). In preceding discussions, the role of the Gilliérons was described; the father and son team that, through their restorations, helped give pictorial form to Evans’ vision of ancient Knossos. This pictorial restoration may not, however, have been the wholly innocent and virtuous activity that Evans supposed it to be. At the time of the collaboration with Evans, the elder Gilliéron had founded a workshop in Athens where replicas of Mycenaean and other archaeological artifacts were produced. Other artists were also at work at the same time in nearby Heraklion, illegally dealing in ancient relics or else producing replicas of Cretan artifacts. At the same time as he was operating his workshop and serving as Evans’s restorer for the murals, Gilliéron pére took up, in 1930, the post of artistic director of Greek museums (Marinatos 2015, 96). There is nothing about these overlapping roles that is directly incriminating, but it is the case that the patterns and styles of fakes circulating at that time were often drawn from excavations of which the Gilliérons had first-hand experience. Reproduced to a very high standard, some of these replicas entered the antiquities market purporting to be genuine objects of Cretan or broader Greek art and some of the objects described and pictured in the various volumes of PM are now confirmed to be fakes (see MacEnroe 1995, 30; Solomon 2015, 28). One example is the “Ring of Nestor,” an artifact purportedly found on the Greek mainland and published in the Journal of Hellenic Studies (1925, 46). Another celebrated example is a statuette of a “boygod” (see Figure 6.3) which is now known to date to the early twentieth century but was originally donated by Evans himself to the Ashmolean Museum in the late 1930s (Lapatin 2018, 83).13 It is difficult to square such gullibility with the influence that Evans’ work has had, and continues to have, on the understanding of ancient Cretan civilization. As stressed in earlier discussions, he brought to the Knossos project a distinctive style of wishful thinking, and, taking this tendency into account, his suspension of disbelief regarding the authenticity of specific artifacts is entirely to be expected. Detection and Adjudication

It is a truism that fakes are created with the intention to deceive, but many legitimately conceived replicas intended only to inform and crafted with no malign purpose can be turned into forgeries merely by being re-labeled as originals (Lenain 2015, 39–56). Historically, the methods of the legitimate copyist and the forger have often been directly comparable and similarly engaged with issues of style, technique and choice of materials (Craddock 2009, 1). An additional complication is the vexed relationship between restored and unrestored artifacts. It has been speculated that outright fakes are far outnumbered by genuinely ancient objects which have been so extensively reconstructed by conservators that they are almost totally renewed (La Niece 2005, 175). It is regrettable that no term exists for this type of intervention given that it is so common. “Pastiche” and “composite” are perhaps the closest terms we have describe objects that have incorporated within materials that did not originally belong and are likely to be of differing dates, some ancient and some much less so.

Visual Replication and the Muse  205

Figure 6.3  Boy-King statuette forgery. Wikimedia Commons.

206  Visual Replication and the Muse What or who do we trust to tell us what is real? As emphasized at the beginning of this chapter, the notion of authenticity within Western discourse has for several centuries been bestowed via close and expert scrutiny of surficial features and their degree of fit with accepted notions of style and craftsmanship found in artifacts of known origin. But judgments about authenticity have been subject to a shift in visual sympathies since the mid-twentieth century. Connoisseurship and the informed opinion of cognoscenti were niche indulgences from centuries past and inadequate, many would say, to the task of unmasking deception or making sense of the inherent ambiguities that artifacts present. The preferred alternative is for technological application to make the judgment call and objectively attest to the “when” of an object and possibly also the “how” of that object. To that end, an array of tools and techniques has been deployed to determine the physical and chemical makeup of relics, looking beneath possibly duplicitous stylistic qualities of the components within. Investigative techniques can now be applied to a wide range of materials for evidence of recent modification or fabrication, including organics such as wood, bone and textiles but also extending to ceramics and stone objects (lithics). Materials lying outside these groups remain subject to more deductive means of assessment (La Niece 2005, 175–178). These methods of investigation not only embody the shift in adjudication from informed eye to technological assay but also the presumption that any stories that might be disclosed by material remains of the past have to be told in codified, machine-generated form. The conversion back into retinal readability, often by means of image production, therefore becomes important. The revelations obtainable through radiocarbon dating were discussed in Chapter 3 and foretold an era of ever greater potential for the investigation of materials that went beyond the metrics of age to the revealing of internal structures and material components. There is, however, a visual prehistory to such investigations. Following the demonstration of X-radiography in 1896, it was a mere few months before the first radiographic image was produced and immediately confirmed that more might be revealed by looking through objects rather than simply looking at them. The object of scrutiny at the time was an Egyptian child-mummy and the intention was to discover any amulets or jewelry that might be concealed within the body cavities or whether the wrappings (cartonage) contained any bone fragments (Bridgman 1964, 135; Zesch et al. 2016, 172). Thus was the venerable notion of excavation as treasure-hunt transferred to a corpse. Early X-ray images were, of course, primitive by contemporary standards, yet we could say that the first pictorial journeys into and through artifacts established tropes of quasi-anatomical investigation and we can identify a reiteration of these tropes in contemporary medical applications, computer tomography being one such. This technology allows visual “slices” to be captured and interpreted and is particularly effective in revealing voids and inclusions, especially in objects crafted from clay. Close focus is often essential in order to collect key information. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) is one such mean of close focus, as described in Chapter 4. Spectrometry is an additional tool and is able to identify diagnostic variation in wavelengths of reflectance. The capacity of materials to fluoresce, and for this property to be measured, has been of considerable value for archaeological analysis.

Visual Replication and the Muse 207 Although the phenomenon of “glowing objects” had been observed since the later 1600s, it only began to be studied scientifically in the mid-1940s and, since that time, techniques of induced fluorescence, by means of ultraviolet light for example, have enabled mineralogical, chemical and morphological analyses to be performed using very small samples (Polikriti 2007, 603; Tite 1972, 128). The detection of electrons that have become embedded within an object over time can establish whether, for example, a clay artifact is as old as it is purported to be. Additional branches of investigation are opened up by using an electron beam to bombard a sample and produce fluorescent X-rays that can tag the presence of specific materials and provide clues about an object’s construction and possible adulteration (Applbaum and Applbaum 2005, 234; 243; Craddock 2009, 26–28). There is a connecting thread between all of the methodologies summarized above. Whether delivered as a suite of optical slices or as an array of reflective components, the documentary imperative is one of recording chemical and physical relationships via procedures that are as physically non-invasive as possible, coupled with various means of image enhancement. There is undoubted efficacy in using such methods to adjudicate an object’s originality or adulteration and even when such matters are a settled issue there may be more to be discovered about the materials of which it is comprised and the methods of its fabrication. However, if we think about this subsurface probing in the context of visual rhetoric and the retention of pictorial expression, the issue of non-destructiveness becomes more nuanced, for the images and the methods for obtaining them can strike us as an immodest revelation as the object, absent its surface-covering, appears naked and exposed. Such means of investigation can suggest that antiquity is being somehow strip-searched or flayed. This would seem to overwrite subjective notions of aura and the muse which were based on complexion alone: the skin of antiquity. But for those examining the image participate on a journey into the internals of what is essentially an artistic rendering and through this journey the connection to the muse of age and duration is maintained. Seeing Double In this chapter I have approached the theme of replicas and substitutes from two directions: one is toward what we might call the heavy materiality of restoration and preservation, while the other focuses on the issue of artifact doubling via digital modeling. I have also presented a sizable serving of theory since replication and substitution, regardless of scale, intersects with issues of authenticity. I have, for example, drawn attention to the contrasting epistemologies of the “constructivist” and “materialist” camps and to the concept of aura which might be projected onto original objects but which reproductions are often said to resist. In terms of epistemological camps, it will come as no surprise to attentive readers that I lean toward constructivism and the notion of flexible interpretation coupled with acknowledgement that the past is biddable and offers scope for creative interpretation. This perspective provides an intellectual pathway for evaluation the role of pictorialism in the present day. It is a perspective somewhat at odds with the reasoning

208  Visual Replication and the Muse of Walter Benjamin on how time’s testimony resides in the material remains of the past, and yet, along with countless others, I find myself returning again and again to his writings for the authority they project. Despite the highly flexible and mutable role of visual representation, or perhaps because of that flexibility and mutability, copies and substitutes, no matter the scale or method of fabrication, are enshrouded by questions of legitimacy. Such questioning is hardly new but it is somewhat surprising that it endures given that we have, arguably, entered a new age of visual encounter with the past in which replicas and substitutes will play an ever increasing role as our gaze is re-directed from original to reproduction. The persistent anxiety regarding the role of copies and replicas is explained partly by the strength of archaeology’s ties to earlier preferences about how the story of antiquity is best told, and also by the particular value assigned to authenticity. Given this new age of visual encounter, the role of aestheticism and the validity of pictorialism will have to be re-negotiated but it seems unlikely, given the history of archaeology’s visual culture, that it will be displaced. Rather, the muse of antiquity will adapt even though judgment about the legitimacy of reproductions increasingly rests on machine-based appraisal, for such appraisal represents a portal for human vision and sense-making. It has been said that every reproduction is proof of fecundity of the original object (Latour and Lowe 2011, 279) and a celebration of what Lev Manovich calls the “ancient myth of mimesis” (2006, 185; 195). Technologically supported methods of visual reproduction, such as the copies of cuneiform tablets discussed in this chapter, are consonant with the long-established regime of archaeological picturing and the simulation of appearance and an affirmation of the enduing power of a particular form of visual persuasion. The tilt toward replication has widened the distance from the original object but has not severed the connection, and creativity and enchantment continues to hinge on what archaeological researcher Stuart Jeffrey calls “the thrill of proximity” (2015, 147). The fidelity to surface detail obtainable with current methods of replication would strike any antiquarian as magical, and in this new era of visual negotiation, digital records and models can acquire an aura of their own and “become imbued with a deliberate and meaningful aesthetic” (Jeffrey 2015, 150). Despite the fact that they are models, their visual presence is genuine and can elicit the projection of affect. Notes 1 It has been pointed out that Mediterranean Bronze Age artifacts are today better known in replica rather than as originals (Lapatin 2018, 83). This is also true of classical Greek sculpture, much admired and copied in Roman times. 2 Levin (1988) cites as his source early correspondence of Benjamin published posthumously. Riegl’s Modern Cult of Monuments has been translated into English (see Riegl 1982 [1903]) but most of his writings exist only in German. I have relied heavily in this chapter on the lucid discussion of Riegl’s work by Thordis Arrhenius (see Arrhenius 2003) 3 The terms “provenience” and “provenance” are often confused and used interchangeably but provenience refers to the exact location of a find, while provenance details the chain of successive possession or ownership. Provenance starts with the first act of retrieval from the spot where it was found (Joyce 2013, 45).

Visual Replication and the Muse 209 4 Paul Bahn lists and illustrates the various threats, ranging from atmospheric impacts to accelerated leaching of calcium from the surrounding limestone, to the growth of subterranean weeds (2016, 339). 5 A horologian incorporates into its tower architecture a sundial to indicate time of day. The Athens horologian also identifies the wind direction based on which of its eight sides faces into the wind at any particular time or, more importantly, during a particular season of the year. The friezes that embellish each of the eight sides indicate the different characteristics of the various wind directions. 6 Being made of wood, no trace of the original figure remains, though stone sculptures of Athena from antiquity are numerous. 7 The use of reinforced cement absorbed moisture and this eventually corroded the iron fittings within, causing weakening and fracturing of the masonry with which they were in contact. In the documentary history of the Acropolis restoration, Nikolas Balanos, the person who directed the restoration work, is often cast as enfant terrible for his engineering-driven approach and use of inappropriate materials, even though such methods and materials were in common use at the time (see for example Lambrinou 2015). 8 For an account of restoration efforts from the perspective of the Acropolis Restoration Service (Athens), including discussion of authenticity issues, see Lambrinou (2010). 9 Dodwell himself went on to publish a suite of engravings on copper and wood along with written descriptions of his observations during his two tours of Greece (see Dodwell 1819a, 1819b). 10 There were exceptions to this trend. In the case of the British Museum, for example, a trade-in casts was still being carried on in the early 1960s as attested to by an extensive catalog. This publication advised prospective purchasers that most of the originals were on view in the galleries (see British Museum Cast Service 1963). There is also the case of the Museum of Classical Archaeology at Cambridge University (UK) where casts are still sometimes used for instruction and remain accessible to the public. 11 Some have cautioned against valuing the technology for its mimetic precision despite that being an obvious strength of the process. Forte, for example, critiques digital models that present “cosmetic or purely visual results that are not adequately supported by advanced research questions” and sees these as suitable only for “more general presentation and contextualization” (2014, 2). 12 The decision about what to digitize and render as a three-dimensional reproduction is an exercise in selection. To the extent the objects in question are drawn from established archives, digital copies are enfolded within established modes of appraisal imprinted by institutional authority and their production is subject to a host of hidden permissions (see Cameron 2007, 57; Di Giuseppantonio et al. 2015). This enfolding serves as a corrective to the idea that digital copying represents a “disruptive” or “revolutionary” turn. 13 Archived at the Ashmolean Museum as item number AE1938.692.

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7

Conclusions

It is now time to sum up the evidence regarding archaeology’s relationship with the muse of antiquity and revisit some of the questions posed in the Introduction. How do the contemporary qualities of pictorial documentation compare with those found in visual records from centuries past? How was the cultural force of pictorial illustration acquired and how does that force relate to the present-day identity of archaeology and what explains the persistence of pictorialism in the context of contemporary understandings of antiquity? If, historically, pictorial illustration provided ready access to antiquity, is that still the case? Finally, there is the cultural frame of Western modernity to consider, bearing as it does on all we think and imagine about antiquity. Is it possible, based on the evidence of the documentary record, to sustain the claim that the visual story of antiquity told by the antiquarians and carried forward into the twenty-first century was (and remains) a point of resistance against the forces of modernity? Certain questions can be answered with a restatement of judgments reached in specific chapters while, in other instances, reappraisal and refinement are in order. Certainly, the relationship with modernity deserves extended discussion in the pages ahead, as does the question of archaeology’s identity, most aspects of which are shaped by reaction to modernity. Turning first to the qualities of contemporary versus historical illustrations, it is the continuities that are most significant and particularly the ability of illustration to transcribe three-dimensional appearances and make them readable. From the mid-twentieth century onward, there was increasing adoption of technical innovations but it is apparent from the visual record that pictorialism readily adapted to this trend because the range of pictorial signifiers expanded in step with the adoption of new technology, particularly with regard to remotely sensed imaging. Such sensing in its various forms inserts distance between the observer and the observed but this has not eclipsed the utility of pictorial signifiers and ways of seeing. The fact that the word “sensing” is used so commonly and non-reflexively suggests that certain corporeal elements are assumed to be active participants in the retrieval of and interpretation of information. The fact that pictorial practices often rested on the coordination of mind, eye and hand helps us answer the question about pictorialism’s persistence. From the first stirrings of interest in antiquity, such coordination became more than just an exercise in bodily action and developed into a trusted means of visual story-telling available to all with the requisite skills. DOI: 10.4324/9781032646893-8

216 Conclusions The resulting products became sites of contemplation and a means by which the past could be reintroduced into the present. In discussing specific images in the various chapters in this book, the corporeal element has consistently emerged as important; the essential point of contact with materiality. But it is vital to note that in cases where the use of hand and eye is challenged, the expression of pictorialism may be perfectly able to be expressed through the workings of the imagination alone. The implications of this go well beyond the scope of this book but clearly point to the need to study archaeological visualization by those with impaired sight or who have lost the sense of touch. In pondering the question of how the cultural force of pictorial illustration was acquired and how it relates to the present-day identity of archaeology, the observations of Bruce Trigger are of relevance. Toward the conclusion of his influential history of archaeological thought, he states unequivocally that “there is no reason to believe that archaeologists are more objective today than they were at any time in the past” (2008, 543). He is correct. Pictorialism was a vehicle for ways of thinking and seeing that projected charm onto ancient remains and turned the negotiation of meaning into an enchanted encounter. This was true three centuries ago and remains true today. It was, and is, a defining feature of archaeology’s identity. Another point of continuity is the role of pictorialism in providing access to antiquity. It has retained that role over time but the dimensions of access have been vastly expanded as new visual channels, including web-based media, have become commonplace. This expanded landscape has caused enchantment with antiquity also to expand. As discussed later in this chapter, it has rendered the boundary between the interests of specialist archaeologists and the enthusiasms of the public more permeable and this goes some way to restoring the historical role of the amateur before distinctions between popular and academic participation became hardened. All of these issues and questions are intertwined and, in engaging with them we must be careful to sort complexion from substance; what matters from what merely appears to matter. It becomes particularly important as we attempt to situate those questions in relation to modernity. Modernity Revisited There are many modernities, never just one. The modernity that has been centerstage in the preceding chapters is the sociocultural modernity configured from the eighteenth century on, and particularly the form it had acquired in the West by the mid-twentieth century. The claim made in the first pages of this book that the muse of antiquity allowed the study of the past to resist the forces of change runs contrary to the conclusions of those commentators who argue that the study of the ancient past has always celebrated change from its very beginnings as a distinct field of inquiry. “Archaeology is rooted in modernity,” claims Christopher Tilley, and “a sense of the past helps fuel the modernist fires of change” (1990, 129; see also Bohrer 2011a, 27, 2011b, 223; Hamilakis and Anagnostopoulos 2009, 285). Our knowledge of the past is, according to Rose Ferraby, entwined with the development of modern technologies (2017). Some have suggested that the co-opting

Conclusions 217 of new means of imaging was a marker of archaeology’s welcoming of change and indicative of an underlying modernist sensibility (see Gonzáles-Ruibal 2013, 2; Thomas 2004; Trigger 1989, 73), and the historian Alain Schnapp (2002, 135) makes an embrace of modernity seem somehow pre-ordained by pointing out that the study of antiquity became a fully-fledged discipline just at the time when positivist science was emerging in Western Europe. There is strong opposition to my claim that archaeology has never been modern, but I stand by it. The visual archive reveals little evidence that established ways of visualizing the past in pictorial form were suddenly abandoned or even revised. By the early twentieth century, although there was acknowledgment of innovations in imaging and demonstration of their potential, there was still no groundswell of eagerness to embrace forces of change and it is perhaps diagnostic that in those instances when archaeologists reach out for technical solutions those solutions are often imported from other fields rather than taken up as bespoke techniques. The antiquarians did not know modernity as we now know it but they had intimations of the changes to come as an impertinent world made inroads. They sensed that doctrines of objectivity and metrics might displace the authority of individual thought and the judgment of the “good eye” and, in their embrace of romantic thought, they pushed back against it. They enjoyed the comforts of long-established ways of depiction and trusted in the aesthetic and intellectual power of picturing as a form of story-telling. They found comfort in the apparent certainties of the intellectual and aesthetic status quo and this explains, I believe, their wistful and conservative perspective. Literary theorist Terry Eagleton claims that the study of the past provided an effective shelter from the gathering forces of modernity, albeit one built upon “suffocating intimacies” (1990, 143). Rupert Crawshay-Williams has, as cited in an earlier chapter, been even more blunt and sees antiquarian thought as an embrace of “the comforts of unreason” (see Crawshay-Williams 1947). The antiquarians, in their alliances with the romantics, sought to enliven the past and forge a visual bond capable of reconnecting antiquity with the present. In this project of enlivening, the past served as a screen onto which values and expectations, even of the most fanciful variety, could be projected in visual form. So deep were the roots put down by these indulgences made the reception and incorporation of innovation a grudging and uneven affair. Realignments in documentary practices and the unease caused by them were particularly apparent in Anglo-American archaeology between the 1930s and the 1970s. Those decades encapsulate what Bruce Trigger calls “antagonistic positions” arising out of “successive theoretical fashions in archaeology” with positivist approaches and interpretations on one side and reflexive negotiations of meaning on the other (2008, 386–483). Put another way, practitioners intent on disclosing the charm of what once lay hidden and unknown were pitted against others who were impelled to systematize and reduce those disclosures to data and metrics (see Olivier 2011, 31–32). The divided opinions that Trigger describes extended into the 1990s and remain in play today. While some emphasize a need for rigor and objectivity, others respond to the siren call of genius loci. With this divergence of commentary came a reprise of old critiques of antiquarian practices, such as the

218 Conclusions impulse for heterogeneous collecting and the eschewing of theory. It was the view of historian Alain Schnapp, for example, that collecting was “the little bastard sister of archaeology … operating from a position of denial.” Modern archaeologists, he insists, are not collectors (1997, 12). The persistence of these antagonistic positions is all the more striking given that new forms of documentary imaging appeared in the mid-twentieth century that seemed to puncture the hull of archaeology’s pictorial practices well below the waterline. This was particularly so with the first demonstration of carbon dating (see Chapter 3 for full discussion). There was no doubting the importance of what radiocarbon dating promised. However, there was also no shortage of archaeologists rushing to the pumps in support of its long-established scopic practices. Consider, for example, Glyn Daniel’s invoking of antiquarian impulses. While conceding on the one hand that collection for collection’s sake had no part to play in modernized archaeology, he points to it as a continuing presence in the archaeological imagination. “There is,” he asserts, “always at the base of the archaeologist’s mind the collector’s joy” (1950, 326). Among British archaeologists, Daniel was a particularly public presence via television, and his comments are notable for the elegiac frame he placed around studies of antiquity. Here he is again, airing his visual sympathies in an address at the University of Hull (United Kingdom) in 1969: Is the contemplation of art not one of the greatest privileges of the archaeologist, and man’s artistic attainment not one of archaeology’s highest themes? This is not a rhetorical question. It is has been firmly and frequently answered in the negative by many of my colleagues. I shall attempt to persuade you how wrong they are. (1970, 4) But a rhetorical question is exactly what it was, and in this same address he suggests that the study of the past is an enchanted undertaking, especially when he refers to “the pleasure of looking” and the “value of value-judgments.” “[A]rt is for all time,” he concludes, and “through archaeology, we own the pleasure of past time” (16–17). From out of this extended period of contrasting perspectives, has a clear winner emerged? It has been said that the hermeneutics of contemporary archaeology have become technologically embodied in visualizing machines (Ihde 1998, 137–138). Specific instrumental capabilities can be seen as part of a more distanced observational stance, as sometimes noted in the contemporary literature of archaeology (see, for example, Moshenska 2006, 91; Thomas 2004, 15). Within a modernized ethos of archaeological investigation, pictorialism is the loser, displaced by graphic traces or encrypted markings interpretable only to the specialist eye. Direct retinal and tactile contact would be largely reserved for situations where ground-truthing is required. Although pictorial explanation offers an accessible route for interpreting the past, it has always been a channel for speculation, conjecture and wishful thinking, and although the condition of modernity does not expressly prohibit the factoring in of subjective sensory awareness in describing and interpreting

Conclusions 219 antiquity, that awareness can be an unruly and anarchic presence. But sometime unruliness and anarchism can lead to new discoveries. The visual evidence suggests that there is no clear winner between technically enabled expert-led visualizations and archaeological pictorialism, and trying to draw distinctions between the two can lead to weary debates about analog versus digital methodology. Rather, the robust intellectual health of archaeology rests on its hybrid tendencies in which differing polarities of visual expression are entangled. This entanglement provides space for the imagination and, yes, space for antiquity as muse. It would, of course, be surprising if this were not the case given the historical dominance of pictorialism in first giving shape and meaning to antiquity, but it is important to realize that pictorialism does not exist now only as a residual presence or trace of past dominance, but as a vital component of documentary practice. It would be useful at this point to review some examples of this vitality. Various preceding discussions have pointed to the interconnections between pixel and picture and we can readily identify pictorial elements whenever an overlay of visual cosmetics in the post-processing of digitized data is used to add emphasis. To the extent it introduces elements of artifice into the pursuit of objective imaging, it reprises pictorial forms of visual rhetoric. For example, reflectance patterns and LiDAR scans of forested terrain in Central America, or the traces of topographic outlines of ancient cultural landscapes in Cambodia (both described in Chapter 5), initially present as pictures in the conventional sense, albeit pictures keyed to a digital matrix. There is evidence to be found in the information gathered by sensors that the trick of quasi-magical reappearance that once characterized the depiction of ancient remains was being performed anew. Though less suggestive of visual conjuring, we can also identify ground-based endeavors where tropes of resemblance have retained value, such as the image-rich methods deployed over recent years in the excavation of Çatalhöyuk (Turkey), an early farming settlement dating to 8250–7400 BCE. There, recording methods used by interactive teams ranged from video to virtual reality and helped generate differing hypotheses based on the visual evidence (see Hodder 2000). This image richness, in combination with visual editing, integrated subjective element into the project and this was considered a necessity rather than an obstruction. Moving from specific cases and methodologies and into the realm of theory, there exists a corpus of commentary from prominent archaeologists where we find terms such as “reflexive,” “phenomenological” and “experiential” being applied in contexts where sensory, visually expressed explanations of the past are considered useful for opening pathways for research (see, for example, Hodder 2000, 2012; Renfrew 2003; Schnapp, Shanks and Tiew 2004; Shanks 2012; Shanks and McGuire 1996). Such perspectives are capable of setting up a relationship of continual re-negotiation of meaning between the observer and the observed. Pictorial forms of information shape that relationship whenever textual explanation fails to convey nuanced detail effectively (Cochrane and Russell 2007, 8). Historian Richard Morris describes this negotiation of archaeological meaning as a kind of ventriloquism whereby “it is not only logic or science that we bring, but also our imaginations” (2012, 17). Some go so far as to see that imaginative element as

220 Conclusions capable of supporting a dreamscape of new and poetical spaces of archaeological interpretation where the past, and memory itself, can be reconfigured (see Hamilakis 2013, 52; 55; Shanks and Witmore 2010, 12) and this is doubtless what Cornelius Holtorf is referring to in his assertion that “in a sense, the archaeologist is not digging for artifacts but digging for dreams” (2007, 141; see also Holtorf 2013). What he is implying is that, in contemporary studies of antiquity, there is no inherent reason why imagination and inspiration on the part of archaeologists should not inform both the starting point of investigation and the documentary journey. The antiquarians characterized themselves as agents for the restoration of the invisible to sight and there is no reason why this agency should now be beyond reach. Indeed, there is a rich strand of commentary in the literature of contemporary archaeology focusing on this topic, often from the perspective of entanglement of people with objects via acts of observation and visual depiction (see, for example, Dobres and Robb 2000, 12; Olsen 2012; Robb 2004, 106). Although not explicitly stated, such commentary reworks aspects of romantic-antiquarian modes of sensemaking that challenged presumed divisions between people and things (see Gosden 2001, 163–164). For example, there is much that inquiring minds of 300 years ago would find familiar in the following comment from the early twenty-first century and the call to recreate the world behind the ruin in the land, to reanimate the people behind the sherd of antique pottery, to cherish and work upon fragments from the past: this is the work of the archaeological imagination, a creative impulse and faculty at the heart of the discipline of archaeology. (Shanks and Svabo 2013, 90) This statement foregrounds the role of both materiality and visuality in the relationship with antiquity, a relationship which has been expressed through direct contact with material originals or via drawings, paintings and prints ever since antiquarianism shifted focus from text to object in the seventeenth century. But there are suggestions that the entanglement between humans and material remains from the past will be forced to adapt to new documentary variants, many of which are compellingly pictorial and able to project radical storylines. Emerging forms of visualization are able to bypass immutable materiality and present antiquity in a pliable form capable of being repeatedly edited. Indeed, rendering material mutable can be a necessity for manipulation, modeling and interpretation. Effective reproduction requires the visual capture of resemblance to an original artifact and processing algorithms can contribute to this by dissolving the original artifact before it is recomposed. The more the materiality of an artifact is subdivided, dissolved and reconfigured, the greater the separation becomes from the artifact at the center of these manipulations. This separation is not limited to individual artifacts but is also expressible, as noted in Chapter 5 as the “paradox of distance” whereby scrutiny from afar can reveal more than at close-up. Many contemporary imaging techniques simultaneously underscore the limits of corporeal power and indicate how those limits can be overcome.

Conclusions 221 If widely cited commentary is to be believed, images will continue to become untethered from their referents as materiality is transformed into simulation (Jay 1994, 544; see also Baudrillard 1994). Developments in virtual reality over the course of the 1990s and early 2000s pointed in that direction, although the supposed benefits were markedly oversold. At the time of writing, it is artificial intelligence and the role of robotics and machine-based reasoning that is attracting sustained attention and generating a substantial degree of concern (Mantovan and Nanni 2020). Although some emergent methods of information-gathering and dissemination appear to represent a break with past scopic practice, it bears remembering that the choices of visual rhetoric around which traditional artworks were conventionally structured also represented, in their day, forms of visual editing. Just as the digital image of today represents materiality in a pliable form, so too did drawings, paintings and prints from the past. The reconfiguration of the relationship between observer and the observed together with the shift away from surface appearance inevitably introduces changes in terms of documentary priorities and procedures. Whereas conventional picturing was often the end-point of observation, an image is now likely to mark the beginning of further visual probing; instrumentation may not only shape the way we see things but also create new subjects of inspection. Pictorialism and the Identity of Archaeology The focus of investigation across the various chapters of this book has been on published documents and on observers who had a vested interest in the accounts they produced. But those investigations would be incomplete without looking across to the other domain of informal and unvested interests and enthusiasms. In his book Archaeology is a Brand (2007), Cornelius Holtorf lists the various identities that have cohered around archaeologists in popular culture: archaeologist as adventurer, archaeologist as detective, archaeologist as producer of profound revelations and archaeologist as guardian of sites and finds. In his opinion, there are few disciplines fortunate enough to be so widely and positively represented as archaeology (2007, 133). The many circles of contemporary archaeological investigation and reporting can, on occasion, overlap with this public space of perception and involvement and cause the boundaries between amateur and expert to blur. This is seen by some as a challenge to professional values, but in the view of archaeologist Tim SchadlaHall, archaeologists should be careful not to denigrate or disregard the reservoir of public fascination with the past (1999, 154). Gabriel Moshenska, in discussing the fluidity of the boundary between specialist and public, claims that archaeologists are as aware as anybody of popular representations of archaeology and that some will have become archaeologists precisely because of the fascination with these representations. Some might even have consciously curated their appearance in relation to the tropes found in popular culture and have taken to wearing a suitably dusty fedora during fieldwork (Moshenska 2017, 152).

222 Conclusions In this zone of boundary-crossing, enchantment thrives and old proclivities to admit into the study of antiquity, anyone with a curious eye is reasserted. Some commentators have identified a shift in the nature of visual story-telling within communities of specialists and experts toward dispassionate observation, a process described by historian Martin Jay as a “denarrativization” (1994, 51–52), but the presence of a broader community of public involvement may allow archaeology to avoid such a shift. It is reasonable to think that expectations of fantasy will be sustained, as they once were, by visual accounts and the association of archaeology with exploration and mystery-solving. Nick Merriman, specialist in museum and heritage studies, has commented that “in an increasingly rational and materialistic society the past, especially prehistory, may offer a refuge for the creative use of emotion and imagination in the construction of a non-rational and non-materialistic past” (1991, 117). Notwithstanding the comments of Tim Schadla-Hall, Nick Merriman and other like-minded commentators, the public space of archaeological imagination can be unruly when it spills over and intersects with the activities of specialists. Viewed from a professional perspective, popular ideas about archaeology are considered by some as shallow compared to the deeper purposes and processes of formal inquiry and deficient in terms of evidence presentation and interpretation. It has been claimed that public involvement incubates bogus archaeological claims which then compete with mainstream archaeological interpretation (Anderson, Card and Feder 2013). Thus, distinctions have been drawn between “inauthentic archaeology” and other varieties considered bona fide (Lovata 2007; see also Fagan 2006a, 2006b) and terms such as “pseudo-archaeology” have been coined to describe the perceived displacement of informed opinion by fantasy (Feder 1990; 2019; Sokal 2006, 286). A stand-out exemplar of the unease is anthropologist Kenneth Feder’s Frauds, Myths and Mysteries: Science and Pseudoscience in Archaeology. The 1990 edition calls for “a veritable past, a real past constructed from the sturdy fabric of geology, paleontology, archaeology, and history, woven on the loom of science. We…can do better than weave a past from the whole cloth of fantasy and fiction” (201). Information for specialist audiences has traditionally been packaged as print publication. Communities of expertise, as sub-cultures, police their boundaries to control admittance and many areas of archaeological inquiry use peer review as an important means of accomplishing this. Over time, this signaling has become more emphatic as specific areas of technical expertise, such as archaeometry and radiometric dating, have acquired their own academic journals. However, beyond this regime of publication, there is a wealth of content directed at a largely popular readership but with articles authored by professional archaeologists. One example would be World Archaeology, a publication which seeks to fold the facticity of specialist commentary into a magazine format consisting of breezy short-form commentary accompanied by arresting imagery. Certain themed editions of National Geographic Magazine serve as further examples of this mix. To the extent a more general and less technically oriented style of publication can attract both a popular and more specialized readership, it is akin to the appeal of some nineteenth-century

Conclusions 223 periodicals such as Gentleman’s Monthly, Illustrated London News, Illustrated Archaeologist and Reliquary and Harper’s Monthly. Stylistically, however, there is an array of visual techniques available today that would be beyond the dreams of publishers in the past when black-and-white engraved illustration was the gold standard. In sum, the visually rich treatment and romanticized narration of antiquity found across today’s media landscape represents a reiteration of enchanted storylines and examination of that landscape represents a bridge between the fixed image of documentary reporting and the moving image. In what follows I describe examples of specific media and documentary approaches that are influential in nurturing enchanted pictorialism, including television, streamed content and web sites. I also describe the potential for collaboration between specialists and the broader public, commonly grouped under the heading of public or community archaeology. Finally, there are activities where divisions between producers of antiquity and the consumers of it are blurred, the best example being the efforts of metal detectorists. Broadcast and Streamed Imagery

From quiz shows and news items and as a vehicle for expert opinion, television programming has long been, and continues to be, a strong gauge of public opinion about archaeology.1 It can nonetheless attract the same criticism from professional archaeologists as earlier described. One particular point of critique is the recruitment of narrators who are expected to adopt the role of detective to solve mysteries that have supposedly baffled experts, a common trope in broadcast media. From a producer’s perspective, mindful of retaining audience interest and fulfilling a commissioning editor’s brief, it is common for content to include a controversial reinterpretation of remains and existing information (Henson 2005). In some of the storylines, the villain is the methodology of archaeology itself for the focus on fragments and details, the slow progress of investigation due to detailed recordkeeping procedures, and the common inability to reach a clear and unambiguous conclusion about what the evidence reveals. To amplify divergent opinions and to introduce an element of competition, the format may feature a supposedly underappreciated savant to help solve the puzzle in easily understandable terms, eschewing the rarefied language associated with academic research.2 Completing the package, there might also be an exotic geographic setting to serve as a backdrop to the proceedings. One example in which all these elements come together is the Discovery Channel’s Helike: The Real Atlantis which aired in 2002. The storyline centered on the idea that the sudden destruction of the Greek island of Helike in 373 BCE supported Plato’s myth of Atlantis. Popular notions of archaeology have a strong gravitational pull toward terms such as “secret,” “mystery” and “myth,” and the envisioning of lost civilizations such as Atlantis perfectly aligns with this pull. For this particular production, archaeologists were deployed on a quest to find evidence of the lost city for which there is none beyond mythical references. There is evidence in recent productions that television broadcasting, and also streamed content, is mimicking

224 Conclusions trends in archaeology itself toward expanded use of hyper-visualization involving image manipulation. With the Discovery Channel’s Seven Wonders series (2021), for example, selected archaeological sites are shown in exploded diagrammatic view to reveal otherwise undetectable interstitial spaces. This has the advantage from the production point-of-view of switching focus away from the slow physical process and visual messiness of excavation and toward the target of the search. This is also useful in terms of dramatic arc because it quickens the pace. Once rendered into an appealing narrative, it is questionable whether the inherent strength or weakness of evidence really matters; it is the allure of the storyline that matters. Professor of fine art, Angela Piccini, in her discussion of archaeological documentaries, refers to the “contract of faith or credibility game” in which viewers consume content relatively uncritically in the presumption that that they are not only viewing but also learning from what they see (2007, 227). Reflecting this fluid mixing of substance and speculation it is common for content to be presented as nuggets of fact embedded within a stylized production package, such as with Raiders of the Lost Past, a series aired by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in the early 2020s. In this series, one principal commentator, recruited from the ranks of academia, introduces others with specialist credentials at various points in the program. It is also the task of the principal commentator to restate periodically the theme of the episode. The public appetite for such productions is robust. For example, the Time Team television series aired between 1993 and 2008 attracted an audience of up to 6 million (Schadla-Hall 1999). Digging for Britain has been similarly popular and reached a viewing audience of 900,000 in 2019 (Tilley 2019).3 Given the level of interest in such productions, it confirms the view of historian Richard Morris that, for the broader public, archaeological myths and fantasies are highly appealing and “fantasies flourish because to many people the past is an open field in which the imagination can wander” (2012, 17). However, broadcast or on-demand programming does not necessarily release the viewer into a free-range environment where they wander at will. Rather, the viewer is led down selected paths where specific aspects of a visual journey are presented. For commissioning editors and producers, audience numbers are critically important and maintaining viewers’ interest requires identifying and fulfilling expectations which are based on enduring popular ideas about what antiquity, and the search for it, should look like. Archaeology in the Movies

The evolution of on-demand programming and the rise to dominance of the Netflix and Amazon Prime platforms has blurred distinctions between the appeal of the movie theater and that of at-home viewing. The long-form content of film versus the more constrained documentary format of television programming allows a dramatic arc to be established, often including a love interest in some form and interludes of implied or actual violence. The archaeological context accommodates drama and romance surprisingly well as is evident in the Indiana Jones and Lara Croft franchises. As we would expect, storylines turn on the thoughts

Conclusions  225 and actions of individuals rather than antiquities per se, indeed the star system of casting mandates this. But this focus also reprises a common trope that has endured for centuries: search and discovery as a heroic endeavor with antiquity serving as a screen upon which action is projected. One specific example where this trope is clearly on display is The Dig (2021), adapted from the novel by John Preston and centering on the discovery and excavation in 1938–1939 of an early seventh-century Anglo-Saxon ship burial at Sutton Hoo in eastern England. A further example, adapted from a novel by Michael Ondaatje, is The English Patient (1996) which dramatizes the fate of a party of archaeologists in the Middle East during the Second World War. Online Archaeology

The extent and variety of online visual communication has vastly proliferated since the 1990s via readily constructed platforms providing opportunities for specialist and popular interests to intersect. Public access has widened as the cost of digital memory has declined and processing power increased. Data are typically stored and retrieved via the “cloud,” a curious concept given that, with archaeology, data mostly relate to the solid materiality of ancient remains at ground level. Archaeologists Michael Shanks and Christopher Witmore are surely right in asserting that, in the online space, antiquity and memory itself can be designed and re-designed as “anyone with a personal computer may author, appropriate, share, rework, and publish work in this new political economy of media” (2010, 12). Weblogs or “blogs,” as they are universally known, are emblematic of this media economy; a format that can be readily refreshed to offer quick-fire information and commentary. As a means of communication, blogging invites interconnection between specialist archaeologists and the public, due largely to two specific features of the medium: it is reiterative, and it is highly visual. The reiteration takes the form of re-blogging content and posting it on other sites and this can often be flattering to the original posting and further propel the urge to share content. Furthermore, because many blogs cater to a specific group or micro-audience, they contain less of the vituperative commentary found on many social media platforms. As regards visual elements, pictorial content such as digital photos and video has increasingly displaced text, and some blogs are now predominantly pictorial (see Ifantidis 2015). Self-programming and file sharing, working in tandem with image-rich content, equate to a dynamic stream of information and opinion which, although disorderly when assessed against the rigidity of professional standards, suggests that the blogosphere is a congenial environment of archaeological pictorialism. There is, however, abundant space for compromise between amateur or experimental blog publication and specialist input. Some sites are compiled and authored by professional archaeologists and constructed around specialist interests in specific fields, such as the Mesoweb site which focuses on the archaeology of the ancient Maya and successor cultures of Mexico and Central America and serves as a portal to specialist publications. There are also hybrid formats, some of which are intended to challenge orthodoxies and hierarchies. Consider, for

226 Conclusions example, the Guerilla Archaeology blog, the mission statement for which strikes a tone that romantically inclined antiquarians of past centuries might recognize: “a collective made up of archaeologists, scientists and artists” in order to “bemuse, amaze and astound with fascinating insights” (guerillaarchaeology.com 2020; see also Austin 2020). Sarah Perry (2015) points out that archaeologists have been experimenting with publication styles since early antiquarian times and she thus considers blogging to represent a continuum of practice. To the extent that blogging accommodates the desire to be amazed by antiquity and to share that amazement, it does indeed reach back to the sensibilities of earlier times. In any discussion of online media, there is a danger of succumbing to belief in a “digital utopia” to which all interested parties could amicably and productively contribute. Lecturer in digital humanities and heritage, Lorna Richardson, notes that “techno-utopians [who] are likely to claim that online communications…can foster new dialogue, underpin new power relations and support representations of community-constructed archaeological knowledge” (2013, 14). In reality, the dissemination of opinion in the blogosphere, though sometimes propelled by egalitarian motives and often projecting an entrepreneurial spirit comparable to that found with any digital start-up, cannot entirely elide long-standing anxieties about authenticity (see Chapter 6). Andrew Bevan, professor of Spatial and Comparative Archaeology asserts that “the combination of rapidly developing, low-cost, shared or illegally pirated creative outputs (including data), have been very unsettling for existing value regimes” (2012, 1–14). Web-based communication, coupled with opportunities for public involvement in archaeology, can open up new or enhanced spaces in which the amateur can find a niche. It represents a twinning of thought and action but largely operationalized through a computer keyboard. Can this twinning of thought and action be configured differently, retaining the element of participation but offering the prospect of direct physical action? The following discussions will help answer that question. Detectorism

As any field-walking metal detectorist will confirm, there are an inordinate number of belt buckles and bottle caps to be found out there and the triumph of hope over experience makes metal detecting the archaeological equivalent of fishing. But sometimes amateur sleuthing brings to light important finds. On those rare occasions, the bleep of a detection wand connects in some respects to the activities of Richard Colt Hoare and William Cunnington during their barrow hunting from centuries past (see Chapter 2). Strike up a conversation about antiquarian pursuits with someone off out the door, detector in hand, and you will be met with a blank stare, but the connection is unquestionably there. Popular interest in metaldetecting is often piqued through media accounts of specific buried hoards being newly discovered, and these accounts inevitably speculate on the monetary value of a find, particularly when it includes precious metals; it is often the first question that is asked.

Conclusions 227 The task of searching is commonly carried out within tightly circumscribed boundaries such as the confines of a farmer’s field which in some European locations might have been repeatedly plowed for centuries. Locales where finds have already been unearthed are often targets for further searching and in such locales, although serendipity still has a hand, it would be incorrect to consider the activity to be entirely random. Indeed, the role of chance in general may be diminishing as the niche market in magazines directed at detectorists expands, providing information on the latest devices available and, occasionally, suggesting fruitful areas to visit. The locations of exact findspots are often purposely undisclosed in media reports to avoid tensions with landowners, particularly if fields are under crops. It is unlikely that the barrow hunters of the past, during their free-ranging canters across the then very-open English landscape, gave much thought to the issue of trespass, but it is an important factor for the amateur searchers of today to consider and increasingly a written right-of-access agreement is required. Although some valuable finds are made in the course of formal investigations, it has been estimated that up to 95 percent are unearthed by amateur detectorists (Bland et al. 2017, 109). Despite this impressive record, the activities of detectorists can spur unease among professional archaeologists, especially in locations where regulations are lax or contradictory. When finds occur, important information regarding context can be lost before a site survey can be undertaken. Matters become more serious if the dark arts of pocketing portable artifacts come into play and in the most egregious cases this pilfering links to the illicit trading of recovered objects. The full dimensions of this trade are hard to gauge given that it is, by nature, a shadowy activity but, in the European context, it has long been questionable whether current regulations are effective and penalties levied against those involved sufficiently punitive (see Deckers, Lewis and Thomas 2016). Institutional and ethical issues intersect at the level of national laws governing patrimony and the obligation, where it exists, for significant discoveries to be reported and for an inquest to be convened to determine the legal course of action. Laws governing treasure trove may apply where the artifacts discovered are of precious metal.4 Rules vary from country to country as do procedures for working with conservators and other specialists. Hobbyist metal-detecting is most common in European countries that have a tradition of amateur archaeology and, arguably, expectations of responsible behavior are more explicit there. Concerns often boil down to the need for detectorists to act in good faith by announcing a discovery to the relevant authorities rather than concealing the location of a discovery. As its popularity has grown, so too have calls for detectorism to be integrated into formal channels of archaeology rather than being rebuffed or condemned as piracy (see Winkley 2016). In some Scandinavian states, for example, it is expected that detectorists will communicate with archaeologists, at least to relay information about finds since this can help initiate formal investigation of a findspot. The European Public Finds Recording Network lists the basic regulations in force for selected countries and provides a checklist of best practices, including limits on depth of digging.5 It is indicative of the more proactive stance found in

228 Conclusions Scandinavia with regard to detectorism that the Network is based at the University of Helsinki (Finland). Community and Public Archaeology

We turn now to a different and far less entrepreneurial form of public participation and one that is structured around group action rather than individual judgment. Nick Merriman notes that “some of the sharpest debates in public archaeology focus around the question of who has rights to own and interpret the remains of the past” (1994, 12). This was true in the mid-1990s and remains true today, but it is a challenge for those debates, group-based as they are, to break free from bureaucratic issues of policy-making, administrative stewardship, identification of stakeholders and the need to specify deliverable outcomes. The terms “public” and “community” can be hard to define. Early studies which attempted to do so, such as Charles McGimsey’s Public Archaeology (1972), set it in the context of publicly funded excavation and preservation of archaeological sites threatened by redevelopment and archaeologists today remain mindful that consideration of the public impact of a project can be a prerequisite when financed through public funds (Deckers, Lewis and Thomas 2016; Richardson 2013, 2; Thomas 2015, 315). The embedding of public involvement within policy frameworks stands in contrast to more expansive and less hierarchical concepts of public input where at least partial control of a project is devolved to local actors. This requires active participation, the adoption of a fluid style of leadership and, most critically, the inclusion of voices that otherwise might not be heard. This conceptual approach is generally referred to as “community archeology” (see Marshall 2002). Although it is often considered a subset of public archaeology, the ethos and objectives of community archaeology are decidedly different. The term “community” connotes a focus on local knowledge and action. It is an approach traceable to the tenets of critical social theory and the adoption of a post-colonial prism through which to view how the story of past and present has been constructed. Ideally, as diverse perspectives become enfolded in the interpretation of the past, muted voices become not only heard but also amplified. This becomes critically important when subaltern voices within indigenous communities are involved (Gould 2016, 3) since the recovery of voice often foregrounds cultural memory from generations past. The mistreatment of tribal communities in the United States springs to mind in this regard but that is just one part of a much larger, pan-global picture. Because all communities have distinctive social attributes, the process of outreach and involvement has to be bespoke process. Projects can be instigated by community groups after identifying specific areas of interest, and although expert guidance might be needed at certain points in the enterprise, professional or academic archaeologists, such guidance is best held in reserve to be drawn on as and when needed. This is easier said than done because the urge to defer to expert opinion is strong. Ideally there is bottom-up involvement where opinions and ideas for particular lines of action come from the participant themselves Moshenska 2008. It is easy for what specialist archaeologists say in a community setting to become

Conclusions 229 lost in translation, bearing in mind that the expectations of participants, the beating heart of enchanted archaeological envisioning, might be far removed from the model of publishable research familiar to an academic. Often, the initial objective is to describe the various roles and objectives and this process intersects with the issue of expectations. All those involved will rightly expect there to be an eventual conclusion when the results of their efforts, whether a dirty-hands role in excavation or a clean-hands role in mapping or archival sleuthing, are fully recognized, evaluated and celebrated. This is even more important when the findings from a campaign are meager or contradictory. Between initial discussion of objectives and that (hopefully celebratory) conclusion there is the continuing process of fostering and maintaining community goodwill. The nurturing of goodwill is a vital component of any ongoing multiyear campaign of archaeological investigation, particularly when excavation is involved. Not all archaeological projects are major earth-moving events; in fact they are relatively rare. Where they are being undertaken, however, the scene presented is a picture of continuing change as features are cleared and made visible and for the local community that slow metamorphosis can be a matter of great interest. Few archaeologists would fail to see the value of having open days in which the community is invited to see the status of a project. I recall one such event in the Orkney Islands of Scotland in 2016, an area that, as noted in Chapter 4, is extraordinarily rich in Neolithic remains. Despite the showers and blustery winds, a large and enthusiastic crowd arrived to view the progress of the work and ask questions. It was a combination of educational event and social get-together and I was struck by the degree of local pride in the project (and also by the inordinate number of sheepdogs in attendance). Certainly behind-the-scenes organization helped make the day a success by planning activities broadly relevant to archaeology, such as displays of flint knapping, but it was community volunteerism which made the whole thing work. The Fate of the Muse Television programming, streamed content, web platforms, the rise of detectorism and participation in local archaeological projects as described above are all indicative of continuing public interest in archaeology. Some of these activities are more overtly pictorial than others, but the influence of the muse infuses them all and serves to confirm the enduring power of visual enchantment. No single metric can tell us to what degree popular media, information-sharing and active participation are impacting archaeology, but we can model conceptually two possible outcomes; one being positive and the other less so. To take the less positive model first, we could speculate that the muse of antiquity has permanently migrated from the domain of the specialist and the expert to the broader public domain, there to promise continuing revelation and spectacle and allow fantasies about antiquity to flourish. In this model the space of specialized study is no longer conducive to speculative picturing. This would truly mark a scopic divide between the pictorial hankerings of the old archaeology and the technological aspirations of

230 Conclusions the new. It would also mean that this book has followed the wrong path all along for I have consistently argued that the expert space of archaeological inquiry has ample space for creativity and imagination. Turning to the more positive model, we find that broader public interests in archaeology overlap with specialized study and have an enriching effect, further strengthening that quality of archaeology that makes it so distinctive; a hybrid endeavor blending aspects of science with an embrace of aestheticism. In that model, the space of specialized inquiry nurtures antiquity as muse. Based on the evidence presented in the various chapters of this book, this is the dominant model. However, in the contemporary literature of archaeology, it is still common to find the uncritical presumption that a point of separation from antiquarian visual manners occurred as the study of the ancient past transitioned into a professionalized field of endeavor. That well-embedded presumption makes Sam Smiles’s rhetorical question from three decades ago particularly forceful. He asked, “how far have we really traveled from the sublime encounters of antiquarian enthusiasm?” (1994, 221). We can rightly answer “not very far.” In a much-cited publication, C. P. Snow wrote of the difficulty for communication to flow productively between the two cultures of the arts and the sciences (Snow 1959). It bears the hallmarks of its mid-twentieth-century origins by expressing anxieties associated with the rise of an expert class. Happily, the visual culture of archaeology has never displayed a conspicuous gap with specialist knowledge on one side and pluralistic forms of interpretation on the other. One can identify fissures, perhaps, but they are bridgeable by constructions drawn from archaeology’s long history of visual story-telling. Were this not the case, the evidence would reveal a closing of the enchanted eye over the course of time, particularly from the mid-twentieth century onward. David Clarke once described the changed context of mid-twentieth-century archaeological explanation as a “loss of innocence” as new observations, methodologies, ideologies and philosophies uncomfortably jostled the epistemological status quo, threatening to displace old certainties with a regime of never-ending change (1973, 8). Nowhere in Clarke’s commentary does the word “enchantment” appear, nor would one necessarily expect it to, but his opinion about the fate of traditional forms of visual story-telling is clear enough. Overlooked in his much-cited essay, however, is the essentially conservative nature of archaeology’s documentary preferences and the pursuit of visual resemblance. The connection to aesthetic ideals reaching back several centuries does not make those preferences somehow “innocent” but worldly wise; pictorial sensibilities were sufficiently adaptive to modernized ways of describing and explaining antiquity that they have remained vital to the effective documentation and interpretation of antiquity. The cloak of allure has always been available for enfolding antiquity and remains so. Notes 1 A long-running example is the quiz show Animal, Vegetable, Mineral? which aired in Britain from 1952 to 1959. It featured luminaries such as Glyn Daniel and Mortimer

Conclusions 231 Wheeler who were asked to guess the identity of a museum artifact based on a few cryptic clues. Arguably, the show’s most useful aspect was the way it illustrated the contestants’ reasoning. 2 For a cautionary tale of how misunderstandings and tensions can arise between media producers and archaeologists, see “Collaborate, Condemn, or Ignore? Responding to Non-Archaeological Approaches to Archaeological Heritage” by Suzie Thomas (2015). 3 According to compiled data for BBC Channel 4, this was the second largest non-sport audience for 2019 (see Tilley 2019). 4 In England and Wales, recovered historical objects with an estimated gold or silver content in excess of 10 percent must be reported to a local coroner within 14 days. The finder has no formal claim to the monetary value of any artifact, but the owner of the land on which it was found does have a right to claim 50 percent of the market value. Typically, there is a gap of several years between discovery and the final determination of entitlement. 5 These countries are Denmark, England, Wales, Flanders (Belgium), Finland and the Netherlands. The most commonly cited limit to depth of digging is 30 centimeters (approximately one foot).

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Index

Accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) 96, 206 Acropolis (Athens) 84; see also Parthenon Adorno, Theodor 32–3 Agrigento (Italy) 23, 24 Alberti, Leon Battista 70 Albums, photographic 66 Andrews, Malcolm 46 Annual of the British School at Athens 8, 128, 137 Antiquarianism 2–3, 49, 137, 156, 220; see also Bacon, Francis; Browne, Thomas Antiquaries Journal 8 Antiquity 8 Archaeologia 8 Anglo-Saxon remains 49, 225 Angkor Thom Temples (Cambodia) 165–7 Angkor Wat Temples (Cambodia) 166–7 Arnold, James R. 89–91 Ashmolean Museum (Oxford) 198–204 Atlantis, myth of 223 Aubrey, John 56, 112 Aura 187–9, 200; see also Benjamin, Walter; Riegl, Alois Authenticity 15, 21, 200–204 Avebury stone circles (England) 109–10 Bacon, Francis 14, 27 Bahn, Paul 191, 202 Barber, Martyn 140 Barrows and tumuli 51, 52, 54 Barthes, Roland 8 Bas relief fragments, Knossos 63, 131, 191 Baudelaire, Charles 26, 67 Baudrillard, Jean 66 Benjamin, Walter 66, 187–9 Berlin, Isaiah 6 Blake, William 69

Blix, Gören 7, 26 Blogs 225–6 Bohrer, Frederick 2 Bonani, Georges 97–8 Botta, Paul-Emile 63 Boy-King forgery 204–5 British Museum (London) 196, 209n10 Browne, Thomas 12, 34 Burl, Aubrey 110 Cabinets of curiosities 15–21 Camera lucida 46 Camera obscura 65 Cameron, Mark 137–8 Caracol (Belize) 160–2 Carbon dating 80–90, 218 Çatalhöyük (Turkey) 4 Catherwood, Frederick 151–2; see also Stephens, John Lloyd Charnay, Désiré 155 Chase, Arlen 162–3 Chichén Itzá (Mexico) 153 Clarke, David 230 Claude glass 46 Columbia University Creative Machines Lab 199 Community archaeology 222–3 Copán (Honduras) 148–52 Crary, Jonathan 65 Crawford, Osbert G. S. 116, 141n5 Crocker, Philip 52–3 Cunnington, William 52 Daguerre, Louis 65 Daguerreotype photography 65 Daniel, Glyn 218 David, Andrew122 de Caylus, Comte 18–21 de Jong, Piet 127, 134, 135

236 Index de Perthes, Jacques Boucher 84, 203 de Vries Hessel 93–5 Dead Sea Scrolls 96–9 Delaporte, Louis 164–5 Dendrochronology 95 Discovery Channel 223 Distance, paradox of 159 Dodwell, Edward 196–7 Doll, Christian 127 Druids and Druidism 112 du Camp, Maxime 67–8 Eagleton, Terry 217 Earle, John 13 École Française d’Extreme-Oriente (Vietnam) 174 Edgeworth, Matt 4 Elgin, Lord (Thomas Bruce) 194 Elkins, James 101 Enchantment 109, 111, 147, 165, 203; see also Aura Engravings 7, 45, 53, 60, 63, 67 Enlightenment, European 26–8, 33, 81, 196 European Public Finds Recording Network (EPFRN) 227 Evans, Arthur, biography of 109–10 Evans, Joan 124 Evans, John 85–7 Fagan, Garrett 220 Fakes and forgeries 201–5 Flandin, Eugène 63 Fox Talbot, Henry 65 Fresco fragments, Knossos 136, 139 Fyfe, Theodore 127 Galassi, Peter 64 Garnier, Francis 169 Gell, William 196 Genius Loci 108, 217 Geographic Information Systems (GIS) 180n17 Geophysical surveying 114, 121–4 Gilliėron, père and fils 134 Gillings, Mark 118–20 Gilpin, William 43–5, 49, 71 Grand tour 202 Graphic telescope 46; see also Varley, Cornelius Graphs 92; as pictures 93, 98, 101 Greater Angkor Project (GAP) 176 Groslier, Bernard-Philippe 174–6 Groslier, George 170–1

Ground-truthing 218 Guerilla Archaeology (blog) 226 Hamilakis, Yannis 108 Harpers Monthly Magazine 59 Hartley, L. P. 103n6 Hawkes, Jacquetta 31, 111, 120 Heaton, Noel 127 Heidegger, Martin 33 Hoare, Richard Colt 52–5 Hodder, Ian 4 Holtorf, Cornelius 4, 220, 221 Horkheimer, Max 32–3 Horologian (Athens) 209n5 Hydraulic culture 174 Idealism, German 25 IKONOS satellite imaging 160 Illustrated London News 62, 223 Illustrated travel accounts 57, 58–9 Instantaneous field of view (IFOV) 160 Ioannidou, Maria 196 Isaac, Glyn 31 James, Henry 108 Jay, Martin 82, 222 John Soane’s Museum (London) 23 Joyce, Rosemary 190 Kant, Immanuel 28 Keiller, Alexander 109–10 Khmer Empire 164 Kidder, Alfred 159 Klee, Paul 93 Knossos (Crete) 126–30 Koh Ker (Cambodia) 172–3 Kuhn, Thomas 103n7 Lambrinou, Lena 197 Landsat satellite imaging 160 Landscape archaeology 160 Lasaponara, Rosa 178 Latour, Bruno 70 Layard, Austen Henry 59–63 Leon Levy Foundation 98–9 Libby, Willard 89–90; see also carbon dating Light detection and ranging (LiDAR) 160–63; see also Caracol (Belize) Linear B script; discovery and translation of 129 Lines, as pictorial elements 93

Index  237 Lipson, Hod 200; see also Columbia University Creative Machines Lab Lithography 47, 72n7 Lolla, Maria Grazia 15, 28 Lotbonière, Pierre-Gustave Joly 66 Lovejoy, Arthur 71n1 Lowenthal, David 103n6, 136, 187, 196, 203 Lucas, Gavin 4 Magnification 139 Masini, Nicola 178 Maudslay, Alfred 150–8 Maudslay, Anne Cary 158 Maya, ancient domain of the 150 McGimsey, Charles 228 Merriman, Nick 122 Mesoweb (blog) 225 Metal detecting 226–7 Mitchell, W. J. T. 2, 45, 63 Modernity 4–5; in relation to archaeology 30–4, 215–21 Modiano, Raimonda 59 Molds, squeeze and plaster 155–6 Mont Bakheng (Cambodia) 16 Monte Albán (Mexico) 191 Monumenta Britannica 113, 36n16 Morris, Richard 219 Moser, Stephanie 21 Moshenska, Gabriel 221 Mouhot, Henri 166–8 Movies, archaeological stories in 224–5 Murray, John, publishers 8 Musée Albert Sarraut (Phnom Penh) 170 Musée de l’Homme (Paris) 179n7 Musée Indochinois du Trocadéro (Paris) 170 Museum of Classical Archaeology (Cambridge University) 179n7 Mycenae (Greece) 125 Myers, John 125 NARA conference194–5; see also Authenticity Nash, Paul 120 Niėpce, Joseph 65 Nietzsche, Friedrich 32 Nimrud (Mesopotamia) 60 Nineveh (Mesopotamia) 60 Numismatics 85; see also Evans, John Olivier, Laurent 2 Olsen, Bjønar 5

Online archaeology 225–6; see also blogs Orkney Islands (Scotland) Neolithic sites 108, 229 Palace of Minos 127 Palenque (Mexico) 153 Paleography 97 Papadopoulos, John 109 Parmentier, Henri 172 Parthenon (Athens) 193–7 Peabody Museum (Harvard University) 179n4 Petrie, Flinders 158 Phenomenology 219 Photography 63–9; see also Albums; Daguerreotype; du Camp Pictorial time 83–84 Pictorialism 2–4, 30, 45–7; as resistance to modernity 216–21 Picturesque turn 44, 45–6, 71n1 Piggott, Stuart 109, 111–15 Piltdown hoax 44 Piranesi, Giovanni Gianbattista 23 Pitt Rivers Museum (Oxford) 22 Portraiture, archaeological images as 47–9 Prestwich, Joseph 84–5 Price, Uvedale 45–6 Priest-king fresco reconstruction, Knossos 131–3 Printmaking 47; see also Engravings; Lithography Pseudo-archaeology 222 Public archaeology 223 Quickbird satellite imaging 180n16 Quiriguá (Guatemala) 153 Qumran caves (West Bank) 97 Radio detection and ranging (RaDAR) 159–60 Radioactivity, decay and half-life of 90 Radiocarbon 187, 206, 218 Raiders of the Lost Past 224 Reliquaries 35n5 Remote sensing 149; see also IKONOS; Landsat; LiDAR, Quickbird, RaDAR Renfrew, Colin 17, 89 Riegl, Alois 188–9, 194 Romanticism 5–7, 25–6, 28–32 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 27–8 Rowley-Conwy, Peter 82 Royal Academy (London) 151

238 Index Royal Geological Society (London) 84 Royal Geographical Society (London) 156 Ruins, as pictorial trope 3, 8 Saturno, William 160 Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) 139 Schadla-Hall, Timothy 221 Schama, Simon 109 Schiller, Friedrich 25 Schliemann, Heinrich 127 Schnapp, Alain 217, 219 Scopic regime 8 Seals and sealstones 125 Shanks, Michael 3–4, 25, 199, 220, 225 Simmel, Georg 51 Smiles, Sam 6 Snow, C. P. 230 Soane, John 23 Société de Antiquaires de France 30 Society of Antiquaries of London 45, 54, 84, 109 Society of Dilettanti 13 Squier, Ephraim George 58 Stafford, Barbara Maria 6, 16, 17, 18, 58, 59 Stephens, John Lloyd 58 Stratigraphy 79, 128 Stuiver, Minze 93–5 Stukeley, William 109–10 Suess, Hans E. 109–10 Television programming, archaeological themes in 218, 223–4 Thom, Alexander 121 Thomas, Antonia 64

Thomas, Suzie 231n2 Tilley, Christopher 16, 25, 216 Time concepts 80–1 Time Team 224 Tourism, Knossos 136–7 Tradescant, John 22 Trigger, Bruce 85, 88, 216, 217 Turin shroud 96 Ucko, Peter 121 Ultraviolet light 207 Uniformitarianism 103n5 Varley, Cornelius 46 Venice Charter 195 Visual rhetoric 196, 207, 219, 221 Visuality 8 Vivant Denon, Dominique 57 Wace, Alan 134 Walker-Caddy expedition 179n2 Weber, Max 31–2 Websites, archaeological themes in 225–6 Weil, Simone 34 Wheeler, Mortimer 36n20 Wickstead, Helen 140 Wiltshire Museum 53 Witmore, Christopher 148, 225 Wittfogel, Karl 174 World’s Fair (Paris) 170 Worm, Olao 17–18 X-radiography 206 X-ray fluorescence 139