Telling Children About the Past: An Interdisciplinary Perspective 9781789201840

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Telling Children About the Past An Interdisciplinary Perspective

edited by Nena Galanidou and Liv Helga Dommasnes

International Monographs in Prehistory Ann Arbor, Michigan 2007

© 2007 International Monographs in Prehistory All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America All rights reserved. ISBN 978-1-879621-40-4

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Telling children about the past : an interdisciplinary perspective / edited by Nena Galanidou and Liv Helga Dommasnes. p. cm. ISBN-13: 978-1-879621-40-4 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Archaeology--Study and teaching. 2. Archaeology and history-Study and teaching. 3. Antiquities, Prehistoric--Study and teaching. 4. Prehistoric peoples--Study and teaching. I. Galanidou, Nena. II. Dommasnes, Liv Helga. CC83.T45 2007 930.107--dc22 2007044094

This book is printed on acid-free paper. ∞ International Monographs in Prehistory P.O. Box 1266 Ann Arbor, MI 48106-1266

Contents Contributing Authors.................................................................................. v Acknowledgements.................................................................................... ix Introduction. Children and Narratives of the Past Liv Helga Dommasnes and Nena Galanidou................................... 1 Part I. Learning Paths: Cognitive and Psychological Perspectives 1. Cognitive and Neural Developments that Make it Possible to Experience the Past as the Present Patricia J. Bauer.............................................................................. 17 2. Autobiography, Time and History: Children’s Construction of the Past in Family Reminiscing Robyn Fivush................................................................................... 42 3. Representing the Past in Pictures Alan Costall and Ann Richards...................................................... 59 4. Children’s Understanding of Authenticity Susan A. Gelman and Brandy N. Frazier....................................... 81 Part II. Contexts of Telling I: Digital and Printed Media 5. Groovin’ to Ancient Peru: a Critical Analysis of Disney’s The Emperor’s New Groove Helaine Silverman........................................................................ 103 6. Telling Children About the Past Using Electronic Games Maria Economou........................................................................... 125 7. In a Child’s Eyes: Human Origins and the Paleolithic in Children’s Book Illustrations Nena Galanidou............................................................................. 145 8. Writing Prehistory for Children. A Comparison Between Author and Publisher-Edited Versions Pascale Binant............................................................................... 173 9. Museums and Archaeological Sites as the Setting for Wondrous Tales Christos Boulotis........................................................................... 187 Part III. Contexts of Telling II: Museums and Cultural Heritage Sites 10. Exhibiting the Past to Children Andromache Gazi.......................................................................... 203 11. Eviscerating Barbie. Telling Children About Egyptian Mummification Lauren E. Talalay and Todd Gerring............................................ 226 Continued…

Contents continued… 12. Conversations About the Past: Families in an Archaeology Museum Theano Moussouri......................................................................... 241 13. Small People versus Big Heritage Liv Helga Dommasnes.................................................................. 259 Part IV. Contexts of Telling III: Schools and Special Classrooms 14. Landscapes and Winter Counts: Lakota Ways of Telling Children About the Past Craig Howe.................................................................................... 277 15. Telling Children About the Past in Brazil Ana Piñón and Pedro Funari........................................................ 291 16. From Fragments to Contexts: Teaching Prehistory to Village Children in Romania Corina Sarbu and Dragos Gheorghiu........................................... 312

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Contributing Authors Patricia J. Bauer Professor of Psychology Department of Psychology and Neuroscience Duke University 9 Flowers Drive, Box 90086 Durham, North Carolina 27708-0086 USA [email protected] Pascale Binant Manager of Creasciences Cultural Center of Sciences in Dordogne 13 allée Beau Rivage 24100 Bergerac France [email protected] Christos Boulotis Senior Researcher in Archaeology Athens Academy Anagnostopoulou 14 Athens 106 73 Greece Alan Costall Professor of Theoretical Psychology Department of Psychology University of Portsmouth Portsmouth, PO1 2DY UK [email protected] Liv Helga Dommasnes Professor of Archaeology The Cultural History Collections Bergen Museum University of Bergen Haakon Sheteligs Plass 10 5007 Bergen Norway [email protected] v

Maria Economou Associate Professor of Museology and New Technologies  University of the Aegean  Department of Cultural Technology & Communication Harilaou Trikoupi & Faonos St. Mytilene, 81 100 Greece [email protected] Robyn Fivush Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Psychology Department of Psychology Emory University Atlanta, GA 30322 USA [email protected] Brandy Frazier Ph.D. candidate Department of Psychology University of Michigan 530 E. University Ave. Ann Arbor MI  48109-1043 USA [email protected] Pedro Paolo A. Funari Professor of Historical Archaeology Campinas State University, C. Postal 6110, Campinas, SP, 13081-970 Brazil [email protected] Nena Galanidou Associate Professor of Prehistoric Archaeology Department of History and Archaeology University of Crete Rethymno, 74100 Greece [email protected]

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Andromache Gazi Lecturer in Museology Department of Communication, Media and Culture Panteion University 136 Syngrou Ave 176 71 Athens Greece [email protected] Susan Gelman Frederick G. L. Huetwell Professor of Psychology Department of Psychology University of Michigan 530 E. University Ave. Ann Arbor MI  48109-1043 USA [email protected] Todd Gerring Coordinator of Visitor Programs Kelsey Museum of Archaeology University of Michigan 434 South State Street Ann Arbor MI 48109-1390 USA [email protected] Dragos Gheorghiu Associate Professor of Archaeology National University of Arts Str. Gral Budisteanu nr. 19 Sector 1 Bucharest Romania [email protected] Craig Howe Instructor in Graduate Studies Oglala Lakota College PO Box 490 Kyle, SD 57752 USA [email protected]

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Theano Moussouri Lecturer in Museum Studies Institute of Archaeology University College London London WC1H 0PY UK [email protected] Ana Piñón PhD candidate Dept. of Prehistory and Ethnology Universidad Complutense de Madrid Av. Complutense S/N, Madrid Spain [email protected] Ann Richards Textile Designer and Analyst 16 Albany Road Southsea, PO5 2AB UK Corina Sarbu Artist, Research Assistant National University of Arts Str. Gral Budisteanu nr. 19 Sector 1 Bucharest Romania [email protected] Helaine Silverman Associate Professor of Archaeology Department of Anthropology University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Urbana IL 61801 USA [email protected] Lauren E. Talalay Associate Director and Curator Kelsey Museum of Archaeology University of Michigan 434 South State Street Ann Arbor MI 48109-1390 USA [email protected] viii

Acknowledgements

Telling children about the past is a vast topic. The volume at hand offers an insight into different national and academic traditions in archaeology and related disciplines, as well as a variety of contemporary approaches to mediating the past to young people. Compiling an anthology that presents recent research within widely different disciplines has been a demanding process. In this endeavour the editors have not been alone. The book consists of 16 chapters commissioned from colleagues working in archaeology, museology, education, developmental psychology and the neurosciences. All chapters have undergone a strict reviewing process involving two anonymous reviewers in each case. So, first and foremost, we would like to thank all those colleagues who agreed to act as reviewers. By reading and offering useful suggestions on individual chapters they have contributed to improving the overall quality of the final outcome. Colleagues from psychology and the neurosciences in particular had no hesitation in entering into the interdisciplinary dialogue we aim to initiate with this volume. Our publisher, Bob Whallon, showed interest in our topic from the very beginning. He has patiently kept pace with us and was there to offer useful advice whenever necessary, thus ensuring a high quality finished product. We have worked together closely to produce a volume that can hopefully act as a source of inspiration to those committed to the task of making new generations aware of our heritage, both material and nonmaterial. In the long process of preparing this book we have benefited enormously from formal and informal discussions with colleagues. These took place both privately and in the contexts of two conferences: ‘Telling Children About the Past’, a session at the 8th Annual Meeting of the European Archaeologists’ Association (Thessaloniki, September 2002), and ‘Children, Identity and the Past’ (Bergen, March 2006). Nena Galanidou would especially like to thank Eirini Gavrilaki for long discussions on children’s education about the past, as well as for co-organising the 2002 conference in Thessaloniki, Greece. Liv Helga Dommasnes would like to thank Nena Galanidou for inviting her to co-edit this volume, which has reached publication primarily thanks to Nena’s enthusiasm and hard work throughout the process. We would also like to thank Rosamund Annetts and Ben Petre for improving the English of those chapters written by non-native speakers of English, and Ioanna Liadaki for undertaking the typesetting and illustration preparation. Individuals and institutions granting permissions ix

to reproduce illustrations are cited individually in the respective caption. Ioanna Liadaki also prepared the final version of the cover artwork, based on an original idea by Nena Galanidou and Corina Sarbu. Finally, we would like to thank Bergen Museum, University of Bergen, for financial assistance that enabled the editors to collaborate, and also assisted in the final stages of manuscript preparation.

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To Smaragda and Anastasia, after the birth of whom it all began… N. G.

Introduction. Children and Narratives of the Past Liv Helga Dommasnes and Nena Galanidou 1. The past as a human quality? On December 10th 2003 the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to the Iranian lawyer Shirin Ebadi for her work promoting human rights in Iran. Ebadi has been especially concerned with the condition of women and children. In her acceptance speech she made it clear that to her, discrimination against girls and women in Islamic countries must be ascribed to cultural norms, not to religion as such. In fact, Ebadi´s choice to work from within the cultural traditions of her country is one of the factors that have made her controversial. In one of the many debates she participated in, she was asked: ‘why do you refer to history all the time? Why not look to the future instead?’ The answer came promptly: ‘because history is where we find the foundations for what we are today. In history is preserved the set of conditions and preconditions that has made today’s society and will follow us into the future’ (interview in Norwegian Broadcasting). One could say that the very ability to conceptualize a past at all is a fundamentally human trait, making social life possible. Ebadi’s views have been a great inspiration in the slow process towards a book on how to approach the task of acquainting new generations with the heritage that touches on their very humanity. We will take Ebadi’s statement as a confirmation that not only the recent, but also the distant past, which is the focus of many of the papers in this volume, has contributed to making us who we are. Archaeology is not some sort of quiet refuge, isolated from the world, but rather another entry into the important questions of humankind. This is an awesome thought for an archeologist. The research to which we give priority, and the responsibility we take – or do not take – for its dissemination to the public, is far more important to the future than to the past. The past as we teach it becomes an integral part of human life on all levels: religions, the production of knowledge, group identity and individual identities all make reference to history and beyond. Because it is so far away, it refers to kinds of existence that would probably be quite foreign to us. It is unreachable, and the little we think we know about it tends to become unchangeable, naturalized, a kind of fixed norm to refer to in the confusion of everyday life.

Introduction - Liv Helga Dommasnes and Nena Galanidou Human societies without a past are something that we simply cannot imagine. As archeologists, we like to stress that the distant past is just as important as recent decades. Modern western societies have developed academic disciplines studying the past through written sources and material relics. In other smaller-scale societies, knowledge of the past is based on oral traditions that draw upon events, landmarks, and experiences. Children will always be a special case. Their cognitive abilities are different from those of adults, and they must undergo a period of apprenticeship in order to make sense of themselves and others in tune with the norms of their culture. Narratives about the past are essential in this process of placing oneself in the world. Children are shown images of the past and told stories about it in various contexts that range from the formal and educational to the informal. These images and stories, whether their source be a professional archeologist, a teacher, an elder of a tribe or simply an individual with a personal interest in the subject, all share a common factor: they must be fairly simple (yet not naïve) and easily accessible to the understanding of the age group at which they are aimed. This is one side of the coin we call ‘Telling Children’, which has to do with the cognitive capacities and learning paths of children at different ages. The other side of ‘Telling Children’ concerns the message conveyed. Representations meant for children tend to ignore recent archeological and anthropological debates, and purvey images of the past that are immediately recognizable from a modern perspective; they may even actively favor biased perspectives intimately connected with contemporary adult power strategies. As we shall see in the chapters that follow, manipulated versions of the past offered in glossy wrappings may seem attractive, but do not foster critical thinking. It is not unreasonable to think that by teaching children alternative approaches to the past, we can undermine its status as unchangeable and normative history, and thus help young people to gain a better foundation for decisions they have to make in later life. Introducing them to the past also becomes a gateway to understanding the potential and variety of humanity. In recent years, considerable effort has been put into attempts to remove adult bias from archeological interpretation by studying children as an integral category of past societies. Work in this field has primarily approached childhood as an experience of the past (Baxter 2005; Moore and Scott 1997; Sofaer Derevenski 2000; Wileman 2005). Although the present book falls into the area of child-related research, its point of departure is not the past itself. Here, the past is approached as an integral part of contemporary society, of value to adults and children alike. ‘Telling Children About the Past’ treats the relations between ‘childhood and archaeology’, ‘childhood and history’ and ‘childhood and identity’ as taking place in the present. The book at hand brings together archeologists, historians, psychologists and educationalists from different countries and academic traditions, in the hope of initiating an interdisciplinary discussion about 2

Children and Narratives of the Past the representation of the past to younger audiences in the various contexts of telling. Developmental psychologists have been asked to provide updates on the multiple ways in which children experience and perceive the past. Archeologists and museologists offer critical examinations of the media through which archeological information is presented to children and the contexts within which these are used, whether formal or informal. Through these chapters an attempt is made to challenge the form, the content and the impact of these narratives. At the core of the discussion permeating this volume are the many unquestioned assumptions and pre-conditioned images that are routinely presented to contemporary children in narratives of the past. Our intention is both to examine the ways in which children come to grips with the past at the beginning of the 21st century and to critically assess the many ways in which contemporary societies and an increasing number of commercial agents construct and use the pasts. This merges into the question of ‘ownership’ of the pasts: when does a local past take on the status of acknowledged common heritage, and who is authorized to approve of its content? As already mentioned, the past in the present is always part of power strategies, some of which are brought to the forefront of the discussion and made visible through this volume. 2. Formal and informal, adventure and identity Typical of the informal contexts in which children encounter the past are those where the past may be presented as adventure - places where anything can happen. These contexts take advantage of what we know of children’s open-mindedness, and include fantastic elements in their narratives. Seen from the present, the overall emphasis in such approaches is on difference rather than on identity: talking animals and statues, time travel and communication across time as in the children’s books written by Boulotis (chapter 9) and electronic games discussed by Economou (chapter 6). But as far as children and children’s universes go, this also functions as an aid of identification as children. We suspect that even quite young children recognize that such disregard of conventions sets them apart from most adults. Finding that this trait is shared with agents of the past creates identity more effectively than even the most innovative ‘responsible’ approach. Modern children time traveling to the past often find themselves in strange and sometimes dangerous places. Most of us have no problem understanding why children are fascinated by unconventional approaches. We may even recognize and approve of the fact that developments within academic archaeology are sometimes anticipated in such presentations, e.g. in verbal communication between people and animals, indicating that the differences between them are superficial. What we object to is that the inclusion of new approaches in 3

Introduction - Liv Helga Dommasnes and Nena Galanidou many informal contexts of mediation seems to be more or less accidental, independent of and often uninformed by ongoing scholarly discussions and evaluations. Since young children still lack the experience to distinguish between fact and fiction (Gelman and Frazier, Chapter 4), this can quite easily lead to distorted ideas about past worlds. On the other hand, such objections are probably as old as humankind. Could it be that it is all about control, and more about values than about facts? We shall return to this point towards the end of this introduction. In formal contexts, on the other hand, one aims to educate, to introduce children to an established tradition of knowledge and insight. Within this tradition the past often appears as a definite body of knowledge, equally relevant, and relevant in the same way, to everybody. The stories can be founded in monuments and museums as well as in verbal sources. Monuments, artifacts and in many cases verbal accounts of the past are geographically situated. Their very location inevitably becomes a part of the cultural interpretation, even in cases where their cultural affiliation is in fact unknown. The argument may be that the remains are here because they were made here (the palace of Knossos in Crete is one example) or that they were definitely not made here, but transported to this place (as raw materials for bronze casting must have been imported into Scandinavia). It is this definite location in space and the immobility of monuments and protected artifacts that make narratives based on archeological remains even more vulnerable to oversimplified ideas of origin and ethnic identification than those based on verbal accounts, which can be copied, translated and studied relatively independently of their origin and present geographical location. Add to this the fact that archaeology has long shown a strong preference for the monuments and beautiful artifacts of the upper strata of society (Lillehammer 1994), and one realizes why the definite location of the monuments in time and space quite often turns out to be incompatible with the expectation of identification with and within a state and the totality of its citizens, as demonstrated by Funari and Piñón in chapter 15. 3. Why ‘Telling’? For quite some time we pondered over the best title for this book. Should we keep ‘Telling Children About the Past’, which has followed us through conferences and book proposals presented to potential publishers, or go for the more formal and widely appealing ‘Teaching Children About the Past’? We had to consider this seriously, and finally opted for ‘Telling’ on the grounds that telling is different from teaching. Telling is open, two-way communication, less authoritarian than teaching. Even though modern teaching is supposed to share those characteristics, contexts of telling tend to be more fluid and egalitarian. Moreover, the past has be4

Children and Narratives of the Past come a source of inspiration for a large number of commercial products rendering children’s encounter with the past an experience that has moved outside traditional teaching venues, i.e. the classroom, the exhibition hall, the textbook. Chapters 2, 5, 6, 7 and 8 depict this trend. In such cases the original motivation is anything other than ‘teaching’. The environment that surrounds us, from ecological zones to technology, fundamentally influences our thinking and the communication of our thoughts. Books and computers have both made possible new ways of relating to the past, replacing the storytellers of earlier societies. Those storytellers were individual voices, each of them coloring their narratives of the past in their own ways. The space that stories about the past take up even in modern media is in itself interesting. These media are in many ways continuing a tradition in mediating the past as exciting knowledge touching the lives of those who engage with it. From cartoons to movies, books and games, past cultures make fascinating settings for all kinds of invented adventures. But with the new media, the voice of the storyteller is no longer adapted to each individual situation as in verbal communication. Further interpretation is left to the child alone. In interactive electronic games, the player is even given the illusion of influencing the past herself, and of having a sense of empowerment. One should keep in mind, however, that this is very different from what happens when one enters into two-way communication with a live, experienced and reasoning elder. Do we want children to think of the past as us, perhaps excluding others, or as them, others? We think it is fair to say that traditionally, educational systems and teaching from Brazil to Norway have operated within identity paradigms. The recipients of such bodies of authoritative knowledge are more often than not presented with pasts lacking points of identification with themselves as age groups or with any traces of their specific culture or section of society in general. Evidently, both would be advantageous in terms of relevance and identification. There seems to be a general lack of awareness of the standpoints and perspectives required in order to identify with the monuments and landscapes of the mighty that often dominate our conceptualizations of the past. Consciously or unconsciously, the perspective from the top of society has become a constant of the identity-and-the-past-projects underpinning most nation states and being disseminated to new generations. Instead of being taught critical approaches, the young ones are expected to adopt standpoints (cf. Harding 1991, 2004) not their own or step out of their own situatedness and adopt the disembodied, impossible ‘gaze from nowhere’ (Haraway 1991).1  Owing much to Marxist thinking, standpoint theories argue that knowledge is always socially situated, and that positions at the bottom of the social hierarchy or other marginalized standpoints allow for better understanding of social systems than do powerful top positions. In recent decades, such theories have been adopted

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Introduction - Liv Helga Dommasnes and Nena Galanidou Unintentionally, the past becomes otherness instead of identification. Unfortunately, the otherness in this case is not the intellectually challenging otherness of alternative cultural conceptions, but the otherness of those empowered to put me in the category of not us. No wonder many young people decide that this is an unwanted dimension to their lives. One question needs to be raised in this connection: What should our roles as experts with special knowledge about the past be? Do we have a special obligation to share our knowledge? If the answer is yes, should we also claim a monopoly on the content of the narratives and the proper ways to share them? Are we entitled to control – censure – the various national as well as commercial efforts? Such questions are not restricted to situations where children are involved. But because children as a group are very vulnerable to the teachings of adults, the questions are very pertinent here. The reason is of course that more than right and wrong facts are at stake. How one tells the past is also a question of values, what to tell and what to omit, how to tell it, and evaluating consequences. 4. Children, past and present in this volume In tune with its commitment to interdisciplinary discussion, this book is organized into four thematic sections. We wanted not simply to address the many encounters of children with the past but also to start from an earlier stage: the cognitive and psychological substratum of human perception of the past and the paths through which children give meaning to the past. Thus the first section, ‘Learning Paths: Cognitive and Psychological Perspectives’, contains essential knowledge gained from neurosciences and psychology that is rarely communicated to historians and archeologists regarding the backdrop of the neuro-cognitive and psychological processes involved in making sense of the past. In this section the authors work within their own scientific tradition, which at times may seem rather technical to the readers of this book, most of whom are presumably trained in the humanities or social sciences. Nevertheless, we contend that if we are to set up a dialogue with colleagues from other disciplines we cannot expect them to speak our own jargon, but must instead make a mutual effort to understand each other’s aims and methods. The chapters on the human capacity for conceptualizing the past are also a reminder of the permeable boundaries between nature and culture in postmodern discourses. Patricia Bauer sets off by reviewing the biological foundations for human memory, in a chapter that introduces the non-specialist to current and refined within frameworks of feminist philosophy, and applied also within archaeological/anthropological and historical research. As far as we are aware of, standpoint theories have not yet been explicitly used in the study of children in the past, but this certainly would be a framework worth exploring.

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Children and Narratives of the Past brain research into the cognitive and neural developments required to recreate the past in the present. She explains that this ability is unique to our species, and that it develops in infancy and early childhood. Bauer argues that recall of the past depends upon a widely distributed network of brain structures, each of which plays a part in generating and regenerating memory representations. Her comprehensive description of the neural events that permit memory for past events sets the scene for understanding the complexity of everyday memory, a prerequisite to any further discussion of a child’s making sense of the past. In chapter 2, Robyn Fivush addresses individual history and small children in family settings, before the age they are able to grasp the concept of a historical past common to us all. She describes the process by means of which children develop an understanding of the historical past through an earlier understanding of a personal past, a familial past and an intergenerational past. Fivush argues that it is through conversations with parents that children first come to understand and construct the notions of autobiography and a sense of self as extended in time. She then goes on to suggest that any abstract understanding of history, of the ancient past and of archeological artifacts must first be founded in a concrete understanding of oneself and one’s family as existing in time. From conversations in family contexts, the focus moves on to pictures, another powerful medium with remarkable properties. Allan Costall and Ann Richards’ chapter draws upon research into the psychology of picture perception to ask how illustrations can inform children about the past. They use a range of examples drawn from visual representations of Danish prehistory to explore how pictures can convey a sense of both objects and events as belonging to the past. They argue that this sense is neither inherent, nor a totally subjective projection of meaning onto a blank artifact. Pictures do have meaning, but this is always contingent on specific communities of use; such an approach stresses the relational character of pictorial meaning. Susan Gelman and Brandy Frazier close this section with a chapter exploring children’s early comprehension of three elements essential to any encounter with the past, especially within museums and heritage sites: authenticity, historical paths and origins. They address the concept of history, the ancient origins of objects, the defining characteristics of objects that determine naming, the notion of identity and constancy when objects are subject to change over time and intentionality in the creative process. The two authors then ask how children come to differentiate between reality and fantasy and how this relates to the context of museum exhibits. Their answers open windows on the nature of children’s museum experiences, and have broader implications for how children reason about the past. The second section of the book, ‘Contexts of Telling I: Digital and Printed Media’, deals with informal contexts in which children encounter 7

Introduction - Liv Helga Dommasnes and Nena Galanidou the past. The authors are all archeologists who have in various capacities gone beyond the strictures of production within their discipline to examine or become actively involved in its popularization. These chapters highlight the contradictions between knowledge as an academic discipline and knowledge that reaches children through cartoon animation, computer games or books. In the modern global economy, antiquity is a raw material that can be refined into very profitable commodities devoted to education or to entertainment. Children are an important target group for the antiquity industry. The products can be seen as ideological expressions often unquestioningly assimilated by children (and adults). Helaine Silverman opens the section with a critical examination of the Disney animated film The Emperor’s New Groove. Though not explicitly named, action takes place in Inca Peru; as a Latin American archaeology specialist, Silverman sets off to place the film in the context of Latin America. Focusing on the large and the smaller elements in the dialogues and images that make up the film, she crafts an argument to show that alongside others of its genre, it may be seen as bearing its own hidden ideological agenda. According to Silverman, the film presents its subject matter in a disturbingly over-simplified, easily digestible manner tailored to the needs of American popular culture and corporate domination. From cinema we then move on to computer or television screens, where electronic games make their own digital presentation of antiquity to children. In chapter 6 Maria Economou evaluates the role and potential of electronic games as entertainment and learning tools, and critically examines the messages conveyed about the past in this ever-increasing industry of new applications. Her sample includes DVDs and CD-ROMs produced by and consumed in formal settings (e.g. the Louvre) and informal educational counterparts (e.g. as games to be played at home). She concludes that such products present an easily recognizable view of the past that identifies with popular culture. A similar view of the deep past is seen in children’s book illustrations about human origins and the Paleolithic. In chapter 7 Nena Galanidou examines the visual material published in educational books and identifies the main trends followed by illustrators in the genre. She concludes that only a limited range of iconographic themes is employed and repeated, almost invariably presenting a stereotypical view of Paleolithic societies that has little to do with current archeological interpretation. Rather than creating new images, illustrators of children’s books, like visual artists working in other contexts, recycle existing ones. In common with cartoons and computer games, they thus create a distorted and ideologically laden version of the deep past, where women, children and the elderly are subservient to male power. The following chapter also deals with educational books, though the focus here is on text. Pascale Binant invites us into the backstage 8

Children and Narratives of the Past of the publishing industry and scientific popularization to discuss the values in operation during the process of producing a book for children. By comparing two texts, an original one written by her and an altered version produced by a publisher after editing, she raises important questions about the ways we use language and adapt it to different types of audience. She reminds us that ‘what you write is not necessarily what children will eventually read’ in a book presumably designed for learning. Writing for children is often reduced to simplification. She makes a clear call for professional responsibility when writing for any kind of scientific popularization. Christos Boulotis approaches children’s books from another viewpoint, striking a note of optimism in the dim landscape of informal contexts. In his twin capacity as an archeologist and celebrated author of children’s literature, he unfolds his own agenda for telling children about the past through the presentation of two of his own illustrated children’s books. In his view, writing a book for children is one of the many possible ways through which archaeology professionals may transform museums and heritage sites into miraculous contexts within which wondrous events can take place. Through such an approach, children can build up positive feelings or love for these places and for antiquity, learn things about them in a relaxed manner, and sow the seeds for critical thinking. In the next section, ‘Contexts of Telling II: Museums and Cultural Heritage Sites’, we move on to formal contexts for telling children about the past, where professional input is highly significant. Museum galleries and cultural heritage sites are venues where children experience three-dimensional perceptions of the ancient world under the guidance of adults, i.e. archeologists, museum educators, teachers and parents. The last two decades have witnessed a major change in attitude towards these ‘formal contexts of encounter’, with considerable effort being placed on developing innovative methodologies for exhibiting and educating children (e.g. Hooper-Greenhill 1992, 1994; Smardz and Smith 2000 for a North American perspective; Stone and Molyneaux 1994 for a world-wide perspective). In tune with these, children should not be bombarded with information during encounters with the past. Instead, all senses should be stimulated so that a child’s knowledge about the past is gradually accumulated in accordance with her or his age group, cognitive abilities and social environment. The chapters in this section are written mainly by museologists with valuable experience in museum educational resources, and capture the diversity of experiences within the field. They converge in that ‘making sense’ of the past is a social process; it is an activity that involves communication between teacher/teller and visitors, and with the physical remains on display. In Chapter 10, Andromache Gazi offers a museologist’s view on the question of communicating the past to children, in an attempt to articulate an exhibition language for children. She surveys current trends 9

Introduction - Liv Helga Dommasnes and Nena Galanidou and existing practices in archaeology and history museums, and argues that an exhibition’s ultimate aim should not so much be to impart knowledge of specific facts, but rather to create an affective experience which may help children to develop an awareness of themselves and the world. Theoretical and methodological reflections are combined with handbook type advice on how to present the past to children, in a chapter that should prove valuable to anyone setting up a new exhibition. Chapter 11 is likewise concerned with museum educational resources, though here the focus is on interactive learning through a combination of ‘hands-on’ and ‘minds-on’ activities. The paradigm is the well established and truly inspired program offered by the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology at the University of Michigan. Laurie Talalay and Todd Gerring communicate their experience of engaging children with Egyptian archaeology. By using elements of modern material culture and confectionery, a Barbie doll and candies, members of the museum staff teach children about the ancient Egyptian practice of mummification. Many of the contributions thus far explicitly or implicitly state the role of family in making sense of the past, and in Chapter 12 Theano Moussouri focuses on this very issue within a museum’s premises, the Archaeology Resource Centre in York. She explores family conversations (see also chapter 2) during museum visits as the means through which family members come to grips with archaeology and construct and appropriate the knowledge that it disseminates. Her research demonstrates vividly that archaeology is very much an activity in the present. In Chapter 13, Liv Helga Dommasnes’ essay links children from the past to those of the present from a Scandinavian perspective. She discusses identity, gender, childhood and ethics in the telling of the past to children in formal contexts of archeological education, and spells out a number of philosophical questions. What kind of past do we want to talk about, and why? How can young people of today choose among the stories on offer, and maybe create their own versions? Do we present even remotely realistic pictures of the past when addressing children? The last section of the book, ‘Contexts of Telling III: Schools and Special Classrooms’, carries the discussion on to the fundamental context of modern western education to explore teaching the past to children. The case studies presented here hint to the diversity of the ways children can be taught about the past, as well as the potential of cultural heritage to combat social and economic exclusion and promote democratic exchange. Craig Howe uses the wisdom of Native American practice in story telling to examine the conceptual and methodological applications of an event-centered approach to teaching history. His paper develops in two different times: old times, using winter counts to tell future generations about their past and the modern time, when in a different historical context and setting, i.e. the classroom, a teacher uses a student-centered approach to tell modern Lakota children about the past. He makes a case 10

Children and Narratives of the Past for an alternative method applicable to any history classroom, which may prove to be a positive response to many of the shortcomings of high school teaching methods. In chapter 15, identity and schools are at stake. Ana Pinon and Pedro Funari survey students from different backgrounds aged between 11 and 15 to investigate the relationship between history, ideology, cultural heritage and the presentation of the past to schools in Brazil. They demonstrate that homogeneous national traits are encouraged to enforce ethnicity and national identity at the expense of regional and local identities. From Latin America we move to post-communist Romania, where active involvement of children in their cultural heritage offers a potential instrument to forge education and social inclusion for the economically deprived. In the final chapter, Corina Sarbu and Dragos Gheorgiu describe the Vadastra Museum Project, which has not only served to enhance children’s knowledge of the prehistory of their region, but has also helped to revive traditional craftsmanship. By describing the transformation of Vadastra heritage from the middle 19th century to the present, the authors trace how the past can be transformed from cultural capital of purely symbolic value to one of practical value, creating professional opportunities and new identities for young Romanians. In many ways, editing this volume has proved to be an educative experience. We would like to focus our comments on two issues. The absence of a children’s point of view, and in fact, the difficulties in focusing on children at all, is one element that has struck us at all stages. Although children, and children of today, are the focal theme, this is only occasionally so in the individual contributions. The difficulty of focusing on children probably reveals at least something about western societies, and a great deal about the academic world. It seems to us that in most cases, children are not integrated into the ways that scholars think about society or culture. They become invisible, and interpretations definitely continue to be made from within adult frames of reference. In fact, this is a point where modern media compare favorably. Children’s books introduce children as agents and give them voices. In interactive games, the possibility of changing the perspective is a basic idea, enabling children to make their own platforms, or standpoints, part of the game. The second issue concerns the electronic media. Our worry in this area is primarily that technique may become more important than content, to the point where opportunities are lost. One dilemma so far seems to be that those highly sophisticated media that seem most attractive to children - and are highly amenable to children’s standpoints and perspectives - do not easily lend themselves to the dissemination of complicated human reasoning and relations. Although it could be argued that the past itself can be well presented in the electronic media, the very relations between past and present tend either to be misrepresented or shown as problem free. These relations are at the very heart of why we think telling children 11

Introduction - Liv Helga Dommasnes and Nena Galanidou about the past is so important. We cannot decide whether the limitations lie in the modern media themselves or in lack of ‘humanistic input’. As long as the dilemma remains unresolved, live storytellers and individual authors present themselves as richer and fuller ways of communicating how the past has made us what we are than electronic media. If, on the other hand, it is possible to ‘humanize’ those media, their appeal and technical advantages could be valuable assets. The remonstrance is not against the media as such, but applies to the possible consequences of their shortcomings. 5. Which past? We have already hinted at an accusation often made against formal education in historical and anthropological disciplines - namely that it presents old-fashioned, reified, unimaginative pasts, out of touch with developments in recent research, particularly when these are controversial. Even more than adults, children must be protected from ‘bad science’. It is pertinent, thus, to ask how much the fundamental change in paradigm that has taken place over the last twenty years of archeological research has influenced the past that we tell children about. If it has not, can that be justified? We shall not try to answer that question here and now. In a positive vein, however, we would like to point out that as the archaeology of children develops, we may expect a body of knowledge on children in different cultural settings to evolve. This knowledge will enable us to start from children’s standpoints in dissemination aimed at these age groups. It should also be stressed that such insights are by no means interesting for children only. They do in fact represent one of the few things that we all have in common: childhood. Telling children about the past clearly has an ethical dimension. This is a tough challenge, since the new topics now engaging historians and prehistorians alike are often complicated epistemological and ethical issues. As such, they cannot easily be assessed by the young and immature, particularly when the background is a completely alien culture. At the same time, archaeology, with its sometimes intriguing mixture of being both very much ours, because the remains belong in the very geographical place where we live, and definitely not ours, because they bear witness to ways of life and thinking that are completely alien to us, has a great potential for educating the young in the complexities of life, culture and identities. Making children able to do assessments on complicated issues that are part of human lives, fairly and open-mindedly, is, we think, the ultimate goal of education in the humanities. It is far too important to be left to the mercy of economic agents producing games, or to experts in the techniques of mediation only. In our view, openness and understanding should be more prominent parts of the message from the past than simple identification. 12

Children and Narratives of the Past Socially, the past functions as a form of cultural capital (Bourdieu 1984), a resource to draw on in many situations. In order to have this positive function, it is necessary for it to be integrated into one’s world-view in ways that exclude neither the self nor others. Taking into account the multicultural nature of society in the 21st century, the present volume works to demonstrate how accounts of the past in a wide range of contexts can prove pivotal to the promotion of true intercultural understanding and empathy (Walsh 1992), acting against the stereotypes and fear of the unknown that threaten the harmony and cohesion of societies worldwide. While respecting and recognizing the existence of differences, in such cases education stresses the universality of human experience. References Baxter, J.E. 2005 The Archaeology of Childhood. Children, Gender and Material Culture. Walnut Creek: Altamira Press. Bourdieu, P. 1984 Distinction. A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. London and New York: Routledge. Haraway, D. 1991 Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of a Partial Perspective. In D. Haraway Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature:183-201. London and New York: Routledge. Harding, S. 1991 Whose Science? Whose Knowledge? Thinking from Women’s Lives. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. 2004 The Feminist Standpoint Theory Reader: Intellectual and Political Controversies. New York: Routledge. Hooper Greenhill, E. 1992 Museums and the Shaping of Knowledge. London and New York: Routledge. Hooper Greenhill, E. ed. 1994 The Educational Role of the Museum. London and New York: Routledge. Lillehammer, G. 1994 ’Forvaltning i et Feministisk Perspektiv’ K.A.N. – Kvinner i Arkeologi i Norge 17/18: 136–74. Moore, H. L. 1994 A Passion for Difference. Cambridge: Polity Press. Moore, J. and E. Scott 1997 Invisible People and Processes. Writing Gender and Childhood into European Archaeology. Leicester: Leicester University Press. 13

Introduction - Liv Helga Dommasnes and Nena Galanidou Smardz, K. and S.J. Smith eds. 2000 The Archaeology Education Handbook. Sharing the Past with Kids. Walnut Creek: Altamira Press. Sofaer Derevenski, J. 2000 Children and Material Culture. London and New York: Routledge. Stone P. and B.L. Molyneaux eds. 1994 The Presented Past. Heritage, Museums and Education. London and New York: Routledge. Walsh, K. 1992 The Representation of the Past. Museums and Heritage in the Post-modern World. London: Routledge. Wileman, J. 2005 Hide and Seek. The Archaeology of Childhood. Stroud: Tempus.

14

Part I Learning Paths: Cognitive and Psychological Perspectives

Chapter 1 Cognitive and Neural Developments that Make it Possible to Experience the Past as the Present Patricia J. Bauer 1. Introduction Memory is such a basic ability that it is easy to take it for granted. Much like the air we breathe, we only notice it when something goes wrong (such as when we detect a putrid smell). When all is well though, we barely give it a thought. So it is with memory. The capacity to form memories underlies all manner of cognitive feats, from the mundane (e.g., locating your car at the end of the work day) to the magical (e.g., mentally re-creating, in living color, images of significant experiences such as graduations and births). It is only when we forget where we parked the car, or can no longer recollect details of seemingly unforgettable events, that we notice memory. Because memory is “always there,” it is tempting to think that it is a simple thing that requires little effort. Yet memory depends upon a widely distributed network of brain structures each of which plays a part in generating and regenerating representations of experience. Experience registers in the brain as separate elements of sight and sound that must be bound together into a single episode. For the episode to remain in memory, the bundle of elements must be integrated into a single package and stored in a manner that is accessible for later recollection. From a developmental standpoint, storing and later recollecting memories of past events is a challenge because some of the neural structures involved in memory are late to develop: It is not until the latter part of the first year and into the second year of life that they become sufficiently functionally mature to support adult-like memory; they continue to develop for years thereafter. In this chapter I provide a description of the neural events that permit memory for past events and summarize what is known about their development in infancy and very early childhood. I then review evidence of age-related changes in memory believed to be related to developments in brain. The chapter is intended to provide insight into the complexity of everyday memory and how the young of our species come to appreciate the past as present. 17

Chapter 1 - Patricia J. Bauer 2. Different types of memory At the outset it is important to note that the type of memory that permits us to recollect past events and experiences (as well as share them with others) is only one of several subtypes of a larger construct. Specifically, it is memory that is represented in mental images and linguistic symbols. We convey the memory to others by, for example, showing a photograph that represents the event and telling a story about it. We hope in the process to invoke in listeners’ minds their own images and language to describe the event, such that at a later point in time, they may call upon the representational products to retell the story to themselves or tell it to others. This type of memory contrasts sharply with other abilities that also rely on memory, such as how to ride a bicycle or swing a tennis racket, for instance. True, we can image ourselves riding a bicycle and we may even be able to tell the story of our first successful two-wheeled bicycle adventure. We cannot, however, describe how we move the muscles in our bodies in order to maintain balance on two wheels, or how we adjust our center of gravity when we turn a corner. Nor can we learn to perform these procedures by listening to others describe them or by reading about them. Procedures and skills are learned not by listening or reading but by doing. They are based on memory, nonetheless. The type of memory that supports the acquisition of skills or procedures, such as learning to ride a bicycle, is known as implicit or nondeclarative memory. The type of memory that permits children to learn about and remember historical events, as well as to establish a history of their own lives, is known as explicit or declarative (see, for e.g., Zola and Squire 2000 for further development of this distinction). In the context of thinking about how children come to appreciate stories of the past—either their own or others—it is essential that we distinguish between these types of memory. One reason is it important to do so is that, as already noted, only one of the two forms of memory (i.e., explicit) can be shared with others through images or symbols. Another reason why the distinction is important is that the different types of memory have different developmental courses. Implicit memory is available virtually from the beginning of postnatal life. By contrast, explicit memory emerges slowly, over many postnatal months and years (see Bauer 2002b, 2004; Carver and Bauer 2001; Nelson 2000, for reviews). Its development thus constrains children’s abilities to acquire and remember information that depends on explicit memory. One of the major determinants of the emergence of explicit memory is brain development. It is only with maturation of the neural structures that permit storage and retrieval of explicit memories that we may expect children to form and retain image-based or symbol-based representations. Before summarizing what we know about the neuro-developmental changes associated with age-related changes in explicit memory, it is important to understand the processes by which the 18

…to Experience the Past as the Present mature brain forms and later retrieves explicit memories. 3. How the mature brain builds a memory To understand the constraints that brain development places on children’s explicit memory abilities it is important to know how the human brain builds such memories. The apparent ease and reliability with which we store and retrieve memories of past events makes it seem that the process is a simple one: We create a mental file into which we place information about the who, what, where, when, why, and how of the to-beremembered experience. “Remembering” the experience involves accessing the file and “reading off” what is stored in it. In reality, memory storage and retrieval involves nothing akin to a file drawer full of folders of experience. The brain does not contain stenographers to make records of events; it does not contain file folders into which records can be placed; and it does not house clerks who retrieve files on demand. What the brain does have are neurons—individual nerve cells that communicate with other nerve cells in response to internal and external stimulation. Memories are the products of patterns of activation involving many neurons set into motion by experiences that, through molecular and cellular events that we are only beginning to understand, are preserved over time. Briefly, perceptual experiences impinge on and thus produce excitation across multiple brain regions distributed across the four lobes of the cerebral cortex (Fig. 1). Certain areas of cortex, termed association areas (e.g., the anterior portion of the frontal lobe, known as the prefrontal cortex) bring the information together (thus the name:

Fig. 1. Schematic representation of the four lobes of the cerebral cortex (occipital, parietal, frontal, and temporal). 19

Chapter 1 - Patricia J. Bauer “association areas”), giving rise to conscious awareness of the experience. Neural structures on the medial (or inner) surface of the temporal lobe are involved in the consolidation of the distributed representation into a durable memory trace. Over the long term, memories are stored in the same cortical areas that participated in initial registration of experience. Prefrontal cortex is implicated in retrieval of memories from long-term stores (Kandel and Squire 2000). In the sections to follow, I outline in greater detail each of these steps in “how the brain builds a memory,” namely, initial registration, consolidation, storage, and retrieval of information. 3.1 Initial registration of information Information about events and experiences does not impinge upon the brain at once in the same time and place. Rather, it is distributed across multiple cortical areas. That is, neurons in primary somatosensory cortex (Fig. 2) respond to inputs from the skin (registering information about light touch) and muscles and joints (registering information about the position and movement of our extremities). In parallel, neurons in primary visual

Fig. 2. Schematic representation of the association cortices of the brain. P.S.C. = Primary somatosensory cortex; P.V.C. = Primary visual cortex; P.A.C. = Primary auditory cortex; S.U.A.C. = Somatosensory unimodal association cortex; V.U.A.C. = Visual unimodal association cortex; A.U.A.C. = Auditory unimodal assocation cortex; P.-P.A.A. = Posteriorparietal association area; A.-P.A.A. = Anterior-prefrontal association area; L.-T.A.A. = Limbic-temporal association area. 20

…to Experience the Past as the Present cortex respond to the form, color, and motion of an object or event; and neurons in primary auditory cortex respond to various attributes of the sounds made by the object or event. Inputs from these primary sensory areas are sent (projected) to sensory association areas that are dedicated to a single modality (somatic sensation, vision, or audition) where they are integrated into whole percepts of what the object or event feels like, looks like, and sounds like, respectively. These unimodal sensory association areas in turn project to polymodal (also termed multimodal) posteriorparietal, anterior-prefrontal, and limbic-temporal association areas where inputs from the different sense modalities are integrated. Studies with humans and nonhuman primates have shown that over time intervals on the order of seconds, information about objects or events is maintained in the cortical association areas. For example, in studies of humans using neuroimaging techniques such as Magnetoencephalography (MEG) neuronal activity can be observed to last for at least 1 to 2 seconds when participants are asked to maintain new information, such as speech sounds (e.g., Korzyukov et al. 2003; Papanicolaou et al. 2003). When normal function of association cortices is disrupted by lesion or disease, forgetting sets in after delays as short as a few seconds (see Diamond 2001, for a review). Research with nonhuman primates sheds light on how information is maintained in cortical areas over the short term. In monkeys, neurons in the prefrontal cortex begin to fire when a visual stimulus is presented. Critically, if the stimulus is hidden from view, the neurons continue to fire during a short delay interval (typically less than 30 sec). When the delay is over, the animal is able to make a correct look or reach to where the object or cue had been. Thus, the neurons “represented” the object in the brain even after the sensory stimulation was gone. In contrast, if during the delay period the neurons stop firing, the monkey fails to locate the stimulus (e.g., Fuster and Alexander 1971; see Eichenbaum and Cohen, 2001, for a review). Findings such as these make clear that the association cortices play a role in the initial registration and temporary representation of information. 3.2 Consolidation Cortical association areas are involved in the short-term registration of experience. They permit us to hold in mind information such as a phone number just long enough to dial it, for example. In addition, ultimately, the association areas are the long-term storage sites for memories: it is from association areas that we retrieve our own home phone number. Yet between initial registration and commitment to long-term storage there is substantial additional processing. That processing generally is described as involving integration and stabilization of the various inputs from different cortical regions and is thought to be performed by structures within the temporal lobes (i.e., in the medial aspect of the lobe). 21

Chapter 1 - Patricia J. Bauer Whereas integration and stabilization processes begin upon registration of a stimulus, they do not end there. By some estimates, the process of stabilization of a memory trace, termed consolidation, continues for hours, days, months, and even years. Importantly, throughout the consolidation period, memories are vulnerable to disruption and interference and thus, forgetting. There are two major types of evidence that imply that for memory traces to live on beyond immediate experience, they must undergo additional processing. The first source of evidence is the observation that humans with lesions in the medial temporal lobes (as well as animals with induced lesions) are able to hold new information in mind over the very brief term (i.e., they have intact short-term memory), but they are unable to remember it over long delays (e.g., Squire 1992; Squire and Zola-Morgan 1991). That is, patients with damage in the medial temporal lobe have normal intelligence (as measured by standardized IQ tests) and normal short-term memory (e.g., over intervals of a few seconds, they can remember a series of digits as well as healthy control subjects can). However, they suffer from anterograde amnesia: an inability to form new explicit memories. As a result, as reflected in Table 1 (adapted from Reed and Squire 1998), they perform at levels below normal control participants on a variety of explicit memory tasks, including diagram recall (reproducing a diagram after a 5-10 minute delay), recall and recognition of individual words presented on lists, and 24-hour delayed recognition of words and faces (ibid). The memory deficits of these individuals cannot be accounted for by problems with retrieval alone: lower levels of performance are apparent on tests of recognition as well as recall, even though tests of recognition make lower retrieval demands, relative to the demands of recall. These observations imply that for new memories to be effectively Table 1. Anterograde memory test performance for four patients with medial temporal lobe amnesia and eight healthy control participants. Task

Patient A.B. L.J. E.P. G.T.

Diagram recall (max.=36) 4 3 0 0

Word recall (%) 33 40 24 20

Word recog (%) 82.7 84.7 65.3 70.0

Words (max.=50)

Faces (max.=50)

32 33 24 27

33 29 28 27

Controls

20.6

71

97.0

41.1

38.1

Note: Controls (n = 8). The Words and Faces tasks involve a 24-hour delay. Adapted from Reed and Squire 1998 table 1.

22

…to Experience the Past as the Present stored, something must happen between initial registration and long-term memory. The second source of evidence that to live on, memories must undergo a process of consolidation is the observation of temporally-graded retrograde amnesia: Memory for more recent events is impaired, relative to memory for more remote events. Notice that this pattern is precisely the opposite of normal forgetting. The phenomenon is illustrated in Fig. 3 (based on Brown 2002). Included in the figure are data from patients whose amnesia was the result of Korsakoff’s syndrome (attributed to chronic alcohol abuse) averaged with patients whose amnesia was acute, due to lesion, infarction, or anoxia. Plotted in the figure are the percentages of items the patients remembered from different points in time, ranging from one to five decades from the onset of their amnesia. The patients’ “Absolute” performance (indicated by the filled squares) reflects the percentage of items they remembered from each decade; patients’ “Relative” performance (indicated by the open triangles) reflects the percentage of correct items relative to the performance of healthy control participants. The fact that temporally-graded retrograde amnesia is apparent by either analysis is strong support for the phenomenon (ibid). The phenomenon also can be induced in nonhuman animals (including rabbits, mice, and monkeys) by creating a lesion in medial temporal structures at different points after learning of a novel association, for example (e.g., association between a tone and an electrical shock). Lesions made shortly after learning produce

Fig. 3. Memory performance averaged across Korsakoff’s and acute patient subgroups expressed in both absolute (filled squares) and relative (as a percentage of control performance; open triangles) terms across five decades. Based on Brown 2002 fig. 4. Values are approximate. 23

Chapter 1 - Patricia J. Bauer a large deficit in performance; lesions made well after training produce only mild or no disruption of performance (e.g., Kim and Fanselow 1992; Takehara et al. 2003). Together, the data on temporally-graded retrograde amnesia and on anterograde amnesia, provide strong evidence that for memories to be preserved over the long term, they must undergo additional processing for some time after experience of an event. What is the nature of the processing that experiences must undergo to be maintained over the long term? There is general consensus that consolidation actually involves two processes that occur in parallel: (1) stabilization of a memory trace through integration of the individual elements of experience, and (2) establishment of the memory trace in cortical association areas (e.g., Zola and Squire 2000). Stabilization of a memory trace begins as inputs from the association areas are projected to structures in the medial temporal lobes (Fig. 4). As noted earlier, at the time of experience, inputs from different sensory modalities are processed by different association cortices (i.e., unimodal and polymodal association areas). The neural codes of the representations of these inputs come together in the perirhinal and parahippocampal cortices of the medial temporal lobes. These cortices then relay the information to another medial temporal structure—the entorhinal cortex—which in turns relays it into the hippocampus itself (by way of the dentate gyrus). It is in the hippocampus that enduring links between the different elements of experience are forged. By way of analogy, this aspect of the consolidation process is akin to forming a bouquet out of single cut flowers, with each flower representing an element of experience. A principle role of the hippocampus is to join the individual stems of experience into a unified bundle (a single event or episode). Even as it is being processed in the hippocampus, new information is being associated with old information in cortical storage areas (note in Fig. 4 the bi-directional nature of information flow into and out of the hippocampal formation). The basis for association is shared elements: a rose in the current bundle of flowers shares elements with roses already in storage. As a result, “roses”—those in the current experience and those stored in memory—are simultaneously activated. Simultaneous activation is the presumed means by which information comes to be established in cortical areas, through the mechanism of synchronous convergence: neurons that are repeatedly activated together tend to become associated. The result is an entire pattern of interconnection of new information with old. Throughout the period of consolidation, the pattern is regularly “refreshed” by additional neural signalling between the hippocampus and the association areas. Eventually, the connections between cortical neurons become “cemented,” after which medial temporal activity is no longer necessary for the continued existence of the representation (Alvarez and Squire 1994; McClelland et al. 1995). We may think of the entire consolidation process as analogous to 24

…to Experience the Past as the Present

Fig. 4. Schematic representation of the input and output pathways of the hippocampal formation. Based on Kandel et al. 2000. gelatin setting. At first, gelatin is liquid and the only way to hold it in one place is with a mold. With refrigeration, the gelatin hardens to the point that the mold can be removed and the gelatin will maintain its shape. New memories are like gelatin, the hippocampus is the mold, and the coordinated processing within the hippocampus (to bind the elements together) and between the hippocampus and the neocortex (to bind new elements to old) is the refrigeration. Once refrigeration (coordinated processing) has done its work, the mold (hippocampus) is no longer necessary to maintain 25

Chapter 1 - Patricia J. Bauer the integrity of the gelatin (the memory). Unlike gelatin, which sets in a matter of hours, the process of consolidation of new memories may require days, weeks, and even years to complete. 3.3 Storage As just reviewed, consolidation involves establishing memory representations in cortical areas. This process is essential because the cortex, rather than the medial temporal lobes, is the long-term storage site for explicit memories. The first suggestion that memories must be stored outside the hippocampus came from evidence of temporally-graded retrograde amnesia (Fig. 3). That organisms with medial temporal lobe damage have intact memories from the distant past, with impaired memory for more recent experiences, is strong evidence that after some period of time, memories are no longer dependent on medial temporal lobe structures. Neuroimaging studies provide another source of evidence of a time-limited role for medial temporal structures in memory storage. Petersson et al. (1997) found that in humans, even over a short time interval, medial temporal lobe activation decreases as a function of repeated encoding and recall. Conversely, functional connectivity across cortical areas (as indicated by statistical modeling of fMRI data) increases as a function of repeated performance of a task (Büchel et al. 1999). There also is evidence of lower levels of medial temporal involvement in memories from the remote relative to the more recent past. For example, Haist et al. (2001) tested 60- to 70-year-old participants for recognition of the faces of people who had been famous during different decades, ranging from the 1990s to the 1940s. The results suggested greater neural activity in the hippocampus in response to faces of people famous in the 1990s relative to faces of people famous in the more distant past. Finally, consistent with the suggestion that memories eventually are stored in neocortical association areas, it has been found that lesions to them impair recall of information acquired before the damage. For instance, individuals with lesions in association cortex show impaired longterm memory for familiar objects and faces (e.g., Hodges and Patterson 1995, 1996). Such patients have higher levels of recognition of names of famous people from the recent past, relative to the remote past (Hodges and Graham 1998). This pattern suggests that as long as maintenance of the information is supported by intact medial temporal structures, it is accessible. As the responsibility for storage is given over to cortical structures, however, accessibility is lost (see Mayes 2000, for discussion). 3.4 Retrieval The raison d’etre for the consolidation and storage of explicit memories is so that they can be retrieved at some later time. But just 26

…to Experience the Past as the Present what is “retrieval”? Joaquin Fuster (1997) suggests that retrieval is, in essence, a reactivation of the neural network that represents the event. Reactivation occurs because “An internal or external stimulus, whose cortical representation is part of the network by prior association, will reactivate that representation and, again by association, the rest of the network” (ibid, 455). It is increasingly clear that retrieval of information from long-term stores is accomplished by the same circuits as were involved in initial registration of the experience, namely, the association cortices in general, and prefrontal cortex in particular. Damage to the prefrontal cortex disrupts long-term memory retrieval of both post- and pre-morbidly experienced facts and episodes (e.g., Janowsky et al. 1989). Prefrontal involvement also is implied by neuroimaging studies (fMRI and PET) which reveal increased activation in right prefrontal cortex (in particular) during memory retrieval. The findings generalize across many kinds of retrieval tasks, including auditory and visual stimuli, and recall and recognition (see Maguire 2001, Nyberg 1998 for reviews). 4. Development of the explicit memory system For memories to be formed effectively and efficiently, the entire network of structures involved in the encoding, consolidation, storage, and later retrieval of memories must be “up and running.” Research on brain development indicates that different components of the network that supports explicit memory develop at different rates. In this section I describe what is known about development of the major components of the network—the medial temporal structures and association cortices—with special emphasis on anterior-prefrontal association cortex. In brief, the evidence is consistent with the suggestion that, whereas some components of the temporal-cortical circuit develop early, it is only near the end of the first year of life that the entire network begins to function. It continues to develop for months and even years to come. I discuss the behavioral consequences of neural development in the following section. 4.1 Development of medial temporal components There are a number of indicators that in the human, many of the medial temporal lobe components of the explicit memory system develop early. First, the neurons (nerve cells) that make up most of the hippocampus are formed in the first half of gestation and virtually all are in their adult locations in the brain by the end of the prenatal period (Seress 2001). The neurons in most of the hippocampus also begin to connect early in development: synapses (junctions between neurons) are present as early as 15 weeks gestational age (Kostovic et al. 1989). The number and density of synapses both increase rapidly after birth, and reach adult levels by approximately 6 postnatal months (Paldino and Purpura 1979). 27

Chapter 1 - Patricia J. Bauer Perhaps as a consequence, the metabolic rate of neurons in the temporal cortex (as indicated by the amount of glucose they consume) reaches adult levels at the same time (i.e., by about 6 months: Chugani 1994, Chugani and Phelps 1986). Thus, there are numerous indices of early maturity of major portions of the medial temporal components of the network. In contrast to early maturation of most regions of the hippocampus, the course of development of a particular section of the hippocampus, the dentate gyrus, is protracted (Seress 2001; see Fig. 4). At birth, the dentate gyrus includes only about 70% of the adult number of cells (ibid). This means that roughly 30% of the cells are produced and establish connections postnatally. It is not until 12 to 15 postnatal months that the morphology of the structure appears adult-like (Serres 1992). Maximum density of synaptic connections in the dentate gyrus also is delayed, relative to that in the other regions of the hippocampus. In humans, synaptic density increases dramatically (to well above adult levels) beginning at 8 to 12 postnatal months and reaches its peak at 16 to 20 months. After a period of relative stability, excess synapses are pruned until adult levels are reached at about 4 to 5 years of age (Eckenhoff and Rakic 1991; see Webb et al. 2001, for discussion). Although the functional significance of later development of the dentate gyrus is not clear, there is reason to speculate that it has an impact on behavior. As noted earlier, information from distributed regions of cortex converges on the entorhinal cortex (Fig. 4). From there, it makes its way into the hippocampus in one of two ways: via a “long route” or a “short route.” The long route involves projections from entorhinal cortex into the hippocampus, by way of the dentate gyrus (depicted in Fig. 4 by dotted lines with unidirectional arrows); the short route bypasses the dentate gyrus (depicted by a solid line with bidirectional arrow). Whereas the short route may support some forms of memory (Nelson 1995), based on data from rodents, it seems that adult-like memory behavior depends on passage of information through the dentate gyrus (Czurkó et al. 1997; Nadel and Willner 1989). This implies that maturation of the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus may be a rate limiting variable in explicit memory early in life (Bauer 2002b, 2004, Bauer et al. 2003; Nelson 1995, 2000). 4.2 Development of association cortices Like the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus, the association areas develop slowly (see Bachevalier 2001, for a review). For example, it is not until the seventh prenatal month that all six cortical layers are apparent. Both neurons and synapses are overabundant at birth. Their numbers are progressively reduced (at different rates across different cortical areas) as a function of experience. The density of synapses in prefrontal cortex increases dramatically at 8 postnatal months and peaks between 15 and 24 months. Selective elimination of synapses (i.e., pruning) to adult levels 28

…to Experience the Past as the Present is delayed until puberty (Huttenlocher 1979; Huttenlocher and Dabholkar 1997; see Bourgeois 2001, for discussion). Although the maximum density of synapses may be reached as early as 15 postnatal months, it is not until 24 months that synapses develop adult morphology (Huttenlocher 1979). There also are changes in glucose utilization and blood flow over the second half of the first year and into the second year of life: blood flow and glucose utilization increase above adult levels by 8 to 12 and 13 to 14 months of age, respectively (Chugani et al. 1987). Other maturational changes in frontal cortex, such as myelination, continue into adolescence (Johnson1997). Adult levels of neurotransmitters (the chemicals that permit communication among neurons at the synapses) such as acetylcholine and dopamine are not seen until 10 years of age and adulthood, respectively (Benes 2001). 4.3 Functional maturity of the temporal-cortical network Because the full network that supports explicit memory in the human involves medial temporal and cortical association areas, it can be expected to function as an integrated whole only once each of its components, as well as the connections between them, has reached a level of functional maturity. Although there is no one metric by which we determine “functional maturity,” the late Patricia Goldman-Rakic (1987), one of the founders of developmental cognitive neuroscience, suggested that it may be reached as the number of synapses peaks. In the domain of explicit memory, Goldman-Rakic’s (ibid) guideline predicts the emergence of long-term explicit memory by late in the first year of life, with significant development over the course of the second year, and continued development for years thereafter. Specifically, with the exception of the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus, the medial temporal components of the network would be expected to reach functional maturity between the second and sixth postnatal months. The cortical components of the network, and the connections both within the medial temporal lobe (i.e., those involving the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus) and between association cortex and the medial temporal structures, would be expected to reach functional maturity late in the first year and over the course of the second year of life. The network would be expected to continue to develop, albeit less dramatically, for years thereafter. The time frame is based on increases in the formation of new synapses from 8 to 20 months in the dentate gyrus (Eckenhoff and Rakic, 1991), and from 8 to 24 months in the prefrontal cortex (Huttenlocher 1979; Huttenlocher and Dabholkar 1997). The expectation of developmental changes for months and years thereafter stems from the protracted selective reduction in synapses both in the dentate gyrus (until 4 to 5 years; e.g., Eckenhoff and Rakic 1991) and in the prefrontal cortex (throughout adolescence; e.g., Huttenlocher and Dabholkar 1997). 29

Chapter 1 - Patricia J. Bauer 5. Relations between brain and behavior in development The expectation that the temporal-cortical network that supports explicit memory reaches functional maturity late in the first year and over the course of the second year of life leads to the prediction of significant changes in behavior during the same period of time. In this section, I provide a brief review of the literature on changes in memory behavior in the first years of life. As will be seen, the “fit” between the timing of changes in brain and the timing of changes in behavior is a good one. 5.1 Measuring explicit memory in infancy In adults, explicit memory typically is assessed verbally. In preverbal infants and very young children, this approach is not viable: Infants do not talk! Accordingly, researchers interested in the dawning of explicit memory use nonverbal measures. A common method for examining developments in the ability to recall the past is elicited imitation: Props are used to produce a sequence of action that either immediately, after a delay, or both, the infant or child is invited to imitate. An example sequence, namely, Make a Gong, is illustrated in Fig. 5. There are a number of reasons to argue that the task measures explicit memory (see Bauer 2005, for elaboration of the argument). Two of the most compelling are that

Fig. 5. Three-step event sequence Make a Gong. The sequence involves placing the bar between the supports to form a cross piece, hanging the metal disk from the cross piece, and hitting the metal disk with the mallet to make it ring. 30

…to Experience the Past as the Present adults suffering from temporal lobe amnesia, in whom explicit memory is impaired, are unable to perform the task (McDonough et al. 1995); and that once children acquire language, they talk about events experienced as preverbal infants in the context of imitation-based tasks (e.g., Bauer et al. 2002). Use of elicited imitation across the first years of life has revealed the emergence of long-term explicit memory by the latter half of the first year. Over the course of the second year, the ability becomes both reliable and robust. 5.2 Recall in the first year of life At 6 months of age, the ability to recall the past is just emerging. For example, after six exposures to sequences such as Make a Gong (Fig. 5), as many as 67% of 6-month-old infants remember at least one action over a 24-hour delay (Barr et al. 1996). Six-month-olds do not, however, remember the actions in order: Although in Barr et al. three actions were modeled in sequence, a maximum of only 25% of the infants produced more than one action in order. Moreover, among 6-month-old infants, recall of even the actions of sequences is fragile and severely temporally limited: (a) infants who receive only three exposures (rather than six) fail to recall even the actions of sequences after 24 hours (ibid), and (b) even after multiple exposures, 6-month-old infants do not recall after delays of 48 hours (Learmonth et al. 2003). Near the end of the first year of life, coincident with increases in the formation of new synapses in prefrontal cortex and the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus (e.g., Huttenlocher and Dabholkar 1997; and Eckenhoff and Rakic 1991; respectively), infants show great strides in long-term explicit memory. For example, in my laboratory we tested 9-month-olds’ recall of multi-step sequences after a 5-week delay. In the sample as a whole, the infants showed evidence of recall of the individual actions of the sequences. That is, after the 5-week delay, the infants produced more of the target actions of the sequences they had seen demonstrated 1 month earlier, than of sequences that were new to them at the time of delayed-recall testing (new sequences were used as a within-subjects control for non-memory related maturational changes). As reflected in Table 2, 45% percent of the infants showed evidence of temporally-ordered recall memory after the 5-week delay but the remaining 55% of the infants did not (Carver and Bauer 1999). As indicated in Table 2, this distribution since has been replicated in two independent samples of 9-month-olds (Bauer et al. 2003; Bauer et al. 2001), suggesting systematic individual differences in longterm explicit memory at 9 months of age. Whereas at 9 months of age, individual differences in long-term ordered recall are the rule, by 10 months, they are the exception. In a longitudinal study, we enrolled infants at the age of 9 months, at which time they learned multi-step event sequences. One month later, we tested 31

Chapter 1 - Patricia J. Bauer the infants for recall of the events. Within a few days of their first delayedrecall test, we exposed the infants, now 10 months of age, to new event sequences. We tested for recall of those sequences one month later. At the first delayed-recall test, only 28% of the infants evidenced delayed ordered recall. In contrast, among the same infants, at the second delayed recall test, 80% evidenced delayed ordered recall (Bauer et al. 2006). Thus, after only one additional month of development, the capacity to retain organized representations over a delay went from being an “exception” to a “rule.” In addition to more reliable recall, 10-month-olds also evidence recall over longer delays, relative to 9-month-olds. We enrolled two groups of infants in a study of long-term recall. One group of infants was enrolled at 9 months and the other was enrolled at 10 months. We taught the infants multi-step event sequences. We then tested the infants for recall of half of the sequences 1 month later, and for the other half of the sequences 3 months later. The 9-month-olds showed evidence of memory for the events after 1 month but not after 3 months. In contrast, the 10month-olds showed evidence of memory after both the 1- and the 3-month delays (Carver and Bauer 2001). Thus, between 9 and 10 months of age (a) individual differences in long-term ordered recall diminish, and (b) the length of time over which infants are able to remember increases substantially. Table 2. Data on ordered recall after 1 month by three independent samples of 9-month-old infants. Percentage of Infants Who Evidenced Study of Origin Carver & Bauer (1999) Bauer, Wiebe, Carver, Waters, & Nelson (2003) Bauer, Wiebe, Waters, & Bangston (2001)

Ordered recall 45%

No ordered recall 55%

46%

54%

43%

57%

5.3 Recall in the second year of life Significant development in explicit memory continues throughout the second year of life, coincident with the peak in the formation of new synapses and continued morphological development of synapses. Notable are changes in the reliability and robustness of recall. In Bauer et al. (2000) we enrolled children at 13, 16, or 20 months of age, and tested for recall of multistep sequences after delays of 1, 3, 6, 9, or 12 months. In Table 3 are the percentages of children at each age at enrollment who, at delayed testing, showed evidence of recall of the sequences (i.e., they performed at 32

…to Experience the Past as the Present higher levels on previously experienced than on new event sequences). An asterisk indicates that the number of children with this pattern is greater than the number that would be expected by chance. Overall, the forgetting function reflected in Table 3 is very similar to that seen in older children and even adults (e.g., Schneider and Pressley 1997). That is, there was an initial relatively steep decline in performance, followed by a smooth, shallow function. For children who had been 13 months of age at the time of experience of the events, the decline in performance across delay conditions was relatively rapid. Indeed, beyond 1 month, the number of 13-month-olds who performed at higher levels on previously experienced than on new event sequences was not greater than chance. For the children who had been 16 months at the time of experience of the events, the percentage of children evidencing the pattern indicative of long-term ordered recall was reliably greater than chance in the 1-, 3-, and 6-month delay conditions, but not in the 9- and 12-month delay conditions. For children who had been 20 months of age at the time of exposure to the to-be-remembered event sequences, even after 12 months, the number of children exhibiting the pattern indicative of recall was reliably greater than chance. The data in Table 3 are reflective of increasing reliability in longterm recall across the second year of life. At the short delay interval of 1 month, across age groups, there were roughly comparable proportions of children who contribute to the “memory” effect: 78% of 13-month-olds, 94% of 16-month-olds, and 100% of 20-month-olds showed higher levels of performance on previously experienced than on new event sequences (contrast these levels of performance with those of 9-month-olds tested after 1 month, only 43% to 46% of whom evidence ordered recall; Table 2). As delay interval increased, fewer children maintained the information that they had learned about the events. The younger the children were at the time of experience of the events, the faster they “dropped out.” For Table 3. Percentage of 13-, 16-, and 20-Month-Olds whose Performance on Previously Experienced Event Sequences was Greater than Performance on New Event Sequences. Age at Exposure 13 months 16 months 20 months

Delay interval 1 month 78* 94* 100*

3 month 67 94* 100*

6 month 39 72* 83*

9 month 44 50 78*

12 month 39 61 67*

Note. Data are from Bauer et al. 2000. An asterisk indicates that the number of children exhibiting the pattern of ordered recall (i.e., higher level of performance on previously experienced than on new event sequences) was reliably greater than chance.

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Chapter 1 - Patricia J. Bauer 13-month-olds, at 6 months and beyond, a random selection would yield a roughly 40-45% chance that the child would show recall. In contrast, even at the longest delay interval, a random selection among 20-month-olds would yield a roughly 70% chance that the child would recall. In addition to evidence of increasingly reliable recall, Bauer et al. (2000) provided evidence of increasingly robust recall over the second year. Simply put, older children remembered more than younger children. Moreover, age-related differences in the amount remembered were particularly apparent under conditions of greater cognitive demand. For example, when the children were prompted by the event-related props alone, age differences were observed in all delay conditions. In contrast, when they were prompted by the event-related props and by the verbal reminders of the events, age differences were obtained only at the longer delay intervals of 9 and 12 months. Thus, age effects in how much information was retained over the long term were particularly apparent when the children had less support for recall (i.e., when they were prompted only by event-related props), and at longer retention intervals. Together, the data indicate that over the second year of life, there are age-related increases in the reliability and the robustness of long-term recall. The changes occur over the same space of time as developments in the neural substrate that supports explicit memory. 6. Facilitating memory as it develops The course of brain development places a limit on the formation and long-term retention of explicit memories by infants and very young children. In addition, a fact of developmental life is that in infancy and early childhood, memory improves with age. As discussed in Bauer (2002a), memory also can be improved by “manipulations” of the to-be-remembered material, by the conditions of learning, or both. One of the most dramatic influences on children’s (and adults’) memories is that of logical or causal relations in to-be-remembered events. In some events in the world, one action logically comes before another, and perhaps even causes (or enables) a subsequent action. For example, in the everyday activity of brushing one’s teeth, if we are to enjoy the cleansing benefits of toothpaste, we must apply the paste to the brush before we brush; applying it after brushing would not yield the same results! Adults’ learning of new material is greatly aided by logical, causal, or enabling relations (see van den Broek 1997, for a review). The same is true of young children. Indeed, accurate memory for sequences that are constrained by logical, causal, or enabling relations among the steps of the event is observed months before that for sequences that are arbitrarily ordered (e.g., Wenner and Bauer 1999). A second factor that has a pronounced influence on learning and memory is repetition. As implied earlier, in the first year of life, infants 34

…to Experience the Past as the Present seem to require repetition in order to remember even for 24 hours (Barr et al. 1996). By the second year, a single experience is all that is necessary to support memory (e.g., Bauer and Hertsgaard 1993). Nevertheless, learning and memory are facilitated by multiple experiences (Bauer et al. 1995). Finally, active participation in events and experiences facilitates learning and memory, perhaps especially as explicit memory is emerging (e.g., ibid). Consideration of how the brain builds a memory makes clear why: the more sources of information there are about an experience, the richer the pattern of neural activation associated with the event. In turn, richer patterns of activation provide more information for consolidation and more opportunities for linkages to be formed both within the current episode and between the current episode and other memories in long-term storage. In other words, the multi-modal experience that is associated with active participation in an event provides not only more flowers to be included in a bouquet, but a more secure means of binding the individual stems together as well. 7. Conclusion The second half of the twentieth century was marked by substantial advances in our understanding of the neural bases of explicit memory in adults. The period also yielded a great deal of information about the neural development that permit explicit memory to get off the ground in infancy and very early childhood. The data on brain and behavioral development are quite consistent at the level of timing of changes in structure and function. On the horizon are more precise models of how changes in particular neural structures, such as the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus, for example, might contribute to developments in specific memory processes, such as consolidation (Bauer 2002b, 2004, Bauer et al. 2003). Knowing how the brain builds memories can inform us as to how to best structure experiences for infants and young children such that they can come to appreciate the past. References Alvarez, P. and Squire, L.R. 1994 ‘Memory consolidation and the medial temporal lobe: A simple network model’ Proceedings of the National Academy of Science of the United States of America 91: 7041–45. Bachevalier, J. 2001 ‘Neural bases of memory development: Insights from neuro­ psychological studies in primates’ in C.A. Nelson & M. Luciana (eds.) Handbook of developmental cognitive neuro­science: 365–79. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. 35

Chapter 1 - Patricia J. Bauer Barr, R., A. Dowden and H. Hayne 1996 ‘Developmental change in deferred imitation by 6- to 24-monthold infants’ Infant Behavior and Development 19: 159–70. Bauer, P.J. 2002a Early Memory Development’ in U. Goswami (ed.) Blackwell Handbook of Childhood Cognitive Development: 127–46. Oxford: Blackwell. 2002b ‘Long-term recall memory: Behavioral and neuro-developmental changes in the first 2 years of life’ Current Directions in Psychological Science 11: 137–41. 2004 ‘Getting explicit memory off the ground: Steps toward construction of a neuro-developmental account of changes in the first two years of life’ Developmental Review 24: 347–73. 2005 ‘New developments in the study of infant memory’ in D. M. Teti (ed.) Blackwell Handbook of Research Methods in Developmental Science: 467–88. Oxford: Blackwell. Bauer, P.J. and L.A. Hertsgaard 1993 ‘Increasing steps in recall of events: Factors facilitating immediate and long-term memory in 13.5- and 16.5-month-old children’ Child Development 64: 1204–23. Bauer, P.J., L.A. Hertsgaard and S.S. Wewerka 1995 ‘Effects of experience and reminding on long-term recall in infancy: Remembering not to forget’ Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 59: 260–98. Bauer, P.J., J.A. Wenner, P.L. Dropik, and S.S. Wewerka 2000 ‘Parameters of remembering and forgetting in the transition from infancy to early childhood’ Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development 65 (4, Serial No. 263). Bauer, P.J., S.A. Wiebe, J.M. Waters and S.K. Bangston 2001 ‘Reexposure breeds recall: Effects of experience on 9-month-olds’ ordered recall’ Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 80: 174–200. Bauer, P.J., J.A. Wenner and M.G. Kroupina 2002 ‘Making the past present: Later verbal accessibility of early memories’ Journal of Cognition and Development 3: 21–47. Bauer, P.J., S.A. Wiebe, L.J. Carver, J.M. Waters and C.A. Nelson 2003 ‘Developments in long-term explicit memory late in the first year of life: Behavioral and electrophysiological indices’ Psychological Science 14: 629–35. Bauer, P.J., S.A. Wiebe, L.J. Carver, A.F. Lukowski, J.C. Haight, J.M. Waters and C.A. Nelson 2006 ‘Electrophysiological indices of encoding and behavioral indices of recall: Examining relations and developmental change late in the first year of life’ Developmental Neuropsychology 29:293-320. 36

…to Experience the Past as the Present Benes, F.M. 2001 ‘The development of prefrontal cortex: The maturation of neurotransmitter systems and their interaction’ in C.A. Nelson and M. Luciana (eds.) Handbook of developmental cognitive neuroscience: 79–x92. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Bourgeois, J.-P. 2001 ‘Synaptogenesis in the neocortex of the newborn: The ultimate frontier for individuation?’ in C.A. Nelson and M. Luciana (eds.) Handbook of developmental cognitive neuro­science: 23–34. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Brown, A.S. 2002 ‘Consolidation theory and retrograde amnesia in humans’ Psychonomic Bulletin and Review 9: 403–25. Büchel, C., J.T. Coull and K.J. Friston 1999 ‘The predictive value of changes in effective connectivity for human learning’ Science 283: 1538–41. Carver, L.J. and P.J. Bauer 1999 ‘When the event is more than the sum of its parts: Nine-montholds’ long-term ordered recall’ Memory 7: 147–74. 2001 ‘The dawning of a past: The emergence of long-term explicit memory in infancy’ Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 130: 726–45. Chugani, H.T. 1994 ‘Development of regional blood glucose metabolism in relation to behavior and plasticity’ in G. Dawson and K. Fischer (eds.) Human behavior and the developing brain: 153-175. New York: Guilford. Chugani, H.T. and M.E. Phelps 1986 ‘Maturational changes in cerebral function determined by 18FDG positron emission tomography’ Science 231: 840–43. Chugani, H.T., M. Phelps and J. Mazziotta 1987 ‘Positron emission tomography study of human brain functional development’ Annals of Neurology 22: 487–97. Czurkó, A., B. Czéh, L. Seress, L. Nadel, and J. Bures 1997 ‘Severe spatial navigation deficit in the Morris water maze after single high dose of neonatal X-ray irradiation in the rat’ Proceedings of the National Academy of Science of the United States of America 94: 2766–71. Diamond, A. 2001 ‘A model system for studying the role of dopamine in the prefrontal cortex during early development in humans: Early and continuously treated phenylketonuria’ in C.A. Nelson and M. Luciana (eds.) Handbook of developmental cognitive neuroscience: 433–72. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. 37

Chapter 1 - Patricia J. Bauer Eckenhoff, M. and P. Rakic, 1991 ‘A quantitative analysis of synaptogenesis in the molecular layer of the dentate gyrus in the rhesus monkey’ Developmental Brain Research 64: 129–35. Eichenbaum, H. and N.J. Cohen 2001 From conditioning to conscious recollection: Memory systems of the brain. New York: Oxford University Press. Fuster, J.M. 1997 ‘Network memory’ Trends in Neuroscience 20: 451–59. Fuster, J.M. and G.E. Alexander 1971 ‘Neuron activity related to short-term memory’ Science 173: 652–54. Goldman-Rakic, P.S. 1987 ‘Circuitry of primate prefrontal cortex and regulation of behavior by representational memory’ in F. Plum (ed.) Hand­book of physiology, the nervous system, higher functions of the brain, Vol. 5: 373–417. Bethesda, MD: American Physiological Society. Haist, F., J.B. Gore and H. Mao 2001 ‘Consolidation of human memory over decades revealed by functional magnetic resonance imaging’ Nature Neuroscience 4: 1139–45. Hodges, J.R. and K.S. Graham 1998 ‘A reversal of the temporal gradient for famous person knowl­edge in semantic dementia: Implications for the neural organisa­tion of long-term memory’ Neuropsychologia 36: 803–25. Hodges, J.R. and K. Patterson 1995 ‘Is semantic memory consistently impaired early in the course of Alzheimer’s disease? Neuroanatomical and diagnostic implications’ Neuropsychologia 33: 441–59. Hodges, J.R. and K. Patterson 1996 ‘Non-fluent progressive aphasia and semantic dementia: A comparative neuropsychological study’ Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society 2: 511–25. Huttenlocher, P.R. 1979 ‘Synaptic density in human frontal cortex: Developmental changes and effects of aging’ Brain Research 163: 195-205. Huttenlocher, P.R. and A.S. Dabholkar 1997 ‘Regional differences in synaptogenesis in human cerebral cortex’ Journal of Comparative Neurology 387: 167–78. Janowsky, J.S., A.P. Shimamura and L.R. Squire 1989 ‘Source memory impairment in patients with frontal lobe le­sions’ Neuropsychologia 27: 1043–56. Johnson, M.H. 1997 Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience. Oxford: Blackwell. 38

…to Experience the Past as the Present Kandel, E.R., J.H. Schwartz and T.M. Jessell 2000 Principles of neural science, Fourth Edition. New York: McGrawHill. Kandel, E.R. and L. R. Squire 2000 ‘Neuroscience: Breaking down scientific barriers to the study of brain and mind’ Science 290: 1113–20. Kim, J.J. and M.S. Fanselow 1992 ‘Modality-specific retrograde amnesia of fear’ Science 256: 675–77. Korzyukov, O. A., I. Winkler, V. I. Gumenyuk and K. Alho 2003 ‘Processing abstract auditory features in the human auditory cortex’ Neuroimage 20: 2245–58. Kostovic, I., L. Seress, L. Mrzljak and M. Judas 1989 ‘Early onset of synapse formation in the human hippocampus: A correlation with Nissl-Golgi architectonics in 15- and 16.5week-old fetuses’ Neuroscience 30: 105–16. Learmonth, A.E., R. Lamberth and R. Rovee-Collier 2003 April. Context change and imitation in 6-month-old infants. Poster presented to the Society for Research in Child Development. Tampa, Florida. Maguire, E.A. 2001 ‘Neuroimaging studies of autobiographical event memory’ Philosophical Transactions. Royal Society of London 356: 1441–51. Mayes, A.R. 2000 ‘Selective memory disorders’ in E. Tulving and F.I.M. Craik (eds.) The Oxford handbook of memory: 427–40. New York: Oxford University Press. McClelland, J.L., B.L. McNaughton, and R.C. O’Reilly 1995 ‘Why there are complementary learning systems in the hippocampus and neocortex: Insights from the successes and failures of connectionist models of learning and memory’ Psychological Review 102: 419–57. McDonough, L., J. M. Mandler, R. D. McKee and L. R. Squire 1995 ‘The deferred imitation task as a nonverbal measure of declarative memory’ Proceedings of the National Academy of Science of the United States of America 92: 7580–84. Nadel, L. and J. Willner 1989 ‘Some implications of postnatal maturation of the hippocampus’ in V. Chan-Palay and C. Köhler (eds.) The hippocampus – New Vistas: 17–31. New York: Alan R. Liss. Nelson, C. A. 1995 ‘The ontogeny of human memory: A cognitive neuroscience perspective’ Developmental Psychology 31: 723–38. 39

Chapter 1 - Patricia J. Bauer 2000

‘Neural plasticity and human development: The role of early experience in sculpting memory systems’ Developmental Science 3: 115–36. Nyberg, L. 1998 ‘Mapping episodic memory’ Behavioral Brain Research 90: 107–14. Paldino, A. and D. Purpura 1979 ‘Quantitative analysis of the spatial distribution of axonal and dendritic terminals of hippocampal pyramidal neurons in immature human brain’ Experimental Neurology 64: 604–19. Papanicolaou, A. C., E. Castillo, J. I. Breier, R. N. Davis, P. G. Simos and R. L. Diehl 2003 ‘Differential brain activation patterns during perception of voice and tone onset time series: A MEG study’ Neuroimage 18: 448–59. Petersson, K.M., C. Elfgren, and M. Ingvar 1997 ‘A dynamic role of the medial temporal lobe during retrieval of declarative memory in man’ Neuroimage 6: 1-11. Reed, J.M. and L.R. Squire 1998 ‘Retrograde amnesia for facts and events: Findings from four new cases’ The Journal of Neuroscience 18: 3943–54. Schneider, W. and M. Pressley 1997 Memory development between two and twenty, Second Edition. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Seress, L. 1992 ‘Morphological variability and developmental aspects of monkey and human granule cells: Differences between the rodent and primate dentate gyrus’ Epilepsy Research 7 (supplemental): 3–28. 2001 ‘Morphological changes of the human hippocampal formation from midgestation to early childhood’ in C.A. Nelson and M. Luciana (eds.) Handbook of developmental cognitive neuro­ science: 45–58. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Squire. L. R. 1992 ‘Memory and the hippocampus: A synthesis from findings with rats, monkeys, and humans’ Psychological Review 99: 195-231. Squire, L.R. and S. Zola-Morgan 1991 ‘The medial temporal lobe memory system’ Science 253: 1380– 86. Takehara, K., S. Kawahara, and Y. Kirino 2003 ‘Time-dependent reorganization of the brain components underlying memory retention in trace eyeblink conditioning’ The Journal of Neuroscience 23: 9897–905.

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…to Experience the Past as the Present Van den Broek, P. 1997 ‘Discovering the cement of the universe: The development of event comprehension from childhood to adulthood’ in P. van den Broek, P.J. Bauer and T. Bourg (eds.) Developmental spans in event representation and comprehension: Bridging fictional and actual events: 321–42). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Webb, S.J., C.S. Monk and C.A. Nelson 2001 ‘Mechanisms of postnatal neurobiological development: Implications for human development’ Developmental Neuro­ psychology 19: 147–71. Wenner, J.A. and P.J. Bauer 1999 ‘Bringing order to the arbitrary: One- to two-year-olds’ recall of event sequences’ Infant Behavior and Development 22: 585–90. Zola, S.M. and L.R. Squire 2000 ‘The medial temporal lobe and the hippocampus’ in E. Tulving and F.I.M. Craik (eds.) The Oxford handbook of memory: 485– 500. NewYork: Oxford University Press.

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Chapter 2 Autobiography, Time and History: Children’s Construction of the Past in Family Reminiscing Robyn Fivush 1.Introduction In learning about history, and about peoples and cultures different from one’s own, children must make a cognitive leap from understanding about one’s own personal life and history to analogize that others also had lives existing in cultural and historical contexts. How might children come to understand that others lived in different historical periods or cultural contexts, and that these other lives were imbued with beliefs and events that unfolded and left cultural artifacts to mark their existence? In other words, how do children come to understand that the objects viewed in museum exhibits represent real flesh and blood lives of other people and/ or other times? In this chapter, I argue that this understanding develops out of children’s understanding of their own personal past and their own family’s past. Furthermore, understanding of one’s own autobiographical past and a sense of one’s own self as extended through time develops through family reminiscing. All human beings reminisce. Whether we are meeting new people or gathering with old friends and family, we talk about the past. In this chapter I argue that children learn the forms and functions of talking about the past through participating in reminiscing with parents and other adults. Moreover, as children begin to develop a sense of their own personal past, they also come to understand the past as a concept, as a sense of time that stretches back before they were born, and in which other individuals lived and experienced events both similar and dissimilar to the self. In order to develop this argument, I first review research on children’s developing autobiographical memory and narrative skills, as it emerges in the context of parent guided reminiscing. I then turn to a discussion of children’s developing sense of time, and the concept of the past, first as related to self and a familial past, and then, more speculatively, as related to an historical past. 42

2. Autobiographical memory development in social context Autobiographical memory is defined as consciously accessible memories of personally experienced events that occurred at particular points in time and space (e.g., the time I visited the Louvre when I was 21 years old and vacationing in Paris). This kind of memory contrasts with semantic memory, which is memory of general facts about the world and events that are not referenced to a specific past (e.g., knowing that the Louvre is a museum in Paris) (see Nelson and Fivush 2004, for a complete definition and theoretical discussion). As such, the clearest and most reliable evidence that a young child is accessing an autobiographical memory rather than a generalized semantic representation is verbal recall. Language is critical in the development of autobiographical memory for three interrelated reasons, each of which I discuss in more detail below. First, language allows for a new way of organizing and representing experience through narrative forms that define events in time. Second, language allows children to participate in shared reminiscing with others, which is critical in the development of these narrative forms. Finally, through participating in shared reminiscing, children begin to understand that they have a unique perspective on their personal past, and that others also have unique autobiographical histories. Intriguingly, children begin referring to past events almost as soon as they begin talking, at about 16 to 18 months of age (Eisenberg 1985). However, at this early stage, children refer to events in the recent past, and their comments are fragmentary and the references are often unclear (Sachs 1983). Over the course of the preschool years, children begin to talk about the past more frequently, and more coherently, and by about the age of 5, children are able to give relatively extended coherent accounts of personally experienced events (Fivush et al. 1995), although narrative skills continue to develop throughout childhood (Hudson and Shapiro 1991; Peterson and McCabe 1982). Perhaps not surprisingly, not all children develop these skills at the same rate or to the same extent, and these differences are related to differences in how parents talk about the past with their young children. When young children first begin referring to the past, parents help to structure, or “scaffold” the conversations. In the early stages of language learning, when children are only able to provide a word or two to refer to a past event, parents expand on these minimal contributions and place the past event in a more coherent linguistic framework. For example, a toddler might look up from her play and say “berries.” The mother might respond by saying, “Yes, we had berries for breakfast this morning. Did you like them?” In this way, the mother is focusing in on the past event with the child, providing a more comprehensive narrative account of the 43

Chapter 2 - Robyn Fivush recent past event, and inviting the child to provide additional information about her response to that event. Extensive research has now documented individual differences in parental reminiscing style, such that some parents display a highly elaborative style, talking about the past in great detail, including rich descriptions, and drawing their children into the conversation with many questions and evaluations on what their children contribute. In contrast, other parents display a less elaborative style, asking fewer questions overall, simply repeating questions when their children do not respond, and commenting and evaluating less when their children do contribute (Fivush and Fromhoff 1988; Hudson 1990; Peterson and McCabe 1992). Parental reminiscing style is consistent over time (Reese et al. 1993) and across siblings (Haden 1998), but, critically is not related to maternal educational level or socio-economic class. It is also not related to overall talkativeness. Parents who display a highly elaborative reminiscing style do not necessarily show a highly elaborative style in other conversational contexts, such as engaging in ongoing play activities or story book reading (Haden and Fivush 1996; Hoff-Ginsburg 1991). Most important, research following the same children across the preschool years has established that a highly elaborative parental reminiscing style facilitates the development of memory and narrative skills; by the end of the preschool years, children of parents who were highly elaborative early in the preschool years give more coherent, more detailed narratives of their own personal experience than do children of parents who were less elaborative early in the preschool years (Peterson and McCabe 1992; Reese et al. 1993). Interestingly, parental reminiscing style is related to both gender and culture (see Fivush and Haden 2003 and Fivush and Nelson 2004, for overviews). Parents are more elaborative and place the past in a more evaluative, emotional framework when reminiscing with daughters than with sons (Reese et al. 1996), and by the end of the preschool years, girls narrate their past in more detail and include more emotional information than do boys (Fivush and Buckner 2003). Similarly, mothers from European cultures reminisce in more elaborated and emotional ways with their children than do mothers from Asian cultures, and, these differences are reflected in children’s emerging autobiographical narratives such that children from European cultures give more detailed, more emotional narratives of their personal past than do children from Asian cultures (Leichtman et al. 2003; Pillemer 1998). These patterns of individual, gender and cultural differences in children’s developing autobiographical memory and narrative skills indicate that, over the course of the preschool years, children are learning how to narrate their past through engaging in parent-guided reminiscing. Through the creation of more detailed and more coherent narratives, children are learning new ways of organizing and understanding their personal past (Nelson and Fivush 2004). More specifically, narratives move 44

Autobiography, time and history… beyond a simple sequential account of what occurred. Narratives place events in a context that orients to place and time, and provides evaluation that conveys the meaning and significance of an event (Bruner 1990; Labov 1982). In learning how to narrate their past, young children are learning more than how to report what happened; they are learning how to organize and interpret their past experience. Moreover, because narratives place events in context, narratives move beyond remembering single events, by placing events in relation to each other through time and meaning. Thus, in learning how to narrate their personal past, children also begin to develop a sense of time, and a sense of self through time. This may also be the rudimentary awareness necessary for an historical consciousness. As I will argue later in this chapter, it is through an understanding of self through time that children first begin to glimpse and then construct a sense of other lives and other times. In order to place these arguments in context, I first turn to a discussion of how children construct a sense of self through time, and a sense of one’s own personal past. 2.1 Time, self and autobiography Even very early in development, children distinguish between the “now” and the “not now” but this initial distinction appears to be rather global. For example, Nelson (1989) examined a young toddler, Emily, talking to herself as she fell asleep. In these bedtime monologues, Emily at age 2 referred to past events, but used almost no linguistic markers at all to reference them as past. When she did use a linguistic marker, “yesterday” was used to refer to virtually any event that occurred at any point in the past. Indeed, children have a great deal of difficulty marking the past as past in language early in the preschool years, and will use the words “yesterday” and “tomorrow” to refer to any non-present event (Harner 1982). It is not until age 5 or 6 that children gain control over these kinds of words, and use them more appropriately, suggesting that during the preschool years children have only an undifferentiated sense of the “not now.” Importantly, this is not simply a language limitation, as preschool children have difficulty ordering events in time even using non-linguistic tasks. Events are ordered in time both internally and in relation to other events. In terms of the former, any given event has an internal temporal order, a beginning, middle and end. Even quite young children are able to order the component actions of familiar events, knowing what happens first, second, and last. For example, 3-year-old children can sequence the component actions of going grocery shopping, or baking cookies, in their correct temporal order, but they have difficulty sequencing the component actions of unfamiliar events, either in verbal reports or using non-verbal 45

Chapter 2 - Robyn Fivush tasks such as picture sequencing (see Nelson 1986, for an overview). Further, early in development, familiar events are reported as simple chronological sequences, with one action following another. With increasing age and experience, children’s understanding of temporal relations become more complex, in that they begin to understand and reference actions that are conditional (e.g., actions that occur if and when other actions occur first, such as when the school bell rings, it is time to go into the classroom) and actions that are optional (e.g., actions that may or may not occur during any given occurrence of the event, such as a demonstration in science class which may only happen occasionally) (see Hudson et al. 1992, for a full review). Thus, whereas young preschoolers represent the simple temporal order of actions within familiar event sequences, by age 7 to 8, children are able to represent complex chronologies of experienced events. The second way in which events are ordered in time concerns temporal relations among events. This involves knowing whether one event happened before or after another, as well as being able to estimate temporal distances between events; was Christmas before or after your birthday? Did you go to the zoo before or after your grandmother came for a visit? Friedman (1990; 1993; Friedman and Kemp 1998) found that preschool children have difficulty ordering the sequence of a series of daily activities (e.g., what you do on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, etc.), and even 6- and 7-year olds have difficulty ordering the sequence of annual events. Thus it seems that young children do not yet understand past events in an organized chronology. An additional difficulty that young children have is being able to place themselves temporally within past events. Although children understand that it was them who experienced specific events, they have difficulty coordinating when the past event occurred in relation to the present. Povinelli and his colleagues (1996; 1999) engaged young children in a play episode during which a sticker was surreptitiously placed on the child’s head. The child was aware that the event was being video taped. Immediately after the event was over, the child was asked to watch it on the video that had just been recorded. Children readily recognized themselves on the video, and 4- and 5-year-olds immediately looked at the video and reached up to remove the sticker from their head, indicating that they understood that the play event happened just prior to their watching the video; that is, they understood the relation between “now” and “then.” Three-year-olds, on the other hand, identified themselves in the video, but did not remove the sticker. In fact, they gave no indication that they understood that the sticker would now be on their head since it is visible on the video that had just been taped. In line with this interpretation, when children were brought back to see the video of the play episode a week later, the 4-year-olds still reached for the sticker, indicating some confusion about when the play episode had occurred and the temporal 46

Autobiography, time and history… relation between the video and now. Five-year-olds do not reach for the sticker one week later, explicitly stating that the sticker would no longer be on their heads as time had passed between the video event and now. These kinds of results indicate that early in the preschool years children do not easily connect “then” and “now” in a coordinated sense of time, nor do they have a sense of self as continuous through time. But by age 5, children understand self in time; they understand temporal relations between events that occurred either more recently or more distantly in the past and their current self. Thus an understanding of time involves an understanding of self as continuous through time. And the present self is linked to the past through autobiographical memories. As children develop more coherently organized narratives of the past, they begin to develop a sense of self as represented in these narratives, and a sense of time as experienced events linked together chronologically. In order to do this, children must develop a sense of previously experienced events as representations of what occurred at particular points in the past. That is, memories are not of currently available events, but are representations of time already lived at specific points in time and space. This is actually quite a complex cognitive achievement, relying on the ability to understand the past as past, and memories as representations of that past. One way in which children develop this understanding is through parent-guided reminiscing. As already discussed, in the context of reminiscing about past events, children are learning how to organize and report their past memories in more coherent and narratively organized ways. But in discussing past events with their parents, children also become aware that memories are representations of past events, and as such, what one person remembers about an event may or may not be the same as what another person recalls (Fivush 2001; Fivush and Haden 2004). During parent-child conversations, there are critical conversational junctures during which parents and children disagree about what happened. For example, the child may recall seeing a giraffe at the zoo that the mother does not remember, or the mother might insist that there was a hippopotamus that the child cannot recall. It is at these moments, when children are confronted with differences in what individuals recall about a past event, that they come to realize that memories are subjective representations of past experiences. When parents and children disagree about what occurred it stimulates children to reflect on the fact that their own recollection of events are unique. Moreover, many of these disagreements are not about the facts of what occurred, but are about subjective evaluations. Was the child scared seeing Santa or not? Was the roller coaster fun or frightening? Disagreements about subjective perspective are especially important in facilitating children’s understanding of their own unique perspective on past events, and are critical in helping children link the past to the present: “This is what I remember about that past event in contrast to what 47

Chapter 2 - Robyn Fivush others may remember and this is how I evaluate that experience from my current self-perspective.” This cognitive accomplishment is related to children’s developing understanding of self and other. Even infants are able to participate in interactions that involve an understanding of other minds. For example, in simple role-taking games such as peek-a-boo, in which the infant and adult engage in prescribed behaviors (hiding the face, revealing the face) and proscribed emotional reactions (dismay at not seeing the other, delight at unveiling the other) 6-month-olds are able to participate as either the masked or the unmasker and take great delight in doing so, indicating an early appreciation of self and other engaging as different interactants in a coordinated social interaction (Bruner 1975). However, at this early stage of understanding, infants do not yet appreciate that others may have different perspectives on events than oneself. This more gradually developing understanding, often referred to as “theory of mind” (Astington 1993; Perner 1991) refers to the understanding that both self and other have individual minds, that self and other have beliefs, desires, emotions and thoughts, and that self and other may have the same or different beliefs, desires, emotions and thoughts. So I may have found the roller coaster fun even though my sister found it frightening. Or I may like chocolate ice cream, but my brother may only like vanilla. Most important for the arguments here, I can remember certain events because I was there and experienced them, but if you were not there, you cannot remember them. And critically, you can remember events that I do not, because you experienced those events and I did not. Children do not achieve this level of understanding of self and other until about age 5, and these developments are closely linked to autobiographical memory skills (Perner 2001; Welch-Ross 2001). Children with a more advanced understanding that self and other can have different knowledge, different beliefs, and different emotions, tell more coherent and more detailed narratives of their own past. And they seem to understand that others who were not there do not have any knowledge of what occurred; thus they understand that memories are based on lived experience, and different experiences will lead to different memories. In this way, children are not only developing an autobiographical understanding of self; they are also developing an understanding that others have autobiographies as well. 2.2 Self and other in time: The familial past By the end of the preschool years, children have developed quite impressive autobiographical memory skills. They are able to represent and narrate complex event sequences in a relatively coherent and detailed manner, and they understand the temporal relations between past events and current time, as well as the relation between self in the past 48

Autobiography, time and history… and self in the present (Nelson and Fivush 2004). Of course, these early understandings are still rudimentary, and will continue to develop in more sophisticated ways across childhood. But importantly, once these rudimentary skills are in place, it heralds the ability to construct and understand an autobiographical self, a self who has had specific experiences at particular spatial and temporal points in the past, and who has a unique perspective on what occurred. Intriguingly, it is also at about this age that children begin to ask their parents two types of questions that imply a deeper understanding of time, self and autobiography. First children begin to ask about their own babyhood, a time that cannot be remembered but that is part of one’s autobiographical history. Even more interesting, children begin to ask about their parents’ childhood. This is an extremely interesting development because it signals that children are beginning to understand that, not only do other people remember shared experiences in different ways, but that other people have individual histories and autobiographies that are unknown to the child. This realization most likely occurs first in the context of family reminiscing, during which the child comes to understand that other family members also have memories of self through time, and that each family member therefore has a unique personal history, some of which is shared among family members and some of which is not. As already discussed, children’s personal memories develop in a social interactional context in which parents help guide and scaffold children’s emerging sense of self through time. But personal memories remain interpersonally situated throughout our lives. Each individual is embedded in an ever-widening social cultural circle. The child develops a sense of self and individuality only in the context of being a member of a family, and this family is located in a particular social community and culture at a particular point in history. Thus the first level of social embedding is in the family, and children come to understand their personal experiences as members of a family that has a shared history. A second level of social embedding is in the sense of family history, in that each member of the family has their own unique personal history that includes many experiences that predate the child. Parents have memories of childhood and early adulthood before the child was born, and their grandparents before them and so on. Thus family history stretches back into an intergenerational family past. Intergenerational family history is embedded in more abstract historical time, time that stretches back before one can trace family ancestors, to the distant past that can only be known through cultural artifacts, a point I will return to later. Finally, the individual, family and historical past is embedded in a particular social-cultural-historical context that defines what an appropriate life story should look like, and how history should be told (see Nelson 2003, for an extended discussion of this issue). From the moment of birth, children are surrounded by family sto49

Chapter 2 - Robyn Fivush ries. New parents begin telling family stores to their infants, well before the infant has any capacity to understand (Fiese et al. 1997), and these stories continue to be told frequently, with reference to the past occurring approximately seven times per hour during unstructured interaction (Miller 1994). Family stories can be told to others in the presence of the child, they can be told directly to the child, or they can be told about the child (Miller and Sperry 1988), but in all cases, children are learning that they are part of a unit defined at least partly through this shared history. Through participating in family story telling, children learn to take the perspective of others and to understand how they fit into a larger social unit defined through time (Fiese and Marjinsky 1999; Ochs et al. 1992). In terms of the arguments in this chapter, the construction of a shared family history allows children to develop a sense of self and other through time. Further, through family story-telling children come to understand that each member of the family has a unique perspective; there is both shared and unshared understandings of what occurred. To illustrate, I present excerpts from family conversations gathered from an ongoing study of family narratives (Fivush et al. 2004; Duke et al. 2003). In this study, middle class families with at least one preadolescent child are asked to record both family conversations about highly emotional events as well as everyday dinnertime conversations. In the following excerpt, a family of 4 (mother, father, preadolescent son, and adolescent daughter) are discussing when the family pet dog, Max, died (< > indicates overlapping speech): Mother: That’s because he was sick. You know and there was that big cancerous spot remember sitting on the couch back there watching you all cry (unintelligible) Mother: Yeah. Do you remember how old you were? Daughter: But I remember you didn’t cry because you weren’t that close (name of son) was in first grade then. Son: Hmmm. Mother: Yeah, yeah and then we had ah. Daddy and I brought Max in the car so that the veterinarian could put Max to sleep. Son: Mmm. Mother: And I think I took it the hardest because Max was in our lives since (name of daughter), I was pregnant with (name of daughter). Daughter: Before. Mother: And Max was our first baby, Daddy and I. Daughter: Because I, I looked in the photo albums and saw a picture of you and Dad both holding Max by the balloons saying that you were going to have a baby, which was me. 50

Autobiography, time and history… Mother: Yeah. And that’s why Max was in our life all that time and it was real sad when we had to put him in the car. And Daddy remembers this cuz I don’t think, Daddy, (name of father) you haven’t uh was that the first dog you put to sleep? Father: Yeah, it was horrible. In this conversation, we see that each family member presents their own perspective on the event, including their own personal relationship to the dog, as well as placing the event in the context of a family time line – that the mother and father had the dog before the first child was born, and that the dog died when the second child was in the first grade. Further, there is at least passing mention of the parent’s individual lives before they came together as a family, when the parents mention that this was the first dog that the father had put to sleep. The time line is laid out quite explicitly, and each individual family member’s lives are coordinated along this time line. Thus, this single event is placed in the context of, and helps define, the family history. During middle childhood, parents also begin telling stories about their own childhoods, stressing both similarities and differences between their childhood and those of their children. These stories are sometimes told at the request of the child, but often are embedded in ongoing conversations about family life. For example, in this excerpt, a family of 4 (mother, father, preadolescent son 1, and adolescent son 2) is talking about the fact that the sons do not like asparagus: Mother: I told you about asparagus, how weird it is. Son 1: And how (unintelligible) you hated it when you were a kid. Mother: I didn’t like it when I was kid, which is a really terrible thing ‘cause my father grew it fresh in the garden. Son 2: Well, at least it was better than the stuff you buy at the store. Mother: I know. I’m sorry I missed it….My parents didn’t make me ‘cause they liked it so much they didn’t care if I didn’t eat it. (Chuckles). They made me eat the frozen or canned peas, Father: (Unintelligible) likes peas. Son 1: But I thought they said that they didn’t Mother: They did actually did. They grew peas and beans and rhubarb and asparagus. One year he grew corn and that was pretty cool. Son 1: Did it turn out okay? Mother: It was okay. It wasn’t great. Son 1: Not as good as the store? Mom: No. It’s hard to grow… 51

Chapter 2 - Robyn Fivush Here we see that the mother refers back to her own childhood experiences and her own family of origin. Moreover she provides direct links between her family of origin and her current family in terms of dietary likes and dislikes. It is also apparent that her parents’ vegetable garden has been a topic of previous conversations; the children are taking over part of the story of their mother’s childhood as well, and incorporating this family history into their own individual history. In this way, the mother and children are constructing a family time line that extends back into the mother’s childhood, thus fostering an understanding of intergenerational family history. Finally, families embed their own personal narratives in larger cultural and historical contexts, such as immigration, national identities and shared cultural values. Again, an example helps illustrate. In this excerpt, a Mexican-American family is discussing the day at school with their two sons over the dinner table. They are talking about one son’s science project (Son 1) and the other son’s history project (Son 2), when the father states: Father: Let’s talk a little bit about the Mexican Revolution. You know what’s the difference? Son 2: What? Father: Now, here in the States, what they call the American Revolution is really… Son 1: It’s the War of Independence. In Mexico, we call that the War of Independence. And what here in the States they call the Civil War, is what we in Mexico call Father: The War of Independence in Mexico was in 18… Mother: Even before the um, the Americans did it. Father: No! Mother: No? Father: Father: The American Independence in 1776… Son 2: Does all this have to do with my brother’s report? Mother: Uh huh. Father: No, it has to do with your general knowledge. Mother: Do you all want to have general knowledge? Son 2: Yeah. Thus, whereas by the end of the preschool years, children have constructed a sense of self as continuous through time, it is during middle childhood and early adolescence, from about 8–12 years of age, that this personal time line becomes coordinated with the personal time lines of other family members, and within the larger time frame of generational and historical time. 52

Autobiography, time and history… 2.3 Time before self: The historical past With the growing understanding of lives lived before one’s own, preadolescent children (8-12 years old) begin to construct a sense of historical time. At first, this past is linked to the awareness of parents’ lives before one was born, that one’s parents were once children and that they had parents, and these parents were once children and so on. Thus the first inkling of an historical past is based on an understanding of family generations. This kind of understanding develops through family stories, stories that parents and grandparents tell about their own lives and the lives of those around them. Through this kind of reminiscing, children begin to understand that they are part of an intergenerational family, a family that extends back in time and culminates in the present, with their own life story which is ongoing. Moreover, many of these family stories are punctuated and illustrated by important family objects – photographs, historical artifacts such as stamped passports, family bibles that mark the generations of marriages, births and deaths, and family heirlooms. When I look at old family photographs, I do not simply see an old woman dressed in the style of 1912. I see my great grandmother. I only know her through the family stories I have been told. And when I hold her stamped passport in my hand, it is not just an old document. It has acquired great emotional significance as I have heard the stories of her leaving her home in Romania to travel to the United States, and her passage in steerage, and her experiences at Ellis Island. This has become living history to me through the stories my family has told me, and these documents, which might have simply be seen as old pieces of paper, have acquired meaning through the stories that have become attached to them. The same is true of objects that have been handed down through generations. The set of candlesticks that I light every holiday have special significance because they belonged to my grandmother, and by lighting these candles, I am bringing all of her stories back to life as part of my own identify. It cannot be emphasized strongly enough that this kind of history can only be created through language and stories. Without the story of my great grandmother traveling to the United States, her passport would have no meaning. Without the stories of my grandmother’s life and struggles, the candlesticks would only be decorative. Thus family artifacts only acquire meaning through family stories, and at the same time, they “hold” the family stories. The artifacts, themselves, now come to represent the very stories that define their importance. The same is true of more distant cultural artifacts. A ceramic bowl in and of itself is not historically meaningful until it is placed in a narrative about where, when and who used it for what purpose. Simply dating something does not make it meaningful in a human sense. Just as children need family stories to make family artifacts 53

Chapter 2 - Robyn Fivush meaningful, they need cultural narratives to make historical and cultural artifacts meaningful. By placing artifacts in a deeply embedded cultural narrative, children learn that these artifacts were used by individuals in other times and other places, and have acquired significance because they tell us something about our past – a past that may be distant but that is linked to who we are today through stories that bring ancestors to life, as living beings with beliefs, desires, and emotions, with lives filled with drama, tragedy and accomplishment. Creating these links through narrative brings the past to the present. 3. Epilogue Through narratives, children begin to abstract the idea of a past that extends beyond the family both in terms of a more distant past and in terms of encompassing unrelated individuals. Children begin to understand that each individual, both those currently alive and those who lived in the past, has a unique life story, and these stories link together to create a past in which unknown individuals lived out their lives, and the events that they experienced and recorded are the events of history. Artifacts are the markers of those individual lives, and therefore, of history. It is in this way that the development of preschool children’s ability to recall and recount their own personal past links developmentally to preadolescent children’s growing ability to understand history as a living enterprise. Through understanding one’s own personal past in relation to others, and their own family history in social and cultural context, children begin to understand history as a collection of individual lives linked through social and cultural interactions woven together into an historical narrative. It is with this developing awareness that history becomes more than a collection of facts, and becomes a rich tapestry of human existence, struggle and survival. Acknowledgements This paper was written while the author was a senior fellow in the Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Law and Religion at Emory University, sponsored by a grant from The Pew Charitable Trusts. The opinions expressed here are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Pew Charitable trusts.

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Autobiography, time and history… Bruner, J.S. 1975 ‘From communication to language: A psychological perspective’ Cognition, 3: 255–87. 1990 Acts of Meaning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Duke, M., R. Fivush, A. Lazarus. and J. Bohanek 2003 Of Ketchup and Kin: Dinnertime Conversations as a Major Source of Family Knowledge, Family Adjustment and Family Resilience. Working paper of the Sloan Center for Myth and Ritual in American Life, Emory University. Eisenberg, A. 1985 ‘Learning to describe past experience in conversation’ Discourse Processes 8: 177–204. Fiese, B.H., K.A. Hooker, L. Kotray, J. Schwagler, and M. Rimmer 1997 ‘Family stories in the early pages of parenthood’ Journal of Marriage and the Family 57: 763–70. Fiese, B.H. and K. Marjinsky 1999 ‘Dinnertime stories: Connecting family practices with relationship beliefs and child adjustment’ Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development 64(2, Pt. 3): 52–68. Fivush, R. 2001 ‘Owning experience: The development of subjective perspective in autobiographical memory’ in C. Moore and K. Lemmon (eds.) The Self in Time: Developmental Perspectives: 35–52. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Fivush, R., J. Bohanek, R. Robertson and M. Duke 2004 ‘Family narratives and the development of children’s emotional well-being’ in M. W. Pratt and B.E. Fiese (eds.) Family Stories and the Lifecourse: Across Time and Generations: 55–76. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Fivush, R. and J.P. Buckner 2003 ‘Constructing gender and identity through autobiographical narratives’ in R. Fivush and C. Haden (eds.) Autobiographical Memory and the Construction of a Narrative Self: Developmental and Cultural Perspectives: 149-168. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Fivush, R. and F. Fromhoff 1988 ‘Style and structure in mother-child conversations about the past’ Discourse Processes 11: 337–55. Fivush, R. and C.A. Haden 2004 ‘Parent-child reminiscing and the construction of a subjective self’ in B. Homer and C. Tamis-LeMonda (eds.) The Development of Social Cognition and Communication: 75–94. Mahwah: NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Fivush, R., C.A. Haden and S. Adam 1995 ‘Structure and coherence of preschoolers’ personal narratives 55

Chapter 2 - Robyn Fivush over time: Implications for childhood amnesia’ Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 60: 32–56. Fivush, R. and K. Nelson 2004 ‘Culture and language in the emergence of autobiographical memory’ Psychological Science 15: 586-590. Friedman, W. J. 1990 ‘Children’s representations of the pattern of daily activities’ Child Development 61: 1399–1412. 1993 ‘Memory for the time of past events’ Psychological Bulletin 11: 44–66. Friedman, W. J. and S. Kemp 1998 ‘The effects of elapsed time and retrieval on young children’s judgments of the temporal distances of past events’ Cognitive Development, 13: 335–67. Haden, C.A. 1998 ‘Reminiscing with different children: Relating maternal stylistic consistency and sibling similarity in talk about the past’ Developmental Psychology 34: 99–114. Haden, C.A. and R. Fivush 1996 ‘Contextual variation in maternal conversational styles’ MerrillPalmer Quarterly 42: 200–27. Harner, L. 1982 ‘Talking about the past and future’ in W. J. Friedman (ed.) The Developmental Psychology of Time: 51–61. New York: Academic Press. Hoff-Ginsburg, E. 1991 ‘Mother-child conversations in different social classes and communicative settings’ Child Development 62: 782–96. Hudson, J. A. 1990 ‘The emergence of autobiographic memory in mother-child conversation’ in R. Fivush and J. A. Hudson (eds.) Knowing and Remembering in Young Children: 166–96. New York: Cambridge University Press. Hudson, J. A., R. Fivush and J. Kuebli 1992 ‘Scripts and episodes: The development of event memory’ Applied Cognitive Psychology 6: 483–505. Hudson, J. A. and L. Shapiro 1991 ‘Effects of task and topic on children’s narratives’ in A. McCabe and C. Peterson (eds.) New Directions in Developing Narrative Structure: 89–136. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Labov, W. 1982 ‘Speech actions and reaction in personal narrative’ in D. Tannen (ed.) Analyzing Discourse: Text and Talk: 3-38. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. 56

Autobiography, time and history… Leichtman, M., Q. Wang and D.P. Pillemer 2003 ‘Cultural variations in interdependence and autobiographical memory: Lessons form Korea, China, India and the United States’ in R. Fivush & C. Haden (eds.) Autobiographical Memory and the Construction of a Narrative Self: Developmental and Cultural Perspectives: 73–98. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Miller, P. J. 1994 ‘Narrative practices: Their role in socialization and selfconstruction’ in U. Neisser and R. Fivush (eds.) The Remembering Self: Construction and Accuracy in the Life Narrative: 158–79. New York: Cambridge University Press. Miller, P. J., and L. L. Sperry 1988 ‘Early talk about the past: The origins of conversational stories of personal experience’ Journal of Child Language 15: 293–315. Nelson, K. 1986 Event Knowledge: Structure and Function in Development. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Nelson, K. (ed.) 1989 Narratives from the Crib. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 2003 ‘Self and social functions: Individual autobiographical memory and collective narrative’ Memory 11: 125-136. Nelson, K. and R. Fivush 2004 ‘The emergence of autobiographical memory: A social cultural developmental model’ Psychological Review 111: 486–511. Ochs, E., C. Taylor, D. Rudolph and R. Smith 1992 ‘Storytelling as a theory-building activity’ Discourse Processes 15: 37–72. Perner, J. 1991 Understanding the Representational Mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 2001 ‘Episodic memory: Essential distinctions and developmental implications’ in C. Moore and K. Lemmon (eds.) The Self in Time: Developmental Perspectives: 181–202. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Peterson, C. and A. McCabe 1982 Developmental Psycholinguistics: Three Ways of Looking at a Narrative. New York: Plenum. Peterson, C. and A. McCabe 1992 ‘Parental styles of narrative elicitation: Effect on children’s narrative structure and content’ First Language 12: 299–321. Pillemer, D. 1998 Momentous Events, Vivid Memories. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 57

Chapter 2 - Robyn Fivush Povinelli, D.J., K.R. Landau and H.K. Perilloux 1996 ‘Self-recognition in young children using delayed versus live feedback: Evidence of a developmental asynchrony’ Child Development 67: 1540–54. Povinelli, D. J, A. M. Landry, L. A. Theall, B. R. Clark and C. M. Castille 1999 ‘Development of young children’s understanding that the recent past is causally bound to the present’ Developmental Psychology 35: 1426–39. Reese, E., C. A. Haden and R.Fivush 1993 ‘Mother-child conversations about the past: Relationships of style and memory over time’ Cognitive Development 8: 403–30. Reese, E., C.A. Haden and R. Fivush 1996 ‘Mothers, father, daughters sons: Gender differences in reminiscing’ Research on Language and Social Interaction 29: 27–56. Sachs, J. 1983 ‘Talking about the there and then: The emergence of displaced reference in parent-child discourse’ in K. E. Nelson (ed.) Children’s language 4: 1–28. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Welch-Ross, M. 2001 ‘Personalizing the temporally extended self: Evaluative selfawareness and the development of autobiographical memory’ in C. Moore and K. Lemmon (eds.) The self in time: Developmental perspectives: 97–120. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

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Chapter 3 Representing the Past in Pictures Alan Costall and Ann Richards 1. Introduction The Danish philosopher, Søren Kierkegaard, compared philosophy to a shop with a sign in its window saying “trousers pressed here” - you enter only to discover that the shopkeeper is a sign painter, and the sign is for sale. The present book, Telling Children About the Past, is about how children come to achieve a sense of events that happened a time long before they were born. Although the title of the book refers to ‘telling’, we have been asked to consider how pictures, rather than talk or text, can ‘re-present’ the past to children. There does exist a limited amount of relevant research, to which, of course, we will refer, but we are not in a position to be able to offer a standard “review of the literature.” There has been hardly any psychological research directed specifically to the pictorial representation of the past. So it is also the case that in our shop window it is the sign that is for sale: “psychological research on the pictorial representation of the past conducted here”. However, we are not just in the business of selling signs. Rather, our main purpose is to clear the way for further research. The existing theories of picture perception have tended to veer between two extremes, neither of which have been helpful in encouraging research into how pictures actually work. We have been faced with two incompatible, yet historically and logically intertwined, accounts of pictorial meaning: an ‘objectivist’ one which attributes pictorial meaning to geometrical or optical projection itself, and a ‘subjectivist’ one which regards pictures as ‘projective’ in a quite different sense: as inherently unstructured surfaces upon which perceivers merely project their own individual or socially shared meanings. We shall be arguing, instead, not for a mere compromise between these alternatives, but for a relational approach to pictures that connects their meaning both to their material structure and also to the communities in which these representations ‘live’. 2. Two opposing views of pictures

Pictures are often contrasted with language in terms of their status 59

Chapter 3 - Alan Costall and Ann Richards as ‘natural’ as opposed to ‘conventional’ signs: pictures have been assumed to bear a direct and lawful relation to what they represent, whereas language depends on local, socially-shared conventions. This appearance of ‘naturalness’ has seemed particularly true of linear perspective, which, as its early proponents proclaimed, replicated the pattern of light that would have been projected from the depicted scene itself. Linear perspective developed not simply as a particular technique, among many others, for constructing pictures but as a theory of what a picture should be: the picture as a ‘section’ of the sheath of light rays emanating from the depicted scene to a specific point in space, the ‘centre of perspective’ – or, as Alberti (1435/1991, 54) put it, “an open window through which the subject to be painted is seen.” The system of linear perspective embodies a reassuringly neat and lawful relation between the picture and what it represents. Given a definite ‘station point’ (i.e. the centre of projection) and a particular position and orientation of the picture plane, the ‘shape’ of the projected image is fully specified. Yet, within the Western tradition, alongside the assumption of the ‘transparency’ of the meaning of perspectival pictures, there has been a long standing mistrust of any knowledge based solely on the senses, in general, and of pictorial representation, in particular (Arnheim 1969, 2–3). Curiously, despite its rhetoric of ‘empiricism’, this mistrust has persisted within the sciences not just in their emphasis upon the unreliability and biases of empirical observations, but in the fundamental conviction that scientific reality itself lies beyond the reach of the senses, and can only be inferred, such as hidden atomic structures in the case of physics, and mental or cognitive structures in the case of psychology (cf. Costall and Leudar 2004). Indeed, this has been the standard line taken in theories of perception for many centuries (see Costall 1997; Hatfield and Epstein 1979), and it is a prejudice still embodied in most ‘modern’ theories of vision. Knowing the world through vision, according to this standard view, involves two quite distinct steps: first, the supposed passive reception of disordered and meaningless sensations (‘the input’ in modern terminology), and, then the intervention of the intellect (‘cognitive processing’), the sole source of order and meaning. Paradoxically, the system of linear perspective, as an ideal of how pictures should ‘work’, has itself served to reinforce the distrust of pictorial representation, and visually-based knowledge in general. Given a particular station point relative to the scene to be depicted, and also to the picture plane, the ensuing perspective projection is then fully determined. But this tidy relation does not hold in reverse. In principle, the projected shapes on the picture are compatible with an infinite (though constrained) set of circumstances in the world. Thus, an elliptical shape on the picture plane could have been projected onto it either by a circle 60

Representing the Past in Pictures at a slant, or by a whole set of ellipses at different orientations, or even quite separate edges located in quite different planes that just happen to ‘line up’ on the picture plane. In response to this problem of pictorial ambiguity, painters, such as Leonardo da Vinci, began to identify various ‘pictorial depth cues’ that could be deployed in a picture to help convey the spatial relationships between the depicted objects (see Kemp 2001). However, it has been generally agreed that these cues could never, either individually or collectively, fully specify the spatial relationships between the depicted objects. The problem of the potential ambiguity of perspective pictures clearly reinforced the long-standing distrust of pictures, and also vision more generally, as a source of knowledge. In contrast, however, the very fact that linear perspective had such an explicit geometrical and optical basis accorded very well with the classical idea of knowledge as theoretical and explicit rather than practical and tacit (see Toulmin 1976). Furthermore, following the invention of photography in the 19th century, even the need for the craft of the artist to translate the image projected by the camera into paint was eliminated. Instead, as Fox Talbot, one of the pioneers of photography, put it, “the depicted object draws its own picture” (Talbot 1839, cited in Greenough et al. 1989, 11). The projective paradigm of pictures is therefore deeply ambivalent about their status. It emphasizes not only the inherent unreliability of pictures, but also the apparently intimate connection between image and reality. This fundamental ambivalence about pictures is reflected in the way psychologists have used pictures in their own research. On the one hand, psychologists have studied the abilities of young children and also people from societies with little or no experience of pictures, in the firm expectation that such observers should have great difficulty in making sense of them. On the other hand, experimental psychologists have shown no hesitation in using pictures as substitutes for the ‘real thing,’ in, for example, their research on object recognition and face perception. Indeed, given that the majority of theories of visual perception continue to take pictures as the starting point of vision—namely, the images formed on the retina of the eye—why should we suppose that pictures might pose any special problems as ‘objects’ for perception? This surely goes a long way to explain why, despite the widespread use of pictures in psychological research, there has been so little interest in how people, immersed in a world of images, actually make sense of pictures. The last comprehensive overview of the existing research on the psychology of picture perception appeared more than twenty-five years ago (Hagen 1980)! 3. Two contrasting views of ‘projection’ in relation to pictures

When we think of a picture as an optical or geometrical projection 61

Chapter 3 - Alan Costall and Ann Richards of a depicted scene, and, furthermore, as a projected image ‘captured’ not just by drawing or painting but ‘automatically’ by means of photography, the relation between the picture and the depicted scene seems so intimate and so transparent, that it is tempting to suppose that the very process of optical projection explains how pictures work. Indeed, some theorists have regarded pictorial representation as so straightforward that they have taken it as a ready solution to other difficult problems, such as the nature of language, as in Wittgenstein’s early philosophy (Daitz 1953). However, projection does not, as such, provide an adequate explanation of pictorial representation. It does not even apply to perspective pictures. There are pictures that are in perfectly good ‘shape’ as perspective projections yet simply do not look right or else are difficult to comprehend or disentangle (Pirenne 1980). Furthermore, many of the pictures that surround us are not ‘in’ linear perspective (or any other consistent projective system), and yet are highly effective, such as skilful caricatures which succeed precisely because they exaggerate the distinguishing features of their victims. Another approach to understanding how pictures represent things is to think of a picture as a coalition of specific pictorial devices that each, in their different ways, help to convey meaning to the spectator. Many of these devices are not necessarily tied to any particular system of depiction (such as linear perspective) but can occur in quite different systems (see Blakemore 1973; Costall 1993). Now, this, of course, is what the traditional approach based on the concept of ‘pictorial cues’ had in mind. However, as we have seen, such cues were regarded as inherently unreliable, since they were not supposed to bear a systematic or consistent relation to states of affairs in the depicted scene. There is now a growing recognition among psychological researchers that we seriously underestimated the amount of information available to perceivers. We failed to take into account the many ways in which the world itself is structured or constrained, and in turn structures the information available in light, sound, and so on. And we adopted an overly atomistic approach to the study of perceptual information, focusing upon isolated ‘features’ rather than more subtle relational structures. One of the pioneers in this change of emphasis within perceptual theory was the American psychologist, James Gibson (1904-1979). In his later work, he emphasized the information that becomes available when we move around and act upon things, and the way that such information involves transformations over time (Gibson 1979). He thus rejected the traditional idea that the perception of pictures should be regarded as representative of perceiving in general. Nevertheless, he also made the important claim that some of the information available to us in real situations can also be captured in pictures, and that such information is not arbitrary and ambiguous, but can completely specify objects, events, and the ‘layout’ of the world. For example, the visible horizon in a picture or a 62

Representing the Past in Pictures real scene corresponds to eye level, and hence the horizon can specify the size of objects relative to eye level (Sedgwick 1980). Thus, objects based on the ground surface that extend above the horizon must be higher than eye-level, and objects that transect the horizon in the same proportions must be of equal size (regardless of their relative distance from one another). The very existence of such informative structures does not imply that the perceiver is passive, and plays no active part in accessing what they mean. The crucial difference between Gibson’s information-based approach and the traditional ‘cue’ theory concerns how perceivers engage in an ‘effort after meaning’. In the case of the cue approach, the perceiver adds meaning to inherently impoverished cues, and, in effect, ‘guesses.’ In the information-based approach, the perceiver needs to attend to the relevant informative structures, and this may involve a good deal of learning and even training, as when an expert on art distinguishes a genuine antique from a fake, or a doctor diagnoses an illness. In the textbooks, the standard cue approach is often explained by drawing an analogy with the detective, Sherlock Holmes, famed for his ability to make inspired inferences from “fragmentary scraps of data” (Eysenck and Keane 1995, 76). Yet both Sherlock Holmes and Joseph Bell (the Edinburgh professor of medicine with exceptional diagnostic skills, upon whom Conan Doyle’s fictional detective was based) were at their most impressive and effective not when resorting to guessing, but, rather, when acting in ‘Gibsonian’ mode – that is, carefully attending to subtle or apparently unremarkable features of the situation that really clinch the forensic or diagnostic case. We shall be drawing upon Gibson’s approach to pictures in our examination of the ways pictures might help convey a sense of the past. But we part company with his analysis of pictures in two respects. For our purposes, his analysis of the information available in pictures was largely pitched at a rather abstract level, the depiction of surfaces rather than of meaningful objects and events. Furthermore, contrary to his emphasis upon the reciprocity of people and other animals and their environments, Gibson himself promoted an extremely ‘reified’ or ‘objectified’ conception of information. In fact, in presenting our own relational approach to pictorial meaning we will be emphasizing, instead, Gibson’s radical concept of ‘affordances.’ The concept of affordances was Gibson’s attempt to undermine the dualism, so fundamental to Western thought, between materiality and meaning. According to the concept of affordances, objects have meaning, but in relation to the various activities which they can support. Their material structure does not determine their meaning, but it does constrain the various things that could be done with them. For, although it is true that we can do many different things with the same object, it is not the case that we can do anything with anything. We will be applying this line of thinking to pictures. Pictures, we shall be arguing, have meaning, sometimes quite definite meaning, but in relation to particular contexts 63

Chapter 3 - Alan Costall and Ann Richards of use. Thinking about the meaning of things in such a relational way, has of course, wider implications for archaeology, one of the few human sciences that would seem obliged, given its very data, to take materiality seriously (see De Marrais et al. 2004). Meaning, according to this relational view, does not “hover” over the material world, but “permeates” it (Ingold 2000, 340). As the archaeologist, Julian Thomas, has put it: “…we cannot separate mind from body, the mental from the material, or thought from action. …Cultural change takes place in the relationships between people and things, rather than in the head” (1999, 155). 3.1 What pictures can do When psychologists first turned their attention to the topic of pictorial representation their main concern related to the perception of ‘space’. How can people experience three-dimensional objects and the spatial relationships between them on the basis of a static and two-dimensional pictorial display? On the face of it, this would seem to be something that only those with extensive experience of pictures could begin to achieve. Yet studies of babies and young children, and even of animals, have demonstrated that they can readily recognize the objects depicted, and the spatial relationships among them. One of the more remarkable of such studies remains the “deprivation experiment” performed by Hochberg and Brooks (1962) on their baby son. They did their best to prevent their son from seeing any pictures, and, with the exception of occasional glimpses of advertisements in the street, largely succeeded. When their child was two (and sufficiently mobile to break in upon their furtive evening television viewing), they tested his recognition of photographs and even outline drawings of everyday objects. And he performed remarkably well. For a long time it was difficult to reconcile such findings from developmental and comparative psychology with the insistent claim made by many cross-cultural researchers that people from societies with no history of picture making were, to a large extent, ‘blind’ to the meaning of pictures, even photographs. For example, much was made of the apparently foolish way in which these people would turn the pictures over to inspect the other side. Yet, as Kennedy (1974) noted, the people being tested would hardly have been puzzled by the images, if they could see them as nothing but meaningless patches of light and dark. Indeed, it was a peculiar assumption, on the part of the investigators, that the people they were investigating might be unable to make sense of the pictures they were shown, and yet be perfectly au fait with the social institution of the psychology experiment! In a critical reassessment of the cross-cultural research, Jones and Hagen (1980) have revealed the incompetence and blatant prejudice of some of the major researchers in this field: the use of poorly designed materials; failure to present the material in such a way as to help the observers attend to the pictorial display in the proper way; 64

Representing the Past in Pictures confusions, on the part of those tested, about the true purpose of the ‘test’; and selective reporting of the results. Reassessing the available crosscultural research, they came to the same conclusion as those studying young children: that it is possible to recognize objects, and appreciate the spatial relations between them, without any extensive experience with pictures. The preoccupation with object recognition and ‘space’ in the existing psychological research on picture perception has led to the neglect of other important issues. Thus, despite all of the emphasis upon ‘space’, researchers have even neglected the closely related issue of scale. Clearly, the inclusion of familiar objects helps to convey the scale of a depicted scene, as when someone photographing an archaeological ‘section’ includes a measuring rod or a person in the picture. But familiar size is not the whole story. The visible horizon, and indeed the proportions of certain objects can be informative about their size (Bingham 1993a, 1993b; Sedgwick 1980). Another, remarkable characteristic of pictures is that they can portray surfaces that are as shiny as polished silver or as transparent as glass even though the pigments themselves, being matt and opaque, lack these very properties. Perhaps the most wonderful thing about pictures is not, however, that they can portray depth despite being flat, or properties of surfaces that transcend those of the pigments from which the picture is made, but, rather, that pictures can represent events despite being still rather than moving images (Cutting 2002; Valenti and Costall 1997). Even in early paintings and carvings we can often recognize not only the ‘objects’ represented, such as people, animals, or boats but at least sometimes also what is supposed to be going on: people hunting, plowing or skiing (Jørgensen and Jørgensen 1972). Indeed, we are so used to seeing the movement and energy in photographs of various sports, that it is only when such photographs fail, as when a footballer just seems to be hanging limply in mid-air rather than jumping to head the ball, that we really take any notice. Young children seem to have surprisingly few problems even with this temporal aspect of pictures (Beilin 1991). Indeed, events are the very stuff of children’s comics: collisions, chasing, and various other kinds of mayhem. Many children’s drawings are about events, and some of their earliest drawings, which we may mistake for meaningless scribbles are, in fact, ‘action representations’, where the very activity of drawing is itself the means of representation. For example, a child may represent someone mowing the lawn by drawing the person as a schematic figure, but the mower itself by means of energetic whirling movements of the pen – accompanied, no doubt, by appropriate sound effects from the child (Arnheim 1967, 169; see also Feinburg 1976; Matthews 1984). In fact, young children are able to represent narratives in a variety of ways (Luquet 2001), and engage in a kind of proto-writing with their drawings (Catán 1989; Vygotsky 1978). 65

Chapter 3 - Alan Costall and Ann Richards Everything we have said so far clearly favors the assumption that the meanings of pictures should be highly accessible to young children, and would also seem to support the unqualified optimism of the more enthusiastic promoters of visual media in teaching. However, the research we have considered so far has been concerned with what children are able to see in pictures, not their understanding of how pictures connect with the wider world in which they exist. It is becoming increasingly clear, that making this connection can pose real problems for children. For example, children before the age of about four seem incapable of using a photograph of a room as a guide to help them search for a hidden object, such as a teddy bear, in the actual room (DeLoache et al. 1998). Yet, curiously, confusions can also arise in the other direction, as it were, when children suppose that a picture should itself change if the scene it depicts is subsequently modified in some way (Zaitchik 1990). Thus, despite the central place of mapping in the projective model of pictures, it is precisely the ways in which pictures ‘map onto’ the world that children can find so confusing. And, on reflection, perhaps this should not be so surprising. One fundamental thing that a picture or a map fails to represent is how it relates to the world: “In a map, squares may represent houses and lines may represent streets, and this can be explained to a child. ... Now, it’s as though everything on the map represents something. ...but representing is not represented on the map. ... Its use is what makes it a map.” (Wittgenstein, cited in Bouwsma 1986, 343; emphasis added.) 4. The use of pictures to represent the past As we have just explained, young children have difficulty connecting the content of pictures even with the current state of the world. So how can they (or indeed we, since we were once children) come to see the past in pictures? Pictures are used in several different ways to represent the past: to depict ancient artifacts and structures, to re-enact past activities and events, and to portray the various archaeological procedures that provide us with information about past societies (see also Galanidou, chapter 7). The recognition of objects and the materials from which they are made (metal, wood, etc.) is clearly not a problem. The recognition of certain objects as human artifacts is probably also not a great problem, since they are usually quite distinctive – though a good deal more research is needed on this. And, as we have seen, children are used to the idea that even ‘still’ pictures can represent events. But how can pictures themselves also convey that these represented objects and events relate to the past? As in so many discussions relating to human perception, it is easy, given the dualistic nature of Western thought, to get trapped into ‘eitheror’ and ‘nothing-but’ thinking, and simply assume that pictorial meaning 66

Representing the Past in Pictures must be either ‘objective’ or else purely ‘subjective’ – either in the picture or in the eye of the beholder. But pictorial meaning (and ‘information’ more generally) is relational. Pictures really do have meaning but in relation to people and the uses they make of them. Pictures do not exist in a realm of their own. The saying that “a picture is worth a thousand words” clearly has some truth to it, but it also sets up a deeply misleading opposition between pictures and talk. We do not generally experience pictures in the way a visitor to a picture gallery often encounters the exhibits: alone and with little explanatory context. Yet this has been the implicit paradigm presupposed in much of the existing theory and research on picture perception. As for many of the other objects that surround them, it is not the case that children simply encounter pictures; they are introduced to them (Leont’ev 1981). Making sense of pictures, for most children, is not a solitary endeavor. Picture books, for example, and indeed the child’s own drawings provide a lively topic for early conversations (DeLoache and DeMendoza 1987). Robyn Fivush in her chapter (2) on parent-child reminiscing highlights the important role of conversation in the construction of memories and a sense of the past (see also Fivush 1994). And, beyond the confines of the immediate family, the child is soon exposed to other, possibly conflicting, narratives concerning the past (Tulviste and Wertsch 1994). Pictures can play an important part in conveying to children a sense of past events that not only occurred so early in their lives that they cannot recollect them, but which may also have occurred long before they were born. The family photograph album is one very powerful resource for conversations about the past: photographs of the child and siblings as babies, of the parents when they were children, and of now deceased relatives.1 Children develop a sense of the past not just by looking at pictures, but becoming engaged in conversations about them (see Edwards and Middleton 1988). Situating pictures in their wider context is also important if we are to appreciate how specific pictorial devices for representing the past actually function. Meaning exists in the picture. The structure of a picture really does matter, and our theories really ought to give the creators of pictures some credit for taking the trouble to put the structure there.2 But representation is not an intrinsic, self-contained, property of a picture. Representation is a functional relation, and presupposes not just the existence of people, but also specific kinds of ‘background’. Much of  Neisser has discussed this issue in terms of his concept of the ‘extended self’ (Neisser 1988). 2 We are not claiming that the meanings of pictures are limited to the artist’s intentions. As Fox Talbot noted, “it frequently happens, moreover - and this is one of the charms of photography - that the operator himself discovers on examination, perhaps long afterwards, that he had depicted many things he had no notion of at the time.” (Talbot, cited in Newall 1972, 150). 1

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Chapter 3 - Alan Costall and Ann Richards the original meaning of the early religious paintings in our art galleries, for example, is largely lost to us, given their and our dislocation from the ways of life in which they once played their part. 5. Depicting the Danish old times In the remainder of this chapter, we will be considering some of the means by which pictures can help convey a sense of the past to children. Although we come from England, we have recently been based in Denmark, and we have chosen our specific examples from Danish books for children about Danish prehistory. We are not claiming that the Danish books are typical - in several interesting respects Denmark is a very special case. There can be few other countries where the distant past is such ‘living prehistory’! There is an important sense of identification of the Danes with their prehistory. There has been continuity of occupation of their own land, and in the national songs the old times are represented as a golden age. Thus authors and illustrators working on books about the past for Danish children can take quite a lot for granted. However, as we have been stressing, the representation of the past needs to be understood as culturally situated and the Danish context illustrates this point very well. Pictures do not exist in a realm of their own but are used in combination, not only with text, but also, as in Denmark, with archaeological source material and practical activities that that can engage children’s interest. Also, we do think the Danish children’s books provide good examples of the resourceful deployment of ‘devices’ available within a particular community to convey a sense of the past. The distant past is evident in the Danish landscape, such as the thousands of burial mounds that still survive across the country. Michaelsen (1997, 51) remarks that “...in its own quiet way the Bronze Age is part of our modern world. Everyone knows about the burial mounds. Here is prehistory that one can clamber up and stand upon. We can literally stand on the past and look into the future.”3 Also, in addition to the usual pots, shards and postholes, hardly the stuff to capture children’s imaginations, there are, thanks to special local conditions, truly impressive organic remains in remarkable condition: Viking long boats, distinctive clothing and, perhaps best of all, ghastly, crumpled ‘bog bodies’ whose fame extends well beyond Denmark. Indeed, the Danish archaeologist P.V. Glob was urged to write his popular book about the bog people, by a deputation of English school children (Glob 1965). The Danish seem to have a genius for bringing ‘dead’ artifacts to life, most notably at the Viking Ship Museum at Roskilde, where in addition to the original finds, the visitor can see full-scale replicas being sailed in the neighboring fjord, and new replicas under construction by means of the original techniques. The National  The translations from the Danish texts are our own.

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Representing the Past in Pictures Museum in Copenhagen also makes special provision for children, with artifacts they can touch and play with, including a replica Viking boat. As the Museum’s information leaflet states “The Children’s Museum invites the active participation in a journey traversing 3,500 years of cultural history”. In fact, there are at least 40 historical workshops throughout Denmark, which provide a resource for the teaching of archaeology through activities for children, and these are seen as offering an important complement to other resources such as pictures and text. In his book on the Tollund Man, Fischer (1988, 2) expresses the hope that pupils reading the book will be inspired to find out more through visiting historical workshops and museums and perhaps even participating in archaeological digs themselves. A website (www.historiskevaerksteder.dk/index.htm) provides information and links to many of these workshops. One of the best known, the HistoricalArchaeological Research Centre at Lejre, carries out a program of practical experiments on Iron Age culture and its results feature in many publications for children. For example, a series of well illustrated books on the Iron Age covers such topics as agriculture, ceramics and weaving, based on research carried out at the Centre. These books are aimed at helping pupils and teachers to work together in interpreting archaeological material and attempting to reconstruct aspects of Iron Age culture through their own experiments. “In this way, pupils get the opportunity to compare their own solutions with those of others” (Kold 1970, i). Most of the Danish archaeology books available for children are explicitly ‘instructional’ in tone and obviously aimed at school age children. However, there are also books available that aim to engage the interest of very young children and, as such, contain mainly pictures and very little accompanying text, and certainly no explanations that the pictures are indeed about the past. We have been particularly struck by a charming series of books by Seeberg and Seeberg about everyday family life, From Morning to Evening, from the Stone Age to the Viking Age (1996; 1997; 1998; 1999). The children depicted in these books are very young and, despite the clothing appropriate to the time, look thoroughly modern, in, for example, their haircuts. The children reading the books are clearly being invited to identify with the children in the story. So what helps place the depicted events in the past? Well, certainly once one compares the different books, it is clear that one important way of conveying the past is to include iconic finds and monuments of the past in the picture. In the Danish context, there are several such icons that have achieved the status of national emblems (see Barrett 2005 for a review of children’s understanding of such emblems as the national flag). A widely known example is the distinctive style of long boat from the Viking period. But within Denmark itself, a potent symbol is the lur, a spiral, horn-like musical instrument from the Bronze Age (Fig. 1). The lurs, commonly found in pairs, are defining artifacts of the Scandinavian/North European 69

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Fig. 1. A lur from Brudevælte, Nordsjælland, now in the collection of the National Museum of Denmark. (Photograph: Alan Costall, reproduced with permission). 70

Representing the Past in Pictures Bronze Age and, although the majority have been found in Denmark, they are also known from Germany, Sweden and Norway. As Michaelsen has put it, in his book for children about the Bronze Age, “the lur is one of the most Danish symbols we have.” It widely appears in various logos, and as a national emblem. For example, it was used on the campaign posters for the important vote held in 1920 to determine whether the people in the contested territory of Schleswig-Holstein wished to belong to Germany or Denmark (Michaelsen 1997, 44). Interestingly, although a Danish brand of butter, Lurpak, is widely used in England, it was only during the course of preparing this chapter that we noticed the stylized lurs on the trademark, and recognized the reference to lurs in the name of the product. The illustrations in the Seebergs’ Morning to Evening books about the Bronze Age (1997) and the Viking period (1999) were able to include lurs and Viking ships that effectively tie the books to these specific periods. In contrast, in the book that deals with the early Stone Age (1996), the illustrations did not include iconic finds, since there are fewer remains from that period which have attained such status. Another iconic artifact used in the Seebergs’ book on the Bronze Age is the costume from the Egtved burial, which is now displayed in the Danish National Museum in Copenhagen. Special soil conditions meant that the bones of the dead woman had been destroyed, but the teeth, hair and clothes were perfectly preserved. On the basis of the teeth, the estimated age at death was between 16 and 20 years (Glob 1970; Hvass 2000). The burial created a sensation in Denmark when it was discovered in 1921 and the very name, the ‘Egtved girl’, which was immediately applied to the dead woman, has been used throughout Denmark ever since (Glob 1970). This burial is regarded with particular pride and affection in Denmark. For example, Hvass (2000, 70) considers this find to be “... one of the most important from the Bronze Age, famous throughout the world. Rarely has any find brought us closer to the people of prehistoric times than the Egtved girl”. The exceptional quality and nature of the clothing make it unique. We recently overheard a guide at the National Museum explaining the burial to a group of visitors: “Here we have the Egtved girl in her beautiful clothes. Nowhere else in the world do people have beautiful clothes from the Bronze Age like these we have in Denmark!” When the burial was first examined, the preservation of the outer layer of skin of the dead woman gave some suggestion of the outline of her body and even of her profile. The existing archaeological evidence consists of photographs and information from this initial examination and the costume, hair and grave goods, which are currently displayed in the original coffin. A replica of the costume is also on show at the National Museum. There have been many attempts, through both drawings and photographs, to represent the girl as she might have looked in life and these obviously make this archaeological evidence more accessible to both children and adults (Fig. 2). 71

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a

b

Fig. 2. Reconstructions of the Egtved girl in her costume: (a) from 1936 and (b) from 1987. (Photographs: The National Museum of Denmark, reproduced with permission). It is interesting to note that these illustrations ‘show the past’ in two senses, first as an attempt to depict the Bronze Age, but also, unwittingly, as a source of information about the time when the picture itself was produced. Particularly in the case of photographs, subtle details, such as hairstyle, posture, and even how the subject relates to the camera in terms of eye contact and expression, seem mercilessly to reveal the date, despite the photographer’s best efforts towards authenticity. For example, the photograph of a girl wearing the Egtved costume, included in Kold (1970, 4) is unmistakably from the 1960s. Michaelsen (1997, 30–31), in his book for children, shows photographs ranging from around the 1930s to the 1990s and points out that ‘every age has its Egtved girl!’ 72

Representing the Past in Pictures The Egtved costume features in the Seebergs’ book on the Bronze Age (Fig. 3), and through its iconic status ties the events in the book specifically to that period. Now, of course, even an adult reader unaware of Danish archaeology would not appreciate that the illustration refers to the Egtved costume and might dismiss this minimal ‘mini-skirt’ as a blatant anachronism. And we are not suggesting that a young Danish child will

Fig. 3. An illustration by Ursula Seeberg showing a young woman wearing the Egtved costume. (Seeberg and Seeberg 1997, reproduced with permission). 73

Chapter 3 - Alan Costall and Ann Richards automatically pick up the significance of the costume. However, consistent with the existing research on joint picture book interactions (DeLoache and DeMendoza 1987), it seems very likely that an adult reading the book with a child would readily identify this well-known find, thus providing the occasion for some conversation about the Egtved girl and maybe even a visit to the National Museum. In addition to pictures of the past, there are also pictures from the past that can be very distinctive. Thus the ‘orthographic’ mode of representation characteristic of Egyptian tomb paintings is readily identifiable. For the Danes, the Bronze Age rock carvings, found in various parts of Scandinavia, are very evocative of the distant past (Fig. 4). Those found in Bohuslän in Sweden are especially rich in imagery and very well known in Denmark, though the Danes also have some interesting examples of their own, such as those on the Englestrup stone (Jørgenesen and Jørgensen 1972). These images, with their distinctive style, are not only included explicitly as figures with captions, but are also used very effectively to convey a sense of the distant past, through their use as margin decorations (Michaelsen 1997) and as endpapers and cover decorations (Jensen 1979). Clearly, as we have been arguing, an important aspect of representing the past is conveying a sense of difference (see also Dommasnes and Galanidou Introduction). We have been emphasizing the important role of iconic artifacts in the Danish context, which are indeed strange,

Fig. 4. Outline of a rock carving from Bohuslän, Sweden, showing men blowing lurs. 74

Representing the Past in Pictures and ‘famous’ for being so. But a sense of difference can also be conveyed by the familiar, though presented as strange as seen through different eyes and placed in a different context. The Seebergs’ book on the Iron Age (1998), for example, features a barely domesticated cat, and, as such, a very curious object as far as the children in the story are concerned – the very latest thing in mouse-traps but one that requires feeding. Representing the past to children as foreign requires not only a sense of distance but, if the book is to engage their interest, also involvement. Many illustrations of events from the past present an ‘external’ perspective, where the reader is made to feel like a detached onlooker. However, in our view, the more effective books draw the child into the past, by including children with whom they can identify. For example, a book on prehistory for children by Michaelsen (1998, 54) includes an account, in the form of a newspaper report, of two children who actually found a hoard of Bronze Age swords in 1993 during a potato harvest, with a photograph of them looking very proud with their find. This attempt to involve children is what we found most engaging about the Seebergs’ From Morning to Evening books. The main characters are of the same age as the intended readers, and look unmistakably modern, despite their different clothing, so that the young readers can identify with them, and get involved in their prehistoric exploits. Pictures, along with stories, films, and plays, can really ‘draw us in’, so that we completely lose ourselves in the represented events, and identify ourselves with the characters involved (see Michotte 1991). 6. Conclusion In this chapter, we have tried to identify some of the ‘devices’ by which pictures can help to convey a sense of the past. The examples we have given are, admittedly, rather specific and even local. Yet, that is precisely our point. Research on picture perception has, as we have been arguing, been hampered by two opposing views: a subjectivist view that denies any serious role for the content of a picture, and an objectivist view that treats the meaning in a picture as intrinsic and readily accessible regardless of the background of the observer. We have adopted a relational approach to pictorial meaning, and, on the basis of our investigation of the ways in which Danish prehistory is illustrated for Danish children, come to recognize the importance of locally meaningful structures in conveying the pastness of ancient times, as in the inclusion of iconic finds from the past, some of which may be hardly known beyond a particular community. We have taken as our main task the examination of some of the ways in which pictures can even begin to convey a sense of the past to young children. But, to the extent that this is clearly possible, there is the further question of whether such representations do justice to current archaeological knowledge and uncertainties. Here, in our view, lies a serious 75

Chapter 3 - Alan Costall and Ann Richards dilemma. For many of the ways in which the books we have been studying try to involve the child in the past can hardly avoid being misleading. The agenda of a narrative which will draw the child into the depicted events cannot be easily reconciled with the introduction of many qualifications about possible alternative interpretations of the archaeological record. And this is true not only for the story books, but also for the instructional texts. Furthermore, as we have noted, one very effective device to locate the depicted events within a particular period is the inclusion of well known archaeological finds from around that time. In many of the children’s books, young women are shown engaged in everyday tasks, such as making pots, gathering food or caring for children, while dressed in the Egtved costume (e.g. Jensen 1979, 2001; Michaelsen 1997; Seeberg and Seeberg 1997; Trenter and Kovanen 2001). Yet this clothing came from an elaborate burial and, although other evidence suggests the use of such a garment to have been widespread in Denmark, it is not possible to be sure that it served as everyday wear. The books cited above also include images of women wearing the ‘skirts’ found in the burials at Borum Eshøj and Skrydstrup but, among archaeologists, there has been considerable disagreement about how such ‘skirts’ were worn and, indeed, whether they were ever worn in life, being perhaps simply shrouds (Broholm and Hald 1940; Hald 1980). The variety of different representations of the ‘skirts’ does indirectly reflect this diversity of opinion, but only in books suitable for older children (e.g. Glob 1970; Jensen 1979, 2001) is the issue of different interpretations explicitly raised. Finally, the attempt to engage the child’s interest through close identification with characters and events supposedly located in the distant past is deeply paradoxical. For, the more we try to involve children in the past, by reducing its otherness, the more we may be undermining the educational, indeed moral, objective of encouraging an appreciation of the existence of different ways of life, and, furthermore, the care that is required in properly understanding such difference. References Alberti, L. B. 1991 On Painting. London: Penguin. Arnheim, R. 1967 Art and Visual Perception. London: Faber & Faber. [First published in 1956.] Arnheim, R. 1969 Visual Thinking. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Barrett, M. 2005 ‘Children’s understanding of, and feelings about, countries and 76

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Beilin, H. 1991 ‘Developmental aesthetics and the psychology of photography’ in R. Downs, L.S. Liben and D.S. Palermo (eds.) Visions of Aesthetics, the Environment, and Development: The Legacy of Joachim Wohlwill: 45–86. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Bingham, G. P. 1993a ‘Perceiving the size of trees: Biological form and the horizon ratio’ Perception and Psychophysics 54: 485–95. Bingham, G. P. 1993b ‘Perceiving the size of trees: Form as information about scale’ Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 19: 1139–61. Blakemore, C. 1973 ‘The baffled brain’ in R.L. Gregory, R.L. Gombrich and E.H. Gom­ brich (eds.) Illusion in Nature and Art: 9–48. London: Duckworth. Bouwsma, O. K. 1986 Wittgenstein: Conversations 1949-1951. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing. Broholm, H. C. and M. Hald 1940 Costumes of the Bronze Age in Denmark. Copenhagen: Arnold Busck. Catán, L. 1989 ‘Musical literacy and the development of rhythm representation: cognitive change and material media’ in A. Gellatly, D. Rogers and J. A. Sloboda (eds.), Cognition and Social Worlds: 144–67. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Costall, A. 1993 ‘Beyond linear perspective: A cubist manifesto for visual science’ Image and Vision Computing, 11: 334–41. 1997 ‘Innocence and corruption: conflicting images of child art’ Human Development, 40:133–44. Costall, A. and I. Leudar 2004 ‘Where is the ‘theory’ in theory of mind?’ Theory & Psychology 14: 623–46. Cutting, J.E. 2002 ‘Representing motion in a static image: constraints and parallels in art, science, and popular culture’ Perception 31: 1165–93. Daitz, E. 1953 ‘The picture theory of meaning’ Mind 62: 184–201. DeLoache, J.S., S.L. Pierroutsakos, D.H. Uttal, K.S. Rosengren and A. Gottlieb 1998 ‘Grasping the nature of pictures’ Psychological Science 9: 21–43. 77

Chapter 3 - Alan Costall and Ann Richards DeLoache, J.S. and O.A.P. DeMendoza 1987 ‘Joint picturebook interactions of mothers and 1-year-old children’ British Journal of Developmental Psychology 5: 111–24. DeMarrais E., C. Gosden and C. Renfrew (eds.) 2004 Rethinking Materiality: the Engagement of Mind with the Material World. Cambridge: MacDonald Institute for Archaeological Research Edwards, D. and D. Middleton 1988 ‘Conversational remembering and family relationships: How children learn to remember’ Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 5: 3–25. Eysenck, M.W. and M.T. Keane (eds.) 1995 Cognitive Psychology: A Student’s Handbook (3rd ed.) London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Feinburg, S. G. 1976 ‘Combat in child art’ in J.S. Bruner, A. Jolly and K. Sylva (eds.) Play: its Role in Development and Evolution: 589–93. London: Penguin. Fischer, C. 1988 På Sporet af Tollundmanden. Copenhagen: P. Haase & Søn. Fivush, R. 1994 ‘Constructing narrative, emotion, and self in parent-child conversations about the past’ in U. Neisser and R. Fivush (eds.) The Remembering Self: Construction and Accuracy in the Selfnarrative: 136–57. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Glob, P. V. 1965 Mosefolket: Jernalderens Mennesker Bevaret i 2000 År. Copenhagen: Gyldendal. 1970 Højfolket: Bronzealderens Mennesker Bevaret i 3000 År. Copenhagen: Gyldendal. Gibson, J. J. 1979 The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Boston: HoughtonMifflin. Greenough, S., J. Snyder, D. Travis and C. Westerbeck 1989 On the Art of Fixing a Shadow: One Hundred and Fifty Years of Photography. National Gallery of Art, Art Institute of Chicago. Boston: Bullfinch Press; Little, Brown, & Co. Hagen, M. (ed.) 1980 The Perception of Pictures (2 vols.). New York: Academic Press. Hald, M. 1980 Ancient Danish Textiles from Bogs and Burials. Copenhagen: The National Museum of Denmark. Hatfield, G.C. and W.Epstein 1979 ‘The sensory core and the medieval foundations of modern perceptual theory’ ISIS 70: 363–84. 78

Representing the Past in Pictures Hochberg, J. and V.Brooks 1962 ‘Pictorial recognition as an unlearned ability: A study of one child’s performance’ American Journal of Psychology 75: 624–28. Hvass, L. 2000 Egtvedpigen. Viborg: Sesam. Ingold, T. 2000 The Perception of the Environment: Essays in Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill. London: Routledge. Jensen, J. 1979 Bronzealderen. 2. Guder og Mennesker. Viborg: Sesam. 2001 Oldtiden i Danmark. Bronzealderen. Viborg: Sesam. Jones, R.K. and M.A. Hagen 1980 ‘A perspective on cross-cultural picture perception’ in M. A. Hagen (ed.) The Perception of Pictures (vol. 1): 193-226. New York: Academic Press. Jørgensen, O.B. and M.S. Jørgensen 1972 Bronzealderens Billedkunst. Holbæk: Historisk Samfund for Holbæk Amt. Kemp, M. (ed.) 2001 Leonardo on Painting. Yale, CT: Yale University Press. Kennedy, J. 1974 A Psychology of Picture Perception. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Kold, A. 1970 Vi Rekonstruer Jernalderen 5: Vævningen. Copenhagen: Gyldendal Leont’ev, A.N. 1981 Problems of the Development of Mind. Moscow: Progress Publishers. Luquet, G.-H. 2001 Children’s Drawings. London: Free Associations Press. Matthews, J. 1984 ‘Children drawing: Are young children really scribbling?’ Early Child Development and Care 18: 1–39. Michaelsen, K. K. 1997 Bronzealder - Imellem Sten og Jern. Glamsbjerg: Alrune. 1998 Tag over Hovedet: fra Jægerfolkets Telte til Vikingernes Huse. Copenhagen: Gyldendal. Michottte, A. 1991 ‘The emotional involvement of the spectator in the action represented in a film: Towards a theory’ in G. Thinès, A. Costall, A. and G.E. Butterworth (eds.) Michotte’s Experimental Phenomenology of Perception: 209–17. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. [Translation of A. Michotte, 1953. ‘La participation émotionelle du spectateur à l’action représentée a l’écran’ Revue Internationale de Filmologie 4: 87–96.] 79

Chapter 3 - Alan Costall and Ann Richards Neisser, U. 1988 Five Kinds of Self-Knowledge’ Philosophical Psychology 1: 35–59. Newhall, B. 1972 The History of Photography from 1839 to the Present Day. (Revised and enlarged edition.) London: Secker and Warbur Pirenne, M. H. 1989 Optics, painting, and photography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sedgwick, H.A. 1980 ‘The geometry of spatial layout in pictorial representation’ in M. Hagen (ed.) The Perception of Pictures (Vol. 1): 33–90. New York: Academic Press. Seeberg, P. and U. Seeberg 1996 Fra Morgen til Aften: En Forårsdag i Stenalderen. Copenhagen: Gyldendal 1997 Fra Morgen til Aften: En Sommerdag i Bronzealderen. Copenhagen: Gyldendal. 1998 Fra Morgen til Aften: En Efterårsdag i Jernalderen. Copenhagen: Gyldendal. 1999 Fra Morgen til Aften: En Vinterdag i Vikingetiden. Copenhagen: Gyldendal. Thomas, J. 1999 ‘Some problems with the notion of external symbolic storage, and the case of neolithic material culture in Britain’ in C. Ren­frew and C. Scarre (eds.) Cognition and material culture: 149–56. Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research. Toulmin, S. 1976 Knowing and Acting. New York: Macmillan. Trenter, L. and E. Kovanen 2001 Grav efter Spor. Copenhagen: Høst & Søn. Tulviste, P. and J.V. Wertsch 1994 ‘Official and unofficial histories: The case of Estonia’ Journal of Narrative and Life History 4: 311–29. Valenti, S. and A.P. Costall 1997 ‘Visual perception of lifted weight from kinematic and static (photographic) displays’ Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 23: 181–98. Vygotsky, L.S. 1978 ‘The prehistory of written language’ in. M. Coles, V. John-Steiner, S. Scribner and E. Souberman (eds.) Mind in Society :105–19. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Zaitchik, D. 1990 ‘When representations conflict with reality: the pre-schooler’s problem with false beliefs and ‘false’ photographs’ Cognition 35: 41–68. 80

Chapter 4 Children’s Understanding of Authenticity Susan A. Gelman and Brandy N. Frazier Recently, one of us was attending a museum exhibit about the Titanic at the Detroit Science Museum, where a number of elementaryschool-aged children were also present. The exhibit included a large block of ice, with a sign explaining that the temperature of the ice was the same as the temperature of the water surrounding the Titanic the night it sank. Visitors to the exhibit were encouraged to touch the ice and feel for themselves how cold it was. One of the children then turned to an adult in the group and asked in a voice tinged with awe, “Was this the actual iceberg that sank the Titanic?” The question was charmingly naive to the adult observer: clearly this could not have been the original iceberg from that night in 1912. Yet the question provides an interesting glimpse into the child’s perspective. He seemed to expect that objects in the exhibit would be authentic and tied to the original event. In this chapter, we examine children’s early understandings of authenticity, historical paths, and origins. “Historical path” refers to the continuity of an object over time, so that past encounters affect how an object is viewed later in time. This understanding is a crucial component of interacting with material culture as presented in museums. A painting created by Picasso himself is more valuable and museum-worthy than a reproduction (see Bloom 1996). Likewise, an original red-figured Greek vase fills us with awe, linking us to its creation thousands of years ago in an ancient civilization. Even mundane objects with little intrinsic value become priceless if their source indicates a brush with fame (e.g., Jacqueline Onassis’s faux-pearl necklace, which fetched a small fortune at auction). Where does an appreciation for authenticity come from? Does it have to be taught and instilled in museum-goers, or does it seem to be an easilylearned disposition (as with the child at the Titanic exhibit)? When do children come to appreciate that original, authentic objects have special status and special value? The answer to this question will provide information regarding the quality and nature of children’s museum experiences. It also has broader implications for how children reason about the past. 81

Chapter 4 - Susan A. Gelman and Brandy N. Frazier This chapter is organized as follows. We first sketch what we mean by historical path and authenticity, and their relevance to the museum experience. Next we review arguments suggesting that an appreciation for historical path and authenticity may not emerge until middle-childhood or later. We then contrast these arguments with recent research suggesting that even preschool-aged children have a rudimentary understanding that historical path is important to an object’s identity and value. We conclude by discussing questions that remain, and possible future research directions. 1. What are historical path and authenticity? Authentic objects are those that participated directly in a significant past experience. Examples include an artifact that made contact with a famous, beloved, or admired person, an object that was used during a famous event, a painting that was created by a well-regarded artist, or an artifact that was created during a significant point in history. Although different museums have different goals, museums often include the presentation of original, authentic artifacts, as the following diverse examples illustrate: • gowns worn by First Ladies (Henry Ford Museum, Dearborn, MI) • Noah Webster’s house (Greenfield Village, Dearborn, MI) • a sliver of moon rock (National Air and Space Museum, Washington D.C.) • dinosaur bones (Natural History Museum, Los Angeles) • Cycladic idols (Museum of Cycladic Art, Athens) • DaVinci’s Mona Lisa (the Louvre, Paris) • Original dishware from the Titanic found at the bottom of the sea (Titanic Exhibit) In each of these cases, the museum piece is original, and text accompanying the piece emphasizes its provenance by listing its date and origins. At times the only substantial distinction between objects exhibited in the museum and objects for sale in the gift shop is provenance: the museum pieces are original whereas the gift shop pieces are replicas (e.g., poster of the Mona Lisa; ceramic casts of dinosaur bones). 1.1 How authentic is authenticity? A number of scholars have questioned the importance of authenticity for museums. Although museums house authentic objects, Gurian (1999) suggests that museums are not simply safe houses; rather, the importance of a museum visit may reside in the experience itself. Indeed, museums not uncommonly include inauthentic objects: copies of sculptures in the Louvre, a dinosaur skeleton that includes plaster cast bones, 82

Children’s Understanding of Authenticity or limited-edition lithographs that were never touched by the hand of the artist (ibid.).1 Entire resorts are constructed with the goal of depicting (not presenting) other worlds—such as the Epcot Center in Florida or the Paris Las Vegas Hotel. These examples are apparently treated by visitors with a great deal of respect and awe, suggesting that authenticity may reside in the viewer’s engagement with the object rather than being intrinsic to the object. Similarly, Roberts (1997) suggests that the desire for authenticity is a relatively recent phenomenon, arising in response to the abundance of imitations enabled by the assembly lines of the industrial revolution. Citing MacCannell (1976), she argues that the concept of authenticity underwent a transformation during the twentieth century, in which the authenticity of objects is no longer solely a function of provenance, but also reflects how objects are displayed or experienced. For example, seeing a demonstration of iron working in a blacksmith’s shop in Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia (USA) is unlikely to involve any actual objects from the period, yet observers view this experience as authentic because it provides a realistic view of what life was like in this historic context (Roberts 1997). Thus, authenticity of artifacts is only one factor in how people experience museums and must be considered alongside other important aspects, including the museum-going event itself. Furthermore, these analyses suggest that an understanding of authenticity may require substantial knowledge about the post-industrial world (e.g., the possible existence of identical replicas), as well as an awareness of how an item is framed or displayed within a museum context. They certainly raise the question of how authenticity is acquired, a point we turn to next. 2. Obstacles to children’s appreciation of historical path and authenticity At what age do children care about authenticity? At least two contrasting models are plausible: (a) young children may readily and spontaneously reason about authenticity, as they discover fundamental principles about the world, or (2) authenticity may require a level of knowledge and cognitive sophistication that children do not achieve until middle-elementary-school. In this section we review the ways in which children may have specific conceptual difficulties associated with an understanding of authenticity and historical origins. In particular, we will investigate evidence from four areas of research: children’s understanding of historical (or “deep”) time, children’s understanding of ultimate  Whether or not museum-goers realize that these objects are “fake” is a separate issue that has not been investigated but would have important implications for the psychological question of how people reason about authenticity.

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Chapter 4 - Susan A. Gelman and Brandy N. Frazier origins (“the very first X”), children’s understanding of the role of history when naming artifacts, and children’s beliefs in magic. At the end of the section, we will discuss the implications of these obstacles for children’s understanding of authenticity. In particular, we will suggest that these obstacles limit the extent to which children can recognize and appreciate authentic objects, but do not preclude a more basic understanding of authenticity. 2.1 Understanding of historical (“deep”) time Historical or “deep” time concerns periods that existed before a person’s remembered past, and is an important component to a variety of museum exhibits, from historical museums to collections of dinosaur bones. Young children seem to lack a historical understanding of this sort. Children first understand time on an immediate or personal level (e.g., demonstrated by the ability to sequence short-term events in one’s own life, Vukelich and Thornton 1990; see also Fivush, chapter 2). Somewhat later (at approximately age 5), time understanding expands to include information concerning immediate persons in the child’s life, such as the age of family members. Not until later does children’s understanding of time extend to include historic time contexts. In other words, children appear to have an expanding capacity to understand time both in the sense of scale (days to weeks to months to years) and the sense of personal connection (from self to immediate others, to the community, to the nation and eventually, the world; Friedman 1991). These findings imply that young children in a museum setting may have a limited understanding of the historical origins of the artifacts displayed. For instance, whether a painting was painted in 1805 or 1905 is unlikely to have significance to a 5-year-old. Likewise, a young child would not appreciate the age of ancient artifacts, or the evolution of species. 2.2 Understanding of ultimate origins (“the very first”) Related to the concept of deep time is the notion of ultimate origins, or the “very first” instance of something. This issue is particularly relevant to an understanding of evolution, which of course is critical to many natural history museums. It is perhaps not surprising, given children’s difficulties with historical time more broadly, that they face additional difficulties reasoning about ultimate origins. When U.S. children are asked where “the very first” instance of an item came from (e.g., the very first tiger, the very first chair), 5- to 7-year-olds endorse a mixture of spontaneous generation (“it came out of the ground”) and creationist (“God made them”) explanations, whereas 8- to 9-year-olds consistently prefer creationist explanations (Evans 2000). It was not until early adolescence that some children begin to provide evolutionary explanations. 84

Children’s Understanding of Authenticity Evans et al. (2002) further probed 4- to 10-year-old children’s understanding that various kinds of animals and artifacts did not always exist, but came into existence with a “very first” exemplar. Results showed that children did not grasp these concepts in a clear way until 8 to 10 years of age. Evans et al. concluded that these younger children “are unlikely to appreciate the special nature of original artifacts, such as art-work or historic objects, because they do not yet grasp that such objects were previously nonexistent” (ibid., 71–72). They further suggest, “In order to truly appreciate the awe-inspiring nature of authentic objects, adults must first grasp the nature of reality and originality. Adult understanding, we claim, is qualitatively different from that of the preschool or early schoolage child” (ibid., 73). We agree with Evans et al.’s intriguing analysis that young chil­ dren have difficulty understanding the possibility of “the very first” object of a kind. However, museums rarely present the very first object of any kind. Instead, the objects are often considered authentic because they were linked to a particular famous person, famous event, or long-ago time. We propose that authenticity of an object is often determined not by its ultimate origins, but instead by its history or provenance (see also Leinhardt and Crowley 2002). For instance, what makes Abraham Lincoln’s top hat special is not the original design of the hat’s creator, but rather the fact that, at some point in its existence, it was worn by the president. 2.3 Understanding of the role of history when naming artifacts Historical path is a critical element of authenticity (as with Lincoln’s hat, above), yet the role of historical path for children’s understanding of artifacts is in dispute (Gutheil et al. 2004). Previous theories have assumed that children use features present in an object as the basis for naming artifacts (e.g., shape, size, texture; Smith et al. 1996). In contrast, Gutheil et al. note that the origins and historical path of an object may also provide important information when determining an object’s name— at least for adults. In a series of experiments, Gutheil et al. (2004) presented an array of objects (e.g., paper cups), and then radically altered the appearance and function of one of the objects by crushing it, cutting it into pieces, or both cutting the object and crushing the pieces. Whereas most adults report that an object remained a member of its original kind, preschoolers consistently focused on the current state of the object and reported that its identity was not preserved across the alteration. Gutheil et al. (ibid) interpret these results as suggesting that children initially determine an object’s identity based on its current properties, only later attending to the object’s original identity or “history”. One possible interpretation of these results is that using the history of the object to determine its identity is a relatively late develop85

Chapter 4 - Susan A. Gelman and Brandy N. Frazier mental achievement. This explanation is in line with previous research regarding children’s understanding of “design stance,” the idea that the properties of an entity are the direct result of the purpose underlying its design. Although children understand some aspects of design stance as early as 4 years old (Kelemen 1999), other researchers have found that, when extending novel names to artifacts, children younger than 6 years old often privilege appearance over information regarding function (German and Johnson 2002; Landau et al. 1998). However, these findings need not imply that children fail to understand authentic objects in the museum context. Rather, the results show that children are sensitive to changes in how an object functions. This same flexibility is needed in order to grasp that an object that once served a purpose in a historical context (e.g., a pot from ancient Greece used for carrying water) can now serve a very different function within a museum (e.g., the pot is valuable not because of its function, but instead because it represents a particular culture and historical time). This suggestion echoes MacCannell’s (1976) discussion of how the action of placing artifacts within a context that communicates authenticity also changes their function from the original intended purpose. 2.4 Understanding of magic Evans et al. (2002) suggest that in order to appreciate the reality of authentic objects, children must develop the capacity to distinguish what is “real” from what is illusory or magical.2 Early on this appears to pose difficulties. For example, Mull and Evans (2001) asked children if ordinary events (such as “Can that person break a pencil?”) and illusory events (“Can dogs really talk?”) could really happen. Although even the youngest children (3 to 4 years) answered accurately about ordinary events, they answered randomly when asked about illusory events. Results across age groups showed a pattern of increased ability to distinguish between ordinary and illusory events with increasing age, with only 10-year-olds performing at the adult level. Evans et al. (2002) suggest that young children’s inability to distinguish between reality and illusion may present specific problems for their understanding of authenticity when the boundary between illusion and reality is not entirely explicit. For instance, children may be confused when illusions are used to catch the interest of museum-goers (recall the ice block at the Titanic exhibit). Another potential situation for confusion could be entertainment contexts where fantasy and illusions are presented in very realistic ways (e.g. talking dinosaurs at an amusement park).  This is different from—and more difficult than—the appearance/reality distinction (as discussed later in this chapter).

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Children’s Understanding of Authenticity 2.5 Summary of obstacles A variety of research suggests that young children face several serious difficulties in interpreting museum displays, related to their limitations in concepts of historical (or “deep”) time, ultimate origins (“the very first X”), the role of history when naming artifacts, and magic. Despite these very real limits, none directly blocks an understanding of authenticity. Hypothetically, a child could appreciate the value of the “real”, original Elmo muppet that appeared on television, even before she understands deep time, ultimate origins, or the unreality of magic. However, the obstacles reviewed above suggest that to the extent children do conceptualize authenticity, it will not be with the full breadth that one sees in adults. Instead, authenticity must be examined in particular respects: with respect to objects that children know or experience directly, and with cues that are explicitly provided. How an authentic object is displayed (or described by a knowledgeable adult or parent) may also be critical for children’s understanding. We turn next to the evidence for early understanding of authenticity. 3. Early precursors to an understanding of historical path and authenticity We argue that authenticity is a concept that young children readily grasp without direct instruction, across a range of everyday contexts. Specifically, we suggest that children readily understand three conceptual underpinnings to authenticity: (a) that the origins and personal history of an animal or object helps determine what it is and how it behaves (origins and historical path), (b) that things can retain identity despite outward changes in appearance (the appearance-reality distinction), and (c) that items have special significance if they interact with a significant person or participate in significant events (positive contagion). We propose that these three beliefs, individually and collectively, are precursors to the mature concept of authenticity that accompanies many museum experiences for adults. Although we focus on similarities between young children’s early concepts and notions of authenticity in adults, we do not mean to suggest that authenticity or the museum experience are unchanging over development. Although in some ways children seem to be rather sophisticated in their appreciation of one basic component of museums, clearly the museum experience of a 4-year-old is dramatically different from the museum experience of a 24-year-old. These changes are likely to reflect a combination of many factors, including those discussed in other chapters in this volume. It will be of interest to explore in the future how authenticity changes as children gain more knowledge, expertise, and theories about the world. 87

Chapter 4 - Susan A. Gelman and Brandy N. Frazier 3.1 Origins and historical path The ability to recognize that an item is the same over spatial and temporal transformations is critical to many animals. Recognizing offspring, tracking relative position in a social hierarchy, even thinking about ownership all require that one recognize the same object over time. We do not mean to imply that these insights are the result of an explicit reasoning process. Instead, these insights are contained within the cognitive act of deciding that an entity is the same thing at time T as it is at time T+1. Moreover, tracking identity is not simply a matter of tallying outward features, but rather involves learning the historical path that an individual has taken over time (see also Kripke 1971). For example, there are enormous changes in an animal or plant as it grows. There is now solid evidence that infants can track the identity of individual objects (Xu and Carey 1996), and that by preschool age children can track the identity of individuals when applying proper names (Gutheil and Rosengren 1996; Hall 1996; Sorrentino 2001). For example, if a doll wearing a distinctive green cloth cape is named “Daxy,” and the doll is then moved to a new location and the distinctive cape is removed while a new doll is placed in the old location with the distinctive cape added, three-year-olds report that the original doll—not the new doll—is Daxy. What is crucial to determining individual identity (as marked by the name) is historical path, not the location or appearance that were present at the original naming. How sophisticated is this notion? Specifically, how important is historical path when it competes against other sorts of information? We explore this question with respect to two distinct processes: inheritance (for animals) and creator’s intent (for artifacts). 3.1.1 Inheritance Inheritance embodies a fundamental historical path. The biological “blood tie” is defined by a historical link (as contrasted to non-historical features, such as similarity or current interactions). A variety of recent studies suggest that inheritance has a special status in young children’s reasoning. In order to examine these issues, researchers have used either an “adoption” task (Gelman and Wellman 1991) or a “switched-at-birth” task (Hirschfeld 1996). These tasks pose a nature-nurture conflict to children and ask them to choose which is more predictive. The basic idea is to describe an animal or child who at birth is either adopted by another family or is switched (accidentally) with another animal/child. The birth parents and the upbringing parents differ on some crucial dimension (e.g., race, species, personality trait). The question then is how the animal/child will turn out. If respondents predict that the animal/child will be like the birth parents, they are presumably using a nativist model. If instead they 88

Children’s Understanding of Authenticity predict that the animal/child will be like the upbringing parents, they are presumably using an environmental model. The nativist model implies the importance of the animal’s origins; the environmental model implies the importance of the animal’s current context. Nature wins out over nurture for 4-year-olds’ judgments about animals and plants (Gelman and Wellman 1991). For example, respondents said that a baby kangaroo raised among goats will grow up to hop and have a pouch.3 They very rarely appealed to the environment. Various researchers have replicated this finding (Atran et al. 2001) and extended it to other kinds of properties, including individual differences (Springer 1996; but see Solomon et al. 1996), gender-linked characteristics (e.g., wanting to play with dolls; Taylor 1996), race (e.g., Hirschfeld 1996; Gimenez and Harris 2002), and to some extent traits (e.g., shy, smart; Heyman and Gelman 2000). One intriguing result from these studies is that preschool children’s focus on origins is at times even stronger than that of older children and adults. For example, preschoolers report that the language someone speaks is determined by the birth parents, not the adoptive parents (Hirschfeld and Gelman 1997). 3.1.2 Creator’s intent Historical path is notoriously crucial to reasoning about artifacts, and works of art in particular. Here we are thinking of the twin notions of authenticity and forgeries. An authentic Picasso is staggeringly valuable. We suspect that even Picasso’s childhood scribbles would be valuable, despite having little aesthetic interest. Yet a forgery of a Picasso will never have the same value as the real thing—even if it looks identical (Bloom 2000). What is crucial is the process by which the work of art was created: by a particular person in a particular time and place. Once we discover that a painting (or autograph or book manuscript or musical recording…) was created not by the purported artist but instead by some imposter, it plunges in value. When preschool children are asked to reason about works of art (Bloom and Markson 1998; Gelman and Ebeling 1998) or everyday artifacts (Gelman and Bloom 2000), they likewise grant special significance to historical paths. For example, Gelman and Ebeling (1998) presented preschool children (2-1/2 to 4 years of age) and adults with a series of simple drawings roughly shaped like various nameable objects, such as a man. For one group of participants, each item was described as having been created intentionally—for example, someone painted the picture. For  All properties were pretested to make sure that children knew the answer when no conflict was presented—for example, they said that kangaroos are good at hopping and have a pouch and that goats are good at climbing and do not have a pouch. 3

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Chapter 4 - Susan A. Gelman and Brandy N. Frazier the remaining participants, the same drawing was described as having been created accidentally—for example, someone spilled the paint. For each item, participants first heard the brief story, then were asked to say what the corresponding drawing was. Responses were coded as naming the shape (e.g., “a man”), naming the actual materials (e.g., “paint”), or other (e.g., “I don’t know”). The findings indicated that participants were strongly influenced by the origins of the pictures: when the drawings were intended, participants named the shapes, e.g., “a bear”; when the drawings were unintended, participants referred to the pictures in some other way, such as describing the literal materials, e.g., “paint”. 3.1.3 Summary For preschool children, origins and personal history help determine what something is, what properties it will have, and what it should be called. This finding has emerged in studies examining two very distinct domains: animals and artifacts. It appears in studies using very different methods, including reasoning about switched-at-birth vignettes and labeling items after learning how they were made. Two-year-olds and adults give remarkably similar responses, though at times younger children appear to give origins more weight than do adults. We therefore conclude that historical path and origins are early-emerging and central concepts for young children. 3.2 Appearance-reality distinction A second prerequisite to understanding authenticity is a distinction between appearance and reality. Specifically, an appearance-reality distinction seems necessary for distinguishing a real object from a fake. Children clearly grasp the appearance-reality distinction by four years of age (e.g., a fake rock made out of sponge is a sponge, but it looks like a rock; Flavell et al. 1983). Indeed, a basic appreciation of the appearance/ reality distinction may be in place much earlier. The two-year-old’s capacity to accept her mother’s word that a pterodactyl is a dinosaur, not a bird, is evidence of this core understanding (Gelman and Coley 1990). The threeyear-old’s expectation that substances can have invisible particles further supports this ability (Au et al. 1993; Hejmadi et al. 2004; Rosen and Rozin 1993; Siegal and Share 1993). Grasping the distinction between appearance and reality in a general sense does not mean that one always recognizes false appearances, nor does it mean that one has resolved the distinction correctly. Nonetheless, children possess a basic appreciation that reality can be distinct from appearances throughout the preschool years. This basic appreciation has quite significant consequences for children’s reasoning about authenticity. In order to grasp the significance of the authentic objects we have been considering, a fundamental prerequisite 90

Children’s Understanding of Authenticity is understanding that non-visible properties are central to object identity. What differentiates an ordinary dinner plate from the plate retrieved (at great expense!) from the ocean floor in the Titanic? Not its size, shape, or material property, but its history. Therefore, authentication of museum artifacts rests on a distinction between appearance (the visible properties) and reality (the individual history of this object). Children seem quite comfortable with this distinction from the earliest ages researchers have studied. 3.3 Positive contagion Positive contagion is the belief that a person can acquire positive qualities from interacting with a beloved or respected individual, or with an object that such an individual has owned or touched. Closely related is the assumption that an inanimate object acquires value from interacting with a beloved or respected individual. For example, Abraham Lincoln’s top hat, Chuck Berry’s guitar, and Jacqueline Onassis’s fake pearls all have in common that they were owned or came into contact with a famous person. Interestingly, they are also all appropriate objects for display in museums. Nemeroff and Rozin (2000) discuss the “law of contagion” as one principle of sympathetic magic: The law of contagion holds that physical contact between the source and the target results in the transfer of some effect or quality (essence) from the source to the target. Qualities may be physical, mental, or moral in nature, and negative or positive in valence. When qualities and their effects are negative in valence, the terms ‘contamination’ or ‘pollution’ apply, while positive effects are sometimes referred to as ‘transvaluation’. Nemeroff and Rozin 2000, 3 (original emphases) Contagion entails both an appearance-reality contrast (“things are often not what they seem”; Nemeroff and Rozin 2000, 7) and tracing historical path (“once in contact, always in contact”; ibid., 4 and 7). Studies with adults provide converging evidence for magical contagion beliefs. In an example of negative contagion in the food domain, adults show a strong aversion to the idea of eating something that has been contaminated with something disgusting or dangerous (e.g., with a dead, sterilized cockroach, or with non-harmful doses of sodium cyanide), even when there would be no negative physical consequences of doing so (Nemeroff and Rozin 2000). Likewise, when reasoning about contact with other people, adults behave in a manner consistent with negative contagion. They prefer not to wear freshly laundered clothing that was once worn by a stranger, especially if the stranger had suffered a misfortune or disease, or had a committed a crime. Adults also seem to think there is positive value in wearing clothing that was once worn by a respected or loved individual. 91

Chapter 4 - Susan A. Gelman and Brandy N. Frazier What about children? Depending on the task, studies find sensitivity to negative contagion by either 3 years of age (Siegal and Share 1990) or 6-8 years of age (Fallon et al. 1984). For example, when contact with the contaminating agent is immediate, Siegal and Share (1990) found that preschool children discriminate contaminated from safe substances, even when the appearance is misleading (e.g., moldy bread with jam concealing the mold). However, when the contact with the contaminating agent is indirect (e.g., a drink in which a cockroach had been dipped), avoidance of the contamination does not appear until a little older. Children’s beliefs about positive contagion have been much less studied. However, the available evidence is suggestive. Many children form strong attachments to transitional objects (e.g., a particular soft blanket; Litt 1986; Winnicott 1969), and seem quite adamant that this particular object cannot be replaced. Authenticity is thus paramount in a child’s attachment to a treasured blanket or doll. More detailed studies would be needed to determine if authenticity is determined by subtle perceptual features of the object or by prior historical path. In light of these observations, children’s concepts of ownership would also be interesting to investigate in more detail. Tracking ownership entails tracing an object over time. But it also concerns provenance, in that ownership is tied to particular individuals (the owner) and particular events (the moment of giving). Certainly early language and anecdotal evidence suggest that appreciation for ownership may emerge at a precocious age (Fenson et al. 1994). It would be interesting to explore the nature of this concept more fully. For example, would children trace ownership even for items that are materially equivalent (such as two identical toy cars that were initially shown to belong to two different individuals)? At a more sophisticated level, Johnson and Jacobs (2001) examined children’s and adults’ beliefs about the causal effects of wearing the sweater from a beloved U.S. television personality, Mr. Rogers. The researchers asked children a variety of questions about a sweater said to be worn by Mr. Rogers and about a sweater that was identical but was said never to have been worn by Mr. Rogers. They found that most adults and some six- to eight-year-old children endorse the possibility that wearing Mr. Rogers’s sweater will lead to behavior changes (child will act more friendly), emotion changes (child will feel more special), and even transfer of essence (the sweater will pass “something of Mr. Rogers” to its wearer). However, even more telling for this context, one of the questions children were asked was if one of the sweaters would be good for a museum, and if yes, which one. Interestingly, 70 percent of 4-5 year olds and 85 percent of 6-8 year olds responded that the sweater worn by Mr. Rogers should be put in a museum, reflecting an understanding of an unobservable, underlying special quality of the sweater worn by Mr. Roger’s as opposed to the identical replica (Johnson and Jacobs 2001). 92

Children’s Understanding of Authenticity 3.3.1 Summary Positive contagion entails understanding of both historical path and the appearance-reality distinction. Additionally, it adds the notion of provenance. Research on young children suggests that an understanding of negative contagion is found even among preschoolers. Concepts of positive contagion have not received systematic study, but the small amount of available evidence suggests that children may understand and apply the concept spontaneously in their everyday interactions. We agree with Nemeroff and Rozin (2000), that “this may be a fruitful area for exploration, given the anecdotally common phenomenon of special objects of attachment such as soft blankets or stuffed toys” (ibid. 18–19). If further research were to support this early development, then a belief in positive contagion could provide a grounding for the notion of authenticity with relevance for museums. Children who believe in positive contagion should care, for example, whether the jewels on display in the museum were the original ones worn by royalty, or were replicas that a king or queen had never worn. 4. Discussion In this chapter we examined the question of when in development children appreciate authenticity, with the assumption that authenticity is an important component of many museum experiences. Although prior research has identified reasons to expect that children might not understand a distinction between authentic and inauthentic objects (given their problems understanding initial origins of things, deep or historical time, and certain aspects of appearance-reality contrasts), we identified three components of authenticity that emerge early in childhood. These include an understanding of origins and historical path, a distinction between appearance and reality, and a belief in positive contagion. In all three cases, preschool-aged children attend to historical path, and judge it to be more important than either current context or current appearances. In all of these cases, the history of an item is more crucial than its appearances. How are these different understandings related to one another? Are they distinct understandings, or are they related in some way? Although more research would be needed to make progress on this issue, it seems at least plausible that these understandings may share some commonalities. For example, perhaps whatever it is that makes us care about authenticity for artwork stems from the same impulse that leads to species essentialism (which privileges the parentage, and therefore historical origins, of an organism) as well as to contagion (which privileges the historical path an item undertakes; Rozin and Nemeroff 1990). One might even say that the notion of object constancy partakes of some of the same logic. After 93

Chapter 4 - Susan A. Gelman and Brandy N. Frazier all, if a particular Bic pen is my pen, then I will still recognize that it was my pen, even if my daughter swaps it with a seemingly identical pen, and even if I do not care (in any material way) that the pens were exchanged. Likewise, the capacity to track the individual identity of people crucially rests on personal history, not feature listings (see also Kripke 1972). Our cognitive systems may be structured to invoke personal history—rather than observable features—as constituting identity. One question that arises is why children so readily consider personal history when judging the identity of an item (person, animal, or object). Why is historical path so critical for children to trace? One possible answer to this puzzle may lie in the relative value of historical path to very young children, who have relatively little knowledge about specific categories of objects. Xu and Carey (1996) observe that, for a young infant, the spatiotemporal properties of historical path are a more reliable indicator of identity than are observable featural properties (such as shape, size, or texture). The reason for this is that it takes a great deal of world knowledge for one to determine which properties are relevant to identity. A balloon that is deflated changes size rapidly yet it does not stop being a balloon. A red apple can appear to turn gray when lights are turned off yet it does not become a different sort of fruit. Yet in other cases features such as size or color do signal differences in identity (e.g., a large vs. a small balloon; an apple vs. an orange). Determining which object features do or do not have implications for identity is difficult and rests on accumulated world knowledge. In contrast, tracing an object’s path does not rely on world knowledge to the same extent, and can be tracked with relative ease. Thus, it may be that infants’ relative ignorance about the world sets the stage for children’s early attention to spatiotemporal features (historical path). It also may be that concepts of possession provide evolutionary arguments for attention to historical path. As noted earlier, children appear to have a precocious sensitivity to ownership. It would be sensible, from the standpoint of species survival, for humans to be skilled at tracking which foods, goods, and the like belong to whom. Ownership is the basis of our human legal systems, economic systems, and social interchanges (e.g., reciprocity, owing someone a favor, and the like). Individuals need to be skilled at detecting the subtle cues of ownership, and historical path is among the best of the available cues. Thus humans may have evolved as a species to become highly sensitive to such historical-path cues. How to link children’s emerging construals of historical path and authenticity to the more sophisticated notions presented in museums is an important question for the future. The understandings examined here are relatively simple—and lack the historical depth often found in museums. That children can trace historical path and grant it importance does not mean that they spontaneously do so. For example, as noted earlier, children cannot be expected to appreciate the significance of dinosaur 94

Children’s Understanding of Authenticity bones before they have some understanding of what dinosaurs are and when they existed. One possibility that remains untested is that children’s understanding of authenticity may vary depending on their knowledge of and interest in the domain in question. Perhaps children do not start out with a wholly broad grasp of authenticity of museum pieces, but rather appreciate the significance at first for those domains where the initial object or event has greater personal significance. Another anecdote illustrates this point. The first author was having a conversation with a 12-year-old boy in which he maintained that it was ridiculous that original artwork costs so much money, when replicas look just like them and are just as good. The author then asked how he would feel about a baseball that had been hit as a home run by his favorite ball-player. Here the boy unhesitatingly replied that he would much rather have the home-run ball than another, identical-looking ball. This example suggests that authenticity may be more powerful in a highly familiar domain that has great personal significance. A related issue is that cultural forces may serve to heighten or dampen children’s (or adults’) concern with authenticity. Twenty-first century Americans, for example, live in a culture where authenticity is so powerfully valued that even Britney Spears’s chewed-up gum or Justin Timberlake’s half-eaten breakfast are put up for auction on eBay. As others have noted, we live in a culture where fame is highly-sought and celebrities are adored. This culture may be a breeding-ground for the cultivation of authenticity. Nonetheless, regardless of the cultural value placed on authenticity, a point to keep in mind is that young children seem to attend to authenticity without any direct tutelage. In this sense, the authenticity of objects may be a childhood invention. Acknowledgments This research was supported by NICHD grant HD36043 to Gelman and an NSF pre-doctoral fellowship to Frazier. References Atran, S., D. Medin, E. Lynch, V. Vapnarsky, E. U. Ek’ and P. Sousa. 2001. ‘Folkbiology doesn’t come from folkpsychology: Evidence from Yukatek Maya in cross-cultural perspective’ Journal of Cognition and Culture 1: 3–42. Au, T. K., A. L. Sidle and K. B. Rollins. 1993 ‘Developing an intuitive understanding of conservation and contamination: Invisible particles as a plausible mechanism’ Developmental Psychology 29: 286–99. Bloom, P. 1996 ‘Intention, history, and artifact concepts’ Cognition 60: 1–29. 95

Chapter 4 - Susan A. Gelman and Brandy N. Frazier 2000

How children learn the meanings of words. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Bloom, P. and L.Markson. 1998 ‘Intention and analogy in children’s naming of pictorial representations’ Psychological Science 9: 200–04. Evans, E. M. 2000 ‘The emergence of beliefs about the origins of species in schoolage children’ Merrill-Palmer Quarterly 46(2): 221–54. Evans, E. M., M. S. Mull and D. A. Poling 2002 ‘The authentic object? A child’s-eye view’ in S.G. Paris (ed.) Perspectives on Object-Centered Learning in Museums: 55–77. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Fallon, A. E., P.Rozin and P. Pliner 1984 ‘The child’s conception of food: The development of food rejec­tions with special reference to disgust and contamination sensitivity’ Child Development 55: 566–75. Fenson, L., P. S. Dale, J. S. Reznick and E. Bates 1994 ‘Variability in early communicative development’ Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development 59, vol. 173. Flavell, J. H., E. R. Flavell and F. L. Green 1983 ‘Development of the appearance‑reality distinction’ Cognitive Psychology 15: 95–120. Friedman, W. J. 1991 ‘The development of children’s memory for the time of past events’ Child Development 62(1): 139–55. Gelman, S. A. and P. Bloom 2000 ‘Young children are sensitive to how an object was created when deciding what to name it’ Cognition 76: 91–103. Gelman, S. A. and J. D. Coley 1990 ‘The importance of knowing a dodo is a bird: Categories and inferences in 2-year-old children’ Developmental Psychology 26: 796–804. Gelman, S. A. and K. S. Ebeling 1998 ‘Shape and representational status in children’s early naming’ Cognition 66: B35–B47. Gelman, S. A. and H. M. Wellman 1991 ‘Insides and essences: Early understandings of the non-obvious’ Cognition 38: 213–44. German, T. P. and S. C. Johnson 2002 ‘Function and the origins of the design stance’ Journal of Cognition & Development 3(3): 279–300. Gimenez, M. and P. L. Harris 2002 ‘Understanding constraints on inheritance: Evidence for biological thinking in early childhood’ British Journal of Developmental Psychology 20: 307–24. 96

Children’s Understanding of Authenticity Gurian, E. H. 1999 ‘What is the object of this exercise? A meandering exploration of the many meanings of objects in museums’ Daedalus 128(3): 163–83. Gutheil, G. and K. S. Rosengren 1996 ‘A rose by any other name: preschooolers’ understanding of individual identity across name and appearance changes’ British Journal of Developmental Psychology 14: 477–98. Gutheil, G., P. Bloom, N. Valderrama and R.Freedman 2004 ‘The role of historical intuitions in children’s and adults’ naming of artifacts’ Cognition 91(1): 23–42. Hall, D. G. 1996 ‘Preschoolers’ default assumptions about word meaning: Proper names designate unique individuals’ Developmental Psychology 32: 177–86. Hejmadi, A., P. Rozin, and M. Siegal 2004 ‘Once in contact, always in contact: Contagious essence and conceptions of purification in American and Hindu Indian children’ Developmental Psychology 40: 467–76. Heyman, G. D. and S. A. Gelman 2000 ‘Beliefs about the origins of human psychological traits’ Developmental Psychology 36: 665–78. Hirschfeld, L. A. 1996 Race in the making: Cognition, culture, and the child’s construction of human kinds. Cambridge: MIT Press. Hirschfeld, L. A. and S. A. Gelman 1997 ‘What young children think about the relation between language variation and social difference’ Cognitive Development 12: 213–38. Johnson, C. N. and M. G. Jacobs 2001 Enchanted objects: How positive connections transform thinking about the very nature of things. Poster presented at the Biennial Meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development. Minneapolis. Kelemen, D. 1999 ‘The scope of teleological thinking in preschool children’ Cognition 70: 241–72. Kripke, S. 1971 ‘Identity and necessity’ in M. K. Munitz (ed.), Identity and individuation: 253–355. New York: New York University Press. 1972 ‘Naming and necessity’ in D. Davidson and G. Harman (eds.) Semantics of natural language: 135–64. Dordrecht: D. Reidel. Landau, B., L. B. Smith and S. Jones 1998 ‘Object shape, object function and object naming’ Journal of Memory and Language 31: 195–217. 97

Chapter 4 - Susan A. Gelman and Brandy N. Frazier Leinhardt, G. and K.Crowley 2002 ‘Objects of learning, objects of talk: Changing minds in museums’ in S. G. Paris (ed.) Perspectives on object-centered learning in museums: 301–24. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Litt, C. J. 1986 ‘Theories of transitional object attachment: An overview’ International Journal of Behavioral Development 9: 383–99. MacCannell, D. 1976 The tourist: A new theory of the leisure class. New York: Schocken Books. Mull, M. S. and E. M. Evans 2001 Magic can happen in that world (but not this one): Theory of mind understanding and children’s explanations for illusory events. Biennial Meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development. Minneapolis. Nemeroff, C. and P. Rozin 2000 ‘The makings of the magical mind: The nature and function of sympathetic magical thinking’ in K. S. Rosengren, C. N. Johson and P. Harris (eds.), Imagining the impossible: Magical, scientific, and religious thinking in children: 1–34. New York: Cambridge University Press. Roberts, L. 1997 From knowledge to narrative: Educators and the changing museum. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press. Rosen, A. B. and P. Rozin 1993 ‘Now you see it, now you don’t: The preschool child’s conception of invisible particles in the context of dissolving’ Developmental Psychology 29: 300–11. Rozin, P. and C. Nemeroff 1990 ‘The laws of sympathetic magic: A psychological analysis of similarity and contagion’ in J. W. Stigler, R. A. Shweder, and G. Herdt (eds.) Cultural psychology: Essays on comparative human development: 205–32. New York: Cambridge University Press. Siegal, M. and D. L. Share 1990 ‘Contamination sensitivity in young children’ Developmental Psychology 26: 455–58. Smith, L. B., S. S. Jones and B. Landau 1996 ‘Naming in young children: A dumb attentional mechanism?’ Cognition 60: 143–71. Solomon, G. E. A., S. C. Johnson, D. Zaitchik and S. Carey 1996 ‘Like father, like son: Young children’s understanding of how and why offspring resemble their parents’ Child Development 67: 151–71. 98

Children’s Understanding of Authenticity Sorrentino, C. M. 2001 ‘Children and adults represent proper names as referring to unique individuals’ Developmental Science 4: 399-407. Springer, K. 1996 ‘Young children’s understanding of a biological basis of parentoffspring relations’ Child Development 67: 2841–56. Taylor, M. G. 1996 ‘The development of children’s beliefs about social and biological aspects of gender differences’ Child Development 67: 1555–71. Vukelich, R. and S. J. Thornton 1990 ‘Children’s understanding of historical time: Implications for instruction’ Childhood Education 67: 22–5. Winnicott, D. W. 1969 The child, the family, and the outside world. Baltimore: Penguin Books. Xu, F., and S.Carey 1996 ‘Infants’ metaphysics: The case of numerical identity’ Cognitive Psychology 30: 111–53.

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Part II Contexts of Telling I: Digital and Printed Media

Chapter 5 Groovin’ to Ancient Peru: A Critical Analysis of Disney’s The Emperor’s New Groove Helaine Silverman 1. The relevance of Donald Duck Critical studies of the Disney oeuvre are numerous, notably in the fields of Communication, Education, and Cultural Studies (e.g., Aidman 1999; Bell et al. 1995; Byrne and McQuillan 1999; Cubitt 2000; Dorfman and Mattelart 1971; Giroux 1999; Picker and Chyng Feng Sun 2000; Schickel 1968). One of the earliest and still one of the most influential critiques is Para Leer el Pato Donald (How to Read Donald Duck) (Dorfman and Mattelart 1971), a Chilean indictment of the economic and cultural imperialist ideology in Disney’s seemingly innocuous comic book characters, which was written during the brief freedom of Salvador Allende’s socialist government. Now, decades later, one can again look at Disney in a Latin American context. Disney’s The Emperor’s New Groove (henceforth, Groove) is a feature-length animated movie that archaeologists will readily recognize as set in Inca Peru but which is never identified as such by Disney. Groove’s animated depictions did not arise out of the blank imaginations of filmmakers in their studio. Rather, the images are the result of conscious manipulations of a known ancient society. The anonymity of Groove’s imagery, action and dialogue go to the heart of issues considered in Para Leer el Pato Donald, such as identity, history, and authority in our transnational, deterritorialized, decentered, and culturally hybrid world. As Appadurai (1996, 30-31) has observed: The past is now not a land to return to in a simple politics of memory. It has become a synchronic warehouse of cultural scenarios, a kind of temporal central casting, to which recourse can be taken as appropriate, depending on the movie to be made, the scene to be enacted…the apparent increasing substitutability of whole periods and postures for one another, in the cultural styles of advanced capitalism, is tied to larger global forces. As a quintessential form of American public culture, animated movies are a site where collective social understandings are created and the politics of signification are engaged in (see Hall 1985, 36). Disney’s animated movies can be a particularly insidious ideological text because 103

Chapter 5 - Helaine Silverman their hegemonic images of the world are easily and, too often, unquestioningly assimilated by audiences, especially the young. The tremendous box-office and videotape success of Groove behooves a critical analysis of the messages constructed by the movie studio and received by the viewing public. 2. Methodology The data I report herein are derived from the actual animated movie. I saw The Emperor’s New Groove in a local movie theater when it first opened in December 2000, and I subsequently purchased the ‘Ultimate 2 Disc DVD Edition’ edition (henceforth, deluxe DVD) as soon as that became available. I specifically chose that version as my text because the deluxe DVD contains the movie itself and a supplementary disk with ‘behind-the-scenes’ discussions by the movie’s director, producer, and other key Disney personnel about how the story was developed, visually conceived, animated, musically scored, and publicized. I was unable to interview the principals in the Disney offices. In addition, I tracked and read a substantial amount of information about Groove posted on the world wide web. Using the Movie Review Query Engine I also compiled 55 published reviews of Groove. In addition, I read 95 individually posted reviews of Groove on the IMDb (Internet Movie Database) web site. I take these 150 reviews to be a random and representative sample of all reviews of Groove circulating in the United States. 3. Issues of history, hyperreality, and simulacra Baudrillard (1995) has written of a disappearance of history and our current disengagement from reality. He hypothesizes that through the acceleration of the incredibly complex elements that comprise contemporary life we have moved beyond space-time where the real was possible. Acts and facts of political, historical, and cultural life hurtle into hyperspace where they are unable to achieve their meaning because the ‘referential orbit of things’ has been broken. Thus, Baudrillard argues that history is indeterminate and historical narrative is impossible because there now exists the potential for ‘re-narrativization’ of every sequence of meaning. Fragmentation, disarticulation, and an abundance of unstable, uncertain information have replaced the grand historical narratives of the past. These features and the loss of a real temporal progression propel our movement out of history and create simulation. We are enamored of instantaneity and this destabilizes our historical, lineal sense of time and its events, thereby disposing us to historicize, archive, memorize, commemorate, rehabilitate, and cultural museify everything concerning our past and that of other cultures in what amounts to “a vanishing of actual 104

Groovin’ to Ancient Peru history…instead of things first passing through history before becoming part of the heritage, they now pass directly into the heritage” (Baudrillard 2000, 40). Things are linked as if they had meaning, but they are associated only by artificial montage. Given Baudrillard’s totalizing framework, it should not surprise us that he has specifically taken on the Disney enterprise since Walt Disney was the first innovator to create the imaginary as virtual reality on a grand scale (e.g., Disneyland). Baudrillard (1983) argues that Disney is actively seeking to capture the entire real world so as to integrate it into its own synthetic project where the real becomes a theme park and simulacra are built on existing simulacra thereby creating a hyperreal. Baudrillard further accuses Disney of going beyond the erasure of the real and converting it into a dimensionless virtual image. Disney, he observes, seeks to obviate time by synchronizing all time periods and all cultures into a single atemporal juxtaposition. In a similar vein, Bryman (1995, 1999a, 1999b) identifies the ‘McDisney theme park’ in which organizational principles of efficiency, control, calculability, predictability, and rationality reign. Of particular interest for the analysis of Groove is how some of these features carry redundantly across domains into more sectors of society such that Disney attempts to ensure an overwhelmingly positive Disney gaze (Bryman, 1999a, 106). To go to the theater to see a Disney movie is to act upon the expectation of being entertained happily—no matter how implausibly. Moreover, as cinematic travelers we are primed in advance for our theater experience by Disney merchandise associated with the film, by the film’s trailers on television, and by preview film reviews. Disney published a $3.49 child’s ‘Special Collector’s Issue’ for The Emperor’s New Groove in its Disney Adventures cartoon pocketbook series, providing a ‘sneak peak into Disney’s new animated movie.’ Disney and McDonald’s partnered to produce a series of six toys of the main characters in Groove (Kuzco, Kuzco as llama, Yzma, Yzma as kitty cat, Kronk, Pacha) for child consumers. We enter the theater and encounter a carefully produced site and sight. Groove has been signposted so that its virtual tourists can find the movie’s sites and ‘locate them within an imaginative landscape where they become meaningful as “sights”’ (Gregory 1999, 116). This scripting is all the easier because the appropriated ancient place is left anonymous (see below). With Groove we have the conundrum of postmodernity where power, knowledge, and the visible are still tightly intermeshed, but without reference to a truly visible world: simulation has moved us into the world of simulacra and hyperreality. Disney’s ‘disneyfication’ of Groove can be profitably theorized in terms of Eco’s (1986) discussion of textuality. Groove has a stereotypical narrative and iconographic textual features that have been completely scripted by its authors. The filmmakers employ Eco’s ‘common frame’ to move the story along and Eco’s ‘intertextual frame’ to give it humor. The 105

Chapter 5 - Helaine Silverman ‘common frame’ appears in Groove’s stereotyped situations such as loving gestures between the husband and wife and the wife-as-mother putting their rambunctious children to bed. These kinds of actions are coded by our ordinary quotidian experiences and let us identify with the characters despite the different setting of the action. The ‘intertextual frame’ is stereotyped but in reference to some preceding recorded textual tradition (here textual should be understood broadly to encompass various media). We enjoy the film because it is predicated upon (culturally specific) common frame universals and clever intertextualities. An example would be when Emperor Kuzco’s guardsmen line up and dance in the Irish style of Riverdance. Another example would be Groove’s scene of a pseudo fast-food diner. The incongruities of Groove are readily understood by viewers on the basis of our pre-existing cultural knowledge. Groove is successful because of its postmodernity “where the quotation of the topos is recognized as the only way to cope with the burden of our film encyclopedic expertise” (Eco 1986, 209). 4. Depicting the Past, Dehistoricizing the Incas The past is popular and highly marketable among the viewing public (see, especially, Solomon 2001; Wyke 1997, 1999). Eco (1986, 62) has quipped pointedly that “Americans want and really like responsible historical reconstruction (perhaps because only after a text has been rigorously reconstructed can it be irresponsibly deconstructed).” History, archaeology, and filmmaking are all discourses about the past and, as such, ripe for deconstruction. Wyke (1997, 12–3), who focuses on ancient Rome, incisively argues that films about the past are a primary source of information for the analysis of the present context of these films’ production. She refers to historical films as ‘a powerful new mode of historiography’ (Wyke 1997, 13). I think that the greatest power of the historical film genre, to which Wyke refers, resides in its property of market saturation. Countless more people see such a film and, too often, unquestioningly absorb its narration rather than read the scholarly works by historians and archaeologists about the particular society represented. Indeed, Baudrillard has predicted that future spectators will watch movies about ancient Rome as if they were authentic ancient Roman movies. Where Groove diverges strongly from the historical movie genre is that its plot is not presented as history. Rather, as explained by Groove’s production team in the deluxe DVD audio commentary, ‘the flick’ has a moral idea, a good message, and a visual look, music, and dialogue to support the story whose tone is high comedy. As is typical of all Disney animated films, Groove seeks to present “recognizable moments that are universal…people see themselves up there on the screen” (Randy Fullmer, producer, speaking on the deluxe DVD). Disney’s two trailers, three TV 106

Groovin’ to Ancient Peru ads, and various posters for Groove promote a movie in which humor and action are emphasized and the family values of friendship, courage, and cooperation are taught. Indeed, this emotional pitch appears to be why Disney scrapped an earlier and more serious version of Groove, alternately titled Kingdom in the Sun and Kingdom of the Sun. In Groove, all that remains of the earlier project is the unnamed but Inca-based setting, the arrogant young emperor turned into a llama, an evil woman, and a relationship with a peasant who is reworked as an older family man called Pacha. The change in title and plot also prompted Disney to substitute ‘Kuzco’ as the name of the emperor who was previously called Manco Capac (after the legendary first emperor of the Incas; see discussion of names, below). The imagery of Groove was generated on the basis of a ten-day trip to Machu Picchu undertaken by a group of about twelve people from the Disney studio, including the art director, head of background, head of special effects, and some animators. Randy Fullmer, speaking on the deluxe DVD, explains that: At Disney, usually on most of these features, we try to do some kind of research trip. We really try to immerse ourselves in cultures, in topography, and various elements that will really bring art ideas to a film… We experienced what the people were like, looked at a lot of art work, looked at a lot of Incan art, and just really got a sense of what Peru and the South American landscape was about. Also, for this particular movie we had the animators go to a llama farm;… It was really beneficial for the animators to look at the llamas first-hand, up close, to see how they moved, how they behaved, and to get some of the characteristics and mannerisms from the llamas. But, for all this professed concern with authenticity, how do the real archaeological Incas and the hyperreal Disney Inca society compare? The past is always constructed. Disney invested considerable time and money in research in order to then create its own cartoon (per)version. I agree with Jameson (1991, 46) who says that simulation is not a matter of quotation (which establishes differences) but of assimilation. Assimilation erases differences through dedifferentiation (Lash 1990: 11-15) or, as Rojek (1993) argues, the distinctions between the ‘real’ world and simulated world are eroded more than destroyed. Although Inca material remains are abundant and highly visible in the Central Andes, especially in the Cuzco region, their interpretation has long been a source of academic debate. Beginning with the earliest Inca oral testimony to the Spanish conquistadores, the history of the Incas has been a site of competitive discourse and cultural production informed by the present as much as by the past. Thus, competing Inca factions in the defeated empire produced their own ‘official’ versions of preconquest history in order to establish themselves as elite lineages deserving of 107

Chapter 5 - Helaine Silverman privilege and able to mediate identity and position in the newly colonial world of Spanish social and political realities (see Urton 1990). In the early 17th century a literate indigenous Catholic, Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala (1980), drew on earlier Spanish chronicles and his own sense of social justice to represent the Incas to the Iberian Crown as wise, efficient administrators of a vast territory in contrast to the devastation of Andean society wrought by the Spaniards. In the early 20th century the Incas were reclaimed, revalorized, and (re)presented as the greatest of all civilizations by Peru’s indigenista movement (e.g., Valcárcel 1981, 425–55); incanismo is still dominant in Cuzco politics and culture (see Silverman 2002a). In the early 1940s the Incas were produced as a benevolent socialist empire (Baudin 1944) and subsequently, from a less benign Marxist perspective, as an exploitative pre-capitalist state (Patterson 1991). In the 1940s and 1950s at the height of American culture history the Incas were produced ‘factually’ in time and space (e.g., Rowe 1946, 1970). In the 1960s through the present, structuralist-cognitive (e.g., Zuidema 1964), sociopolitical and, arguably, Andean-reifying (e.g., Morris and Thompson 1985; Murra 1975, 1980) paradigms became important. In the 1980s a comparative and formalist economic approach gained some popularity (e.g., D’Altroy and Earle 1985) as attention shifted away from the core to the peripheries of the Inca Empire (e.g., D’Altroy 1992). In today’s ethnically wracked and extraordinarily inegalitarian world scholarly production of the Incas emphasizes ethnogenesis, social identity, and materialized sociopolitical hierarchy in a multiethnic context (e.g., Bauer 1991, 1992; Covey 2000; Hayashida 1999). As Isbell (1995) has acutely observed, the Andean past is “as you like it” in accordance with one’s chosen theoretical framework and ethnographic lens. But, I am not equating the changing paradigms of archaeology with Disney’s gaze. It is important to recognize that archaeologists of all theoretical persuasions are talking about the Incas who are known to have existed five hundred years ago and whose material remains are readily identified. Among scholars, interpretations over state formation and imperial organization vary, but not the definition of Inca. There are tangible material remains that can be excavated, notwithstanding the intellectual construction of the past from a labile present perch. 5. Acts of anonymity and erasure As exotic as the llama is, Disney nonetheless Americanizes and culturally domesticates it for the U.S. viewing public. In Groove there is an unremitting insistence on pronouncing the word llama (‘yama’) as lama, a willful error also committed by every audio commentator on the deluxe DVD. Moreover, despite the animated llama, to the uninformed viewer, there is no indication that Inca Peru is the basis of Groove’s ‘long ago in a faraway land’ in which ‘there was a prosperous kingdom ruled by a young emperor’—not in the film and not in the extensive credits at its end. Only 108

Groovin’ to Ancient Peru the audio commentary on the deluxe DVD and technical information on the amazon.com and borders.com web sites for the standard DVD version of The Emperor’s New Groove indicate that the making of the movie involved the ‘Animation Team’s Research Trip to Peru.’ The technical information on amazon.com for the deluxe DVD edition merely indicates that there was ‘The Research Trip’ but not to where. And remarkably, it is only by stringing together the DVD’s audio commentary about the illustrated research trip that one figures out that Machu Picchu is in Peru, that Machu Picchu is an Inca site, and that Groove is based on the Incas. There is never any mention that there was a real Cuzco, which was the true Inca capital (or that the filmmakers, like all visitors, obligatorily had to spend a night in contemporary Cuzco in order to take the morning train to Machu Picchu). In fact, on the supplemental disk the words ‘Machu Picchu,’ ‘Incan art,’ ‘Peru and the South American landscape,’ and ‘a South American country’ are said only once and are easily missed. Pocahontas (released in 1995) is the only Disney animated movie to deal with a true historical event. Disney was quite aware of the risks of making that film and consulted with various Native Americans. Nevertheless, when it came out, Pocahontas was strongly criticized for being romanticized, fictionalized, sanitized, and nationalized for popular consumption. In the aftermath of Pocahontas, it appears that Disney decided to play it safe with Groove’s Inca Peru, even though foundation myths of the United States were not at stake. This nonconfrontational strategy is clear in the following quote from the deluxe DVD’s audio commentary: Notice that Kronk is carrying an aluminum foil doggie-bag llama. Talk about liberating ourselves from historical accuracy. That’s the kind of thing that’s just fun to put in. …it also supports the notion that this [movie] is not intended to represent any particular country in South America. If we were gonna do that, we would have approached the film in a completely different way. This is meant to be a fictitious place, fictitious characters, a once-upon-a-time kind of fantasy. …those elements point out that idea that this is not intended to be taken seriously. I attribute Disney’s cavalier, pick-and-choose approach to the material culture of Peru’s ancient past to the primary evolution of Groove through visual development (‘and see where visuals take us’—audio comment on the deluxe DVD) rather than as written text. Lack of knowledge and its consequent temporal-cultural conflation are the simultaneous result and cause of a blurry Peru as mere background (the settings in which the characters act) for Groove’s action. The following statement of Colin Stimpson, art director, in the audio commentary of the deluxe DVD, is revelatory of this bricolage: We looked very closely at a lot of small pottery and little sculpture. …We were just stunned by all the Inca design work we found…We 109

Chapter 5 - Helaine Silverman saw that tapestries are covered in whacky animal designs and also pottery and goldwork. We just wanted to take that as inspiration and use their designs in other ways. The Disney team may have been astounded with their discovery, but ‘found’ is an imperialist and appropriating action when a vernacularly and scientifically culture is already known. Indeed, this is the complaint frequently levied at Hiram Bingham who ‘found’ Machu Picchu in 1911, a grand Inca site well known to local inhabitants. The ‘whacky animal designs’ are incongruous only to those unfamiliar with their culturaliconological significance. The appropriation is complete in the team’s use of ancient Peruvian art as ‘inspiration’ for redesign. Moreover, if we compare the images in Groove to their real archaeological prototypes, we see that Groove’s appropriation of ancient Peruvian art and technology is specific at the same time that it is conflated. Actually, the only aspects of Inca material culture that are used in the film are stone masonry, one particular textile design that becomes a tile floor, and a silver goblet on a table. The other decorative art in the film is derived from various non-Inca and pre-Inca objects. The range of time and archaeological cultures implicated is three thousand years and at least 275,000 square kilometers. The non-Inca and pre-Inca originals could only have caught the eye of the research team in Lima’s museums (I assume that the research team had to spend a night in Lima before taking a morning flight to Cuzco and also upon their return and that this provided the opportunity to visit museums) and/or in art books. Indeed, given the complex and fast-moving iconography of Groove and the deliberate bombardment of the audience with visual stimuli, it is perplexing that the production team states in the deluxe DVD audio commentary that they constantly strove to ‘simplify action for clarity and readability’ by the audience, so as to not ‘overwhelm’ the public with images. Here I would argue that we again have an excellent case of hyperreality. The legibility sought by Disney is two-fold: that the plot be easy to follow (which it is) and that the supporting iconography be generically pre-Columbian or, for the truly uneducated viewer, merely exotic (which it is). In Disney’s hands Groove so significantly departs from and appropriates the archaeologically known Inca Empire and other pre-Columbian civilizations of ancient Peru that it is a textbook example of hyperreality and simulacra. Perhaps the best example I can give of Disney’s wanton rampage through ancient Peru is the deluxe DVD’s audio commentary discussion about ‘this little candleholder,’ seen in Scene 9, ‘A Diabolical Dinner,’ where Emperor Kuzco is given the potion that turns him into a llama. We are told that the candleholder ‘was once a character in a very early version of this movie. He was called the huaca. He was a little advisor to the emperor. But, as is the case with the development of the stories, characters come and go and unfortunately he went. But we wanted to preserve his memory in this little cameo here.’ Actually, the candleholder is a compos110

Groovin’ to Ancient Peru ite of the early Middle Horizon (ca. AD 600) Wari-Tiwanaku frontal face staff god (the candles replace the staffs), the late Middle Horizon (ca. AD 900) Lambayeque/Middle Sicán Lord, and an Early Intermediate Period (ca. AD 200) Huaraz stone sculpture, all rolled into one and poised atop an elongated base resembling the neck of an Inca arybalus (a vessel for storing liquid; see Fernández Baca 1973, plate 5). Disney’s iconographic appropriations characterize the supplemental disk as well. The disk’s menu is superimposed on a day-glo rendering of Paracas Necropolis textile imagery from the south coast of Peru, predating the Incas by almost 1,500 years. Then, too, there are images imported from outside the Andes that are used in the movie such as the footprinted map derived from Contact Period Mexican codices, the iconic and derogatory contemporary Mexican sombrero, the contemporary Mexican piñata, a ‘Merlin the magician’ character, Riverdance, and writing, which never existed in the pre-Columbian Andes. But, Disney is not making any claims of authenticity for Groove. To the contrary, Disney has gone out of its way to culturally de-author and de-authorize the models that served as its artists’ inspiration. As such, Groove is a virtual gaze, ‘“not a direct perception but a received perception mediated through representation…a gaze that travels in an imaginary flânerie through an imaginary elsewhere and an imaginary elsewhen” (Friedberg 1993, 2; emphasis in original). As Friedberg suggests, to go to the movies is to travel in space and time, literally and figuratively. Yet there is a ‘real’ behind Disney’s representations. Groove both represents and is ‘Disneythinking’ about ancient Peru. Following Baudrillard (1983), the real has collapsed into the hyperreal. “When the real is no longer what it used to be, nostalgia assumes its full meaning. There is a proliferation of myths of origin and signs of reality” (ibid, 12). Baudrillard (ibid), most especially, has argued that we are living in an era of simulation in which the sharp line between reality and illusion has become messy if not erased. Disney’s dedifferentiation of distinctions that are traditionally made between retail marketing and amusement, hotels and theme parks, work and play, education and entertainment (Cubitt, 2000 citing Bryman 1995, 165–68) can be seen as part of the process. But, have our images, communications, and media usurped the place of reality? Cubitt (2000) argues for a critical and selective use of the concept of simulation and shows it to have an important political aspect. That aspect is manifest in the manipulation of Cuzco today by local, national and international agents of international tourism and economic development (see Silverman 2002a). 6. Place and Placelessness Although I watched Groove at least a dozen times while preparing my article for Journal of Social Archaeology (Silverman 2002b; see 111

Chapter 5 - Helaine Silverman Acknowledgements), I missed the following line in the opening of the movie when Emperor Kuzco is introduced, probably because I was laughing. The song says: “He was born and raised to rule. No one has ever been as cool in a thousand years of aristocracy—an enigma and a mystery in Mesoamerica[n] history… Kuzco!” I am pleased to have the opportunity to correct this oversight because Disney’s lyric actually strengthens my 2002b argument about the studio’s wanton appropriation of the past and deliberate espousal of cultural anonymity-cum-placelessness. I believe that Disney actually did not know that ‘Mesoamerica’ does not refer to ancient Peru, rather than that this was a deliberate obfuscation. Among Groove’s professional and avocational film critics, more than half thought it relevant to geographically/culturally situate the action between Emperor Kuzco and Pacha. But not all of the localizations were accurate, and some were contradictory. Among the more egregious geographical and cultural attributions that I discovered in the movie reviews were: “Mayan, or Incan or something…at an Aztec jungle diner” (Kerry Douglas Dye in LeisureSuit.net); “a mythical mountain kingdom that, by appearances, at least, seems to have been inspired by the ancient Aztecs and Mayans” (Jeff Vice in Deseret News, 15 December 2000); and “Aztec setting…Aztec prince” (The Film Critiquer, 7 February 1999). The comment that most annoyed me in my survey of reviews was made by the distinguished film critic, Roger Ebert (Chicago Sun-Times, 15 December 2000). Although he liked the film and correctly set the action in “a mythical kingdom somewhere in South America,” he says that Emperor Kuzco’s name “sound[s] like a discount store,” ignorant of the fact that this really was the name of the Inca capital city. I am especially interested in the comments of three reviewers of Groove. Writing for the Toronto Sun on 15 December 2000, Bob Thompson complained that the “mythical Inca-like mountain kingdom’ was ‘barely etched and not-quite realized” by Disney. Similarly, MaryAnn Johanson observed that “while the film’s environment may be pre-Columbian, it could well be almost anywhere—the pseudo-Inca setting is lovely and colorful, but it serves only as a backdrop to an essentially timeless, placeless story…Groove feels no need to treat its setting with much semblance of reality, which allows all sorts of modernalia, from theme-park roller coasters to roadside diners” (http://www.flickfilosopher.com). A pseudonymous ‘rogue librarian’ perspicaciously observed on the joblo.com web site on 19 December 2000 that Groove “fits into any cultural environment and time period…That it’s supposed to be Incan/Mayan doesn’t matter: it could have been set in Hugenot France or Imperial Russia or 1980s Japan and it would still be the same story. Which is why it doesn’t matter that voices are all Americanized.” But it does matter. In Place and Placelessness, Edward Relph (1976, 82) identifies “an inauthentic attitude to place [which] is essentially no sense of place, for it involves no awareness of the deep and symbolic significances of 112

Groovin’ to Ancient Peru places and no appreciation of their identities.” Relph’s statement clearly describes the inauthenticity and placelessness of Groove. Indeed, Randy Fullmer, the film’s producer, stated that as the production team discussed particular details such as whether or not to show a wheel since the Incas did not use the wheel, “We realized at the end of that day we were taking this film way too seriously” (Entertainment Weekly, 18 August 2000, page 92). Placelessness is a symptom of a self-conscious attitude that “consists especially of a relationship between man and objects in which the objects are created and produced solely for consumption by a mass public” (Relph 1976, 82). It is in this framework that we should understand the tight linkage between Disney’s animated movies (such as Groove), Disney’s retail marketing around those movies, and Relph’s placelessness. Disney, an economic and ideological corporate activist, is manipulating media to deliberately create and encourage placelessness and, by so doing, “weakening…the identity of places to the point where they not only look alike but feel alike and offer the same bland possibilities for experience” (Relph 1976, 82)—whether Celebration, Florida or Kuzcotopia. Although Groove is placeless, within the movie’s action Pacha’s village is explicitly placeful. Pacha defends his family’s right and desire to live there in words evocative of the keenest anthropological descriptions of sense of place. He says, “When the sun hits just there, the mountain sings.” The mountain anchors their social life. It is dwelling in its most Heideggerian sense. Yet for Emperor Kuzco, who wants to destroy Pacha’s village in order to build his own private estate-resort, the mountain does not sing and, ultimately, one mountain is the same as any other. The placelessness of Groove extends to Disney’s appropriation of character names, done without any regard for their cultural significance. As Pratt (1992, 33) realized, the act of naming is an assertion of power: “the naming, the representing, and the claiming are all one; the naming brings the reality of order into being.” Emperor Kuzco’s name is taken from the capital city of the Inca Empire, Cuzco or Cusco (in Spanish)/Qosqo (Quechua). Disney’s use of ‘K’ in Kuzco is particularly notable since the letter does not exist in Spanish (except in borrowings from other languages) and Quechua was an unwritten language, thereby doubly distancing the emperor’s name from the ancient people and site. Pacha is an impossible name for a peasant of the Inca empire. Pacha is an untranslatable, complex, polysemous Andean concept that simultaneously denotes ‘earth, world, time, place’ (Salomon 1991, 14). The concept is found in the names of the legendary builder of imperial Cuzco and ninth Inca emperor, Pachacutec (‘he who shakes up the world’), and at the great oracular pilgrimage shrine of Pachacamac (the deity ‘World Maker’) on the central coast. Chicha (Pacha’s wife) is the name of a beer brewed from fermented maize that was a ceremonial-ritual beverage consumed in the prehispanic Andes and still drunk today. Yzma (the evil advisor scheming for the throne) must 113

Chapter 5 - Helaine Silverman be Yschma, the name of the late prehispanic central coast polity where Pachacamac was located. Kronk is a completely made up name, though his appearance is clearly derived from running warrior figures painted on north coast Mochica pottery dating to ca. AD 400-600 (see, e.g., Donnan and McClelland 1999, fig. 4.105). Tenuously, too, I would suggest that it is ethically easier for Disney to profit from Peru’s archaeological patrimony by not naming the model for the film’s mythical empire. The Peruvian state does not hold a copyright to the reproduction of its stunning ancient heritage. 7. Stereotypes and responsiveness in the Disney enterprise In Groove, Disney’s archetypical stereotypes are blatant. The DVD commentary states that during the course of the production team’s research trip to Machu Picchu, they “experienced what the people were like.” This statement is illustrated by a cut-away from posing Quechua Indians in full ethnic dress at the Pisaq market (a tourist-attraction town near Cuzco) to a scene in Groove in which Pacha kisses his wife Chicha and picks up his children, a gesture that I have rarely, if ever, seen in traditional Andean communities but one which satisfies Disney’s and the U.S. viewer’s universalizing ideology of gender roles (husband-wife), nuclear family (parent-child, sibling-sibling relationships), and domesticity. As Byrne and McQuillan (1999, 59) observe, domesticity (the great discovery of the bourgeois age) is “a discourse that Disney is really at home with,” notwithstanding the pervasive absence of parents, especially a mother, for main characters throughout so many other Disney animations and comics. The deluxe DVD audio commentary states that Disney regarded showing Chicha pregnant as a breakthrough in animated movies and that Disney executives gave their permission so long as the expectant Chicha was ‘tastefully’ drawn. She is so tasteful, in fact, that she appears to be an elegant Classical Greek or Roman noblewoman with her coiffed hair and toga garment, rather than an Indian peasant woman with braids, chapped cheeks, rough hands, calloused feet, and childbirth-distended stomach. Nor can Disney resist expressing an undercurrent of homophobia. The scene where Pacha gives Kuzco-cum-llama mouth-to-mouth resuscitation can be read on two levels: Pacha’s dismay at the llama mouth, replete with flapped out tongue (‘oh gross’ moaned children in the audience when I saw the movie), and the mutual distress of Pacha and Kuzco-as-cognizant male-despite-llama-appearance at the same sex intimacy. While it is true that “Disney has always preferred autocracy to democracy” in its animated movies (Byrne and McQuillan 1999, 85), it is interesting that in Groove the very familiar democratic act of petitioning 114

Groovin’ to Ancient Peru for redress of an authority’s wrong is ultimately successful. Although the kingship is not toppled, the emperor does reassume power as a more mature and humane ruler. This is clearly progress over some of Disney’s other recent animated films, which appear to celebrate antidemocratic social relations (see Giroux 1999, 107). On the other hand, it is important to recognize that Pacha, the happy peasant, felt such loyalty to the office of the emperor that he was willing to help him even though success would mean the destruction of his village (what would Gramsci say!). Thus, the agency and power of peasant-cum-Pacha is severely limited in Groove and dependent on the moralization of a particular emperor. Yet it must be acknowledged that here Disney is only portraying what were truly hierarchic relations in the Inca Empire where the agency and power of peasants were severely limited, the Inca state policy of ‘reciprocity writ large’ notwithstanding (see Murra 1980, 88). Remarkably, Disney’s notoriously conservative political-business practices underwent internal scrutiny and discussion as a result of the participation of Sting, a major popular culture icon, in the movie’s musical score. Mark Dindal’s audio commentary about scenes deleted from the movie indicates that in the original ending of Groove, Emperor Kuzco built Kuzcotopia at Pacha’s village; Pacha’s village was not destroyed, but Kuzco built a giant palace (crowned by a Wari-Tiwanaku sun face) near Pacha’s house. Sting objected to that ending and said so. Rather than being dismissed from the project, as he thought would happen, Dindal and Fullmer decided to listen to him and have Kuzco build a little house appropriate to the community where Pacha lives. Dindal states that they realized their planned ending “was really socially irresponsible, not ecologically friendly at all.” He credits Sting with “saving us.” Dindal also says that Sting convinced the Disney team to “respect indigenous cultures” and not ‘force our culture on other cultures.’ Dindal’s and Fullmer’s comments about the revised ending are full of irony since, in acceding to Sting, Disney executives were suggesting that giant theme parks should not be built where local people might not want them and that a powerful contemporary empire (Disney) might well have to be publicly accountable and less culturally imperialist. 8. Conclusion Groove is a delightful animated movie, quick-paced, musical, visually stunning, full of puns. Therefore, it could be argued that its cultural mixings and missings cause no harm. But they do. They are not innocent errors. They are the result of a very particular attitude in the Disney studio that essentializes, exoticizes, and objectifies the past and those who created it. Here I have been concerned with Groove-as-ideological-symbolism and Groove-as-ideological-weapon. Disney’s masterful visualizations in 115

Chapter 5 - Helaine Silverman Groove deploy dominant power endowed by Disney’s own economic might. Movies, too, can presént and présent the past in tourable, consumable form (e.g., Disney merchandise, above). As Friedberg (1993, 7) so aptly observes, “film and television spectatorship has produced a new relation to the past. The past is, now, inexorably bound with images of a constructed past: a confusing blur of ‘simulated’ and ‘real’.” Cinematic spectatorship produces a timelessness; the past is interminably recycled, and ever-accessible (ibid., 9). Disney’s appropriations are exemplary of Jameson’s (1984) critique of late capitalist and consumer society, for Groove is Jameson’s postmodern pastiche—a ‘blank parody’ of ancient Peru, a ‘complacent play of historical allusion’ that overtly seeks to hide or deny the ‘healthy normality’ from which it has ‘momentarily borrowed’ and diverged. Groove effaces history by its “random cannibalization of all the styles of the past [in a] play of random stylistic allusion” (Jameson 1984, 65–6; see Appadurai 1996, 29–30 quoted earlier). Groove also exemplifies Jameson’s postmodernism in its unreferenced culture of derivative iconographic quotations. In fact, Groove could be considered one of Jameson’s nostalgia films since the deluxe DVD audio commentary explains that the Disney animators sought to make Pacha’s village “beautiful with shapes that are round and calm…peaceful.” This, to me, is as if Disney were trying to recapture the ideal, naive, stable, prosperous small-town America of the 1950s, but in a different setting. Because Groove is based on a real place, time, and society, and because the making of the movie involved a research trip to Peru, we also can consider Groove to be a form of travel writing and cultural translation. As such it is amenable to critical treatment as applied by, for instance, Said (1979), Pratt (1992), Duncan and Gregory (1999) and Rojek and Urry (1997) to other Other-toured cultures. The irony should not be lost that Disney—creator of the paradigmatic theme park tourist industry of the late 20th century—spawned its own real tourists: its production team who went to Peru and came back with photographic, penciled, and crayoned images of happy contemporary domestic Andean subjects whom they morphed into ancient ones. Like Pratt’s (1992, 7) ‘seeing-man,’ their eyes passively surveyed the Cuzco region and possessed it in imagery that was then animated according to their script without any encumbrances from natives, living or dead. Certainly, the Disney team did not dwell-in-travel, to use Lury’s (1997) term. Rather, theirs was a hit-and-run trip to acquire the objects (again, Lury, 1997) and first-hand knowledge necessary for the visualization of the movie. In the deluxe DVD’s supplemental disk, we see the most important of these trophies—color photographs—prominently displayed in wall panels along the corridors of the Disney studio where Groove was produced. In keeping with this line of argumentation, it can also be argued that seeing Groove is virtual travel and owning a VHS or DVD copy of Groove is a form of ‘object of travel’ practice, once removed. 116

Groovin’ to Ancient Peru And yet, to play devil’s advocate and to return to my basic contention, Disney’s conscious non-identification or non-naming of Peru in Groove may well reveal the company’s doubts about its clientele’s level of global cosmopolitanism (ibid). What becomes readily apparent in this critical travel approach is that “the forces of cultural production and reception are not equal” (Giroux 1999, 9). It is Disney telling a story about ancient, albeit anonymous, Peru. And because: these films possess at least as much cultural authority and legitimacy for teaching roles, values, and ideals as more traditional sites of learning…, Disney films…help children understand who they are, what societies are about…The authority of such films in part, stems from their unique form of representation and their ever-growing presence…such authority is also produced and secured within a media apparatus equipped with dazzling technology, sound effects, and imagery packaged as entertainment. (Giroux 1999, 84) The public who receives Disney’s message then creates its own images of these (re)presentations based on ‘Disneyknowledge.’ Moreover, we must consider the poststructuralist critique of how cultural texts, even those as highly polished as Disney’s, are never seamless. There exists the possibility of creative misreadings and misviewings of the film-cum-text that always provide the consumer of the text with space for resignification. Certainly this occurs at Disneyland and Disney World. The vast majority of U.S. movie-goers are ‘accidental’ tourists or ‘post-tourists’ who will never see the appropriated models for themselves. Indeed, there may be nothing but appropriated models and copies of copies. In the case of a movie such as Groove, which is actually sited in a foreign albeit fictionalized land, the issue is all the more sensitive if we accept the (chilling) statement made by Michael Ovitz (cited in Giroux 1999, 26), former Disney executive, that “Disney isn’t a company as much as it is a nation-state with its own ideas and attitudes.” As various critics have observed, the Disney ideology is aggressively politically conservative, corporatist, and global. Disney is not just American popular culture, it is a world culture and mainstay of the global economy (theme parks, merchandise, media conglomerates, and the employment and revenues these generate). In this regard, Disney fits very well into Appadurai’s (1996, 35–6) concept of ‘mediascape.’ I agree with Dorfman and Mattelart (1971, 133) that ‘by invading the past (and the future) with the same structures of the present, Disney takes possession - in the name of its social class - of the whole of human history’ (my translation). I have noted above the well known litany of Disney’s celluloid ‘sins’: sexism, political conservatism, homophobia, racism, cultural imperialism, class denigration, and so on. Cindy Fuchs has explicitly referred to the ‘perennial bugaboos’ of Disney animators in her review of Groove 117

Chapter 5 - Helaine Silverman (Philadelphia City Paper, 14-21 December 2000). And thirty years ago Dorfman and Mattelart (1971, 69) excoriated Disney’s “nourishment in international stereotypes,” specifically criticizing Disney’s pre-Groove comic book treatment of Peru. Who can deny that the Peruvian (in Inca-Blinca) is somnolent, sells pottery, sits on his haunches, eats hot peppers, has a millennial culture. …Disney does not invent these caricatures, but does exploit them to their maximum efficacy. Disney encloses all of these places of the world into a deeply rooted vision of the dominant (national and international) classes. Disney gives this vision coherency and justifies the social system on which it is based. Mass culture media uses these cliches to dilute the everyday life of the people. [Thus,] the only way a Mexican recognizes and knows Peru is by means of Disney’s prejudice which means that Peru can’t define itself, can only be that, can’t escape this situation of proto-typicalness, is prisoner of its own exoticism… Disney sensationalizes. (Dorfman and Mattelart 1971, 69–70, my translation) But Disney is not monolithic and unchanging. I have shown that there are many Disney ideologies, each with its own consequences. There is the expansive, corporatist, bottom-line, labor exploitative, moneymaking Disney that is blueprinting the United States in its image using intermeshed economic might and political wherewithall to carry out its agenda. There is the equally well known conservative Disney that pushes family values and ‘the American way of life’ which, in Disney’s hands, is homophobic, capitalist, traditionally gendered, and autocratic. There is the related imperialist Disney that is aggressively opening foreign markets for its diversified products. There is also the tentatively or calculatedly enlightened Disney which subtly permits a message of ecological balance to be aired in Groove and which is currently promoting wild life reserves. In this article we have seen examples of all of these Disney ideologies. As Giroux (1999, 5) has noted, “Disney culture, like all cultural formations, is riddled with contradictions…Disney culture offers potentially subversive moments and pleasures in a range of contradictory and complex experiences.” The easy conflation of time, space and society created by Disney and accepted by viewers of The Emperor’s New Groove is explicable as a result of the style of this movie which is homogenizing and iterates the Bob Hope and Bing Crosby ‘Road to [Wherever]’ feature films in their shared genre of buddies, riotous action, quick-witted story line, music, and brilliant color. The differences that make the invented societies worth animating are, at the same time, minimized or inconsequentialized in fulfillment of the dominant Manichean morale of the movies: good vs. evil, cooperation vs. individualism. Disney appears obsessed with remaking a pristine, innocent past (Bryman 1995). But there is a fundamental difference between Disney’s 118

Groovin’ to Ancient Peru recent animated movies about mythical, never-existed people or places such as Hercules (ancient Greece), Aladdin (ancient Islamic Iraq), Mulan (ancient China) and Atlantis (ancient sunken continent), and movies such as The Emperor’s New Groove (and Road to El Dorado by DreamWorks, 2000), which concern ancient societies about which there are archaeological, historical, and ethnohistorical data. Walt Disney once said, “We just make the picture, and let the professors tell us what they mean” (quoted in Bell et al. 1995, 1). This is disingenuous. As others have argued and as I have reframed here, conscious ideologies are at work behind Disney’s seemingly ahistorical and apolitical movies. Indeed, Schickel (1968, 227) observed that Walt Disney appropriated, “but that process nearly always robbed the work at hand of its uniqueness, of its soul…In its place he put jokes and songs and fright effects…He came always as a conqueror…It is a trait, as many have observed, that many Americans share when they venture into foreign lands hoping to do good but equipped only with knowhow instead of sympathy and respect for alien traditions.” In Groove, we clearly see the validity of this criticism. Perhaps most alarming about the educational value professed by the Disney enterprise is that in this genre of animated films Disney “makes a claim on the future through its nostalgic view of past” (Giroux 1999, 88). This is true not only in Disney’s Norman Rockwellized America, but for every real country that has served as a model for the transnational media corporation’s creative animation genius. There should have been nothing boring to Roy Disney about making an animated version of the Inca Empire and its myths, replete as it would have been with artistically legitimate inaccuracies. And, indeed, a tremendous amount of archaeological research is obvious in the movie, most notable - in my opinion - in the hilarious ‘bride scene’ which must be based on some knowledge of the aclla (chosen women; see Silverblatt 1987) as well as women motifs painted on Inca pottery (see Fernández Baca 1973, figs. 323–329, 333–334, 336). In fictionalizing Cuzco-Machu Picchu to the point of anonymity, Disney has not told a story about some mythical kingdom that never existed, rather Disney has denied the Inca Empire which did. Whereas the genre of historical movie, with all the faults of veracity that its films have, contributes positively to knowledge and curiosity about the past, such cannot be the result of Groove because the movie is explicitly set in a mythical kingdom. Moreover, the form or medium of Groove (animation) must necessarily influence our perception of its content. Cartoon animation fictionalizes as well as trivializes history into entertainment and unreality to a far greater degree than movies with human actors whose very tangibility supports the veracity of the story being told. Why is this important? Ultimately, the answer can be expressed best by quoting Walter Benjamin’s (1968, 255) fifth thesis on the philosophy of history: “every image of the past that is not recognized by the present as one of its own concerns threatens to disappear irretrievably.” 119

Chapter 5 - Helaine Silverman Acknowledgements This chapter was first published in Journal of Social Archaeology, Volume 2, Issue 3, 2002 (copyright Sage Publications Ltd). I am grateful to Sage Publications for granting permission to republish this material. I have reduced the length of the original for this book, and added mention of my belated discovery that Groove refers to Mesoamerica at the beginning of the movie. References Aidman, A. 1999 ‘Disney’s “Pocahontas”: conversations with Native American and Euro-American girls’ in S. Mazzarella and N. Odom Pecora (eds.) Growing Up Girls. Popular Culture and the Construction of Identity: 133–58. New York: Peter Lang. Appadurai, A. 1996 ‘Disjuncture and difference in the global cultural economy’ in Modernity At Large. Cultural Dimensions of Globalization: 27–47. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Baudin, L. 1944 L’Empire Socialiste des Inka. Paris: Institut d’Ehtnologie. Baudrillard, J. 1983 Simulations. New York: Semiotext(e). 1995 ‘Pataphysics of the year 2000’ in The Illusion of the End, translated by Chris Turner: 1–9. Stanford: Stanford University Press. 2000 The Vital Illusion. New York: Columbia University Press. Bauer, B. S. 1991 ‘Pacariqtambo and the mythical origins of the Inca’, Latin American Antiquity 2 (1): 7–26. 1992 The Development of the Inca State. Austin: University of Texas Press. Bell, E., Haas, L., and Sells, L., eds. 1995 From Mouse to Mermaid: The Politics of Film, Gender and Culture. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Benjamin, W. 1968 ‘Theses on the Philosophy of History’ in H. Arendt (ed.) Illuminations. Walter Benjamin. Essays and Reflections: 253–64. New York: Schocken Books. Bryman, A. 1995 Disney and His Worlds. London: Routledge. Bryman, A. 1999a ‘Theme parks and McDonaldization’ in B. Smart (ed.) Resisting McDonaldization: 101–15. London: Sage. 120

Groovin’ to Ancient Peru 1999b ‘The Disneyization of society’ The Sociological Review 47 (1): 25–47. Byrne, E. and McQuillan M, 1999 Deconstructing Disney. London: Pluto Press. Covey, R. A. 2000 ‘Inka Administration of the Far South Coast of Peru’ Latin American Antiquity 11 (2): 119–38. Cubitt, S. 2000 Simulation and Social Theory. London: Sage. D’Altroy, T. N. 1992 Provincial Power in the Inka Empire. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press. D’Altroy, T. N. and T. K. Earle 1985 ‘Staple finance, wealth finance, and storage in the Inka political economy’ Current Anthropology 26: 187–206. de Certeau, M. 1985 ‘Practices of Space’, in M. Blonsky (ed.), On Signs, pp. 122-145. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Donnan, C. B. and D. McClelland 1999 Moche Fineline Painting. Its Evolution and Its Artists. Los Angeles: UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History. Dorfman, A. and Mattelart, A. 1971 Para Leer El Pato Donald. Valparaiso: Ediciones Universitarias de Valparaiso. Duncan, J. and Gregory D., eds. 1999 Writes of Passage. Reading Travel Writing. London: Rout­ledge. Eco, U. 1986 Travels in Hyperreality. New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovan­ ovich. Fernández Baca, J. 1973 Motivos de Ornamentación de la Cerámica Inca Cuzco. Lima: Studium. Foucault, M. 1970 The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. New York: Random House. Friedberg, A. 1993 Window Shopping. Cinema and the Postmodern. Berkeley: University of California Press. Giroux, H. 1999 The Mouse That Roared. Disney and the End of Innocence. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. Gregory, D. 1999 ‘Scripting Egypt. Orientalism and the cultures of travel’ in J. Duncan and D. Gregory (eds.) Writes of Passage. Reading Travel Writing: 114–50. London: Routledge. 121

Chapter 5 - Helaine Silverman Guaman Poma de Ayala, F. 1980 Nueva Corónica i Buen Gobierno. (1615) Mexico City: Siglo Veintiuno. Hall, S. 1985 ‘The Rediscovery of ideology: The return of the repressed in media studies’ in V. Beechey and J. Donald (eds.) Subjectivity and Social Relations: 23–55. Philadelphia: Open University Press. Hayashida, F. 1999 ‘Style, technology, and state production: Inka pottery manufac­ ture in the Leche valley’ Latin American Antiquity 10 (4): 337–52. Isbell, W. H. 1995 ‘Constructing the Andean past or “As You Like It”’ Journal of the Steward Anthropological Society 23 (1–2): 1–12. Jameson, F. 1984 ‘Postmodernism, or the cultural logic of late capitalism’, New Left Review 146: 53–93. 1991 Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. London: Verso. Lash, S. 1990 Sociology of Postmodernism. London: Routledge. Lury, C. 1997 ‘The Objects of Travel’ in C. Rojek and J. Urry (eds.) Touring Cultures. Transformations of Travel and Theory: 75–95. London: Routledge. Morris, C. and D. E. Thompson 1985 Huánuco Pampa. An Inca City and Its Hinterland. London: Thames and Hudson. Murra, J. V. 1975 Formaciones Económicas y Políticas del Mundo Andino. Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos. Murra, J. V. 1980 The Economic Organization of the Inka State. Research in Economic Anthropology Supplement 1. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press. Patterson, T. C. 1991 The Inca Empire. The Formation and Disintegration of a PreCapitalist State. New York: Berg. Picker, M. and Chyng Feng Sun 2000 Mickey Mouse Monopoly. Disney, Childhood and Corporate Power. (independent documentary film) Pratt, M. L. 1992 Imperial Eyes. Travel Writing and Transculturation. London: Routledge. 122

Groovin’ to Ancient Peru Relph, E. 1976 Place and Placelessness. London: Pion Limited. Rojek, C. 1993 Ways of Escape: Modern Transformation in Leisure and Travel. London: Macmillan. Rojek, C. and Urry J. eds. 1997 Touring Cultures. Transformations of Travel and Theory. London: Routledge. Rowe, J. H. 1946 ‘The Inca Empire at the Time of the Spanish Conquest’ in J. H. Steward (ed.) Handbook of South American Indians, Volume 2, The Andean Civilizations: 183–330. Bulletin 143. Washington, D.C.: Bureau of American Ethnology, Smithsonian Institution. 1970 ‘La Arqueología del Cuzco como Historia Cultural’ in R. Ravines (ed.) 100 Años de Arqueología en el Perú: 490–563. Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos. Said, E. 1979 Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books. Salomon, F. 1991 ‘Introductory essay: the Huarochirí manuscript’ in F. Salomon and G. L. Urioste (eds.) The Huarochirí Manuscript. A Testament of Ancient and Colonial Andean Religion: 1–38. Austin: University of Texas Press. Schickel, R. 1968 The Disney Version: The Life, Times, Art, and Commerce of Walt Disney. New York: Simon and Schuster. Silverblatt, I. 1987 Moon, Sun, and Witches. Gender Ideologies and Class in Inca and Colonial Peru. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Silverman, H. 2002a ‘Touring ancient times: The present and presented past in contemporary Peru’ American Anthropologist 104 (3): 881– 902. 2002b ‘Groovin’ to ancient Peru: a critical analysis of Disney’s “The Emperor’s New Groove.”’ Journal of Social Archaeology 2 (3): 298–22. Solomon, J. 2001 The Ancient World in the Cinema. New Haven: Yale University Press. Urton, G. 1990 The History of a Myth. Pacariqtambo and the Origin of the Inkas. Austin: University of Texas Press. Valcárcel, L. E. 1981 Memorias. Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos. 123

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Wyke, M. 1997 Projecting the Past. Ancient Rome, Cinema, and History. London: Routledge. 1999 ‘Sawdust Caesar: Mussolini, Julius Caesar and the drama of dictatorship’ in M. Biddess and M. Wyke (eds.) The Uses and Abuses of Antiquity: 167–86. Bern: Peter Lang. Zuidema, R. T. 1964 The Ceque System of Cuzco. Leiden: E. J. Brill.

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Chapter 6 Telling Children About the Past using Electronic Games Maria Economou 1. Introduction This chapter focuses on the use of electronic games for presenting the past to children. First, it examines some general issues related to the use of digital media for the interpretation of the past, considering their potential but also some of the pitfalls and problems which arise when they are applied in this field. It then uses four different case studies to examine these issues in depth. The aims of the chapter are to critically examine the views about the past which these games communicate either directly or indirectly. It looks at the way this can influence children’s attitude towards ancient societies and towards archaeology in general. In the analysis of the games a number of key questions relevant to all types of public presentations of archaeology were examined: What is left out or omitted in these applications? What is stressed? What is made explicit and what is implied? What are the means for achieving this? Who is responsible for these types of interpretations? The methodology for the study involved the evaluation of samples of available electronic games chosen for their thematic link with ancient societies. More than ten were reviewed before the final selection was made. The particular case studies were chosen because they are representative for different types of presentation techniques used in electronic games; refer to different ancient cultures; were designed by different software developers/designers; and are targeted to a range of different children’s age groups. Each game was examined for the following characteristics • depth and quality of information presented • pedagogical strategies and potential as learning tools • appropriateness for the targeted age group • view of the past presented • input from archaeologists or related specialists • innovative use of digital media • overall design and interface 125

Chapter 6 - Maria Economou 2. Using digital media to present the past Information and communication technologies (ICT) can prove powerful tools in our effort to capture the past, interpret it and present it to an audience. They offer possibilities for creating three-dimensional models, visualizing ancient building structures and whole settlements, combining sound and moving images with text, constructing immersive environments, to mention only a few examples. All this, while offering users the ability to choose what interests them and to follow their own pace, has significant potential for educational applications. Some of these features have been exploited by computer game companies and designers of educational CD-ROMs to create applications about the past for children which aim to be captivating and entertaining. These present considerable opportunities for reaching a wide audience in an informal setting, in most cases from the convenience of the users’ own home, without the didactic tone of formal educational environments which can act as a deterrent for a section of the public with a genuine interest in the past. Although these games can be played in the classroom, they are primarily part of informal education and learning environments. Playing them usually takes place at home, without the presence of a teacher and only rarely with the mediating role of a parent. These programs have the potential to spread some of the lessons learned by archaeology in an enjoyable and far-reaching way, as well as make clearer the role of investigating the past and of archaeological work processes. Yet, this opportunity for reaching a wider audience is also laden with difficulties and pitfalls as any effort of interpretation of the past is a complex process raising a number of issues. The users of these applications are offered control of the navigation and of the pace of exploration and the freedom to start this virtual encounter with the past whenever and for as long as they choose. They are invited to participate and to understand the past by ‘experiencing’ it in a personal way, of re-enacting patterns of life of past societies. According to modern educational psychology, through this hands-on approach, users are likely to remember more than through more traditional and passive methods of presentation. However, although it is generally accepted that this type of handson experience can be memorable, it is worth considering exactly what it is that is remembered. As Peter Ucko reminds us, public archaeology handson activities in general (including ‘low tech’ ones, such as building wooden long-houses or creating your own pots) have more to do with contemporary society than with ancient ones, as they reflect on our own interpretation of the past and take place in a different context and cultural environment than that of the people of the past (1994, xxi). But as he goes on to state himself: [i]n the multidimensional aims of education… none of this can be 126

Telling Children about the Past using Electronic Games seen to be bad. Indeed, hands-on experience may be essential to its aims of encouraging pride in the past, recognizing the longevity of tradition, or stressing the complexities and ingenuity of those who have gone before. Meanwhile, archaeology as a discipline has come of age, pointing out the subjectivity of much archaeological interpretation, and insisting that it must make explicit the biases (hidden agendas) of those who have accumulated archaeological data and of those who have subsequently interpreted them. (Ucko 1994, xxi) An important element worth stressing here is that although the ‘hands-on’ activities which Ucko refers to are concrete and tangible, the recreated electronic environment of computer games and electronic applications does not offer the physical experience of material culture or of archaeological sites. In these programs, the virtual replaces the real and in this process, no matter how sophisticated the model or high quality the graphics, important elements are lost. Public interest in archaeology often stems from a longing for adventure or a romantic view of the past (Fagan 1984, 177–8; DeCicco 1988, 841). Electronic games capitalize on this, but rarely turn this predisposition towards what can be learned by modern archaeology, while at the same time maintaining the excitement which attracts people in the first place (McManamon 1994, 63–4). It is today recognized that all interpretations of the past tell us a lot, if not more about the present society in which they were created, than about the ancient one which they study (e.g., Hodder et al. 1995; Lowenthal 1985; Shanks and Tilley 1992; Walsh 1992). In the case of electronic games, the contrast between the distant past(s) they represent and the modern western world, of which they are a product, is particularly striking. Today, electronic games represent one of the largest and fastest growing entertainment industries with over 25 billion dollars revenue in 2004 (PricewaterhouseCoopers 2005), approaching in size the music industry and surpassing the motion picture one in terms of box office revenue (Shuster 2003). Since their appearance about thirty years ago, it is clear that electronic games are today addressing a mass market, yet this global audience is limited to users who are computer savvy and have access to a fast computer capable of displaying good quality graphics and playing sound. Certain types of electronic games (although not the ones analyzed in the case studies) require also special consoles or a fast Internet connection. In the sense that all types of electronic games require access to advanced ICT technology and relevant skills, they contribute to and perpetuate the ‘digital divide’ between the ICT haves and have-nots (both within a particular community, as well as between industrialized and developing societies). The gaming industry follows the general pattern described by several analysts of the social changes related to the use of new media, whereby the drive for profit exasperates existing inequalities, 127

Chapter 6 - Maria Economou while the marketplace logic manufactures new information divides (Gandy 2002; Mosco 1989; McChesney 1999). As is shown in the discussion of the case studies below, when dealing with archaeological subjects, it is obvious that in order to reach this global market effectively and profitably, the electronic game companies have focused on easily recognizable and digestible interpretations of the past. 3. ‘Pompeii: The Legend of Vesuvius’, a historical adventure electronic game This was developed in 1999 by Arxel Tribe and published by Cryo interactive Entertainment. It was published in 2000 in North America with the new name ‘TimeScape: Journey to Pompeii’ by DreamCatcher Interactive. The European Leisure Software Publishers Association recommended a minimum age of 3 for this game, rating it as suitable for all ages. However, these ratings refer to suitability for viewing (e.g., whether the game contains depictions of violence, bad language or frightening scenes) and not to the difficulty or playability of the game itself. I would certainly not recommend this game for young children. In fact, it would be suitable only for older children and teenagers and might require the help of an adult. ‘Pompeii’ is the first of a proposed series of games about Adrian Blake, an explorer and cartographer who is searching through time for his lost love, Sophia. Due to an ancient curse from the goddess Ishtar, Sophia has been metamorphosed into a freed Roman slave in the city of Pompeii in the last days of that city’s life in the year 79 AD. To save his future wife, Adrian must save her personification, find Sophia and convince her to leave before Vesuvius erupts and destroys the city. The users play Adrian’s character from a first-person perspective and must solve puzzles and other challenges presented to them. In the design of this game, a lot of care and thought has been put in the reconstruction of the city, basing most of the virtual model on the archaeological record (Fig. 1). The plan of the city, the architecture and the decorative details of the buildings, interiors of houses, shops, and public buildings are presented in a 360-degree panning, allowing players to utilize a rotational look-around at every scene. The collaboration with the Archaeological Superintendence of Pompeii and the French Union of National Museums (Réunion des Musées Nationaux) was a guarantee about the importance that was placed on this aspect of the production of the game and the faithful use of the archaeological information, which we have about the city. This is rather uncommon in the electronic games industry, where most similar productions (such as the ones examined below) use stylized cartoons and graphics of the historic environment without making any attempt to use the archaeological information, which survives. 128

Telling Children about the Past using Electronic Games Apart from the ‘Play’ mode which launches a new or continues an existing game in an interactive way, users can also select the ‘Visit’ mode, during which they can explore the three-dimensional environment of the virtual city at will. In this mode the exploration of the model feels like wandering in an empty, ghost city without any humans, even though human activity is implied for example by the bakeries, other shops, and villas. This is in tune with the more recent move towards more abstract or symbolic virtual worlds and/or an emphasis on communication with other users as opposed to the realistic representation of buildings and structures which preoccupied most applications of ‘virtual heritage’ during the first years of its development (e.g., Barceló 2001; Roussou and Drettakis 2003; Di Blas et al. 2005). In the ‘Play’ mode Adrian meets and discusses with various inhabitants of Pompeii. These are random encounters planned by the programmers, over which the hero has little control, as is the case with the two characters (a slave and a craftsman) who suddenly appear and discuss with Adrian during the first part of the game. The designers of the game gave the various characters different modern English accents

Fig. 1 View of the Temple of Isis from the VR model of Pompei, CD-ROM ‘Pompeii – The Legend of Vesuvius’, © Cryo, Réunion des musées nationaux, 2000 (reproduced with permission). 129

Chapter 6 - Maria Economou (in the version I reviewed), so for example, the slaves, tavern owners and craftsmen speak with a working class Cockney accent, while Adrian, his wealthy host, Popidius Secundus, and Sophia have an educated uppermiddle class English pronunciation. This portrays in a very interesting way the projection of modern British society’s association between class and language/accent to the Pompeian one of first century AD. In this case, the use of dialogue, one of the special features of digital media differentiating them from printed ones, acts in a subconscious but powerful way as an additional tool to solidify specific views about the past. In between these meetings with different characters, the hero wanders around the rather claustrophobic recreated space of the city, making his way through narrow streets lined with identical buildings. The game gives the impression of a moment frozen in the past, showing a recreated model of the city which portrays ‘how things were’ in ancient Pompeii, without any indication of changes over time or cultural and historical transformations. There is an effort to bring life and diversity to this clean, ‘glossed’ version of a city, which resembles a film set where even the taverns, shops and streets are spotless and where the emphasis is on the richly decorated villas and grandiose architecture of the forum and public architecture, ignoring less privileged private houses and quarters. This is attempted mainly through the characters introduced in the plot, who make some references to Pompeii’s complex social organization and economy, and include slaves (emancipated and not), craftsmen, merchants, prostitutes, and the references they make in the brief dialogues, for example, to property ownership, the electorate system and the textile industry. It is interesting to observe here again the projection of modern stereotypes, with several ‘working class’ types shown as shady characters with questionable morals (e.g., the market gardener and construction laborer quarrelling in the middle of the street, the artisan painter cheating at the game of dice in the tavern, the fuller trying to sell poor quality cloth) compared to the dignified and courteous behavior of the descendants of the elite families, such as Popidius Secundus or Eumachia. More extensive information is also available in the built-in Encyclopedia, which features a collection of essays on historical, religious, political, and cultural matters available to the player throughout the game. These include hot-links to explanations of the special terms mentioned or to images of the excavated site and artifacts from the real Pompeii. The information gained from this section is not directly linked to the puzzles of the game and it is possible to complete this without using the Encyclopedia at all. Although the Encyclopedia increases the educational value of the game, the dry academic style of its articles and the loose connection with the game limit its educational effectiveness and its potential for enriching the game’s limiting, ahistorical and ‘clean’ portrayal of life in the ancient city. Despite this, the effort to include accurate historical information and the extended use of the original archaeological information for the 130

Telling Children about the Past using Electronic Games recreation of the city’s features are some of the strongest features of this product which are not found often in applications of this type. 4. ‘Recess in Greece’, a CD-ROM for children This application was produced in 1994 by the Californian-based company Morgan Interactive as part of their Romp through History series. Although the targeted age-range is not specified on the CD, it is evident from the style and approach of the product that it is addressed primarily to children aged between seven and fourteen. The aim of the company as is stated on the jacket cover, indicates the approach followed in the design of the CD: “Morgan Interactive, Inc. is dedicated to education through entertainment. We develop and publish interactive multimedia products that enable children to actively participate in their own education. Filmquality animation, innovative content and original music bring our lovable characters to life and engage children in the learning experience” (Recess in Greece CD jacket cover 1994). It is interesting to note however, that in common with most electronic games, the long list of credits on the cover includes mainly production and design specialists (such as animators, technical and art producers) and no scientific advisors apart from an educational consultant. ‘Recess in Greece’ is designed like an animated interactive cartoon, which is loosely based on Homer’s Iliad and starts with the hero, Morgan, a young mischievous chimp dressed like a typical American school boy (with jeans, sweatshirt, trainers and a baseball cap), attending a class on Greek mythology, where all the other characters are cartoons of different animals. The CD uses bright colors, short game-like animation features, and lively music from the beginning. In this effort to capture the interest of young children, it employs several common techniques and oftenrepeated stereotypes, such as the travel through time. As Morgan starts to protest about the usefulness of writing a test on Greek mythology and the relevance this might have to his life, he is ordered by the donkey-faced teacher to write on the classroom blackboard which suddenly swallows him and transports him back in time to Ancient Greece, where he reappears with a different attire that mixes ancient (chiton and sandals) and modern (baseball cap) elements (Fig. 2). The landscape there, again rendered in stylized cartoon form, is a mélange of the most commonly known features of ancient Greece, with a Greek temple, a decorated amphora, a male statue which talks to Morgan, some houses scattered in the sunny landscape and a sign pointing to Mount Olympus, Sparta, and Troy (Fig. 2). Although this is supposed to be ancient Greece in 1200 BC, most of the features depicted are from classical Athens combined with several anachronisms, such as the komastes, the feasters on the decorated amphora dancing to 1960s pop music, the pig street-vendor who advertises mousaka (a dish which is part of the 131

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Fig. 2 Morgan is transported to Ancient Greece, CD-ROM ‘Recess in Greece’. cheap touristic image of contemporary Greek cuisine that conforms with the mass view of something definitely Greek nowadays) he sells with an Americanized pseudo-modern Greek accent, or the ancient temple which becomes ‘Club Parthenon’ playing loud disco music when the user clicks on it. Morgan needs to collect clues and information to allow him to return to the twentieth century. Throughout this interactive adventure, the user can click on a torch which is always present, to have goddess Athena appearing dressed in a chiton resembling the graduation robes of American colleges, to provide encyclopedic information. In this mode, short background information is provided, for example about Greek pottery, architecture and geography, while some of the anachronisms (such as the mousaka-selling street vendor mentioned above) are also explained. These are supposed to be part of the fun of the game, effectively combining the animation gags and entertaining self-exploration of the story mode with the more educational encyclopedic mode, allowing the user to switch easily between the two. However, it is uncertain whether 7 to 14-year-olds (of the mainly American targeted audience) would be able to detect the anachronisms and over-simplifications rather than mixing them with their view of ancient Greek, or indeed modern Greek society. Furthermore, as is often the case with several electronic applications aimed at children (Wood 2001), the animations in this CD often appear gratuitous in nature, attempting to captivate young users but not offering any information about ancient Greece. Additionally, the information provided in encyclopedic 132

Telling Children about the Past using Electronic Games mode, rarely provides content-specific information which would have been useful when users get stuck on one task. In normal exploration mode, clicking on Mount Olympus transports Morgan to the palace of the Gods, where continuing in the same style the gods are presented to him combining modern and ancient characteristics; for example, Ares appears like a cigar-smoking American general, Hermes like a motorbike-riding courier, Zeus like a tough-talking sheriff, Apollo like a country-music singer, Persephone like an absent-minded 1960s hippy, Aphrodite like the cinematic Gilda wearing a figure-hugging dress and gloves, Demeter like a farm girl, and Athena (the strangest mixture of all), carrying an open book on her head like a hat, holding a fountain pen and wearing the chiton resembling American colleges’ graduation robe mentioned above. As with ‘Pompeii’, the use of American accents according to the types presented reinforces the anachronisms. In this case, we have the most blatant projection of contemporary American images and symbols to the ancient society of all those found in the games examined. Gender stereotypes categorize neatly the ancient Greek goddesses for instance in the brainy type, the alternative in-touch-with nature one, the seductress femme fatale, the unsophisticated and cheerful cow girl. This way, the U.S. viewer will feel at home with the universalizing ideology of gender roles (see also Silverman chapter 5). From there, Zeus transformed into a swan takes Morgan to King Tindareus’ Sparta to follow his daughter’s Helen’s adventures to Troy and back. Successfully completing quizzes and games allows Morgan to proceed and finally find his way back to his twentieth century classroom. Throughout the story users can test their knowledge by selecting one of the puzzles and quizzes which are listed in a menu, such as ‘The Olympian Gods’ which asks them to match the gods with their title or the ‘Word Builder’ which analyses the etymology of modern words which stem from ancient Greek ones. In general, the games in ‘Recess in Greece’ combine effectively entertainment value with educational aims at a level appropriate for children of this age group. In some cases, they offer features unique to the medium, such as the combination of seeing the spelling of a word or a Greek letter and hearing how this is pronounced, while also getting instant feedback after each effort to answer. However, the potential of the technology is not realized to its full, as the games generally rely heavily on a limited range of learning strategies. Techniques such as answering multiple choice questions or matching pairs are used frequently with few opportunities for deeper processing and more cognitive demands from the user (Wood 2001). Often formulaic in nature, they do not usually demand thoughtful engagement with the topic. The main problem with ‘Recess in Greece’ however, lies not so much in its pedagogical approach, but in the stereotypical visual vocabulary and language it uses in order to render the classical past easily identifiable to a modern American child. The extensive anachronisms are problematic 133

Chapter 6 - Maria Economou as they do not make clear to young learners that they are projections of modern views of the past and reflect a superficial and limited view not only of ancient but also of modern Greek life. Furthermore, in order to add to the perceived enjoyment of a young audience and maintain their interest, ‘Recess in Greece’ selects and presents historic facts and aspects of ancient Greek culture in order to fit the specific story and character of Morgan and his friends, creating a pastiche of modern American symbols and ideologies. By concentrating on a few widely known features of that past, without indicating that these were part of complex processes and a whole cultural system, it presents an easily digestible, familiar and memorable view of Ancient Greece, which is very revealing about American society. 5. ‘Le Louvre Raconté aux Enfants Avec Pef’, a CD-ROM for children This application was produced in 2000 by Gallimard Jeunesse in collaboration with the Réunion des Musées Nationaux and the Louvre Museum and is addressed to children between five and nine years old. Its counterpart ‘Le Louvre des Tout-petits’ is aimed for three to six-year-old users, was produced by the Louvre Museum and the Réunion des Musées Nationaux in co-operation with Emme and Bionik (2001). Pef, the wellknown French illustrator, collaborated in the production of ‘Le Louvre Raconté aux Enfants Avec Pef’ and designed the cartoon characters of a little girl and boy, Mona and Léo, who invite young children in an exploration of 150 objects from the main collections of the Louvre and a brief examination of the history of the Museum itself (Fig. 3). The section on the Louvre’s history uses a timeline with an arrow scrolling on the different periods which can be controlled to show how the building developed through time. In this section, but also throughout the CD, sound is used for reading the texts, with very short written text only appearing on the screen. Although the use of sound is appropriate for the target group, it also limits the program’s accessibility for users with hearing problems or with computers that do not have sound capabilities, as it includes important information which is communicated only in this way. The general approach of the CD indicates that the Louvre itself is worth exploring as an architectural complex and historic monument closely linked with France’s history. It treats the building itself as a treasure and also stresses its traditional role as a storehouse of treasures from around the world, without referring to the Museum’s social, political and ideological role. In the section which explores the Museum’s collections, animation, short video clips, cartoons, puzzles and other games are used to draw attention to aspects of the objects in an entertaining way. The level of information and type of interaction offered is rather limited and better suited 134

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Fig. 3 Jacket of the CD-ROM ‘Le Louvre Raconté aux Enfants Avec Pef’, © Gallimard Jeunesse 2000 (reproduced with permission). to a guided use with the company of an adult, such as a teacher or parent (Economou 2003, 374). The fun aspects of the CD are not particularly original which runs the risk of boring or annoying children used to more sophisticated multimedia games. Although the selection of objects from a collection of the richness and size of the Louvre is inevitably limited, this is diverse and quite representative without being restricted only to the better known pieces such as the Joconda (the CD uses initially the painting’s official title, as it does about all the museum objects it includes, although it explains about ‘Mona Lisa’ when the option for more extensive information is selected). When these objects are included, they do not receive any special treatment, thus encouraging children to discover and examine a range of different objects. The buttons at the bar at the bottom of the screen (which are not always intuitive) include among others, a link to a map to see the provenance of the work, a ruler leading to a screen which imaginatively uses 135

Chapter 6 - Maria Economou Mona and Léo next to the object to give an idea of scale, a magnifying glass for zooming in to examine details of the work, and a camera which allows children to capture images of their chosen objects to create an album. The latter could have been a powerful tool, allowing young users to leave their own imprint and be more active in their exploration of the collections and of past societies. However, its potential is once more not fully exploited, as apart from viewing the images of the works they selected in a slide show, children are not offered other options for expressing themselves and for shaping and adjusting the CD to their individual needs. This type of features is unfortunately missing from all the electronic products reviewed. The ‘fun’ aspects of the games and the way they manipulate the digital surrogates of the objects are sometimes gratuitous, not contributing to their understanding or a closer examination of their features. On the other hand, these ‘irreverent’ interventions are limited to only a few works of ancient art, attempting to desecrate the sanctity of the works of art and making them more approachable to a young audience. Another attempt for bringing the collections closer to children which appears more effective and less problematic, is the inclusion in some parts of children’s audio commentaries about the specific works. This brings spontaneity to the CD, moves away from the didactic tone of other parts, and highlights in a lively way the excitement and the different feelings which the visit to a museum and the encounter with works of art can create. Apart from the chronological periods, the works can also be explored by ten key themes usually of interest to children (histories, myths and legends; looks, gestures and grimaces; costumes; play, feast, celebrate; read, write, remember; scenes and objects of life; animals; gods and goddesses; kings, queens and emperors; children). This is a good way of linking the works and assisting young users to discover things for themselves. However, in practice the themes are not explored sufficiently and do not encourage deeper connections. This is particularly evident in this CD, as unlike the previous ones examined, it focuses on a museum collection, yet does not make any serious effort to contextualize the objects or move beyond the fragmented snapshot impression of the past and other cultures it offers. Despite the humorous and irreverent touches that this CD uses throughout, the underlying approach reflects and is consistent with the Museum’s own western imperialistic attitude to other cultures and its view of archaeology primarily as a history of ancient art. Despite its many re-organizations, the Louvre today maintains to a large extent the nineteenth-century bias to the great epochs of civilization (such as ancient Greece and Italian Renaissance) (Duncan 1995, 33). The high-quality photographs of the ‘beautiful’ items selected in the CD reflect this and by showing them in isolation, strengthen this impression (despite the brief texts which appear at a deeper level in the structure of the application to give some interpretative information). The concept of simple anonymous 136

Telling Children about the Past using Electronic Games archaeological artifacts as material products of past societies is missing from this program, implying that the past is worth telling about, exploring, even playing with only when it is glorious and corresponds to a high civilization. 6. ‘Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego?’, a CD-ROM for children This CD is part of a series which originally focused on teaching geography and history and later branched out into other subjects, like mathematics, and is addressed to children aged nine and up. The version I examined was produced in 2001 by Brøderbund Software (and is now produced by The Learning Company, an educational software company which has become a subsidiary of Riverdeep, along with Brøderbund). The UK edition (distributed by Softkey) was designed to support the UK and Scottish National Curricula at Key Stages 2 and 3 and is supposed to include “time-travel adventures which bring history to life!” (‘Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego?’ cover jacket, UK 2001 edition). The story used in this application is that of the famous thief Carmen Sandiego who has stolen the Chronoskimmer machine, the world’s only travel device, from the ACME headquarters and is using it to steal world heritage treasures. ACME is an organization which represents the good forces and for which users are supposed to work as ‘time pilots’, with the relevant graphics used reminiscent of Star Trek. (Interestingly and in contrast to the gender stereotypes of other games, the head of ACME giving directions to the user is female and black). Once again, the idea of the travel through time is used, as users travel back into world history to prevent Carmen and her evil collaborators from changing historical events. There are 18 different historical periods included in the game, starting from Queen Hatshepsut in Ancient Egypt (1490 BC) and Julius Caesar in Rome of 50 BC and reaching up to 1961 and the launch of the first person in space (Fig. 4). Children playing the game need to pay attention to details as they talk to historic characters, search for clues and use the Time Cuffs to capture the thieves. Throughout each historical adventure there is an ACME Good Guide (such as Ann Tickwittee) who accompanies young users offering assistance, while ACME Chronopedia can be accessed to provide short historical background information on people, places, maps, events and fun facts. A direct Internet connection links to Brøderbund’s Carmen Sandiego website which includes selected history articles from the encyclopedia Britannica Online. During the encounters with the different historical characters, such as Queen Hatshepsut and Julius Caesar, users get involved in related tasks, like searching for the appropriate ingredients to mummify a dead Pharaoh in the first case, or re-plumbing the sewage system in Rome. The graphics are lively and colorful, but as was the case 137

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Fig. 4 Back jacket of the CD-ROM ‘Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego’, © Riverdeep Interactive Learning Ltd. 2006 (reproduced with permission). with Recess in Greece, portray a very schematic, stylized and in the end, distorted version of the ancient landscape, buildings, dress decorations, wall paintings and other details. This is also reflected to complex social constructs, such as religious beliefs and burial practices. Modern stereotypes are again projected to the ancient Egyptian society, as is the case with Queen Hatshepsut who explains to the user in a foreign English accent why she is wearing a false beard (the traditional symbol of a Pharaoh), giving the portrayal of a modern strong, active woman (“it is a strange situation, but nothing I cannot handle”), or the unlikely portrayal of the arrogant Head Priest who is ignorant about how to finish preparing a mummy (in order to fit with the plot of the game). The cartoon-style representation of the ceremonial mask of god Anubis’ in the form of a jackal’s head, of the hieroglyphics, or of the preparation of the body of the dead Pharaoh is so fictionalized and far removed from reality that it ends up trivializing important aspects of the past society. The CD claims to help children master chronological thinking, deductive reasoning, map reading, research skills, historical analyses, listening comprehension, decision making and problem solving. The activi138

Telling Children about the Past using Electronic Games ties planned do exercise these to some extent, however, as the CD tries to fit in a lot of different periods and cultures in a single game, the view of the past portrayed ends up being a very limited snapshot picture. As with ‘Recess in Greece’ (which at least focused on a single historical period), the application replicates and concentrates on the most widely known stereotypes, for example, about the cleanliness-obsessed Romans or the Egyptians’ fixation with death rituals (which has excited public imagination and been captured in popular culture ever since Carter’s discoveries in Egypt in 1922 [Russell 2002]). The examination of several different historical periods and cultures helps children exercise to some extent their geographical knowledge, but as is to be expected, does not encourage any in depth understanding of these societies. This game, similarly to ‘Recess in Greece’ and more than the Louvre CD, addresses the young players directly, inviting them to participate in hands-on adventures and to meet historical figures, trying to make history come alive. This is very effective for the targeted age group but raises also the question of what it is exactly that they will take away about each period, as only few schematic elements from the past are used to create the sleuthing adventures. 7. Discussion The electronic games reviewed here include some compelling features for telling a young audience about archaeology and the past. Colorful graphics, amusing stories, games, activities and sounds which provide immediate feedback and exercise a range of skills can potentially be combined in a creative way to provide entertaining and easily accessible information about archaeological work and the study of the past. Can this potential then be harnessed by those involved in public education in archaeology? Current practice indicates that closer links between these different worlds would be very difficult to achieve. The picture from around the world shows that it is very rare for professional archaeologists or specialists to be systematically involved in the presentation of the past to a general non-specialist audience, let alone children (Binant chapter 8; Dommasnes chapter 13; Galanidou chapter 7). Archaeologists are not always interested in popularizing their work or are too busy to do it (Borman 1994, 186). Despite the increasing number of archaeologists who have strongly supported a closer engagement with the community and public education in archaeological matters in the last few decades (e.g., McManamon 2000), the situation has not changed much. The design and production of electronic games in particular, is not an area of involvement which would bring any kudos to professional or academic archaeologists. Due to their business connections, new technology applications and electronic games are viewed even less favorably than public education activities. The latter are already seen as less important than 139

Chapter 6 - Maria Economou other aspects of an archaeological career in many countries, such as the USA for example (Bender and Wilkinson 1992). Furthermore, as Moser and Gamble (1997, 185) argued, “archaeology does not yet take its visual language very seriously” and is still primarily concerned with the nature of archaeological writing and the production of archaeological text, while for new media, visual information is one of its primary components of communication. But apart from archaeologists’ reluctance to move into unchartered waters, we need to remember that the aims of archaeology and of electronic games remain fundamentally different. The main problem lies with the way the electronic games themselves present the past. The examination of the case studies showed that the attractive features of the games are usually not combined effectively with educational aims to go beyond the popular image of archaeological science and of past societies to challenge the commonly held stereotypes without losing the young public’s initial interest and fascination with the subject. Furthermore, in most of these programs, the claims of empowering the users and offering them control are usually superficial and limited to the selection of the navigation buttons. Users are rarely invited to take part in archaeological interpretation, make up their own minds using the data, or discriminate between alternative models. Despite the direct or indirect claims that all four of the case studies examined here make about being educational, they only exercise the user’s assessment of data and the analysis of material at a very basic level. Another issue relates to the type of users that these programs are addressing. Very few of the applications can be adjusted and customized for different types of learners, including those with disabilities (with the exception of ‘Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego’, which includes the option to adjust the settings for hearing-impaired assistance). In theory, electronic games could build on the powerful psychological and educational benefits of traditional games for children: ‘Playing games is a complex activity which stimulates the emotions, motor activity, cognitive faculties, fantasy, inventiveness and, at the same time, it feeds on continuity and change, which are alternately dominant, and this is what makes them interesting and attractive’. (Rohrs 1990, 65 quoted in Delgado Cerón and Mz-Recaman 1994) However, in practice this potential is rarely realized. In most computer games, including the case studies in this chapter, there are a lot of certainties about the past, which sit uncomfortably with archaeology’s current emphasis on the subjective nature of its interpretations. This is not a limitation of the technology, but more of the way this has been used so far. In fact, new media have a lot of potential for a more creative use which can emphasize the role of archaeology in ‘constructing’ the past, make explicit its subjective nature and present different and even conflict140

Telling Children about the Past using Electronic Games ing interpretation models about the same material. (For an example of how this approach was tried with various ‘low tech’ media in a museum exhibition, see Stone 1994b). These programs also have the potential of highlighting the political and ethical issues related to archaeology and the examination of the past, but this has not been exploited so far at all. Archaeology is increasingly emphasizing the importance of working at local and community level, where the study of the past or pasts can be more directly compared with the social experience of the various groups (Molyneaux 1994, 8). But in order for electronic games to have a high market value, they refer to notions of the past which are considered to having a global perspective, in most cases perpetuating generally accepted, old myths. In this sense, they become part of mass, rather than local culture. The game industry, like the media one (Stone 1994a, 20), is a large business where the primary aim is always financial profit, rather than educational or cultural concerns (see also Galanidou chapter 7, for a discussion of the publishing industry). The focus of most electronic games, including all the cases we presented here, is the glorious, well known and easily digested past. As with the media industry, most new technology applications of this type run the risk of sensationalizing or distorting the archaeological record, stereotyping past cultures and perpetuating, for example, the ‘dinosaur-hunting gruntergroaner’ image of prehistory (Richardson 1987, 76). This has much more to do with the business side of appealing to a global market rather than the characteristics of the technology itself. The way the technology is used affects also the image of the ancient worlds portrayed. In two of the case studies, the Pompeii and the Louvre CDs, a lot of effort was placed in the faithful reproduction of the archaeological remains and material culture. The Louvre, in particular, uses high quality digital images of the Museum’s collection which encourage the close examination and appreciation of the objects. In the case of Pompeii a commendable, even if not always successful, attempt was made to base the virtual model on the archaeological record. This is a rather unusual example in the electronic games world, as it requires a lot of resources and close involvement with archaeologists and the relevant institution or archaeological service. The other two examples, ‘Recess in Greece’ and ‘Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego’, are more typical in the game industry in their use of cartoons and stylized graphics for portraying the past. In the latter approach usually lurks an even greater danger of projecting modern biases to the past and distorting it. Whatever the approach, the use of electronic media for presenting the past will always be based on a virtual world and digital surrogates without ever being able to replace the visit to the archaeological site or the direct encounter with the objects. These virtual constructs however, can be very illuminating about the way we view, interpret and appropriate the past to suit contemporary power strategies. 141

Chapter 6 - Maria Economou References Barceló, J. A. 2001 ‘Virtual reality for archaeological explanation. Beyond picturesque reconstruction’ Archeologia e Calcolatori 12: 221–44. Bender, S. and R. Wilkinson 1992 ‘Public education and the academy’, Archaeology and Public Education 3: 1–3. Borman, R. 1994 ‘The fascinating world of Stonehenge’: an exhibition and its aftermath’ in P. G. Stone and B. L. Molyneaux (eds.) The Presented Past: Heritage, Museums and Education: 179–89. London: Routledge. DeCicco, G. 1988 ‘A Public relations primer’, American Antiquity 53: 840–56. Delgado Cerón, I. and C. I. Mz-Recaman 1994 ‘The museum comes to school in Columbia: teaching packages as a method of learning’ in P. G. Stone and B. L. Molyneaux (eds.) The Presented Past: Heritage, Museums and Education: 148–58. London: Routledge. Economou, M. 2003 ‘New media for interpreting archaeology in museums: Issues and challenges’ in M. Doerr and A. Sarris (eds.) CAA 2002: The Digital Heritage of Archaeology, Proceedings of the 30th Conference, Heraklion, Crete April 2002: 371–5. Athens: Archive of Monuments and Publications. Di Blas, N., E. Gobbo and P. Paolini 2005 ‘3D Worlds and cultural heritage: realism vs. virtual presence’, in D. Bearman and J. Trant (eds.) Museums and the Web 2005, Conference Proceedings, 13–17 April 2005, Vancouver, Canada, http://www.archimuse.com/mw2005/papers/diBlas/diBlas.html (consulted 15 May 2005). Duncan, C. 1995 Civilizing Rituals: Inside Public Arts Museums. London and New York: Routledge. Fagan, B. 1984 ‘Archaeology and the wider audience’ in E. L. Green (ed.) Ethics and Values in Archaeology: 175–83. New York: Free Press. Gandy, O. H. 2002 ‘The Real digital divide: citizens versus consumers’ in L. A. Lievrouw and S. Livingstone (eds.) Handbook of New Media: Social Shaping and Consequences of ICTs: 448–460. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. 142

Telling Children about the Past using Electronic Games Hodder, I., M. Shanks, A. Alexandri, V. Buchli, J. Caran, J. Last and G. Lucas 1995 Interpreting Archaeology. Finding Meaning in the Past. London: Routledge. Lowenthal, D. 1985 The Past is a Foreign Country. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. McChesney, R. 1999 Rich Media, Poor Democracy. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications. McManamon, F. P. 1994 ‘Presenting archaeology to the public in the USA‘ in P. G. Stone and B. L. Molyneaux (eds.) The Presented Past: Heritage, Museums and Education: 61–81. London: Routledge. 2000 ‘Archaeological messages and messengers’, Public Archaeology 1: 5–20. Molyneaux, B. L. 1994 ‘Introduction: The represented past‘ in P. G. Stone and B. L. Molyneaux (eds.) The Presented Past: Heritage, Museums and Education: 1–13. London: Routledge. Moser, S. and C. Gamble 1997 ‘Revolutionary images: The iconic vocabulary for representing human antiquity’ in B. L. Molyneaux The Cultural Life of Images: 184–212. London and New York: Routledge. Mosco, V. 1989 The Pay-per Society: Computers and Information in the Information Age. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. PricewaterhouseCoopers 2005 Global Entertainment and Media Outlook: 2005-2009 [sample chapter on video games http://www.pwc.com/Extweb/ industry.nsf/docid/6BB1D7B2F2463E1885256CE8006C6ED6? opendocument&vendor=none#VG) (consulted 4 July 2005). Richardson, W. 1987 ‘Isn’t it all about dinosaurs? An experiment in a junior school’ in S. Joyce, M. Newbury, and P. Stone (eds.) Degree Digging Dole: our Future: 44–52. Southampton: Department of Archaeology, University of Southampton. Roussou, M. and G. Drettakis 2003 ‘Photorealism and non-photorealism in virtual heritage representation’ in A. Chalmers, D. Arnold and F. Niccolucci (eds.) Virtual Reality, Archaeology and Intelligent Cultural Heritage (VAST 2003) and 1st Eurographics Workshop on Graphics and Cultural Heritage, (5-7 November 2003). Brighton. Eurographics: 46–57. [http://www.makebelieve.gr/mr/www/ mr_publications.html (consulted 10 September 2005)]. 143

Chapter 6 - Maria Economou Russell, M. 2002 ‘No more heroes any more’: the dangerous world of the pop culture archaeologist’ in M. Russell (ed.) Digging Holes in Popular Culture: 38–54. Oxford: Oxbow books. Shanks, M. and C. Tilley 1992 Re-Constructing Archaeology. (Second edition). London: Routledge. Shuster, L. 2003 Global gaming industry now a whopping $35 billion market’ Compiler, http://www.synopsys.com/news/pubs/compiler/ art1lead_nokia-jul03.html (consulted 5 July 2005). Stone, P. G. 1994a ‘Introduction: A framework for discussion’ in P. G. Stone and B. L. Molyneaux (eds.) The Presented Past: Heritage, Museums and Education (One World Archaeology 25): 14–28. London: Routledge. 1994b ‘The re-display of the Alexander Keiller Museum, Avebury, and the National Curriculum in England’ in P. G. Stone and B. L. Molyneaux (eds.) The Presented Past: Heritage, Museums and Education (One World Archaeology, 25): 190–205. London: Routledge, Ucko, P. J. 1994 ‘Foreword’ in P. G. Stone and B. L. Molyneaux (eds.) The Presented Past: Heritage, Museums and Education, (One World Archaeology 25): ix–xxiii. London: Routledge. Walsh, K. 1992 The Representation of the Past. Museums and Heritage in the Post-modern World. London: Routledge. Wood, J. 2001 ‘Can software support children’s vocabulary development?’ Language Learning & Technology 5(1): 166–201 [http://llt. msu.edu/vol5num1/wood/default.html (accessed 4 December 2004)].

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Chapter 7 In a Child’s Eyes: Human Origins and Paleolithic Life in Children’s Book Illustrations Nena Galanidou 1. Pictures to catch children’s imaginations In June 2005 the pop star Madonna launched the fifth and last of her series of picture books for children, inspired by Hebrew Kabbalah texts. Her books have been translated into 30 languages and are on sale in 100 countries, with print runs of anything between a few hundred and many hundreds of thousands (BBC news online). Amongst professional producers and distributors of children’s books, reactions to her work have been mixed. Madonna is not the only high-profile member of an entirely different profession to have set up a sideline in children’s literature. The modern western world could be said to regard writing a children’s book as a ‘rite of passage’ conferring greater moral respectability upon the writer: by writing for an audience regarded as innocent and pure, he or she lays claim to a personal association with these qualities. Zelizer (1985) describes this view as ‘romanticized and sacralized’. Madonna’s literary rivals have included politicians, football players, media figures and even mobsters (MacPherson 2004). There is also, of course, money to be made. Within what is now a globalized and highly commercial market, publishers will accept any children’s book that will sell. It is upon this same market that children’s books written (or supposedly written) principally in order to educate must be launched. In this chapter I shall be discussing children’s books that belong to the educational genre consisting of visual and textual narratives about human origins and life during the Paleolithic. Inspired by palaeoanthropological findings, these books are meant to educate children by introducing them informally to various aspects of early human prehistory. Their power lies in the fact that their vivid verbal and pictorial renditions of the history of early humanity lend flesh and color to what are to many perhaps the most distant and least attractive of archaeological finds: the lithic artifacts, bones and human fossils found in Pliocene and Pleistocene strata. A strong publishing house will translate and release such texts to many countries, making them, like Madonna’s books, part of a global culture; throughout 145

Chapter 7 - Nena Galanidou Europe and on both sides of the Atlantic, parents or teachers in search of a book of this sort are bound to come across some of the same titles. It is the books they buy that will guide their children on their mental voyage through the Paleolithic and cultivate their ideas about a heritage shared by all modern humans, irrespective of race, nationality or religion. My critical examination of the portrayal of early prehistoric life and the history of human evolution offered by these texts will focus upon that inordinately powerful component of a children’s book: the illustrations. During the 1990s historians of science came increasingly to examine the visual imagery of geology and paleontology and to challenge the role of illustrations in shaping their discourse (e.g., Baigrie 1996; Gould 1993, 1997; Haraway 1989; Rudwick 1992). Within the same vein, Stephanie Moser’s pioneering research into the history of visual representations of the archaeological ‘deep past’ and ‘otherness’ has shown that a large part of the repertoire of attributes depicted can be traced back to classical and medieval times (1992, 1998). Her work has had a radical effect upon the ways in which we now approach the visual imagery produced and consumed in contexts as disparate as museum dioramas, archaeology textbooks, advertising and mass culture. Diane Gifford-Gonzalez (1993), Clive Gamble (1998) and Wiktor Stoczkowski (1994, 1997) have also offered incisive critical insights into the content of ‘scientific’ illustrations and their effect in shaping views about human origins and the Early Stone Age. Gamble observes that visual representations can restrict the development of multiple alternative views about the past: These are powerful, arresting images that shoulder aside alternative visions. Their power is such that the scenes which are commonly reconstructed become the only ones we will see of human origins. So, our experience of the remote past is controlled neither by the evidence we can dig up nor by the scientific analyses we can perform on it, but instead by what we already expect to see of it. (Gamble 1998: x) Gifford-Gonzalez has called for a reflective collaboration between scientists and artists in order radically to expand the range of possible pasts represented in scenes of prehistoric life, incorporating alternative views about social roles and about the assignment of activities according to gender and age (1993: 38). The methodological and interpretive repercussions of the work that I have mentioned are profound. It can no longer be regarded as acceptable automatically to view any visual imagery of the ‘deep past’ as neutral or objective. The illustrators of children’s books often draw upon a ‘pool’ of visual sources created in connection with institutions whose status appears to validate these images: museums, cultural heritage sites and textbooks, for example. Other sources may well be pictures downloaded from the web, or other children’s books. I believe it to be important at this point that we should expand the work described above to take in visual 146

Human Origins and Paleolithic Life in Children’s Book Illustrations imagery designed for children. My subject will be the stories that this imagery tells children about the Paleolithic and the ideas with which it makes them familiar. The many illustrations that I have examined in this connection share, as will be seen, a limited number of themes. I shall be examining and comparing the illustrations that have become the ‘canonical’ icons (sensu Gould 1997) of the Paleolithic and those alternative visual representations that have sought to establish new possibilities. 2. The sample of books examined The sample studied consists of 31 books published between 1979 and 2005 (Table 1). Classified as ‘educational books’, they were distributed worldwide through museum shops and bookshops. They target various age groups from preschool to adolescence. Their contents include text, illustrations, glossaries, instructions to parents and teachers, cards to cut out, adhesives, games and other proposed activities intended to allow the embedded information to be assimilated in a creative and entertaining way. The illustrations variously consist of photographs of archaeological or ethnographic material, color drawings and sketches. I have chosen here to deal with ‘illustrated’ books; in other words, those whose visual images are intended to illustrate the text, but are not supposed to be mutually connected (Cianciolo 1997; see also section on picture books in Egoff et al. 1996).1 In terms of content, the sample examined may be divided into two categories. The first of these contains 27 titles (1–27, Table 1). Some are parts of series dealing with natural or cultural history; some are stand-alone publications by specialists (25–27, Table 1) or non-specialists. The idea with which these books deal is anatomical and cultural change over the course of time. Most of them organize their material in historical order, the earlier stages of evolution being followed by later periods. According to the weight, scope and priorities of their authors and publishers, the departure point of these historical accounts may be the Big Bang, the dinosaurs, the earliest primates, the australopithecines, the genus Homo or the beginning of the modern human adventure. In a few instances thematic organization takes the place of a strictly historical account (18, Table 1). Most treatments of this sort aim to make children’s encounter with the past more interesting to them by answering the questions that they are supposed to be most likely to ask (did Paleolithic people really live in caves? did they eat chocolate? did they go to the doctor?) In such cases illustrations representing separate periods of prehistory (8, 9, Table 1) are 1  These are distinguished from ‘picture books’, defined as books in which illustrations visually weave the fabric of the story on a canvas provided by the author (Marantz 1983). Picture books about the Paleolithic are treated in Galanidou (forthcoming).

147

148 A. Balfour, W. Webb

Collective

6 British Museum Activity M. Corbishley Book: Prehistoric Britain

7 L’ Aube des civilisations B. Andre-Salvini, S. Cluzan, N. Corradini, C. Louboutin & MH. Marino

M. Welply J. Woodcock, J. James, M. Bergin

M. Berger

5 Eyewitness Guide Early P. Wilkinson People

4 Early Humans: A Prehistoric World

P. Gouletquer

3 Le Livre des prèmiers hommes

C. Ranzi, S. Pérols, C. Jégou, M. Mallard, D. Grant, R. Charman

Fergus Fleming & G. Smith, B. Hersey, Paul Dowswell R. McCaig, K. Tomlins, G. Wood

2 Stone Age Sentinel

P. Joubert

Illustrator

L.R. Nougiet

Author/ Editor

1 La Vie Privée des Hommes. Les Temps Prehistoriques

Title

1994 (1991, 1992)

1989

1989

Athens

London

London

London

France

1989 (1984)

1987

UK

Athens

Place

1998

2001 (1979)

Year

Table 1. The sample of illustrated children’s books examined

Delithanasis (Gallimard - Larousse)

The Trustees of the British Museum

Dorling Kindersley

Child’s play International

Gallimard

Usborne

Kedros (Hachette, Paris)

Published by

Author (Head of Education, English Heritage)

Nick Merriman

Author (C.N.R.S.)

Jonathan Cotton

Author (Honorary Archaeology Professor, Univ. of Toulouse)

Archaeological/ Editorial Consultant & Affiliation

Continued on next page…

French

English

English

English

French

English

French

Written in

Chapter 7 - Nena Galanidou

G. Wood

S. Tourret, A. McBride, P. Bull, J. Haysom, J. James & D. Salariya

12 Stone Age Times

149 Collective

14 Mon Premier Larousse de l’Histoire

M-C Lemayer, B. Alunni & V. Stetten

16 L’imagerie des dinosaures et de la préhistoire

É. Beaumont

F. Bartsota

15 Short-short stories for S. Bitsa the very-very early times

A-M. Lelorrain

K. Vigestad

13 Min første bok om Stein- C. Lindström alderen

C. Maynard

G.Vergés & O. Vergés

11 La prehistoria y el anti- M. Rius guo Egipto

P. Roxbee Cox & S. Reid

10 Who were the first people

S. Carter, J. Baker

I. Thompson

C. Hurdman

9 What do we know about M. Corbishley Prehistoric People

8 Step into the Stone Age

Table 1- continued

2000

2005

2002

2001

1995

1994

1994

1994

1998

Lorenz Books -- English Anness Publishing

Athens

Athens

Athens

Norway

London

Athens

London

English

French

Norwegan

English

Modern Times (Fleurus)

Paul Bahn

Nick Merriman & Anne Millard

Author (Head of Education, English Heritage)

Robin Holgate (Luton Museum)

Continued on next page…

French

Benaki Museum Greek Educational Programs

Larousse

N.W. Damm & Søn

Kingfisher

Kedros (ParSpanish ramón Ediciones)

Usborne

Hemel Simon & Schus- English Hempstead ter Young Books

New York

Human Origins and Paleolithic Life in Children’s Book Illustrations

150 Collective

F. MacDonald

Catherine Loizeau

C. Ranzi

20 The Stone Age News

21 Explorers—Discovering the world

22 Homo settanta milioni d’anni fa

C. Ranzi

A. Veaux, B. Veillon

I. Chamberlain, J. Fisher, C. Forsey, D. Guerrier, C. Hook, R. Lindsay, P. Werner

19 À la rencontre des hom- Z-L. Crepaux, P. mes prehistoriques Picq, B. Garel, C. Powels

F. Chandler, S. Ta- Collective plin & J. Bingham

18 Usborne World History: Prehistoric World

J. Field, R. Hook, J. James, S. Lafford, S. Marsh, T. Riley, M. Sanders, P. Sarson, R. Sheffield, S. Stitt, M. White, J. Woodcock

Illustrator

P. Brooks

Author/ Editor

17 Prehistoric Peoples

Title

Table 1 continued…

1986 (1982)

1999

1998

1998 (1997)

2000

2000

Year

Athens

France

London, Boston, Sydney

Athens

London

London

Place

English

English

Written in

Gnosis (Rizzoli - Milano)

Bayard Presse Jeune

Walker Books

Frédéric Serre (French National Museum of Natural History)

Alison Roberts (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford)

David Norman (Sedwick Museum of Earth Sciences, Cambridge), Anne Millard (archaeologist)

Archaeological/ Editorial Consultant & Affiliation

Continued on next page…

Italian

French

English

Patakis (Nathan) French

Usborne

Lorenz Books

Published by

Chapter 7 - Nena Galanidou

P. Lauber

151

V. French

E. & E. Binder

28 From Zero to Ten - The Story of Numbers

29 The mastered fire

31 L’imagerie des inventions

B. Delf

E. & E. Binder

R. Collins

N. Verrechia

P. Simmon & M.- C. Hus-David, I. L. Bouet Misso, I. Rognoni, S. Beaujard

30 In the Beginning: The R. Platt Nearly Complete History of Almost Everything

P. Picq

27 Lucy et son temps

P. Valavanis

26 The Hill with the Hidden Secrets A. Ganosi

L. Karali-Gianna- K. Gouma kopoulou

Isabella Benekou

25 Young Archaeologists researching for human prints in the environment

24 Once upon a time in the Marina Plati Stone Age

23 Painters of the Caves

Table 1 continued…

2002

1995

1982

2000

2001 (1995)

1995

1998

1996

1998

France

English

Altberliner Verlag

Zero to Ten Ltd.

Erevnites (Fontaine, Mango)

Akritas

Akritas

Fleurus

French

English

German

English

French

Greek

Greek

Goulandris Greek Foundation-Museum of Cycladic Art

National Geographic Society

London, Dorling KinderNew York, sley Stuttgart

East Germany

Slough (UK)

Athens

Athens

Athens

Athens

Washington

Author, Collège de France

Author (Department of History and Archaeology, University of Athens)

Author (Department of History and Archaeology, University of Athens)

Ian Tattersall (American Museum of Natural History)

Human Origins and Paleolithic Life in Children’s Book Illustrations

Chapter 7 - Nena Galanidou sometimes presented as parts of a single topic. For example, the heading ‘Where did prehistoric people live?’ is illustrated with a Paleolithic cave, a Neolithic house and an Amerindian tepee. The second category contains 4 books that contain representations of Paleolithic life while also dealing with other topics (28–31, Table 1). Inherent in these books is a diachronic view of the past: they see the Paleolithic as the very starting point of human history. Amongst these books, however, only 30 (Table 1), attempts to divide the Paleolithic by reference to species, technology or geography, or in any other manner. In the other texts this period is treated only as a prelude to the core theme of the book and is given no more than a couple of pages or a handful of images. The visual reconstructions employed embody a fixed sense of ‘primitiveness’. They do so by reproducing the visual tradition of the Greek mythical hero Herakles (Moser 1998: 29–30) (28, Table 1), by indicating an amount of body hair that would not currently be regarded as usual, or by other means. For instance, The Mastered Fire (29, Table 1), a book that aims to describe human use of fire from its very early discovery (Fig. 1) to the use of electric power, evokes primitivity by depicting half-naked cave occupants

Fig. 1. A Paleolithic cave scene from ‘The Mastered Fire’, © Synchroni Epochi (reproduced with permission). 152

Human Origins and Paleolithic Life in Children’s Book Illustrations dressed in animal skins and a cuisine consisting of wild animals (Fig. 1). Drawing upon the comic tradition and deliberately using anachronisms, the illustrator contrasts a modern frying pan with elements of prehistoric hunter gatherer life (Fig. 2) in order visually to explain why natural fire was sought after and how its controlled use improved daily life in the ‘deep past’.

Fig. 2. The discovery of fire scene from ‘The Mastered Fire’, © Synchroni Epochi (reproduced with permission). 3. Images of power and the power of images Illustrations have a central place in ‘educational books’, particularly those intended for a younger audience. In such books pictures typically take up far more space than text.2 In recent years both visual artists and This is best exemplified by a series of books, all entitled ‘The Imagery of…’, the first component of whose titles expresses the aim of transmitting educational material in visual form. Originally published in French, this series has also been translated into other languages. Paleolithic images appear in two books in this

2  

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Chapter 7 - Nena Galanidou researchers in psychology and education have asserted the many benefits of this balance. As well as supplying visual cues as to the content of the text, illustrations are seen as cultivating aesthetic education, emotional development, the ability to consider concepts theoretically and a sense of space. Let us now consider the function of such illustrations as a ‘visual context for learning’ (Kiefer 1995, 7) about our Paleolithic heritage. Whatever their size or number, illustrations are powerful media that mobilize a child’s visual sense and direct the mental connection between what is narrated and what is portrayed. The components of an illustration (its lines, its colors, its proportions, its perspective, the characters and activities depicted and their location in the foreground or the background of a scene) combine to constitute a visual language that transmits a specific message about the past. The artist attempts to make the vocabulary of this language, its visual images, clear and attractive in order deliberately to create a lasting effect (perhaps dramatic, perhaps humorous) that will familiarize young readers with evolutionary concepts such as anatomic differentiation and cultural strategies for survival. The text may thus be the recipe, but it is the illustration that transmits its flavor. Discussing Paleolithic imagery, Gifford-Gonzalez draws an analytical distinction between ‘anatomic reconstructions’ (visual representations of early humans’ soft tissues based upon the fossil evidence) and ‘dioramic representations’ (scenes depicting early humans carrying out activities in natural settings) (1993: 26–27). An illustration whose representation of hominid anatomy is faithful to the existing evidence may nonetheless depict its subjects within anachronistic or ideologically biased scenes. Many illustrators who take great care over anatomical details seem to lose all inhibition when they come to depict certain living scenes, discarding the primary evidence in favor of powerful visual traditions. During the early 1980s, for example, the scientific illustrator Carlo Ranzi produced a series of what were then credible anatomical reconstructions of the hominid line, based upon a lengthy and meticulous study of the paleontological record. Ranzi’s image of the creator of the parietal imagery at the Upper Paleolithic cave of Niaux in France (3, 22, Table 1), however, predictably depicts an old male. Despite its painstaking anatomical correctness, this image has given rise to considerable conflict, since it perpetuates a narrow and androcentric reading of the Paleolithic record (Conkey 1997, Conkey et al. 1997). Another example is the ‘ladder of human evolution’, which puts in an appearance in most of the children’s books in our sample. This image classically compresses many thousands of years of evolution and multiple genetic processes into the linear march of a male figure from ‘primitivity’ to ‘civilization’, the figure’s anatomical features and technological achieveseries; one deals specifically with prehistoric life (16, Table 1), while the other includes images depicting inventions (31, Table 1).

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Human Origins and Paleolithic Life in Children’s Book Illustrations ments being shown as gradually evolving towards perfection in the form of a modern white male. Gould has dealt with this image extensively in his discussion of canonical icons of human evolution (1997). Here we need merely note that whereas its anatomical reconstruction of hominids may indeed in many respects be accurate, its message is a distorted one. Human evolution was neither a linear event nor a men-only club and it is not helpful light-heartedly to represent it as such. Following a different analytical path, Costall and Richards (chapter 3) argue that illustrators tend to convey a sense of ‘pastness’ by using a few visual elements linked to the past as its icons in the present. Three types of illustration that may employ this approach are discussed: (a) the purely decorative use of ancient motifs around page borders to create an atmosphere of antiquity, (b) pictures that directly represent the content of the text step by step, and (c) illustrations that expand upon the author’s text to present their own version of the subject, in which case the visual and textual narratives may not coincide. The second and third types may be identified as Gifford-Gonzalez’s dioramic representations. Since in the ‘educational books’ that we are examining anatomical reconstructions almost always appear within such representations, we shall now examine the dioramic representations of five hominid groups (classified by genus or species) within our sample.3 My quantification of these in Table 2 takes the illustration as its basic analytical unit, bearing in mind that an illustration may consist of multiple smaller scenes. 4. The Paleolithic for children 4.1 Canonical icons There is a striking similarity, both thematic and structural, between the dioramic representations used in connection with each hominid species depicted by the books listed in Table 1. Several key themes appear repeatedly in the illustrators’ depictions of change (whether evolutionary or cultural) through time. At each new stage of human evolution a particular combination of attributes appears, incorporating any spectacular archaeological findings (new anatomical traits, activities, living environments, elements of architecture, clothing, equipment or other technological achievements). Australopithecines are portrayed in woodland or open savannah. They stand upright and have small hairy bodies and apelike faces (Fig. 3). Their tools consist of their hands, wooden sticks, large bones and un-worked  Illustrations that are supposed to represent the Stone Age in general rather than any specific species, or that represent species long vanished from the literature (e.g., Archanthropus, Pithecanthropus, Paranthropus), are not included in my discussion. 3

155

Number of Books 14 10 12 11 16

Number of scenes

33

20

56

69

102

Australopithecines

Homo hablis

Homo erectus

156

Homo neanderthalensis

Homo sapiens

593

285

304

89

110

Number of individuals

400 (67.45%)

218 (76.5%)

240 (79%)

67 (75.3%)

78 (70.9%)

Adult males

96 (16.19%)

28 (9.8%)

29 (9.5%)

8 (8.9%)

16 (14.55%)

97(16.36%)

39 (13.7%)

35 (11.5%)

14 (15.8%)

16 (14.55%)

Adult females Children total

Table 2. Numerical description of the illustrations and percentages of individuals by species and social category. Images with no clear indication as to the period, species (i.e. referring to the Stone Age in general or using coarse temporal groupings (e.g., before the discovery of the fire and after it), or sex (i.e. they are portrayed in such a manner as to leave no hint about it) are excluded from totals in this table.

Chapter 7 - Nena Galanidou

Human Origins and Paleolithic Life in Children’s Book Illustrations stones. They walk, gather plants for food, crush fruit and nuts, catch small game, reptiles and ants, compete for carcasses with other large carnivores and are threatened by them. Australopithecine illustrations depicting other animals almost invariably show lions and other great cats in the foreground, zebras in the background and vultures sitting in trees. The great cats’ visually dominant position and size within the composition express their aggressive intentions and the threat that they pose to the australopithecines. Three of our illustrations depict the Laetoli footprints; unlike many other dioramic representations, these are cautious in their interpretation. Only one shows the prints in the process of being made, by an adult and a child (5, Table 1). Over 70% of the hominids portrayed are adult males. Of the remaining 30% half are females (denoted by larger

Fig. 3. The australopithecine scene from ‘My first History Larousse’ (in Greek) (c) 2003, METAIHMIO publications (for the Greek language), title of the original French edition: ‘Mon Premier Larousse de l’Histoire’ © Larousse / VUEF 2002 for all over the world (reproduced with permission). 157

Chapter 7 - Nena Galanidou breasts, less ventral hair and sometimes an infant in arms) and half are children (Table 2). Even those illustrations that fall within the comic tradition (Moser and Gamble 1997), as does that in Fig. 3, insist upon the hardship of australopithecine life, aggressive scenes of conflict between members of the species or between them and other large carnivores being popular. Homo habilis generally appears in open valleys whose background of high mountains or steep slopes calls to mind the Oldowai gorge and other present-day East African landscapes. Illustrators of these hominids are not in agreement regarding their anatomy: some draw them with apelike facial traits and hairy bodies, whilst others imagine them with little body hair (5, Table 1) or more ‘human’ faces (12, 17, Table 1). Interestingly, these differences show no temporal progression indicative of a trend in received opinion; regardless of the date of the illustration, the choice between these types appears to depend solely upon the illustrator’s preconceptions. Habilines are, however, always shown naked. They make stone tools, build huts out of branches and stones, gather food, scavenge, track and kill game of various sizes, butcher carcasses and contest the ownership of food with other primates. The archetypal theme that invariably appears is tool–making, or, as some authors prefer to describe it, tool-inventing. Illustrations belonging to the comic tradition (Moser and Gamble 1997) may resort to anachronism, depicting Homo habilis, for example, as a workman carrying a modern toolbox and a stone tool (14, Table 1). Those that adhere to the archaeological tradition (ibid.) depict a male adult knapping stone (1, 2, 5, 16, 17, 18, 22, Table 1) or teaching younger hominids to do so (1, Table 1). The habiline tool inventory is depicted as containing not only stone tools, but bone hammers, sharpened sticks and large pieces of unworked wood used as walking sticks. The illustrations in our sample depict a total of 88 individuals, 75.3% of whom are male. Images of females (again identified by their less abundant body hair, larger breasts and association with infants) are conspicuously rare (8.9%). Typically pictured in or near huts, reinforcing the view that women belong at home and men outdoors, they are never shown making tools. Children (15.8%) are depicted as smaller adults, but without attributes designed to identify gender. Shown in close proximity to females and thus to huts, they help adults and consume food. Images of Homo erectus may or may not depict hairy bodies and apelike faces. Illustrators differentiate these hominids from others not by anatomical but by cultural traits: living in caves and discovering and using fire. Visual narratives often explain how their subjects observed naturally produced fire, mastered it and used it to protect themselves from wild beasts and to improve the ways in which they ate and lived. The great cats make an occasional appearance, but the animals vital to erectus imagery are big pachyderms, depicted as the quarry of choice in communal hunting scenes set in the shallow waters of a wetland land158

Human Origins and Paleolithic Life in Children’s Book Illustrations scape. Caves, open or stone-lined hearths, hand axes, wooden spears and the occasional leather skin worn on some part of the body appear as the emblems of a species more culturally advanced than its predecessors. Erectus life overall is depicted as less precarious and dramatic than that of the earlier hominids. Despite these changes in the visual vocabulary, the male erectus is obviously still in charge. 79% of the individuals portrayed are male, and it is they who achieve technological advances and ensure the survival of the group. Males collect raw stone and transform it into tools, train their young in their methods, discover and use fire and go out together to hunt large game. Meanwhile their females (9.5%), distinguished by curvy bodies, larger breasts and long hair, carry babies and maintain hearths. Children are a little more numerous than females (11.5%). As with the earlier groups, they are identifiable as children by their smaller stature, but no visual cues establish their sex. Two of our erectus scenes belong to the comic tradition (14, 29, Table 1), but most follow the archaeological tradition, within which a single image has proved paramount. Maurice Wilson’s painting of Homo erectus in the Choukoutien cave, commissioned in 1950 by the British Museum of Natural History (Moser 1998, Fig. 6.8), is clearly the source of the erectus scenes in books 3, 7, 17, 18, 22 and 25 (Table 1). Although the illustrators in our sample have variously reshuffled roles and activities, changed the number of individuals depicted, shown different prey species being carried to the cave and moved the interior of the cave into the foreground, all have fallen back upon the comfort and safety of this iconic view of erectus life. More than half a century after Wilson decided upon the core composition and main themes of his interpretation, they remain dynamically present in the visual material through which our children learn about this period. Illustrations of Homo neanderthalensis emphasize the distinctive anatomical and physiognomic characteristics of this species along with its technology, adoption of clothing and habit of living in caves. Depictions of the first composite tools (wooden spears onto which stone points have been hafted) convey the message that Neanderthals were more advanced than earlier species. H. neanderthalensis is shown engaged in a variety of activities: everyday tasks (almost invariably depicted as taking place in caves), hunting and trapping game, fighting and participating in rituals. Portrayed as a competitor for the same habitat, as a cult object and as the quarry in hunting scenes, the animal integral to Neanderthal imagery is the bear. It is in the Neanderthal scenes that depictions of elderly individuals, distinguished by their white hair (and, in the case of the men, beards), first appear (12, 17, 25, Table 1). Despite this expansion, the demographic composition of these pictures remains unnaturally skewed: 9.8% of the individuals pictured are female and 13.7% are children, while 76.5% are male (Table 2). Clearly superior in more than number, men are shown taking the initiative in every activity depicted, watched by females whose 159

Chapter 7 - Nena Galanidou only function appears to be childcare. The prevalence of images of this sort cannot but convey a lasting impression of the overriding importance of the Paleolithic male. Of the many ubiquitous Neanderthal images, perhaps the most iconic is the burial scene. Within our sample, the superficial details attached to this image vary according to the artist. The burial is shown taking place at different seasons and is drawn from different perspectives; the grave, which may be oval, rectangular or circular, may be depicted inside a cave or outdoors, and is attended by anything from two to sixteen people whose sex and age vary. The core elements of this composition are, however, invariable and transmitted with strict care. The deceased is always male. Buried in a foetal position with tools and animal bones around it, his body is adorned with flowers or ochre. More recent images add a goat’s horn to these offerings (e.g., 18, Table 1). The faces of those attending the burial express sorrow and pain at the loss of a companion, conveying the message that Neanderthals shared close emotional ties. Three other images (18, 22, 25, Table 1) illustrate these ties by depicting members of a Neanderthal group caring for an older and less able person. Both groups of images reveal the significant impact of the Shanidar cave findings upon the Neanderthal imagery purveyed to children. The iconography of Homo sapiens overwhelmingly refers to cultur­al traits and activities that may be divided into three key areas: everyday life in camps, big game hunting and cave paintings. Caves are no longer the exclusive setting for everyday activities; more often than not these are shown taking place in open-air camps consisting of shelters made of wood, bone and hides. Here the illustrators have clearly based their ideas upon Amerindian tepees, the Upper Paleolithic mammoth-bone dwellings whose remains were found on the Russian plains and the Leroi-Gourhan reconstructions of the structures at Pincevent. Although the ‘architectural’ background to our illustrations has changed, the division of labor by gender has not. Men (almost always bearded) manufacture tools, return from the hunt carrying game, butcher carcasses and build shelters. Women (with long hair) carry babies, collect firewood, keep hearths alight, cut or cook meat and stitch hides. The same division applies to children, who are generally seen watching or helping with the activities carried on by adults of their own sex, holding small animals or greeting male hunters on their return from a successful hunt (for instance see Dommasnes, chapter 13, Fig. 2). Visual representations of big game hunting show all-male parties either in action or immediately after the hunt; their prey is a mammoth, an elephant or a bear. Most images produced during the 1990s show Upper Paleolithic men and women wearing clothes inspired by ethnographic records of more recent hunter-gatherer attire: skin or fur loincloths, dresses or trousers. Some of the Upper Paleolithic women appear to have acquired an unmistakable erotic charge. With long, sexy legs and perky breasts, they could clearly be supposed to excite male desire (e.g., 19, Table 1). 160

Human Origins and Paleolithic Life in Children’s Book Illustrations Typical divisions by gender may be observed in the dioramic representation of Pincevent published under the heading ‘Summer on the banks of the river Seine’ (7, Table 1). The 20 individuals portrayed here include five boys, 11 men, one person whose sex is uncertain and only three women, none of whom is in the foreground. One woman is brushing her hair while she watches a party of men engaged in various crafts; another is working a hide with a stone tool, while the third, who is surrounded by children as she puts a hot stone into a container full of some liquid, is presumably cooking. In this illustration the women are distinguished by their long hair and dresses. All but one of the men, who are bearded and wear trousers, are either making or carrying some sort of tool. This image is reminiscent of the reconstruction of Pincevent at Le Thot, the Cro-Magnon theme park 5km from Lascaux II in SW France, although it depicts a greater range of individuals and activities. Two of our examples depict Upper Paleolithic cave images in the context of male ceremonial activity (18, 23, Table 1). In every other case they are represented during the process of creation. The iconography of this theme is monotonous and repetitive, insistently purveying an androcentric interpretation of what many consider to have been the dawn of human artistic expression. Cave paintings or engravings are seen as the creations of one or more bearded men (e.g., Fig. 4). The male ‘artist’, assisted either by another man or by a figure of uncertain sex, stands on the cave floor or on a wooden platform or stepladder. The primacy of the male is reinforced by the positioning of these male creators at the centre or in the foreground of these scenes. Children, if present, are depicted in ancillary roles: watching the adults, playing or leaving hand stencils on the cave walls. The role of women, where present, is standard and unchanging: they are there to crush ochre for paint or to light the cave by holding a lamp or firebrand. Within our sample, women do not only appear to make up a strangely small proportion of the Upper Paleolithic population, 16.19%, compared to 67.45% for men (Table 2), but are also seen to be of very little importance to the immediate survival of the group, being of use only where babies, children and domestic activities are concerned. Apparently innocent scenes depicting the life of modern humans during the Paleolithic thus impart an arbitrary (given the evidence) and yet extremely powerful sense of gender roles and the hierarchies of social relationships at this time. Men are invariably seen as of prime importance, at the top of these hierarchies. By far the largest figure in the cover illustration of book 4 (Table 1) is a male hunter who dominates the picture’s foreground at centre stage. He is preparing his spear while teaching a young boy his hafting technique. Over towards the left-hand corner of this picture a secondary male actor is returning from hunting with his prize, a young deer, while to the left of the central male figure another hunter (male, to judge by his attire) bearing a spear carries another dead animal on his back. Women, 161

Chapter 7 - Nena Galanidou half naked and far smaller than the men, appear only in the background of this illustration, under a sheltering rock, where they cook, knap stones and work a hide. It is interesting to note the way in which illustrations such as this use the presence or absence of body and facial hair to signify degrees of evolution and, by extension, of cultural development. In scenes depicting early hominids greater amounts of hair would appear to signify an earlier stage of evolution. Representations of Upper Paleolithic hominids, however, appear to suggest that a male fashion for beards marked the heyday of Paleolithic cultural achievement. These, then, are the principal differences common to our illustrators’ visual reconstructions of the evolution of hominids through time. We may note that even though our illustrations attribute different cultural

Fig. 4. The Upper Paleolithic cave painting scene from ‘My first History Larousse’ (in Greek) © 2003, METAIHMIO publications (for the Greek language), title of the original French edition: ‘Mon Premier Larousse de l’Histoire’ © Larousse / VUEF 2002 for all over the world (reproduced with permission). 162

Human Origins and Paleolithic Life in Children’s Book Illustrations traits, environmental backgrounds and anatomical details to different species, the gender roles portrayed remain constant. The Paleolithic imagery with which children are made familiar currently represents their male ancestors as responsible not only for ritual but for the technological innovations and subsistence activities vital to the immediate and longterm survival of their group; female ancestors, meanwhile, are associated solely with their reproductive functions and with subsidiary subsistence activities. This association is strengthened by the fact that illustrations of big-game hunting are given pride of place, while the gathering of plant foods is an extremely unusual subject. Men in their prime are portrayed as strong, active defenders, food providers and innovators who behave courageously outside the confines of the campsite, while women are generally seen as clinging to the safety of the camp. Children do little to contribute to the welfare of the group, but receive valuable teaching for the future from male adults. Rarely shown playing, children are, like women, invariably excluded from ritual scenes, which of course imply some degree of sophistication and spirituality. Division of labor by gender, a concept that is not given any particular emphasis in scenes of early hominid life, is an immutable feature of Upper Paleolithic scenes, so that these illustrations perpetuate an association between men and culture and between women and biology (Conkey 1997). It is thus that we may purvey to our children a false statement that echoes and serves androcentric Western 19th and 20th century stereotypes. 4.2 The seeds of change From the late 1980s onwards the reverberations from palaeoanthropological debates as to the contributions of various social groups to the history of human evolution started to have some effect upon the imagery of ‘educational books’. Illustrations began to include women participating in big-game hunting (6, Table 1) and in ritual (18, Table 1), making baskets from reeds, hunting seabirds with slings (both in 18, Table 1) and gathering plants for food (10, 14, Table 1). Men were shown collecting shellfish and exchanging blades for seashells (10 and 18 respectively, Table 1). These images give some grounds for optimism. This is not, however, so much because they express any genuine alternative to received ideas regarding gender roles during this period as because they have expanded the range of activities conventionally depicted. The visual vocabulary of these images conveys contradictory and confusing messages to children. Women continue to constitute a ridiculously small proportion of the figures in any scene, and although their activities are now seen as more diverse, any figure seen to express ingenuity or to take a principal role in safeguarding a group’s short- and long-term survival is still invariably male. The cover illustration of a British Museum activity book (6, Table 1) eloquently expresses these contradictions. It depicts a deer-hunting scene that includes a female 163

Chapter 7 - Nena Galanidou hunter. Despite her inclusion in this scene, the rhythm and arrangement of this hunting party are immediately expressive of gender difference. The men, already efficiently prepared to shoot, have dynamically approached the quarry, while the woman stands behind them beginning to take aim. The message that this image conveys to a child must inevitably be that the men are leading and protecting their female companion. Sometimes contradictions between the visual and the textual narrative suggest that an attempt at reform has been made by the author, but not by the illustrator. The best examples of this are seen in book 10 (Table 1), which is remarkable for its thoughtful approach to the minor details of everyday life. Its illustrations show children playing, swimming, making tools and asking for food, men washing animal blood off their clothes in a river and women gathering fruit. One is tempted to suspect, however, that this approach derived rather from the author than from the illustrator. Two examples will clarify this point. On page 6, the caption ‘This girl will go hunting with her parents when she is older’ (a statement that immediately expands the perceived range of female activities is applied to a less than innovative picture of a girl cutting up animal skins to make clothes. A few pages later, on page 13, the caption ‘This man is pretending to make a bone tool. He is really about to have a nap’, a statement that humorously plays down the respect conventionally accorded to the image of the male Paleolithic craftsman, accompanies a picture of a bearded male figure who is clearly performing hard and serious work upon a deer antler. These pictures are accompanied by the usual ladder of human evolution, a scene in which a male party hunts mammoths, Paleolithic parietal imagery incorporating the stereotype of the male artist and his female assistant and other canonical icons of the Paleolithic. This suggests that even where innovative ideas drive the author they may all too easily be neutralized by existing visual traditions in iconography that prove stronger than any force for change. An outstanding work that does not merely diverge from the canons of representation, but sets new standards in australopithecine imagery, is P. Picq’s ‘Lucy et son temps’ (27, Table 1). This book, written with the intention of explaining evolution in an attractive and creative manner, incorporates into its visual vocabulary alternative and entirely new ideas about australopithecine life. Its illustrations, by P. Verrechia, do not belong to the mass-culture approach to popularizing prehistoric archaeology amongst children seen in the last section. These pictures include eight dioramic representations of peaceful everyday activities (such as breastfeeding, resting, bathing, grooming and cleaning up after babies) whose impression upon the viewer has little to do with the conventional idea of the aggressive, dangerous and generally miserable life supposedly led by this species. This vision of australopithecine social life follows the developing trend that has modeled its ideas upon the sociobiology of chimpanzees rather than upon that of other aggressive non-human primates such as 164

Human Origins and Paleolithic Life in Children’s Book Illustrations baboons (Tanner 1981; Hagger 1997), an approach whose visual language gives ‘an overall impression of a kinder, gentler hominid history’ (Zihlman 1997: 106). While we must gratefully acknowledge the few brave attempts made by illustrators between the early 1980s and the late 1990s to represent the Paleolithic to children in a new and more responsible manner, we must also admit that little has changed. It would appear that the visual vocabulary currently associated with this period is so powerful and so deeply ingrained as to be able to throw off even conscious determination for change. The nature of the Paleolithic record is such that this is perhaps the only period of human prehistory whose textbooks must continuously, rather than merely continually, be revised and updated. It is vital that the visual imagery used to accompany these updates should keep pace with them. Where illustration and Paleolithic archaeology meet, the former would currently appear to be the dominant partner. 5. About illustrators My skepticism regarding the existing canons of Paleolithic visual imagery as seen in ‘educational books’ implies no disrespect to the illustrator. Compressing millions of years of human prehistory and of biological and cultural processes into a drawing is no easy task. To the inherent talent and learned skills required to fulfill it (Shulevitz 1997; Salisbury 2004), much may be added by examining the existing ‘stock’ of images. Whether the illustrator seeks to imagine and depict soft body tissues that no longer exist, a scene of Neanderthal life or an abstract notion such as ‘evolution’, a review of the database of existing images is an essential first step. Just so must a scientist review the existing literature before attempting serious scientific research on any topic. So far, so good. The question is, however, why illustrators appear so reluctant to move beyond this initial stage by daring to produce images that do not conform to the existing canons. It is possible that compliance with standard visual images is seen as necessary because every vision of prehistory and especially of the ‘deep past’ is perforce imaginary. Reminding us of this, Gifford-Gonzalez points out the difference between images depicting this period and scenes based on data acquired from natural history or ethnography, in which the entities portrayed derive from some tangible model and thus ‘embody direct experience’ (1993: 25). Paleolithic scenes rely upon the illustrators’ own reading of the text and upon the esoteric process of imagining the past, upon which existing images, perhaps perceived long ago in childhood, must clearly have a great effect. As we saw in the introduction, the most controlling images are those whose inclusion in institutional publications endows them with the entire weight of the palaeoanthropological profession. Such images have perpetuated the powerful and unreconstructed visual language that 165

Chapter 7 - Nena Galanidou is currently constantly recycled in children’s books, showing few signs of change. Perhaps it is time to cease to blame the illustrators for their conservatism. The time may have come to turn our headlights upon the specialists instead. 6. About palaeoanthropologists The books in our sample reveal an interesting publishing trend. Only eight of them (21.62%) were written by professional archaeologists. 12 more (32.43%) acknowledge some degree of collaboration with archaeologists or physical anthropologists, whose names, however, rarely make it onto the book’s cover. The extent of these specialists’ contributions thus remains unclear, as does the matter of whether or not they would be prepared to endorse the final product (including its visual imagery). However this may be, some form of scientific advice has been sought in just over half of the cases in our sample (54%). The remaining books acknowledge no such input. One side effect of this may be the occasional presence of inaccuracies or anachronisms. Most common amongst these are the appearance of pottery in Paleolithic scenes (e.g., Fig. 1) and the presence of motifs borrowed from Upper Paleolithic rock ‘art’ in what is supposed to be the background to a Neolithic scene (e.g., 24, Table 1). Nothing in these scenes indicates that these anachronisms are deliberate (as in Fig. 2); they appear simply to reveal confusion regarding the technological advances proper to various hominids and periods in human prehistory. It may be no coincidence that all of the more thoughtful visual imagery discussed above appears in books that acknowledge some specialist contribution (Table 1). Although it would clearly be desirable that all ‘educational books’ should be informed by professional advice, however, it would be a mistake to believe the lack of it to be responsible for the whole of our problem. Many of the canonical images that I have criticized were published in books that do lay claim to some specialist endorsement. We must thus assume either that the specialists concerned had no opportunity to inspect these images before publication, or that they did so inspect them and found nothing wrong with them, possibly because they were in no way discordant with the experts’ own interpretations of the Paleolithic. The first explanation raises the question of whether the publishing industry ought to rethink the mechanisms whereby specialists contribute to ‘educational books’. The second reminds us that some of the many alternative readings of the past are far more powerful than others, not because of any outstanding interpretative value, but because their popularity and longevity have ingrained them in so many minds. Palaeoanthropologists concerned about social theory may well object to the form in which their findings reach a wider audience or the way in which they are mistreated by non-specialists (see, for example, Silverman 166

Human Origins and Paleolithic Life in Children’s Book Illustrations chapter 5; Binant chapter 8; Dommasnes chapter 13), but their objections are unlikely to have much effect upon the massive children’s book industry. Perhaps such specialists are asking too much; perhaps they have naively failed to recognize the fact that this is an industry driven by profit. Where books are intended to educate children, however, should not quality be the most important criterion? 7. About children Research in developmental psychology confirms that childhood, from earliest infancy onwards, is the period during which the capacity of the human brain to learn is at its peak. In the first section of this book, P. Bauer and R. Fivush explore the ways in which a child’s sense of the past and of history (initially his or her own; later that of others) is established (chapters 1 and 2 respectively). Historical context is also important in the process of ‘making sense’. Bruner and Haste describe this process as a social activity: by interacting with parents and teachers, the child acquires a framework for interpreting experience and learns how to negotiate meaning in a manner congruent with the requirements of its own culture, context and time. (1987: 1) Children’s perception of pictures intended to convey information about the past may be regarded as a similar process of ‘making sense’, and is likewise influenced by cultural and historical constraints, by the perceptual capacity of the individual child and by that child’s environment, mood and state when he or she is introduced to a picture (see Costall and Richards chapter 3). As visual aids to understanding, pictures are part of the social activity of learning by reading. As Costall and Richards stress, [c]hildren develop a sense of the past not just by looking at pictures, but becoming engaged in conversations about them… (chapter 3: p. 67, emphasis added) This leads us to consider the effects upon children’s learning of interaction with adults as they read, a topic whose importance is stressed by R. Fivush in chapter 2. Anyone who has ever read books to preschool children will be well aware that with adult guidance they very rapidly develop a strong sense of the correspondence between text and image. Once a book has been read to a child a few times, he or she will expect, as each familiar picture is revealed, to hear exactly those words that accompanied the picture last time. Personal experience suggests that children of this age often ask to have their favorite stories repeated again and again in order to clarify the visual material that accompanies them. Repetition is an important key to the learning process. Any visual narrative of the ‘deep past’ contained in a children’s book that is seen, read and introduced more than once thus wields considerable power, since such books target an 167

Chapter 7 - Nena Galanidou audience whose members learn fast and have neither the means nor the volition to challenge the validity of what they learn. Many have argued that the fairy tales, myths and religious legends that we tell to children during their formative years profoundly affect their characters and their ideas about the world. According to Bettelheim, input of this sort ‘feeds a child’s imagination and offers the material through which children form their views on world’s origins and destination and the social aspirations upon which future self-construction is founded’ (1997: 236). Every ‘reconstruction’ of antiquity simultaneously constructs a specific view about it (Silverman chapter 5; Economou chapter 6). The power of the image turns hypotheses into facts and presents them to children as truths. The repetition of a single icon (or of its essentials) in many contexts entrenches the ideas that it conveys and nurtures the unthinking acceptance that comes with long familiarity, leaving little room for alternative ideas. Many theories concerning human origins and evolution are, of course, of biological origin, with the result that any representation of Paleolithic societies may easily be seen as based on powerful truths about biology and human nature. This potential confusion is not specific to visual material aimed at children, but it is children who are most likely to take such messages on board wholesale. Growing up with a fixed sense of ‘who was who’ and ‘who did what’ during early prehistory, these children will, when they become adults, proceed in turn to guide their own children or students according to their own ingrained sense of the ‘deep past’. A vicious circle will thus be perpetuated. 8. The way ahead Children’s books about prehistory are only part of a far wider debate as to how archaeology (and indeed science in general) should or should not be popularized (see Dommasnes and Galanidou introduction; Binant chapter 8; Boulotis chapter 9). Like adults who know nothing about the subject, children are ill-equipped to question the validity of the representations of the past (whether textual or visual) offered to them. I would argue that the consumers of children’s prehistory books are particularly poorly placed to recognize its visual components as ‘imaginative blends of scientific knowledge and artistic creativity’ (Gifford-Gonzalez 1993: 25). To the lay person (whether child, parent or teacher), the fact that a book is being sold in the ‘educational’ section may well be enough to make it appear to be a reliable source of information, whether or not it has undergone scientific editing for accuracy. At the same time there exist diverse ways of popularizing scientific findings about human origins. Archaeological and genetic research, for instance, has had a profound effect upon the ways in which the public experiences human evolution. It is now possible to trace the migration paths of your own early ancestors with the help of a user-friendly package 168

Human Origins and Paleolithic Life in Children’s Book Illustrations on general sale online.4 Meanwhile, almost 150 years after the publication of Darwin’s theory of evolution, creationists and evolutionists in the USA are still locked in bitter combat and extensive popular and political support for the teaching of Intelligent Design in schools frequently baffles and frustrates the scientific community. Darwin’s theory, though present in educational systems throughout the western world, is taught far less consistently than one might expect, Greek secondary education being a case in point. All this being so, the images that we have examined must at least be applauded for teaching the language of evolution rather than of lightly disguised religious fundamentalism and for helping children to visualize and understand the complex notions of evolution and change through time. It is obvious, however, that these positive points do not and should not render such images immune to critical scrutiny. The visions of the past constructed and reinforced by illustrations that belong to the canon of representation are highly debatable. These images, avowedly intended to educate, employ a limited range of iconographic themes that confine interpretations of Paleolithic life to a few stereotypical associations. The way in which modern publishers operate (they tend to hold the copyright for their illustrators’ images, often release more than one title on the same topic and sometimes authorize translators to conflate the contents of more than one book) often leads to the appearance in several publications of identical or minimally adapted illustrations. Far more significant than the repetition of a single image, however, is the ubiquitous appearance in various guises of the same icon, sensu Costall and Richards (chapter 3), and thus of the same stereotype. I have already argued that this phenomenon has mainly to do with the limited number of sources used by illustrators of the Paleolithic for children. The perceived meaning of a picture is not dictated entirely by the artist’s intentions. Every reading of an illustration must be seen within its context. According to their background, age and educational status, children may read and interpret images differently. It would therefore be simplistic to regard illustrators as the active and direct transmitters and children as the passive receptors of a single message. Further research to explore the interaction between children and illustrations is needed. The discrepancy between what we currently think we know about the Paleolithic and what our ‘educational books’ are telling children about it also derives partly from the power of the visual image. In illustrated children’s books the narrative is not simply interwoven with visual images; it is the visual images that largely determine the narrative and the message conveyed to children. So powerful has the limited pool of existing images 4  The Genographic Project, a joint venture by National Geographic and IBM, costs a little over a hundred dollars and uses a fairly simple sampling procedure to derive information about the individual’s genetic history (https://www3. nationalgeographic.com/genographic/participate.html).

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Chapter 7 - Nena Galanidou become that alternative interpretations and their visual representations tend to fall by the wayside. Not all of this can be blamed on the illustrators; whether direct or indirect, the influence of specialists in prehistory is critical. If the publishers of children’s books are genuinely concerned about scientific accuracy, they must cease automatically to accept offerings drawn from the usual parochial Paleolithic image bank and insist upon consultation with specialists at every stage of publication. Without this sort of collaboration, alternative interpretations will continue to languish in obscurity. Meanwhile, those who specialize in the social archaeology of the Paleolithic should act upon the discomfort that they feel on passing a bookshop window filled with dubious images endorsed by their colleagues, insisting, next time they write a book themselves, upon commissioning new illustrations that accurately transmit their views. Where the long and painfully restrictive visual tradition in representing the Paleolithic is cast aside, it is entirely possible for alternative images of the deep past to experiment in both creativity and humor without losing a single ounce of scientific accuracy. ‘Lucy et son temps’ has proved that. References BBC news online: news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/showbiz/3103160.stm Baigrie, B. 1996 Picturing Knowledge. Historical and Philosophical Problems Concerning the Use of Art in Science. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Bettelheim, B. 1997 ‘Snowhite’ in D. Makriniotis ed. Childhood: 235–58. Athens: Nisos (translated in Greek by K. Athanasiou). Bruner J. and H. Haste 1987 ‘Introduction’ in J. Bruner and H. Haste eds. Making Sense. The Child’s Construction of the World: 1–25. London and New York: Methuen. Cianciolo, P. 1997 Picture Books for Children. Chicago: American Library Association. Conkey, M.W 1997 ‘Mobilizing ideologies. Paleolithic “art,” gender trouble, and thinking about alternatives’ in L.D. Hager ed. Women in Human Evolution: 172–207. London and New York: Routledge. Conkey, M.W., O. Soffer and D. Stratmann eds. 1997 Beyond Art: Pleistocene Image and Symbol. San Francisco: California Academy of Sciences and University of California Press. 170

Human Origins and Paleolithic Life in Children’s Book Illustrations Egoff S.A., G. Stubbs, R. Ashley and W. Sutton eds. 1996 Only Connect. Reading on Children’s Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Galanidou, N., forthcoming. n.d. ‘Children, text and identity’ in A. Ågotnes, M. Wrigglesworth and L.H. Dommanses (eds.) Children, Identity and the Past. Proceedings of the international conference held in Bergen 30–31/4 2006. Gamble, C. 1998 ‘Foreword’ in S. Moser Ancestral Images. The Iconography of Human Origins: ix–xxiv. Stroud: Sutton Publishing. Gifford-Gonzalez, D. 1993 ‘You can hide, but you can’t run: representation of women’s work in illustrations of Paleolithic life’ Visual Anthropology Review 9 (1): 23–41. Gould, S.J. 1993 ‘Reconstructing (and deconstructing) the past’ in S.J. Gould ed. The Book of Life. An Illustrated History of the Evolution of Life on Earth: 6–20. London and New York: W.W. Norton & Company (2nd edition). Gould S.J. 1997 ‘Ladders and cones: constraining evolution by canonical icons’ in R.B. Silvers (ed.) Hidden Histories of Science: 37–67. London: Granta Books. Hagger, L.D. 1997 ‘Sex and gender in paleoanthropology’ in L.D. Hager ed. Women in Human Evolution: 1–28. London: Routledge. Haraway, D.J. 1989 Primate Visions: Gender, Race and Nature in the World of Modern Science. New York: Routledge. Kiefer, B. Z. 1995 The Potential of Picture Books. From Visual Literacy to Aesthetic Understanding. Englewood Cliffs, NJ and Columbus, Ohio: Prentice Hall. MacPherson, K., 2004 Critics, authors chafe as more celebrities join ranks of children’s authors. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, www.post-gazette.com/ pg/04308/405539.stm visited on 10/4/2006 Marantz, K. 1983 ‘The picture books as art object’ in R. Bator (ed.) Signposts to Criticism of Children’s Literature : 152–56. Chicago: American Library Association. Moser, S. 1992 ‘The visual language of archaeology: a case study of the Neanderthals’ Antiquity 66: 831–44. 171

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Ancestral Images. The Iconography of Human Origins. Stroud: Sutton Publishing. Moser S. and C. Gamble 1997 ‘Revolutionary Images. The iconinc vocabulary for representing human antiquity’ in B.L. Molyneaux (ed.) The Cultural Life of Images: 184–212. London: Routledge. Rudwick, M.J.S. 1992 Scenes from Deep Time. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. Salisbury, M. 2004 Illustrating Children’s Books: Creating Pictures for Publication. Hauppauge, NY: Barron’s Educational Series. Shulevitz, U. 1997 Writing with Pictures: How to Write and Illustrate Children’s Books. New York: Watson-Guptill. Stoczkowski, W. 1994 Anthropologie Naïve, Anthropologie Savante: de l’ Origine de l’ homme, de l’ Imagination et des Idées Reçues. Paris: Editions CNRS. 1997 ‘The painter and prehistoric people: a ‘hypothesis on canvas’ antiquity’ in B.L. Molyneaux (ed.) The Cultural Life of Images: 249–62. London: Routledge. Tanner, N.M. 1981 On Becoming Human. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Zelizer, V. 1985 Pricing the Priceless Child. The Changing Social Value of Children. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Zihlman, A. 1997 ‘The Paleolithic glass ceiling: women in human evolution’ in L.D. Hager (ed.) Women in Human Evolution: 91–113. London: Routledge.

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Chapter 8 Writing Prehistory for Children: A Comparison Between Author and Publisher-Edited Versions Pascale Binant Insofar as writing is taking action, new language can incite people to think differently. And it is from that point on that one can make things change. (Ionesco 2002)1 1. Anecdote In 1995 I wrote a little book for children called The Cooking of Prehistory, published by Editions du Seuil in Paris. It sold rather well and was favorably reviewed by several magazines or programs aimed at a young audience. It was in this context that a French magazine, specializing in archaeology for 8 to 12-year-old children, asked me for an article on the subject. The secretary who contacted me made it clear that the editorial team considered writing for children to be a specialist skill, and was accustomed to modifying the text of articles submitted for publication. It was neither my first book nor my first article. My first article had been published in 1980, in an archaeology magazine for adults produced by the same publishing group as the children’s magazine now asking me for an article. Even then, some 15 years earlier, they had likewise considered writing for the general public to be particular skill, and had made the same remarks to me, without my articles ever being altered. Since then I had written several works and numerous articles in various magazines or collective works. As a general rule, the wide diffusion of science, and particularly of prehistory, is the guiding principle of my work ethic. I could, however, very well see that the editor might have an advisory role and put forward suggestions. So I agreed.  “Dans la mesure ou écrire c’est agir un nouveau langage peut inciter les gens à penser autrement. Et c’est à partir de là qu’on peut faire changer les choses.” (Eugène Ionesco in France Culture, 13.09.2002)

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Chapter 8 - Pascale Binant Once the article was finished and the illustrations had been chosen, I sent the whole thing off to the magazine. When the emended version was returned to me, the changes to it were such that I refused to put my name to it and the article was never published. 2. Comparative analysis As we are dealing with texts written by me – one entirely, the other in part – it is impossible to be objective, and this makes criticism a delicate matter. Comparing and contrasting these two texts is still, however, an instructive process as it shows us what certain publications, editorial teams and even writers call ‘writing for children’ when dealing with prehistory. Significant differences are apparent at first sight. In the first instance, in order to render the process of transformation from one text to another obvious, I have opted for a comparative, almost ‘word for word’ analysis. I shall demonstrate the main processes of transformation I found later, by recourse to the most meaningful examples. In the main, the two texts are about the same length. I was commissioned to write a text of 6000 characters. The original text keeps roughly to this limit (6485 characters); the emended version goes over it (8678 characters), mainly due to the addition of a glossary explaining so-called ‘difficult’ words. The original plan is retained. On the other hand, there are numerous modifications to either vocabulary or syntax or both at once, in cases where a whole paragraph has been altered. Thus the differences go beyond mere style. Certain choices relating to form and content have a significant effect on the message conveyed. 2.1 Questions of form: vocabulary The vocabulary of the two texts differs considerably. Without claiming to be exhaustive, we have selected about 50 words and phrases from the two texts which we consider significant to prehistory in general and the matter in hand in particular; frequency of use in each is reported in Table 1). Significant differences appear in the nature of the vocabulary used. Some words disappear, while others appear, but the most striking difference relates to frequency with which the corpus common to both texts is used. Substitution of one word for another is relatively rare. Nevertheless, even in the introduction we note that the word hearth is replaced by fire: Original version: “Sitting on a big stone, on the bare ground or on little straw mats near the hearth, young and old eat their midday meal.” Modified version: “Sitting on a big stone, on the bare ground or 174

Writing Prehistory for Children: A Comparison… Table 1 Differences and frequency of vocabulary use in each version. Vocabulary Words or Expressions Hearth Fire Vestiges Traces Remains Clues Excavation Laying open Bringing to light Sites Paleolithic Prehistory Prehistoric Stone age Reconstitution Specialists Research Researchers Archaeology Laboratory Investigation Technic Palynology Palaeontology Technology Centuries Microscope Microscopic Magnifying glass Micro-elements Natural resources Plant Pollens Spores Aromatics Herbs Fruits Type (of plant) Charcoal Ingredients Perishable Space Camp Nomads Animals skins Social crossroads Prayer †

Frequency Original Version Modified Version 4 2 +1Dico† 4 5+1Dico+1Rec† 4 3 5 1 4 1 3 1 1 2 1 1 1+1Rec 3+3Dico+1Rec 5 4 8 1Dico 1 2 3 1 1 1 1 2 2 3 1 1 1 1 2 3 1 1+1Dico 1 1 1 1 3+1Dico 2 2 + 1Dico 1 1 + 1 Dico 1 1 4 2Rec 2+2Rec 1 1 2+1Dico 1 1 1 1 1 1 1+1Dico 1 1 1

‘Dico’ = in the accompanying glossary; ‘Rec’ = in the recipes accompanying the text.

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Chapter 8 - Pascale Binant on little straw mats near the fire, young and old eat their midday meal.”2 Then, a little further on, the term micro-elements is replaced by the noun-adjective combination minuscule remains: Original version: “Pollen, spores and other plant micro-elements can also be observed under the microscope.” Modified version: “Microscopes enable us to examine minuscule remains of prehistoric plants, like pollen or spores.”3 We may be surprised by the replacement of the word hearth, which is retained later on, and is the subject of an explanatory note in the glossary. It therefore seems not to be too ‘difficult’ a term. But one of the meanings of the word hearth evokes the fireplace and its remains, in other words an inert, vestigial, element. And it is upon the study of vestiges that all our knowledge of prehistory rests. In the chapter concerned, one might argue that the scene described is an imaginary, dynamic reconstruction, rather than the description of archaeological traces. Fire might then seem appropriate. In parallel, however, we note that whereas the word vestige is used four times in the original text, it disappears entirely from the emended version. As for micro-elements which become minuscule remains, we might consider the second expression easier and more or less equivalent. Yet the words microscope and microscopic are used several (4) times in this chapter, which is suitably entitled ‘cooking under the magnifying glass’. Those terms remain unexplained and are therefore considered ‘known’. As the same root is to be found in micro-elements, it would have been possible - and in my view desirable, to explain it thus in the glossary: ‘micro-elements: tiny particles, visible under the microscope.’ Generally, 16 words or expressions from the original text are dropped in the emended version. They are: vestiges; excavation; laying open; bringing to light; reconstitution; archaeology; palynology; palaeontology; technology; micro-element; natural resources; aromatics; (plant) species; perishable; space; social crossroads. Thirteen words or phrases absent from the original appear in the emended version: prehistoric; specialists; researchers; laboratory; investigation; centuries; magnifying glass; ingredients; animal skins; age of cut stone; hunters; gatherers; prayer.  Original version: “Installés sur une grosse pierre, à même le sol ou sur de petits tapis en paille à proximité du foyer, petits et grands dégustent leur repas de midi.” Modified version: “Installés sur une grosse pierre, à même le sol ou sur de petits tapis de paille à proximité du feu, petits et grands dégustent leur repas de midi.” 3  Original version: “Des pollens, des spores et d’autres micro-élements des végétaux pourront également être observés au microscope.“ Modified version: “Les microscopes permettent d’étudier de minuscules restes de la végétation préhistorique, comme des pollens ou des spores.“ 2

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Writing Prehistory for Children: A Comparison… Quantitatively the deletions and additions seem to balance out, but there is no term for term equivalence between these two lists. Thus the diversity of research practice in prehistory expressed by the use of the words archaeology, palynology, palaeontology and technology is lost. More generally, the terms specialist, researcher and laboratory, which appear in the emended version, can be applied to any scientific activity; there is no equivalence. Similarly, the word investigation does not render the reality of archaeological investigation methods in the way that excavation, laying open, brought to light do, for these are concrete terms which refer us back to the dig, the foundation of any archaeological undertaking. A certain preference for a vocabulary less directly in tune with archaeological professional practice is confirmed. By being more general, it is necessarily less precise and poorer. This impoverishment transpires in two ways: on the one hand, through the choice of a more common vocabulary, and on the other, through less variation and more frequent repetition, as illustrated by multiple occurrences in the emended text of herbs and plants to replace natural resources, aromatics and (plant) species, and of traces, remains and clues, used three or four times more frequently than in the original version, while the word vestige disappears. Thus the comparative analysis of vocabulary in the two texts shows that the main thrust of the editors’ alterations to the text is to simplify it by using a more restricted selection of familiar and more general words. The impoverishment of the vocabulary is both quantitative and qualitative. The level of language drops. But, in accordance with criteria and reasons which we as yet do not understand, by aiming for ease, we invariably end up with information of lesser quality, even scientifically inaccurate information; the tendency towards generalization leads to regrettable stereotyping. 2.2 Questions of form: syntax Changes in vocabulary are usually to be found at the heart of wider-reaching changes to sentences or paragraphs. The repetitions mentioned earlier may result from recasting the main points in one sentence as several independent sentences, or from writing glosses to sentences which were shorter and more direct in the original. It is then a question of real rewriting, sometimes of whole chapters, which modifies the original text considerably. On reading, the emended text seems perhaps more supple, and no doubt appears to give an impression of greater ease. Though bulkier, it is neither richer nor clearer. For example: Original version: “So, observation of a great quantity of pollen from sweet chestnut trees indicates their presence near the camp and lets us envisage the consumption of their fruit. With a lot of luck, the burnt remains of chestnut skins might be found in the 177

Chapter 8 - Pascale Binant hearth.” Modified version: “For example, if we notice, under the microscope, the presence of a great quantity of pollen from sweet chestnut trees, that means that there were several sweet chestnuts near the prehistoric camp we are studying. Therefore the people who lived there must have eaten sweet chestnuts! With a lot of luck, we will also find the remains of burnt chestnut skins in the hearth.”4 The emended version demonstrates a strong desire to explain more, to be more concrete – or, more precisely, more full of images. If we notice, under the microscope, the presence of’ replaces seeing, that means that replaces indicates, it is stressed that the camp is prehistoric, and consumption becomes eating! The original, though certainly more concise, was neither particularly elliptical nor abstract. The tone also changes. In general, statements become more affirmative, as for example in the previously noted replacement of indicate by that means that, and the very injunctive use of therefore at the beginning of the sentence, firmly underlining a causative relationship. Prehistory is no more full of certainties than any other science. Written into history and within the context of the subject, our knowledge is a function of a given moment. Knowledge is not static. Doubt and questioning, the twin engines of meaningful research, still persist. Making statements without discernment denies that dynamic. If we were sure of everything, there would be no research and nothing new to say. This is what often happens in prehistory, and perhaps more generally whenever science is popularized. The same ideas are constantly rehashed, setting up stereotypes that are in contradiction with our present state of knowledge. What is more, rewriting entails the major risk of misunderstanding. In the following text there is a remarkable case: Original version: “And the species of the wood charcoal found in the hearth will tell us if the meat was cleverly flavored.” Modified version: “Analyzing the wood charcoal on which the juices of the meat fell when being cooked by prehistoric man sometimes tells us which herbs or other ingredients were used to flavor the meat.”5  Original version: “Ainsi, l’observation d’une grande quantité de pollens de châtaigniers indique leur présence à proximité du campement et nous permet d’envisager la consommation de leur fruit. Avec beaucoup de chance, des restes brûlés de peaux de châtaignes pourront être retrouvés dans le foyer.” Modified version: “Par exemple, si l’on remarque, au microscope, la présence d’une grande quantité de pollens de châtaigniers, cela veut dire qu’il y avait plusieurs châtaigniers à proximité du campement préhistorique que l’on étudie. Donc les gens qui vivaient là devaient manger des châtaignes ! Avec beaucoup de chance, on retrouvera également dans le foyer des restes brûlés de peaux de châtaignes.” 5  Original version: “Et l’essence de charbons de bois retrouvés dans le foyer nous 4

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Writing Prehistory for Children: A Comparison… The two texts are complete opposites. It is no longer a question of the smoke from scented wood rising up to flavor the meat; but of juices from seasoned meat dropping down to flavor the charcoal! Anthracology tells us the first statement is true, but the second, no matter how exact the information currently available to prehistorians may be, is unproven by any findings. The latter proposition is all the more surprising in that it is not just a question of science but of an everyday experience. Who has not eaten meat cooked over a wood fire and tasted the unique flavor that varies subtly according to the type of wood? Once again, the remarks made about the previous example hold true: the writing is diluted and more images are used to add detail. From a purely practical point of view, replacing a single phrase with two or three will lead to an increase in words used. In order to stick to the volume of text agreed at the outset, if certain paragraphs are developed, others will necessarily be shortened or cut out altogether. In the present case, four paragraphs from the original were significantly shortened or entirely deleted in the emended version. Among these paragraphs there was one which gave the example of pemmican, a native American recipe based on dried meat. With the benefit of hindsight, this seems a good thing. I think that, as a shortcut in thinking which popularization is rarely able to avoid, the comparison of prehistoric practices with those of populations now alive implies some equivalence between them. This clearly does not exist, as all modern people are separated from prehistory by several millennia. I had broken my own rule, I do not know why. Perhaps I too had wanted to be more ‘pictorial’ by giving examples. So that particular modification seems like a good thing to me. Consider, by contrast, the regrettable removal of the following paragraphs, which contain information about data relating to cooking and what we can learn from them: Original version: “Finding the original food of people in prehistory is therefore not an easy thing. As always in archaeology the data we have are partial, in this area perhaps more than in any other, since most food, then as now, is made up of highly perishable substances. So the remains which can tell us about the subject are often indirect. We saw it with stones. Old seats or flint tools are not food but they have a part to play in the preparation and consumption of cooking. They can tell us about the place of the ‘kitchen’ and how dishes were prepared.”6 diront si la viande était savamment parfumée.” Modified version: “L’analyse des charbons de bois sur lesquels est tombé le jus de viande que les hommes préhistoriques ont fait cuire nous révèle parfois quelles herbes ou autres ingrédients ont été utilisés pour parfumer la viande.” 6  Original version: “Retrouver la nourriture des hommes de la préhistoire n’est donc

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Chapter 8 - Pascale Binant Again we see a setting aside of information concerning the development of research in prehistory. These ideas are not touched on anywhere in the emended text. By developing certain chapters and therefore certain pieces of information to the detriment of others, such a practice considerably weakens the ideas set out. The more this is done, the more the original text loses content. There is hardly a chapter which has not been more or less tweaked. On this point we even notice a progression as we go through the text: at first discreet and of little scope, from the second chapter onwards the alterations become more and more numerous and of greater consequence and continue to increase. By the end, the text was no longer mine! 3. Words and ideas7 Can one thus change one word for another, rewrite a sentence or a paragraph, add, cut or develop particular ideas without damaging the basis of the argument? On this topic, I wanted to come back to the replacement of micro-elements by minuscule remains, which we said earlier might seem an approximate equivalent. As a backdrop to this article, I wanted to show that the information on which prehistorians base their conclusions are not just macro-elements or macro-remains exposed by the trowel, but also comprise invisible data, micro-elements and micro-remains; gathering these usually requires specific techniques, while study of them constitutes a specialty in its own right. On the other hand, minuscule elements remain visible to the trained eye of the professional, for whom the magnifying glass is not really a tool unless it is a binocular model. Hence palynology, the very mention of which disappears completely in the emended text. The rigorous study of palaeoenvironmental evidence via palynology and other techniques, and of archaeometric approaches through radiometric dating, intensified from the 1950s onwards. They permitted researchers to refine their knowledge considerably and in so doing to refine the vision they had of prehistory, both as a science and as a period in human life. The extreme precision of the observations we are now able pas chose facile. Comme toujours en archéologie, les données que nous possédons sont partielles. Peut-être encore dans ce domaine plus que dans tout autre, car l’essentiel de l’alimentation, celle d’hier comme celle d’aujourd’hui, est constitué d’éléments hautement périssables. Aussi, les vestiges qui peuvent nous informer sur ce sujet sont-ils souvent indirects. Nous l’avons vu avec les pierres. Anciens sièges ou outils en silex ne sont pas des aliments mais ils participent à la réalisation et à la consommation de la cuisine. Ils peuvent nous renseigner sur l’organisation de l’espace « cuisine » et sur les techniques de préparation des plats.” 7  My PhD thesis is entitled ‘Writing prehistory: ideas and words’, supervised by Professor Jean Guilaine at the Collège de France.

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Writing Prehistory for Children: A Comparison… to make proves that, for prehistory as for any science, you can’t believe what you see; I had hoped to act as a counterweight to the stereotypes in the popular imagination. As a subtle craft at the crossroads between many activities in social fabric, cooking made this particularly possible. 3.1 Prehistoric! Among the terms absent from the original version but liberally used in the emended version, there is one to which we should pay particular attention: the adjective prehistoric. At first sight, what could be more usual than the use of this qualifier in a text dealing with cooking in prehistory, since there lies its primary definition ‘relative to prehistory’, ‘which belongs to prehistory’? The introduction of this term is always made in the context of a greater modification of the sentence or paragraph, which makes a word for word comparison difficult. For example: Original version: “Sometimes, the great quantity of faunal remains found allows us to consider the existence of caches.” Emended version: “In certain prehistoric sites, great quantities of animal bones have been found. It is thought that these were caches of meat laid up by prehistoric men.”8 Prehistoric is thus used 8 times in the emended version, in turn to qualify vegetation (1), men (3 times), the camp (1), the sites (1) the meals (1). Neither man, nor the vegetation, nor the camp, nor the sites, nor the meals which are termed ‘prehistoric’ in the emended version of this article have any clearly defined scientific reality. According to the dictionary definition (Ducrot and Schaeffer 1995), it should serve only to confirm their belonging to prehistory. And yet the addition of ‘prehistoric’ as a qualifier carries with it a deprecation of the subject. This deprecation is moreover clearly to be seen in the synonyms offered: archaic, old-fashioned, stammering, primitive. The difference shown is therefore not only chronological but also qualitative. ‘Prehistoric man’: a man? Perhaps not quite. Not yet! As a lady said, thinking of the pictures showing the various stages in human evolution in the Natural History Museum in Paris, ‘when man was an ape’ (sic). This idea seems very widespread in public opinion and seems frequently shored up by popularizing articles, to say nothing of the accompanying  Original version: “Parfois, la très grande quantité des vestiges osseux retrouvés autorise à envisager l’existence de réserves.” Modified version: “Sur certains sites préhistoriques, on a retrouvé de grandes quantités d’ossements d’animaux. On pense qu’il s’agissait de réserves de viandes constituées par des hommes préhistoriques.”

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Chapter 8 - Pascale Binant illustrations (see also Galanidou, Chapter 7). Yet these illustrations have more to do with the popular imagination than with scientific information of any quality, and contain a considerable proportion of imaginative interpretation (Moser 1998; Stoczkowski 1994). 3.2. The meaning of information Neither the choice nor the variation of words is neutral. In the guise of analogies, the variations in vocabulary noted between the texts reveal very different meanings. Some are greater than others, some more insidious too. Particularly when they are in the shape of a whole modified chapter, they give a completely different picture of prehistory. Final example: Original version: “All our knowledge about the environment: animals, plants…are sources of information about the possibilities offered by nature in different places to populations in prehistory. The proven presence of a great variety of natural resources accessible to man even enables us to discern certain preferences in particular groups. This one preferred reindeer. That one aurochs, the other bison or mammoth.” Emended version: “Men in the Paleolithic period lived on hunting and gathering certain plants and fruits. Sometimes they did not have much choice of what to eat. To calm their hunger, they took what nature offered, even if it was not very varied, or sophisticated. Elsewhere nature was more generous and offered them a greater variety of edible animals and plants. When this was the case it has been noted that each group of humans had its habits, some preferred the flesh of mammoths, others aurochs, others still feasted on bison or reindeer.”9 The vision of prehistory expressed in the emended version is part  Original version: “Toutes nos connaissances à propos de l’environnement: animaux, plantes, …sont des sources d’information sur les possibilités que la nature offrait selon les endroits aux populations de la préhistoire.  La mise en évidence d’une très grande richesse des ressources naturelles accessibles à l’homme, nous permet même de discerner certaines préférences selon les groupes. Celui-là préférait le renne. Celui-ci l’aurochs. celui-là encore le bison ou le mammouth.” Modified version: “Les hommes de l’époque Paléolithique vivaient de la chasse et de la cueillette de certaines plantes et fruits. Parfois, ils n’avaient guère de choix pour leur alimentation . Pour apaiser leur faim, ils prenaient ce que la nature leur proposait, même si ce n’était pas très varié, ou pas très raffiné. Ailleurs, la nature était plus généreuse et mettait à leur disposition une grande variété d’animaux et de végétaux comestibles. Dans ces cas là, on a remarqué que chaque groupe humain avait ses habitudes: les uns préféraient la viande de mammouth, d’autres l’aurochs, d’autres encore se régalaient surtout de bison ou de renne.”

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Writing Prehistory for Children: A Comparison… of the previously condemned naïve anthropology, full of old stereotypes. An ‘age of cut stone’, probably referring to the age of knapped stone, has disappeared from the vocabulary of prehistorians, for whom the data accumulated by nearly two centuries of research, refined by ever improving methods of analysis, reveal complexity out of all comparison with any cliché from beliefs grounded in the nineteenth century. This conception of prehistory rests on the idea that ‘today is better than yesterday and worse than tomorrow’; as if the history of humanity and civilizations was bound into a system of linear evolution heading inevitably towards a better future. According to this logic, prehistory appears as a very primitive sketch for what should constitute evolved humanity: us! Considering prehistory as a period of incoherent grunting is not free of value judgments. Given that prehistory makes us consider polarities, when we consider prehistory we consider The Other. It is therefore possible that such statements may influence the perception we have of present peoples whose social, cultural, or economic modus operandi is different from our own. In this respect it is incumbent upon scientists and popularisers alike to be vigilant. After being manipulated, rewritten, cut and expanded, this text was no longer mine in form, as we have seen, although we could perhaps have come to an agreement on this point. And the text would have benefited from a few changes. But, on the one hand the ideas were no longer mine, and on the other they were often scientifically inaccurate. The meaning of my rationale was altered, the information I sought to transmit twisted or ignored. Under these circumstances publication was impossible. 4. Critical analysis The breadth and the nature of the differences picked up in the course of the previous analysis raise numerous points. 4.1 Popularization Questioning the role of the publishers is legitimate. The original version did not meet their expectations. Yet, by being precise about their wishes, they could have asked for modifications, as often happens. They were also free to reject the text altogether. Here, they use the original text as a canvas on which to embroider at will. It is a common practice, condemned by professionals: …through the manipulation of texts, […], authors simply carry out orders. The editor is the true ‘author’, the one who takes the initiative, who ‘has ideas’. (Figuier 1997, 37)10  “…par la manipulation des textes, […], les auteurs deviennent des exécutants

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Chapter 8 - Pascale Binant Which ideas? In the example we have just analyzed, the ideas introduced by the editor have no originality. The discourse takes up all the clichés of prehistory, as it has been popularized for decades, disdaining the realities of research. The use of more common vocabulary, the simplification of information, the generalization of arguments with the concomitant impoverishment and lack both of precise vocabulary and of ideas are well-known characteristics of popularization. Perhaps they appear particularly marked in the alterations proposed here because they already existed in the original text! It is a fact that working to spread science among the wider public is a specific skill which has its own rules, among which are the above, and this is no doubt even more the case when writing for children. The editor changed the text as if it had been a scientific text, which it was not. The reference work, (Binant 1995), had already been written specifically with the young reader in mind and edited by a publisher who gave me advice but never changed a word. The book sold well and got good reviews. One might have thought that the article was in the same vein, written with attention and thought in order to cater for the requirements of the audience concerned. So, essentially, vocabulary, syntax and ideas were deliberately chosen. The specific choices made included an attempt at explaining the modalities of research. Because scientific practice is above all an investigative process, it is important to explain the methods by which this is achieved. As methods describe the ways of gaining information, they also act as a guarantee for the information transmitted and the teaching based upon it. By almost systematically dispensing with this information in the modified version, the editor freed himself from all methodological constraints, leaving his imagination unfettered. The reality revealed is no longer a factual but an emotional construct. The comforting emotion of a familiar discourse: Sometimes, when the new reality hits them in the face all the same, they seek to reduce it, to integrate it into already known systems, to find resemblances and patterns. They agglutinate and transform it by means of this sap of clichés and anecdotes which they secrete…. Sarraute 1996, 22)11 The various modifications made to the text so as to pander to the need for more accessible science appear to be the expression of that reasaux ordres. L’éditeur est le véritable « auteur », celui qui prend des initiatives, celui « qui a des idées ».” 11  “Parfois, quand la réalité nouvelle, tout de même, leur crève les yeux, ils cherchent à la réduire, à l’intégrer à des systèmes déjà connus, à lui découvrir des ressemblances, des modèles. Ils l’agglutinent et la transforment au moyen de ce suc de lieux communs, de réminiscences qu’ils secrètent…”

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Writing Prehistory for Children: A Comparison… suring shared vapidity. Yet scientific research is by definition a contrary creature, which, impelled by doubt and questioning, interrogates and reveals the unknown. Held to know what the public wants, the publisher here behaves as if all the public desired were what it already knows. If that is really the case, is it the publisher’s role thus to cultivate the cliché? We certainly do not think that specialists should be content with this, especially when such an attitude is maintained to the detriment of the author’s intentions, for we must not forget that the author remains responsible for the knowledge set out when he signs his text. Yet is the researcher the populariser? While it is necessary to master the subject perfectly in order to popularize it properly, popularization as such is not research. Communicating scientific knowledge requires particular skills (Blanchard 1999; Campbelle 1999), which is why we believe that the popularization of science, and prehistory in particular, among the wider public, should be the subject of further studies, recognized as a specialization in its own right. It is necessary to build a new kind of intellectual with a broad education, not only scientific and philosophical but also literary and artistic who will be equipped to read our time critically without prejudice. (Prattico 1999, 206)12 With a more objective view vision of practices little thought-out up to now, such a change in direction would entail critical analysis, of the habitus (Bourdieu 1996) of discourse in particular, which would be of benefit to the neophyte as well as to the specialist. 5. Epilogue Knowledge evolves. The results of present research will stand or fall in the light of new discoveries made in the future. Popular information always lags a little behind, and, in the long run, much of what we write today will not correspond to the reality of tomorrow’s knowledge. Not to work to transmit the latest advances in science to the best of our ability creates an inertia in knowledge which leads directly to the perpetuation of ‘off the peg ideas’ which are so difficult to get rid of. It appears that the dissemination of scientific ideas in the public domain is an unavoidable part of modern scientific research in any field (e.g. Battimelli 1999). Indeed it stands as a necessary part of the civic responsibility to redistribute knowledge. This is a task which cannot depend upon the whim of this or that mediator; it is a responsibility that can only be properly shouldered with professionalism if we are to ensure 12  “Il faut construire une nouvelle figure d’intellectuel disposant d’une vaste formation, non seulement scientifique et philosophique, mais aussi littéraire et artistique, qui soit en mesure de lire notre époque de manière critique sans préjugés.”

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Chapter 8 - Pascale Binant the high quality dissemination of knowledge in step with the present state of research in prehistory. Acknowledgements Translated by Véronique Langlands-Perry References Binant P. 1995 La Cuisine de la Préhistoire. Paris: Seuil. Battimelli, G. 1999 ‘Langages scientifiques et langages des manuels: le cas de la physique’ in L’Ecrit de la Science, Alliage 37/38: 63–70. Blanchard, P. 1999 ‘Jeux et enjeux de l’écriture scientifique. Des stylistes aux fabricants de texte’ in L’Ecrit de la Science, Alliage 37/38: 42–9. Bourdieu, P. 1996 Sur la Télévision. L’Emprise du Journalisme, Paris: Raisons d’agir. Campbelle, P. 1999 ‘Ecrire la science. Vice et vertus’ in L’Ecrit de la Science, Alliage 37/38: 211–13. Ducrot O. and Schaeffer J.M. (eds.) 1995 Nouveau Dictionnaire Encyclopédique des Sciences du Langage, Paris: Seuil. Figuier, R. 1997 ‘L’édition place la recherche dans une logique qui n’est pas la sienne’ Livres-Hebdo 256: 37. Jurdant, B. 1999 ‘La Science: une écriture parlante?’ in L’Ecrit de la Science, Alliage 37/38: 9–13. Moser, Stephanie 1998 Ancestral Images: The Iconography of Human Origins, Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Prattico, F., 1999 ‘Divulgation scientifique et conscience critique’ in L’Ecrit de la Science, Alliage 37/38: 204–10. Sarraute, N. 1996 Roman et Réalité. Paris: Gallimard. Stoczkowski, W. 1994 Anthropologie Naïve, Anthropologie Savante: de l’Origine de l’Homme, de l’Imagination et des Idées Reçues. Paris: CNRS Editions. 186

Chapter 9 Museums and Archeological Sites as the Setting for Wondrous Tales Christos Boulotis 1. Dialogues with antiquity As a realm both real and symbolic, antiquity often perplexes us when it comes to dealing with it, even in its obvious dimension as global cultural heritage and a field for acting out cultural identity and selfknowledge. In particular, the way we serve it up to children - as much via textbooks as via all manner of educational programs and extra-curricular books - reflects this perplexity to a great degree. At the same time, the lack of a co-ordinated methodology, filtered historical perspective and educational strategy are immediately apparent. From this point of view, I believe museums and archeological sites provide the most comfortable and productive access to a three-dimensional understanding of the ancient world, which young visitors can quite literally enter into and touch, embarking on multiple dialogues with it. All the same, children should not be inundated with the knowledge concerned, using the good student whom nothing escapes or the “walking encyclopedia syndrome” as a benchmark. It is something of a truism to say that if knowledge is to be well founded and productive, it must be built on gradually and by absorption, in step with each child’s age, mental faculties and social milieu. In many cases, all that would be required would be for us adults to go back in time and step into the children’s shoes, reliving our former childhood nature as far as possible, before choosing the ‘how’, ‘what’, ‘why’ and ‘how much’ of antiquity in their name. First and foremost, we should lead children to love museums and archeological sites voluntarily, as a wondrous setting where unusual stories can unravel, and where they themselves have a role to play. In fostering this love we are undoubtedly laying the groundwork for future returns to three-dimensional antiquity, as well as for exercising a critical eye. I have put the above views into practice in two of the extra-curricular children’s books I have written so far, calling on my dual capacity as an archeologist and a children’s author: one book concerns the Archeological Museum in Thebes, while the other relates to the National Archeological Museum in Athens. In both books, I have created central roles for children to play, and spliced anecdotal reality with 187

Chapter 9 - Christos Boulotis what transcended it, via reveries and the fictional creation of people and situations, to create an atmosphere of recognition and wonder. 2. Archeology books for children, or white bread on brown Fotis, my father, used to tell me that in the old days there was a time when the bakeries on the Aegean island of Limnos first started baking white bread. Still unused to the new kind of taste, but enchanted by something entirely new, for their mid-morning snack children would hold a piece of the traditional brown bread in one hand, and a smaller piece of the tempting white bread in the other. As an imaginary replacement for cheese or olives, this latter would be eaten sparingly, mouthful by mouthful, as it was more expensive. Yet there is no getting round the fact that this was bread on bread. This image of brown and white bread came to mind every time publishers pressed me, and archeologist colleagues and friends quite reasonably asked me whether it wasn’t about time I got to work on archeological books for children, or books imparting knowledge inspired by antiquity in general. For whenever they turn out like a wellbuilt bridge, they can communicate, bring together and become a crossing point for fascinating educational journeys. Such thoughts and ideas about extra-curricular archeological books for children were of course anything but foreign to me. They often tugged me by the sleeve or the ear and gnawed away at me, especially whenever I came across books in that line, whether written in Greek or in foreign languages. By my own standards these reeked of unassimilated knowledge, at times on account of errors, oversights, vagueness and unchecked curtailment, and at others via naïve simplifications or the overwhelming burden of information. In most cases this was educationally bombastic unassimilated knowledge, polished up with an aesthetic veneer. I’m not sure whether I should confess this, but for a while, without fully realizing it, I got caught up in hunting down extra-curricular books of this type and all manner of related reading materials, both in Greek and foreign languages. This I did with the debilitating sense of the closet devotee, and the wounded one at that, since such people remain inactive and uninvolved, persisting in an almost masochistic way in wounding themselves with what they best love. There is no getting around the fact that antiquity, for reasons well understood that we need not analyze here, is a goldmine the world over. On the other hand, there is also the well known principle that whenever cultural ‘commodities’ enter the trade arena, with the inescapable laws of supply and demand (see also Galanidou chapter 7), what is sublime is readily humiliated, trivialized, dragged through the mire and denigrated, without any discretion or respect. Why then should children’s books be a notable exception? It is not as if antiquity has failed to flourish in the 188

Museums and Archeological Sites as the Setting for Wondrous Tales hands of artists who are at once responsible and inspired, and who know that a kite must be well balanced if it is to fly sky high, artists who go neither too light nor too heavy on the salt. Yet if we want our criteria as fine-honed as they should be, the crop of good extra-curricular books is relatively poor. I will here avoid the stumbling block of naming such books, so as not to do an injustice to any I may forget or which have not come to my attention. Nor is there any point in my branding any particular titles as too lightweight. Let’s just say that it’s not like me, it’s not my style. At the same time as the above, I embarked on similar critical investigations of Greek antiquity as depicted in school textbooks, both recently produced and of earlier vintages. Here again, I often discerned shortcomings and superficialities – yet in their case these were dramatically magnified by the fact that this was guided knowledge prescribed by the state’s official, reputable education bodies, with whatever that implies (see also Piñón and Funari chapter 15). Limiting myself to one illustrative example, ancient art is codified in terms of a deluge of names and dates, with few accompanying pictures, and those of dubious quality. On the other hand, generalizing pomposities, dry descriptions and stereotypic evaluations abound. If this is the case, how could children possibly avoid turning their back on something which, beyond rigid, obsessive delusions of grandeur arising from antiquity, is undoubtedly a vigorous, highly significant part of our cultural heritage? The resultant boredom and disdain are by definition intensified by the compulsory nature of the curriculum and often – let’s be honest – by the ineptitude or inadequacy of the mediator, i.e. the teacher. I sometimes sadly reflect on children who, in their desire to taste more of the ancient world, have had the misfortune to wander from the gray zone of the textbook into the gray zone of the extra-curricular book. At this point, people would be quite right in saying that carping and dismissive views have more to do with utopia than with fertile ground. On the other hand, they might ask me why, instead of being an armchair critic, I don’t try my hand in the same field. And why indeed not? It lies within my brief as an archeologist, with a lengthy research record on paper and in the ground, and my track record in children’s fiction is, let’s say, reasonably successful. My tools as an educator are reasonably well honed, tried and tested on various age groups from primary to tertiary education. And above all, what I have is an inherent need to initiate others into what I love greatly and what fascinates me. Yet however often I set about working on an archaeology book for children, I never managed to get beyond initial plans or at best a few lines. Some cog within me jammed; something within me resisted, holding me back. And I kept putting off writing until a more convenient time, squeezing in other children’s books in the meantime. And so, for example, instead of a book on the Cycladic figurines, one called ‘The Curious Love of the Horse and the Elm Tree’ came out, and my drafts on the Minoan wall paintings 189

Chapter 9 - Christos Boulotis or on script in the prehistoric Aegean yielded to ‘The Soldier who Wanted to Become an Architect and Poet’ and so on. Without initially working out the reason for my inhibitions and procrastination, I was not slow to realize – I must confess – that what was egotistically rising up in the face of duty and debt was my own personal enjoyment. The person I was most often writing for was that 1950s boy in suspenders who still lies curled up inside me. Yes, it was that small boy from Limnos, an island on a desolate shipping route, the boy pampered with fairytales, who then cared little for knowledge if it did not rest sweetly and gently on magical, fantastic domains. That aside, whichever way I looked at it, writing an archeology book for beginner readers bore no promise of a storytelling challenge in the inspirational dosage sufficient for my personal needs. And I need that challenge to write, just as the blade of a mill needs running water or a breeze. The whole process of writing must resemble an adventure or a celebration; otherwise it rarely goes well. For many years now my time has been measured in terms of archeology, and as it goes by it is shrunk ever more by my various obligations regarding research in the Academy of Athens and the suchlike. So whenever I steal away to children, in the name of that boy in suspenders from Limnos, I feel the need for what I write to diverge from the field of my own archaeology, however precious it is to me. In short… we return to that image of the bread I mentioned at the beginning: writing archaeology books for children would be like eating white bread on brown. By the same token, I have every understanding for the professional chef who only rarely cooks for those at home, as well as the kitchen maid who leaves the plates unwashed in her own sink. 3. Fabulous tales starting from museums Yet it is not true that I turned my back totally on antiquity and archaeology. How would that have been possible anyway? It just took me some time for things to settle and ripen within me, and for me to find the vehicle that would take me on a challenging journey, carrying the children along with me. Instead of compulsory learning, center stage was here to be given to malleable emotion, dreams, the frolicking and acrobatics of the imagination. So fabulous tales it was to be! Now there’s a challenge! And there is the vehicle! And that vehicle, as I shall explain later on, was waiting for me in the courtyard of the archeological museum at Thebes, loaded with promises and almost ready to leave. Fabulous tales starting from museums; they were to be the canvas for enchanting storytelling. I am not one of those people who argue that by definition, art languishes in the cold galleries of museums. Museums and archeological sites are the only authentic settings where children can touch the ancient world in three dimensions, feel it and let its images envelop them, however fragmentary and wounded by 190

Museums and Archeological Sites as the Setting for Wondrous Tales the vagaries of time those images are. My lengthy personal experience has taught me that if the ground is not first properly cultivated, then knowledge about archaeology does not take root; this happens if children are not given the sense that that far-distant world is at once so close to them that if they just reach out their hands they will feel it. This is why educational programs at archeological sites and museums bear ripe fruit when they skillfully manage to upgrade children from passive viewers to explorers, creative partners, arbiters and makers. If greenhorn visitors are not pleasantly captivated in the authentic settings, it will be difficult for them to long for the road to antiquity, and difficult for them to seek out more knowledge later on. And the pleasant captivation of elementary school children I usually have in mind when I write can begin – why not? – with fabulous tales. These will offer them their first stimuli or kick-off, making them love museums as places where weird and wonderful things can happen, and what is more they will be spliced with our own times, with people and traces that still exist. And so I set out, accompanied by Fotini Stephanidi, an expert swimmer and fanatic cyclist, so that she could color the fabulous tales of museums with her sensitive paintbrush. There have been two so far – the first in a series which I aim to continue for some time. 4. ‘Cadmus, His Little She Dog and the Moon’ Cadmus is a sensitive Alsatian who works as a guard dog at the Thebes Archeological Museum in Boeotia. The archeologists there have named him after the mythical king of the area. Living in the verdant museum courtyard, among statues, gravestones and other ancient marble artifacts, the Alsatian observes at first hand the wide range of visitors and the activities of the archeologists, most especially of the eccentric director, acquiring an insatiable appetite for knowledge about the new archeological finds that come to light during excavations. Sensitive as he is, he is bewitched every time the full moon bathes the museum courtyard in silver light, transforming it into a fantastical setting for fables. On one such occasion Cadmus sees a little she dog in the moon, and love engulfs his heart. From that moment on he is overcome by the desire to meet her. His wish is fulfilled one night when the small vine in the museum magically produces a thousand bunches of grapes, half red and half black, and a silken rope ladder comes out of the moon. High up in the moon together with his little she dog, now and then the happy Cadmus thinks back wistfully on his former life in the museum courtyard. One night by full moon he is even visited by the eccentric museum director, who climbs up by the same silken ladder. I didn’t find my first fabulous archeological tale, called ‘Cadmus, His Little She Dog and the Moon’ (published by Kastaniotis in 1996) (Fig. 1). It would be fairer to say that it found me. As spring gave way to the 191

Chapter 9 - Christos Boulotis

Fig. 1. The book’s cover: Cadmus in the courtyard of the Thebes Archeolo­ gi­c al Museum. Illustrated by Fotini Stephanidi ©Kastaniotis Publications (reproduced with permission). 192

Museums and Archeological Sites as the Setting for Wondrous Tales summer of 1996, nature was in full glory in the courtyard of the Thebes Archeological Museum. At the time I was studying fragments of Mycenaean wall paintings from the Cyclopean acropolis at Gla in Boeotia prior to publishing them. From dawn to dusk I was laying the pieces out on a makeshift stone table under a rampant vine, next to the medieval tower. Round about me lay broken pieces of marble, gravestones, mortals and immortals, lions and pitchers, all dressed in lush greenery and multicolored flower fragrances. It was when I was staying in the museum guest quarters, in that same verdant courtyard, where barefoot I stayed up all night with Vassilis Aravantinos, a great buddy since my years as student and now director of the museum there, tracing out in stone ancient inscriptions, and discussing things from the loftiest to the most mundane. And so it was that on my very first morning in the museum courtyard, while I was drawing the partially preserved profile of a comely Mycenaean woman, I heard the serious, stentorian voice of my friend Vassilis ring out: “Is the spaghetti ready for Cadmus?” It came as some surprise… That funny phrase seemed incomprehensible to me: it was feeding spaghetti to the mythical king of Thebes! And so in seeking the answer, I met Cadmus the Alsatian, the merciless, restless museum guard who was supposedly mad on spaghetti. For an instant I thought that a humorous children’s story with Cadmus as its protagonist wouldn’t be such a bad idea. But there was nothing doing, because on my first night in Thebes an imperial full moon came and installed itself in that heavenly courtyard, bathing everything in silvery poetry! And then there were the secret whispers, whispers from the inside and the outside, the riotous wing beats of the wild doves in the medieval tower, the unripe bunches of grapes on the vine promising a rich harvest, the heartfelt confidences of the museum guards. And a whole host of other hallowed images, scattered words, snapshots, all of which joined together to form a wonderful, animated setting – a challenging invitation and promise of fabulous tales rolled into one! And for as long as I stayed in Thebes, I kept telling myself that this magic as I was experiencing it in the courtyard, above all at night, should be put down on paper, should be saved; first and foremost as my own pressing need, as an emotional release and creative re-working or, let’s say, as a kind of oblique diary entry and a repayment for what I had had the fortune to experience there. I also owed to my young readers, to whom I aspired to teach the alphabet of museums in a different, gentle way. And lastly – why not? – I felt a debt towards all those who invest their whole lives in guarding and looking after things ancient – guards, archeologists, restorers, yet whose glance often happens to grow dull in the beauty they have come to take for granted. There in the authentic museum setting, in the heat of the moment, the first drafts of the fabulous tale were lovingly penciled into the margin of my archeology notes; the tale did not change much before appearing in printed form a few months later. By right, Cadmus the Alsatian became 193

Chapter 9 - Christos Boulotis the backbone of the short tale, which in such a setting could not but have oozed dewdrops and wild honey. From carefree days to the sweet pangs of love Cadmus feels one moonlit night for the far-distant stray dog in the mythic cycles of the moon, and from there to the triumphantly redemptive ascent or assumption of Alsatian and archaeologist into the full moon, on a silken ladder, I set about fitting in all things animate and inanimate in the museum. Haris Alexiou, the popular singer from Thebes who has sung the praises of the full moon fitted in, as did my fellow archeologist Alexandra’s playful twins. As for archaeology, it was everywhere in the fabulous tale, and yet as a rule indirectly, as a refractor just sufficient to weave the action together, to throw better light on the scene, to color the stimuli for young readers who would be future visitors to the museum in Thebes (Fig. 2). 5. ‘The Statue that Was Cold’ The marble Statue that Was Cold is that of a small boy in a hooded cape, clutching a puppy in his arms, in the rooms of the National Archeological Museum in Athens. The little boy feels cold from loneliness, and above all from nostalgia for Smyrna in Asia Minor, his lost homeland. His loneliness is assuaged by his meeting first with Galateia, the tender-hearted, blue-eyed museum cleaning lady, who was also brought from Asia Minor as a young refugee girl, and then with Lambis, the night watchman’s young son, who loves ancient statues and longs to become a sculptor. Together, the three of them use their daring and imagination to plan an imaginary journey to the shores of Asia Minor. They even find a generous accomplice to their plans in the famous archeologist Mrs. Semni, who is none other than the museum director herself, as well as

Fig. 2. A scene of the story taking place within the exhibition hall of the Thebes Archeological Museum. Illustrated by Fotini Stephanidi ©Kastaniotis Publications (reproduced with permission). 194

Museums and Archeological Sites as the Setting for Wondrous Tales in an imaginary blue bird. The little statue’s wish finally comes true one August night under a full moon. In a miraculous manner he will briefly see his beloved homeland once more, but before daybreak he will be back in position in the museum. From then on, the statue of the boy will no longer be cold, though he will never cease to remember or feel the pangs of homesickness. I had been carrying this second fabulous tale as a welcome load ever since my student days; in mid-1999 it came out as ‘The Statue that Was Cold’ (published by Patakis). However much one is dazzled by the high art of the alluring statues in the museum galleries, one’s eye cannot fail to rest tenderly on the little marble boy (Fig. 3). This tenderness is transformed into a sweet tug on the heartstrings as soon as one reads the accompanying caption: ‘The Little Refugee’. This appropriately emotionally loaded, symbolic name was the inspiration of the late Semni Karouzou, the grand dame of Greek archaeology, whose meritorious service at the National Archeological Museum in Athens lasted many years. ‘The Little Refugee’ was the name because the otherwise humble statue came to light a few days before the destruction of Smyrna in 1922, during excavations by the Greek archaeologist Konstantinos Kourouniotis at Gerontiko in Nyssa, and took to the road as a refugee across the Aegean Sea together with the terror-stricken souls of the Greeks. The fact that I am of Asia Minor descent on both sides of my family, and that I was brought up with memories, yearnings and folktales from the opposite shore of the Aegean, often led me to look on the marble boy as my father. He would have been roughly the same age as the boy when the Greeks were expelled from Asia Minor and he was brought to Limnos, in the same corner of the Aegean as Troy and the Hellespont. I once spoke of this to Semni Karouzou, while having a coffee with her in the small café owned by a Cretan in Phidias Street, next to the German Institute of Archeology library. I remember that her warm eyes misted over! The touch of her hand, so loaded with meaning, is still warm in my palm. “Write something… you must…” she whispered at the time. And a year later, on the island of Aegina, she asked me once more “How’s the Little Refugee going? Have you started writing?” My limitless emotional affinity with the little refugee bound up neatly with my archeological concern, historical knowledge and awareness that the small statue, as an eloquent symbol of refugee status, did not merely allude to any unforgotten former homelands, but rather to the lasting vital cradle of Greek civilization, dearly beloved Asia Minor, from which hundreds of thousands of Greeks were violently uprooted in 1922. Thus there was only one place for me to seek out the leaven for the fabulous tale fashioned around the little refugee - in the tenacious endurance of memory and in hallowed nostalgia, which stake their claim together, declaring the certainty of continuity handed down over time as 195

Chapter 9 - Christos Boulotis their identity. I get the young marble boy to remember and feel nostalgic, I make him want to know whether poppies still bloom in the fields of Smyrna, whether the waves still wash shells up on the shores of Troy; I have his small heart yearn to see his first homeland at first hand once more, if only for a moment, and yearn to drink water from its springs, roll

Fig. 3. The ‘Little Refugee’ in the National Archeological Museum in Athens. Illustrated by Fotini Stephanidi ©Patakis Publications (reproduced with permission). 196

Museums and Archeological Sites as the Setting for Wondrous Tales in the reaped wheat fields and eat a luscious slice of watermelon from the melon fields of Smyrna. Bearing in mind how easily such nostalgic journeys may be misconstrued by uncontrollably obsessed individuals, I took great care to maintain the correct balance and keep the tone low, making the ‘short history lesson’ as harmlessly fabulous and attractive to young readers as possible. Yet at the same time I wanted to prompt the children into action and motivate them to seek out the little refugee in the museum galleries, as if he was one of their own, a long-standing friend. I wanted this to act as an incentive for them to care, to ask, to learn ever more, above all, as I say in the closing lines: “about things past, things present and things to come, but most of all about things to come that rest on things past”. That was because I would like to believe that in essence this particular ‘history lesson’ on memory and oblivion, which we owe children in any case, begins where the book ends. It is a lesson that concerns all of us, regardless of national identity. In more or less following the tried and tested Cadmus formula, here too I grafted anecdotal reality onto what went beyond it, using dreamt up characters and circumstances. Next to Semni Karouzou the archeologist, who knows how to talk to statues, and who becomes an accessory to the fabulous flights through her genteel taciturnity and eloquent silences, there is the Prime Minister of Green Turtle Land, the actor Peter Ustinov, and the son of the night watchman, who dreams of becoming a sculptor some day. Yet at the ethereal head of this heterogeneous troupe I cast the invented figure of Galateia in the leading role. She is the blue-eyed museum cleaning lady, herself a refugee. Having exchanged tokens of recognition, she too begins to inhabit the same realm of nostalgia as the statue that was cold. Within the authentic archeological setting, which has now been transferred from the courtyard to the museum galleries, statues move about at night, strolling silently when no human eye beholds them (Fig. 4). The little refugee grows calm for a while on listening to Galateia’s songs and folktales from Asia Minor, and plays to his heart’s content with the night watchman’s son. And of course, for the long-yearned journey to Asia Minor, an imaginary blue bird flies into our fabulous tale. Thanks to it and to the symbolic transcendence of reason, nostalgia is finally assuaged when, one August night under a full moon, the refugee boy sets foot on the soil of the opposite shores of the Aegean. 6. Re-reading the ancient world through the magic language of fairytales The third story, which I decided should start out from the archeological museum on my home island of Limnos, is already in the pipeline. Fotini Stephanidi, my talented illustrator, is impatiently mixing her ochres, 197

Chapter 9 - Christos Boulotis her sienna, her dark green and her translucent blue. For some time now I have had an enormous, multicolored bag. Into this, with the sense of a prudent saver, I put my valuable dimes – scattered thoughts, rough notes, archeological thoughts and all sorts of images

Fig. 4. The ‘Little Refugee’ at play with Lambis within the exhibition hall, illustrated by Fotini Stephanidi ©Patakis Publications (reproduced with permission). 198

Museums and Archeological Sites as the Setting for Wondrous Tales from our museums. My ambition is to set sail on a wide, incongruent and flexible sea, one that it is inquisitive, tender and yet playful and which, in the name of that young boy in suspenders, will re-read the ancient world through the magic tongue of fairytales. And that is because I now know and have experienced one thing: that every single thing, be it the humblest exhibit, a suspended glance or an auspicious remark may sow the seed for fabulous journeys into a living, palpitating antiquity, which we do not condemn to remain forcefully cut off from things present. This will be the case as long as we learn to love that antiquity both in a tunic and in a frayed jacket, as long as we give it the opportunity to jumble its vocabulary with our own everyday vocabulary. That is what I wanted to put on record here. Acknowledgments I would like to thank Nena Galanidou for her patience and undying support for publication during the adventure involved in writing this text.

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Part III Contexts of Telling II: Museums and Cultural Heritage Sites

Chapter 10 Exhibiting the Past to Children Andromache Gazi 1. Introduction The last two decades have witnessed a significant change in attitude towards children as a museum audience. An impressive amount of work has been carried out on developing approaches and methodologies that best suit this target group. When one thinks of how children are addressed in the museum context, the word education immediately comes to mind. Museum education has long been established as a core function, and most museums worldwide have some educational activity to offer. There is a wide variety of in-house educational provision, including demonstrations, object-handling sessions, costumed role-playing, hands-on workshops, gallery interpretation, family and holiday activities and loan services to schools. There is also a wide repertoire of gallery teaching sessions and guided tours, while some museums also provide teachers with instruction, including special teachers’ courses and in-service training. This development notwithstanding, it seems that there is little discussion on how to exhibit to children without necessarily resorting to educational methods in the strict sense of the term. If we set aside all the above-mentioned activities, what remains? Is there a specific exhibition language for children, and how is this applied in exhibitions about the past? This is the set of questions that triggered the writing of this chapter. Current practice was initially investigated. It soon became apparent that most children-related activities, including specific children’s displays, are usually separate from the main exhibition hall. Thomas (1994, 118) made a similar point, when she wrote that activities for children are usually developed as an ‘optional extra’, an addition, rather than being an integrated aspect of exhibition design. This observation led to the next set of questions: Is it not possible to exhibit to children in the main galleries? How may this be achieved? Which interpretative means are best suited to communicating aspects of the past to children through museum exhibitions? The main scope of this chapter then, is to examine possible ways of exhibiting the past to children within a museum’s galleries. The focus will be on exhibition space and on what might be called exhibition language rather than on related exhibition programming, although some examples of programming will be discussed. Similarly, discussion will not 203

Chapter 10 - Andromache Gazi include independent activity centers or mobile exhibition units developed mainly as part of educational provision for schools, as these are different in scope and do not form part of a specific museum’s resources. The examples presented below are representative and do not constitute a comprehensive survey of existing practices. For the needs of this discussion ‘the past’ will be viewed within a primarily archaeological context, with ‘archaeology’ broadly defined as the study of material remains from the past. However, reference will also be made to other types of exhibitions dealing with the past, such as history and social history exhibitions. ‘Children’ will refer to primary school ages (6-12) which, again, is a generalization made necessary for the kind of broad overview offered here. Finally, ‘exhibition language’ refers to a set of media such as objects (authentic or replicas), text (printed, electronic or audio), graphics and multimedia, which media are used to narrate a story, convey information and/or messages, and assist the visitor in extracting meaning from the displays. Crucial questions, however, remain: What is the ultimate aim of exhibiting the past to children, and how does this compare with presenting the past in other, formal environments, like school, for example? If our aim in the museum is to communicate aspects of the past, can this be achieved by means of an exhibition language only? These questions will be addressed later in this chapter. Let us first look at the whys. 2. Museum exhibitions as a means of communicating the past Why is knowledge of the past important and why does it matter to children? Lowenthal (1985, 185) has summarized the answer: “Awareness of the past is in myriad ways essential to our well-being.” Our image of the present, our consciousness of others and ourselves, is founded on our knowledge of the past. Knowing about the present presupposes knowing about the past, and it is only in light of the past that the present may be understood (see Carr 1987). History in this way provides food for thought. Learning about the past also contributes to creating a sense of background and identity. Surveys attest to the fact that many people feel knowledge of the past not only contributes to their general knowledge, but, more importantly, also offers a sense of personal involvement, the feeling of the past as ‘our roots’ (see Emmott 1989, 28). Knowledge of the past may thus deepen and enrich one’s understanding of present events, values and surroundings. Museums have always been viewed as one of the main institutions in which people can gain access to and construct images of the past, usually by way of an exhibition. History museums, in particular, are one of the means through which people can engage with issues and ideas about themselves and their past (Kavanagh 1996). As Merriman remarks (2000, 204

Exhibiting the Past to Children 303), “museums would be failing in their aims if they did not attempt to tell some stories about the past.” The great advantage of museums over other means of communicating the past is the opportunity of first-hand experience. The exhibition settings offer unique opportunities for an encounter with the authentic (Gelman and Frazier chapter 4), be it an artifact, a specimen or a work of art, and thus create what may become a memorable experience for life. This is something that other media cannot offer. Well-designed exhibits make connections for the visitor by displaying the objects in chronological, historical and socio-cultural context. This is an advantage museums have over archaeological sites, for example, in which the object’s context is as an excavated artifact (Lea 2000) that is, something indecipherable to most people. The stories museums ought to be telling about the past may to a large extent benefit from the existence of real objects or even accurate replicas of them.1 It is exactly this materiality and concreteness of “the evidence” they possess that makes museums such a powerful medium of representation (Merriman 2004, 86; see also Nakou 2000a). What matters, however, is not only communicating objects, facts and evidence, but communicating context and ideas. Focusing on context and process should be as important as focusing on content. After all “what is exciting about objects is their human context”, as Friedman (1981, 148) has noted. In line with the above, one cannot but take on Lord’s (2002, 17) position: “Museum exhibitions address our awareness of the world and affect our attitudes and values, all of which are much more fundamental than our knowledge of specific facts.” Similarly, it has been argued that the role of history exhibitions, in particular, is to add perspective by putting artifacts in context and so move visitors’ understanding beyond the visible (Lubar 1997). The discussion in this chapter evolves around this line of thinking and suggests that what is essential in museum exhibitions is to help children develop their perception of the past in general. As will be discussed later, concrete material evidence from the past may facilitate this process. 3. Children as exhibition audience Children form one of the largest groups of museum visitors. They usually come to the museum on a school visit or a family day-out. While there is extensive provision for children visiting with school and the relevant literature is vast, children as members of a family audience have only 1  Replicas can be perceived as “real” because of the context in which they are presented; there is evidence to suggest that, even when the visitors know that they are experiencing a reproduced artifact or a reconstructive setting, they are satisfied with the reality of the experience, if it is presented with accuracy and integrity (Lea 2000).

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Chapter 10 - Andromache Gazi recently been considered. Here again, museums of archaeology and history lag far behind other types of museums, such as natural history or science museums. This chapter will focus on ways of exhibiting to children who visit with their family. A family may be regarded as a cross-generational group ranging from very young children to grandparents. Children are a crucial factor in the family audience (see also Moussouri chapter 12). Young children in particular often determine the dynamics of a family visit. Once the youngest child has lost interest or become uncomfortable, the whole family has to leave. They therefore have a disproportionate effect on the length of museum visits and in determining whether families will visit a museum again (Graham, n. d.). As Hooper-Greenhill (1994, 101) observes, “where museums are successful, this success is often based on the fact that parents have judged a visit to be appropriate for a family.” Thus, making provision for children often necessitates making provision for adults, too. In the past, families have rarely been considered in exhibition design. This is now changing, as current research shows that museums are ideal environments in which parents and children may explore things together, thus furthering and fostering their emotional and intellectual relationship. Any discussion on children as exhibition audience should take into account how children learn. This chapter adopts a broad and inclusive definition of learning, such as the one used by The Museums, Libraries and Archives Council, UK, for Inspiring Learning for All: “Learning is a process of active engagement with experience. It is what people do when they want to make sense of the world. It may involve the development or deepening of skills, knowledge, understanding, awareness, values, ideas and feelings, or an increase in the capacity to reflect.” Hein’s (1991, online) approach to learning is also instructive: “Learning is an active process in which the learner uses sensory input and constructs meaning out of it. […] The crucial action of constructing meaning is mental [...] Learning is a social activity: our learning is intimately associated with […], our family […] Learning is contextual: … we learn in relation to what else we know, what we believe, our prejudices and our fears.” Within this context, it should further be emphasized that the learning agenda cannot be separated from the access agenda. People cannot engage with, or use, collections unless they have physical, sensory or intellectual access to them. Similarly, the learning agenda cannot be separated from the pleasure agenda, as McManus (1994) has noted. Current approaches to children’s learning, such as those endorsed by the Curiosity and Imagination Network, stress the power of playful, handson experience as a tool for learning, recognizing that parents and carers can play a crucial role in encouraging their children’s learning. What we really need then is to create exhibition environments that will maximize the opportunity for social interaction within families. 206

Exhibiting the Past to Children 4. Designing exhibitions for children: from meeting physical needs to providing a framework for interpretation What is clear from the above discussion is that exhibitions targeted at children should take into account children’s physical and mental needs. With this in mind, I wish to address four points: • Children should be able to see things • Children should be able to touch and feel • Children should be able to make meaningful connections with the past • Children should be helped to understand what the past is, how we come to know about it and why it matters. The first two points are relevant to all types of exhibition, while the last two have particular bearing on displays about the past, and will be analyzed further. - First, children should be able to see things. This means that objects, text and other interpretative media, such as multimedia stations, should be placed so as to conform to children’s average eye-level. Although it may be difficult to decide on an average eye-level for a young audience ranging from 6-year to 12-year olds, some guidance is given in Table 1. Different height needs may be accommodated with the provision of a platform or a step-up that will bring children closer to exhibits and will also give them some independence. Clearly, as Hein and Alexander (1998, 13) confirm, “attention to ergonomics… can dramatically increase interest and engagement.” Table 1. Anthropometric data related to children aged 6-12 (Belcher 1991, 193).† Estimated heights for ages 6-12

From 1.05m to 1.58m

Estimated eye-levels for ages 6-12

From 1.05m to 1.30m

 According to Matthews (1991, 50) the average eye-level of a 12-year old boy is 1.30m. Johnson (2002, 138) gives an eye-level from 1.02 to 1.32m for children aged 8 to 12. †

- Second, children should be able to touch and feel, if possible. In an exhibition space where sensory experience is encouraged, children feel at ease and may be encouraged to find out more. Many archaeological museums are now offering opportunities for visitors to experience hands-on activities, while research from other quarters2 seems to confirm not only  For example, a study by Moussouri (1997; chapter 13) conducted with families visiting the Archaeological Resource Centre (ARC) in York, revealed that visitors valued highly the opportunity to touch and examine real artifacts. This seemed to help them understand the crafts and technologies of the past, appreciate the

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Chapter 10 - Andromache Gazi the sensory impact of these activities, but also their intellectual impact on visitors’ understanding of the past. Hands-on activities refer not only to authentic objects (access to which is usually limited for security or conservation reasons), but also replicas, scaled reconstructions, or ordinary and abundant excavation material such as pottery shards, which may be handled without risk. Exhibitions offering hands-on activities, finally, should make sure they are thoroughly child safe and easy to use. - Third, children should be able to make meaningful connections with the past, relating the familiar to the unfamiliar. As Hein (1998, 156) puts it, “it is not only difficult but almost impossible to learn something without making an association with familiar categories.” Contextualization and relevance are essential. Potentially unknown objects, processes or ideas may be juxtaposed or paralleled with material familiar to children, so that adults can guide their children from familiar to unfamiliar (see HooperGreenhill 1994). So, for example, the suggested modern equivalent of an artifact on display may be placed in close proximity to the original. This method has already been used in archaeological exhibitions such as the Early Ireland Gallery at the Ulster Museum in Ireland, where a Mesolithic borer is displayed alongside a Black & Decker drill (Owen 1999), or the People before London Gallery at the Museum of London, where a number of modern items are juxtaposed with their supposed ancient equivalents (Cotton and Wood 1996). No doubt the safest way of learning what kind of links might be best for a specific target group is through front-end research, even on a small or informal scale. Examples of such research tend to reveal children’s interest in the social, religious and practical aspects of life in the past, and especially those aspects that are common to human experience the world over (see, for example, Stone 1994; Wood and Cotton 1999). - Fourth, children should be helped to understand what the past is, how we come to know about it, and why it matters. This brings us to the most difficult question of interpretation. How should the past be interpreted to children? Which messages about archaeology or history do we want children to leave the museum with? This, again, brings us to one of our initial questions about the ultimate aim of any interpretation offered to children within the exhibition environment. At this point it might be instructive to take a brief look at current discussion on learning history in general.3 Although most of this discusartifacts as part of their culture and reinforce their interest in archaeology (see, also, Adams and Moussouri 2002). 3  The last two decades have witnessed a growing interest in teaching history at school. Discussion has evolved around questions of content, ideological orientation and the nature of historical understanding. The relevant bibliography is vast in many languages. For a basic familiarization with this issue, see Avdela 1998; Dickinson et al. 1984; Howe chapter 15; Kokkinos 1998; Moniot 1993; Nakou 2000a; Sebba 1997.

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Exhibiting the Past to Children sion centers on formal education settings, there are some useful lessons for museums, too. In an official learning environment like school, teaching history has clear objectives and expected outcomes, some of which are linked with developing a deeper understanding of one’s own life, values and surroundings.4 In Europe, school history is generally dual-purpose: To impart knowledge about a common cultural past and to develop attitudes towards the past. Developing attitudes translates, in turn, into familiarizing children with historical methods and nurturing critical thinking and acceptance of difference (Avdela 1998). But if at school the aim is knowledge, memory and method (despite definitional differences), what might the aim for the museum exhibition be? Following our discussion above, it is clear that our purpose is to develop a sense of concepts and advance critical thinking. It may thus be argued that in the museum setting our aim should be to help children: • Develop a sense of relational concepts (like now and then). • Develop a sense of time, change and diversity (people live and do things differently as time changes; each era and each people has some characteristics which differ from ours, etc. • Familiarize themselves with the methods available for knowing the past. • Understand the use of various categories of vestiges as historical evidence. • Realize the subjectivity of all interpretation. Can all this be accomplished within an exhibition? Compared with a formal learning environment, where learning about the past may benefit from a host of educational methods, an exhibition may at first look ill equipped for this. Exhibition language as defined in the introduction does not usually resort to such methods. The task then seems daunting, and yet museums have the advantage of offering a first-hand encounter with the evidence. It is exactly this quality that needs to be exploited if the above-mentioned goals are to be accomplished. This is particularly important in relation to young audiences, because “children perceive, react and add to the world through material culture as objects guide the child’s experience” (Sofaer Derevenski 2000, xv). Moreover, it seems that the use of material and visual evidence helps introduce children to the concept of  In the UK, for instance, these objectives include developing an interest about the past, developing a sense of historical periods, getting to know important historical issues and facts, understanding the way in which the present differs from the past, and comprehending that people who lived in different places and times had different values and behavior, understanding the nature of evidence and historical sources, and discerning between historical events and their interpretations, etc (see Department of Education and Science, History from 5 to 16, Curriculum Matters 11, quoted in Sebba 1997).

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Chapter 10 - Andromache Gazi historical interpretation (Nakou 2000a and 2000b). In their capacity as material evidence from the past, museum objects provide tangible links to it and help us understand past realities easier than other kinds of evidence, like written sources. As Lowenthal (1985, 247) remarks, “a past lacking tangible relics seems too tenuous to be credible.” Viewed this way, our aim seems more realistic: To make possible connections with real objects and people, and create a sense of the past. This brings us to a consideration of who is making meaning through the exhibition. Obviously the museum has a major role here, as the objects are selected, displayed and mediated by the institution. The visitor must be provided with the necessary clues if he/she is to start making meaning of his/her own. One way of achieving this would be the provision of evidence and clues for the interpretation of archaeological objects, or historical processes that families (and children) could work out in order to suggest possible interpretations of their own. They could then be encouraged to compare their interpretation with that of archaeologists or historians (see Owen 1999, James 1999). In this way, children could be helped to realize how we come to know about the past, begin understanding the subjectivity of interpretation, and thus gain a greater appreciation of historical processes. Some archaeological exhibitions are now juxtaposing alternative views on the same topic, indicating that the evidence may be interpreted in multiple ways (see below). The above four points provide a framework within which to discuss ways of addressing children’s needs in the exhibition space, and will be elaborated later in this chapter. Before going further, however, we shall first look at current practice, in an attempt to identify trends that might help us consider improved ways of exhibiting the past to children. 5. Current trends in exhibiting “the past” to children Much of the provision for children usually comes in the form of programmes. The majority of these programmes are not developed as part of exhibitions but, rather, form part of a museum’s overall educational policy. In recent years, however, exhibition programming has developed into a positive feature in many museums. According to Brown (2002), programmes related to exhibitions usually involve an activity which • takes place in, or is proximate to, exhibition galleries; • includes visual and intellectual access to ‘the real thing’; • employs interactivity; • stimulates affect, surprise or inspiration, and • provides flexibility and dynamism. Most programming takes place in or is adjacent to the galleries in which the exhibition is presented. In the past, nearby rooms were used to accommodate exhibition-related activities. Over the last decade, however, there has been a shift of perspective into moving more public program 210

Exhibiting the Past to Children activities into the galleries themselves, thereby changing the nature of exhibition spaces to accommodate these activities (ibid). The table below offers a classification of types of provision for children found in museum exhibitions about the past (Table 2). 5.1 Children-exclusive spaces 5.1.1 Children’s museums A case in point is the Mysteries in History exhibition at The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis, Indiana, USA. The exhibition team felt that a history exhibition for young people should mainly be concerned with developing children’s perceptions of the past in general, and should provide them with some methods of looking at the past. They decided to use the exhibition to help visitors understand the process of how people find out about the past. By focusing on process rather than content, a young audience that had only a few years of personal experience to look back at would for the first time understand the meaning of the concept ‘history’ (Robinson and Leon 1992). Mysteries in History is a thematic gallery that introduces methods to uncover clues to the past via hands-on exhibits in archaeology, documents and photographs, architectural studies and oral history. It is designed to show visitors that there are four ways to uncover the past: dug up clues, spoken clues, visual clues and written clues. The gallery is Table 2. Examples of types of provision for children in museums of archeology and history. Children-exclusive Spaces

Children- inclusive Spaces

Children’s museums • Exhibitions

Children’s galleries/spaces as part of larger exhibitions • Activities for children • Exhibition programming

Children’s galleries within museums • Exhibitions for children • Combining exhibition and hands-on activities

Family-friendly exhibitions • Mixed communicative media

“Conventional” galleries/ exhibitions • Integrated interactive elements 211

Chapter 10 - Andromache Gazi divided into ‘now’ and ‘then’ sections. Each ‘now’ section emphasizes a particular present-day method of uncovering the past. The ‘then’ sections are historical reconstructions of scenes from Indiana’s past based on evidence uncovered in the ‘now’ sections.5 When preparing the exhibition, the exhibit team discovered that visitors had difficulty relating to the various impersonal icons of Indiana’s state history that had previously been displayed at the museum. The team therefore proposed a more personal, more accessible version of the past. To keep the history on a personal level, each setting was to represent a scene from the daily life of a child in a fictitious, but historically plausible, family unit (ibid). Although there is considerable skepticism about the use of reconstructed settings in museums (see, for example, Moser 1999; James 1999), there is no doubt that, if used with care and scientific accuracy, this exhibition method has many advantages to offer. 5.1.2 Children’s galleries within museums The last decade has experienced worldwide interest in providing experiences for children within existing museum premises; many museums have created gallery spaces specifically for children. Families often respond very positively to the concept of an area specifically for children. One example of this approach is the Capricorn Centre, the handson educational wing of the Roman Legionary Museum at Caerleon, South Wales. Museum staff found that accommodating school visits placed too much pressure on its gallery space, and that overcrowding deterred adult visitors or non-educational groups. Created as a separate space for schools, the Capricorn Centre is divided into three areas: (1) an introductory activities area featuring daily activities of a Roman soldier, the process of archaeological excavation and the change of time; (2) a reconstructed barrack room which provides replicas of everyday objects for children to handle, and (3) an archaeology room which houses an archaeological handling collection. Throughout, the Centre makes use of reconstructed settings and replicas to stimulate children’s imagination. The approach taken is archaeological rather than educationalist, and children are encouraged to understand the subjectivity of archaeological interpretation (Kelly 1997). Another example is Yesterday’s Children, a permanent exhibition in the Barbados Museum’s Children’s Gallery. The gallery interprets the social history of Barbados for children. Interpreting history for children is a challenging task. The storyline must be simplified and focused on young people, without being either simplistically sensational or safely picturesque. In Yesterday’s Children it was decided to keep the social his Information may be found at http://childrensmuseum.org/themuseum/mysteries. htm. See also Museum Practice 1(2), 1996, 25. 5

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Exhibiting the Past to Children tory child-centered, stressing the personal, the intimate and the domestic. The overall storyline leads from the pre-Columbian Amerindian culture to the changes brought about by settlement, sugar and slavery, followed by a history of transportation in Barbados. From here children enter a ‘village’, where they explore traditional crafts, toys, school-life, work and the varied lifestyles of children. Physical as well as emotional and cognitive accessibility was of primary concern. Displays are designed using a 1.27m eye-level and text is used minimally or, if appropriate, not at all. Additionally, text font is large, written at an 8-11 reading level and language is clear, direct and empathic. It is used to explain or describe, not to enumerate. More importantly, the exhibition uses a conceptual structure organized on a hierarchy of intellectual “nodes” that lead the child from level to level, from basic information to more judgmental thoughts. This multilevel format has proven to work very successfully for families (Donawa 1993). 5.2 Children- inclusive spaces 5.2.1 Children’s galleries/spaces as part of larger exhibitions The example that follows illustrates how a children’s space can be integrated into a larger exhibition space. This has been a rare type of provision so far, but it is clearly one that has many advantages and thus fits well into the framework of this discussion. In 1988 and 1989 the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich, London, established two temporary interactive history centers on an experimental basis, both associated with major exhibitions. The first, entitled Armada Discovery, was set up in 1988 in a room separate from the main exhibition and is now closed. Armada Discovery was designed for children aged 3–8 years and their parents who were booked in for sessions lasting 30 to 40 minutes. Two approaches to the learning of history that seem to be well suited to younger children were used: storytelling and first-hand tangible evidence. On entering the room, children were welcomed with the story of the Gran Grifon, the flagship of the hulks of the Armada, which was wrecked off the northern coast of Scotland in 1588. This narrative enabled children to absorb necessary information and to involve themselves in the predicament of the ship’s crew. They were then encouraged to look for evidence left behind by the ship’s captain and his men in a reconstruction of the upper decks of the Gran Grifon. Artifacts included extracts from the captain’s diary, clothing, a table and chairs, a gun which could be loaded but not fired, a barrel of salt fish, wooden bowls and spoons used by the crew. These were all replicas of material recovered from Armada wrecks or other contemporary ships. Most of the originals were on display in the main exhibition. Children could thus be guided to appreciate authentic evidence while at the same time being able 213

Chapter 10 - Andromache Gazi to handle things. The artifacts provided children with a rich resource to stimulate their curiosity, and enabled them to develop the skills of observation of evidence, asking questions and making deductions. In addition, they facilitated families in making comparisons with their own everyday experience (Anderson 1989). In 1989 the museum launched a second, larger activity gallery, called Bounty Discovery, as an integral part of a temporary exhibition entitled Mutiny on the Bounty. Here visitors were invited to move in and out of the gallery spontaneously. Both centers were set up to test strategies for promoting historical learning. They were set in historical environments in order to establish a coherent context for the activities and to emphasize the story that each embodied (ibid.). 5.2.2 Family-friendly exhibitions An example illustrating how a museum can make archaeology appealing to a wide audience is that of Segedunum Roman Fort and Museum at Wallsend in the north of England (Martin 2001). Segedunum Fort is today one of more than 20 museums or visitor attractions along Hadrian’s Wall. The aim behind the design of the museum’s permanent galleries is to make the site interesting to families and other groups with no special knowledge of archaeology. This is done through a predominance of tactile and interactive displays, ranging from hands-on exhibits to multimedia programmes on touch-screen terminals. Text panels are used sparingly and have no more than 100 words. Much of the interpretative text is given on hand-held laminated panels placed in holders in each area, which visitors can pull out and read. Hands-on exhibits range from tactile samples of materials such as woven fabric to finds such as small bones, pottery fragments and shells for sorting into categories, to a video-microscope for examining samples of excavated material. This is supplemented by computer interactives and audio-visual programs. The approach taken has proved to work well and has resulted in a reinforced sense of pride in the area among local people. 5.2.3 “Conventional” galleries/exhibitions Archaeology and history museums have traditionally overlooked children as an audience within the exhibition space. In recent years, though, there have been quite a few examples illustrating what one might call ‘seeds of change’. Examples of provision for children within a conventional exhibition include conforming to basic ergonomics (e.g. keeping heights and eye-levels child-friendly), providing tactile exhibits, providing areas where children can experience objects or themes (e.g. small children’s corners within exhibitions). Museums of archaeology have also started to incorporate elements 214

Exhibiting the Past to Children of interactivity in their displays (see Owen 1999). Examples include original artifacts on open display, such as Paleolithic hand-axes or Roman tiles that visitors can touch, boxes of pottery shards that visitors are encouraged to sort out, replicated artifacts like the suit of armor that visitors can try on at Colchester Castle Museum, or computer interactives. Other museums have installed small participatory displays aimed at children within the main exhibition, such as the quern stone that is part of the gallery at Tullie House Museum and Art Gallery in Carlisle, UK (see Museum Practice 4, 1997, 31). Another activity increasingly exploited in archaeological displays is access to drawers placed underneath showcases, where replicas or samples of the materials on display may be handled. Similarly, in the People before London Gallery at the Museum of London, “touch” sections projecting in front of the cases complemented displays in the Technology Section. As Cotton and Wood (1996) report, visitors welcomed this opportunity to feel objects at times exclaiming, “we’re allowed to…!” (see also Owen 1996, 207-12). The available evidence shows that hands-on activities are being successfully incorporated into archaeological exhibitions, and this is reinforced by research findings from other quarters. Yet one should here take note of Owen’s (1999, 186) remark that the majority of hands-on activities in archaeological displays mainly encourage problem-solving learning experiences. Museums of archaeology, she believes, should further exploit the potential of hands-on media to offer ‘open intellectual interaction’ instead of merely offering ‘closed, passive interaction’. This is a valid point, and one that certainly holds true for the use of hands-on activities in all types of museums. Furthermore, it is in tune with current thinking on learning that stresses the need for ‘minds-on’ as well as ‘hands-on’ engagement of learners. This chapter has argued that one of the aims of exhibiting to children should be to help them understand the subjectivity of interpretation. The redisplay of the Alexander Keiller Museum at the World Heritage Site at Avebury, UK, tackled this question in an innovative way. One of the goals of the redisplay was to focus on the nature of archaeological evidence and the subjectivity of interpretation based on such evidence. The exhibition team decided to “show how archaeologists interpret fragmentary evidence from the past and that, while the data … may in themselves be regarded as a collection of ‘objective’ artifacts, any interpretation of these data is necessarily subjective and always open to question and modification” (Stone 1994, 196). Overall, the aim was to create an atmosphere where questions are raised not only about the Neolithic, but also about our own understanding and presentation of the period. The museum offers visitors alternative interpretations of the same subject. For instance, after long discussions within the project team as to whether or not the display should include a full-size Neolithic figure, the team finally decided to use their own disagreement to re-emphasize 215

Chapter 10 - Andromache Gazi the display’s major theme, i.e., the limitations of archaeological evidence and the subjectivity of display. The resulting figure is presented in two halves: one side showing a fully dressed yet ragged individual, coping with existence; the other side illustrating a painted, tattooed individual with well-made clothes and decorated with jewelry. Below the character a caption suggests that, because of the nature of archaeological evidence, ‘the experts’ are unsure about what people really looked like in the Neolithic, and that the two options shown in the figure represent two extreme views. Visitors are directly asked what they think. In this way, it was hoped, and subsequently confirmed by museum staff, that visitors would question their own preconceived views of what people in the Neolithic may have been like. This stance is further adopted in some of the artwork on display, where the same scene is presented in two illustrations, with individuals sitting and standing in the same places but dressed differently and doing slightly different things (ibid.). 6. Is there an exhibition language for children? What is clear from this short account is that with the exception of children’s museums, there are very few examples of exhibitions specifically designed for children in archaeology and history museums. In most instances there is a combination of methods and media, some of which are used in exhibition programming, like storytelling, while others are pure exhibition media, such as portable labels for families. Examples presented above fall broadly into the following categories: • Exhibitions set in children-exclusive spaces. • Programs employing various techniques that are integrated into a larger exhibition hall, although often set in an adjacent room. • Hands-on centers such as the Capricorn Centre, which combine exhibition and hands-on activities but are usually targeted at school audiences. • Exhibitions using mixed media in order to appeal to families. • Interactive elements integrated into conventional galleries. At first glance, then, there seems to be no specific exhibition language for children. Perhaps we may need to revisit the definition of an exhibition language given in the introduction to this chapter. A broader, children-specific, definition would read as follows: An exhibition language for children involves a combination of interpretative methods and media (some of which are used in exhibition programming, while others are pure exhibition media), all of which are used to facilitate children in extracting meaning from the displays. Of what would such an exhibition language consist? 216

Exhibiting the Past to Children 7. Towards an exhibition language for children The main parameter to be considered when designing exhibitions for children is the ability of children to have physical, social and mental access. Thus, an exhibition aimed at children should take into account the following: • First, conform to children specific ergonomics as discussed above. • Second, create an exhibition environment where sensory experience is encouraged, allowing children to touch and feel. The ability to interact with authentic objects or accurate replicas of them is crucial. Integrated children’s corners may provide for direct tactile and interactive experiences related to the exhibition; objects offered are intended to be handled, to supplement the exhibition messages and to provoke discussion. These corners may consist simply of some drawers under display cases or of small interactive displays within the main exhibition aimed at children. • Third, provide clear links (connecting the familiar/present to the unfamiliar/past) and context (both physical and intellectual). It is essential to help children understand the process of how we find out about the past, provide them with a method of looking at the past, and thus develop their perception of the past in general. This is now evident in a number of museum exhibitions, such as Mysteries in History discussed above. The way forward would be to use a variety of media from low-tech mechanical models to digital interactive exhibits and portable digital guides such as the PDAs discussed below. If used critically and within the scope of each particular exhibition, new media have enormous potential for interpreting the past, as they are highly flexible in making complex phenomena more understandable, drawing conceptual links between different artifacts, explaining more about archaeological work, and presenting various interpretations (Economou 2002; for the capacity of IT-based presentations to elucidate aspects of archaeological evidence see also James 1999). • Fourth, provide family-oriented interpretation. Interpretation should be presented in such a way as to enable parents to explain things to their children. McManus (1994) notes that children in family groups tend to rely on the adult in the group to relay information to them. So, for example, it is essential that textual information is presented in brief sections that can be easily assimilated and explained by the parent. It is also important to provide information that adults can access quickly when asked questions. Some parents and carers express embarrassment at their own perceived or genuine lack of knowledge and are scared that they will not be able to answer their child’s questions (Farmery 2001). Some museums also provide labels for adults to read aloud to their children. 217

Chapter 10 - Andromache Gazi However, this is not always the best way to address children, as many of them value a degree of independence. Activity backpacks are also used by some museums in order to help provide a more focused visit, thus maximizing an exhibition’s potential for families (see, for example, Museum Practice 12, 1999, 44). • Fifth, provide child oriented interpretation. Exhibitions should be designed to allow children some degree of personal involvement. A variety of communicative media can aid in such a direction. However, there still remains the question of how to present a story specifically for children. The aim is not to incorporate some children-oriented elements into an exhibition. The real aim is to design exhibitions where children can follow a story either independently or with little help. One way to achieve this may be to create a cartoon character with which the child can more easily identify, and who will guide the child through the exhibition. It is far more important to give the whole picture, not just ‘optional extras’, to use Thomas’ (1994) term again. In light of this, it is essential that museums offer a more accessible version of the past and keep history child-centered, stressing the personal and the domestic in the way Mysteries in History has done (see above). In the case of the Alexander Keiller Museum, also discussed above, consultation with school children (aged 5–14) revealed that children wanted to know about social, religious and practical things that are central to their own world, and would have been central to the world of those people living in the Avebury area during Neolithic times. This helped the exhibition team place the objects in a more general context and address many of the questions raised by the children (Stone 1994). Another form of offering a more personal and intimate version of the past might be to consider the use of hand-held personal devices or “personal digital assistants”, known as PDAs. One of the great advantages of PDAs is that they can be used to “translate” information at any level from novice to expert, and are thus ideally suited to children-targeted interpretation. Moreover, research has shown that children use technology differently than older people, and are more comfortable using PDAs by themselves than being told by an adult (Ostrow 2003). Whatever the option, it is also essential that the language used in interpretation is child specific, not a child’s version of an adult text (see Binant chapter 8). Furthermore, written text should be easily identified and attractive to read (e.g. by means of a logo or a cartoon character). Tables 3 and 4 summarize the basic elements of an exhibition language for children as outlined above. Having analyzed all this, however, we should not forget that provision for children should not be at the expense of provision for adults. There it no doubt that it is difficult to strike a balance between children and adults as an audience (Moussouri chapter 12); this often leads to the well-known dichotomy between the two in conventional exhibition practice. Yet there seems to be no obvious 218

Exhibiting the Past to Children reason why such a balance cannot be achieved. On the contrary, if adults are empowered to explore an exhibition alongside their children, this can also bring life-long learning benefits to the adults themselves. Table 3. Basic tips for creating children-inclusive exhibitions in museums. Basic tips for creating children-inclusive exhibitions • Provide orientation aids pointing out which areas or features are for children • Make the visit appeal to family groups • Think of children’s needs, while acknowledging adult intelligence and needs • Adhere to ergonomics • Provide intelligent, accessible interpretation • Provide as much variety of interpretive media as possible • Use text minimally • Make clear links • Provide portable interpretive material that adults can use to guide children • Create a cartoon-like character that can narrate a story specifically for children • Provide ‘hands-on’ experiences with a ‘minds-on’ approach • Explore the potential offered by new media • Exploit the potential of portable hand-held devices such as PDAs

Table 4. Elements of an exhibition language for children. Elements of an Exhibition Language for Children • Children-targeted interpretation • Children-targeted language • Cartoon-like characters used to explain, interpret or ‘narrate’ a story • Children’s labels • ‘Please touch’ areas • Models/scaled reconstructions that can be manipulated • Interactives (mechanical, digital, or other) • PDAs for children • Integrated children’s ‘corners’

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Chapter 10 - Andromache Gazi 8. Conclusion This chapter set out to examine how aspects of the past might be communicated to children in museum exhibitions by means of a childrenspecific exhibition language. It has been argued that museums, in their capacity as holders of concrete material evidence from the past, may help children gain a basic understanding of chronological, historical and socio-cultural context, and further guide them to appreciate concepts of time, difference and change. Museum exhibitions offer opportunities for first-hand experiences of a kind not made possible through reading a book, attending a class or watching a film about the past. Well-designed exhibitions address our awareness of the world and affect our understanding, attitudes, values, ideas and feelings in a much more visceral way than mere knowledge of facts and data. A successful exhibition may help children make better sense of the world, increase their capacity to reflect about life and people in the past, or even incite an interest in studying other cultures and periods. More specifically, it has been argued that museum exhibitions about the past should help children make possible connections with real objects and people, create a sense of time and familiarize themselves with the methodology for knowing about the past. Only then will they begin to understand the use of various categories of vestiges as historical evidence, and, more importantly, realize that the evidence is fragmented, incomplete and susceptible to various interpretations. In order to achieve these aims, however, we first need to provide children with clues that may help them relate their experiences to life in the past. A brief survey of current practices showed that exhibitions specifically designed for children in archaeology and history museums are scant. In most cases combinations of methods and media are employed, some of which are used in exhibition programming, while others are pure exhibition media. There is clearly more room for an exhibition language for children within a museum’s conventional galleries. Such a language may include conformance to children-specific ergonomics, creation of an exhibition environment where sensory experience is encouraged, provision of clear links (connecting the familiar/present to the unfamiliar/ past) and context (both physical and intellectual), provision of both family and child oriented interpretation as well as room for alternative interpretations. Further, exhibiting to children must be in compliance with current approaches to learning, and encourage social interaction among families. What we really need is to come up with an exhibition language that will stimulate and inspire children. Once this has been achieved, we may be able to help them deepen their knowledge of the past, increase their capacity to develop new ideas and feelings and thus make better sense of the world and their place in it. 220

Exhibiting the Past to Children Acknowledgments I would like to thank Nena Galanidou for inviting me to contribute to this volume, and for her constructive comments on the first draft. Thanks also go to my colleagues Alexandra Nikiforidou and Michalis Gazis, who read earlier versions of this chapter.

References Adams, M. and T. Moussouri 2002 ‘The interactive experience: linking research and practice’ Paper presented at the Victoria & Albert Museum International Conference Interactive Learning in Museums of Art and Design, 17-18 May 2002 http://www.vam.ac.uk/vastatic/acrobat_pdf/ research/adams_moussouri.pdf Anderson, D. 1989 ‘Learning history in museums’, International Journal of Museum Management and Curatorship 8(4): 357–68. [Reprinted in G. Durbin (ed.) 1996, Developing Museum Exhibitions for Lifelong Learning: 163–69. London: The Stationery Office.] Avdela, E. 1998 History and School. Athens: Metaixmio [In Greek]. Belcher, M. 1991 Museum Exhibition. Theory and Practice. Leicester & London: Leicester University Press. Brown, K. 2002 ‘Educational and other public programmes for exhibitions’ in B. Lord and G. Dexter-Lord (eds.) The Manual of Museum Exhibitions: 297–315. Walnut Creek: Altamira Press. Carr, E. 1987 What is History? London: Penguin Books. Cotton, J. and B. Wood 1996 ‘Retrieving Prehistories at the Museum of London: A gallery case-study’ in P. McMannus (ed.) Archaeological Displays and the Public. Museology and Interpretation: 53–71. London: Institute of Archaeology, University College. Dickinson, A. Lee, P. and P. Rogers 1984 Learning History. London: Heinemann. Donawa, W. 1993 ‘From digs to dolls: the pedagogical design of the Barbados Museum’s Children’s Gallery’ Journal of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society 41: 59–73. [Reprinted in G. Durbin (ed.), 1996, Developing Museum Exhibitions for Lifelong Learning: 159–62. London: The Stationery Office.] 221

Chapter 10 - Andromache Gazi Economou, M. 2002 ‘New Media for Interpreting Archaeology in Museums: Issues and Challenges’ in M. Doerr and A. Sarris (eds.) The Digital Heritage of Archaeology. Computer Applications and Quantitative methods in Archaeology, CAA, Proceedings of the 30th Conference, Herakleion, Crete, April 2002: 371–75. Athens: Archive of Monuments and Publications, Hellenic Ministry of Culture. Emmott, K. 1989 ‘A Child’s Perspective on the Past: Influences of Home, Media and School’ in R. Layton (ed.) Who Needs the Past? Indigenous Values and Archaeology (One World Archaeology Series 5): 21–44. London: Unwin Hyman. Farmery, K. 2001 ‘If they build it they will come’ Museums Journal (April): 37–39. Friedman, A. 1981 ‘The Human Context of Objects’ in Z. Collins (ed.) Museums, Adults and the Humanities. A Guide for Educational Programming: 147–64. Washington, D.C.: American Association of Museums. Graham, J., n. d. Children under 7 as a Core Part of Audiences for Museums and Galleries, Museum Learning Initiative (MLI), http://www.swmlac.org. uk/mli//pdf/jg_childrn.PDF Hein, G. 1991 ‘Constructivist Learning Theory’, Paper presented at The Museum and the Needs of People, CECA (International Committee of Museum Educators) Conference, Jerusalem Israel, 15-22 October 1991, http://www.exploratorium.edu/IFI/ resources/constructivistlearning.html 1998 Learning in the Museum. London & New York: Routledge. Hein, G. and Alexander, M. 1998 Museums. Places of Learning. Washington, D.C.: American Association of Museums, Education Committee, Professional Practice Series. Hooper-Greenhill, E. 1994 Museums and their Visitors. London & New York: Routledge. James, S. 1999 ‘Imag(in)ing the Past: The Politics and Practicalities of Reconstruction in the Museum Gallery’ in N. Merriman (ed.) Making Early Histories in Museums: 117–35. London & New York: Leicester University Press. Johnson, K. 2002 ‘Exhibition accessibility’ in Lord, B. and G. Dexter Lord (eds.) 222

Exhibiting the Past to Children The Manual of Museum Exhibitions: 134–41. Walnut Creek: Altamira Press. Kavanagh, G. 1996 ‘Preface’ in G. Kavanagh (ed.) Making Histories in Museums: xi–xiv. London & New York: Leicester University Press. Kelly, J. 1997 ‘The Capricorn Centre, Roman Legionary Museum, Caerleon’ Museum Practice 5: 18–9. Kokkinos, Gh. 1998 From History to Histories. Approaches to the History of Historiography, Epistemology and History Didactics. Athens: Ellinika Grammata [in Greek]. Lea, J. 2000 ‘Teaching the Past in Museums’ in K. Smartz and Sh. Smith (eds.) The Archaeology Education Handbook. Sharing the Past with Kids: 315–27. Walnut Creek: Altamira Press. Lord, B. 2002 ‘The purpose of museum exhibitions’ in B. Lord and G. DexterLord (eds.) The Manual of Museum Exhibitions: 11–25.Walnut Creek: Altamira Press. Lowenthal, D. 1985 The Past is a Foreign Country. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lubar, St. 1997 ‘Exhibiting Memories’ in A. Henderson and A. Kaeppler (eds.) Exhibiting Dilemmas. Issues of Representation at the Smithsonian: 15–27. Washington & London: Smithsonian Institution Press. Martin, D. 2001 ‘Accessible Archaeology’ Museum Practice 18: 21–25. Matthews, G. 1991 Museums and Galleries. A Design and Development Guide. Oxford: Butterworth Architecture. McManus, P. 1994 ‘Families in Museums’ in R. Miles and L. Zavala (eds.) Towards the Museum of the Future: New European Perspectives: 81–97. London & New York: Routledge. Merriman, N. 2004 ‘Involving the Public in Museum Archaeology’ in N. Merriman (ed.) Public Archaeology: 85–108. London: Routledge. Moniot, H. 1993 Didactique de l’ Histoire. Paris: Nathan. Moser, S. 1999 The Dilemma of Didactic Displays: Habitat Dioramas, Lifegroups and Reconstructions of the Past’ in N. Merriman (ed.) 223

Chapter 10 - Andromache Gazi Making Early Histories in Museums: 95–116. London & New York: Leicester University Press. Moussouri, T. 1997 ‘Family Agendas and the Museum Experience’ in Denford, G. (ed.) Museums for the 21st Century (The Museum Archaeologist 24): 20–30. Liverpool: Society of Museum Archaeologists. Nakou, I. 2000a Children and History. Historical thought, knowledge and interpretation. Athens: Metaixmio [in Greek]. 2000b ‘Historical knowledge and museum’, Mnemon 22: 221–37 [in Greek]. Ostrow, C. 2003 ‘Museum exhibits in the digital age: how PDA’s are helping to reshape museum exhibit strategies’ Exhibitionist 22 (2): 15–9. Owen, J. 1996 ‘Making Histories from Archaeology’ in G. Kavanagh (ed.) Making Histories in Museums: 200–15. London & New York: Leicester University Press. 1999 ‘Interaction or Tokenism? The Role of Hands-on Activities in Museum Archaeology Displays’ in N. Merriman (ed.) Making Early Histories in Museums: 173–89. London & New York: Leicester University Press. Robinson, C. and W. Leon 1992 ‘A Priority on Process. The Indianapolis Children’s Museum and “Mysteries in History”’ in K. Ames B. Franco and L. Thomas Frye (eds.) Ideas and Images. Developing Interpretative History Exhibits: 211–32. Nashville: American Association for State and Local History. Sebba, J. 1997 History for All. London: David Fulton. Sofaer Derevenski, J. (ed.) 2000 Children and Material Culture. London & New York: Routledge. Stone, P. 1994 ‘The re-display of the Alexander Keiller Museum, Avebury, and the National Curriculum in England’ in P. Stone and B. L. Molyneaux (eds.) The Presented Past: Heritage, Museums and Education: 190–205. London: Routledge. Thomas, G. 1994 Why are you playing at washing up again? ` Some Reasons and Methods for Developing Exhibitions for Children’ in R. Miles and L. Zavala (eds.) Towards the Museum of the Future: New European Perspectives: 117–31. London & New York: Routledge. 224

Exhibiting the Past to Children Wood, B. and Cotton, J. 1999 ‘The Representation of Prehistory in Museums’ in N. Merriman (ed.) Making Early Histories in Museums: 28–43. London & New York: Leicester University Press. Websites Curiosity and Imagination, the national network for children’s hands-on learning, http://www.centresforcuriosity.org.uk/the_approach. asp Inspiring Learning for All: A Vision For Accessible Learning In Museums, Archives And Libraries, MLA (The Museums, Libraries and Archives Council), http://www.mla.gov.uk/action/ learnacc/00insplearn.asp Children’s museum, http://childrensmuseum.org/themuseum/mysteries. htm

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Chapter 11 Eviscerating Barbie. Telling Children About Egyptian Mummification Lauren E. Talalay and Todd Gerring

Tell me and I will forget Teach me and I will remember Involve me and I will learn Ancient Chinese Proverb 1. Introduction

Debates o­n effective teaching and learning have spanned the centuries, ranging from the musings and writings of Lao-Tse and Aristotle to Jean Piaget and Howard Gardner. Although these discussions have not produced consensus, most specialists would probably agree that effective learning is a complex phenomenon, involving motivation; the ability to conceptualize, problem solve, and remember; and the capacity to transfer concepts acquired in one realm of knowledge to another (see also Bauer chapter 1, Fivush chapter 2). Increasingly, there is also agreement that individuals have different styles (and rates) of learning, and perceive and process information in different ways. While neither author of this chapter would claim expertise in learning theory or developmental psychology—one of us is an Aegean prehistorian, the other an artist and coordinator of museum programs— we are well aware that effective learning and teaching takes numerous forms, especially amongst children at various developmental stages. Our particular experience with children has evolved over the past decade and a half and has been largely confined to teaching within a university museum. These experiences have lead us to the (not surprising) conclusion that interactive instructional techniques and experiential learning provide one of the more successful ways of teaching young children about the past. Using the basic assumption that children learn best when they can synthesize information through several different sensory modalities (Davidson et al. 1994, 193), we crafted an interactive workshop on ancient 226

Egypt (described and discussed below) that offers both ‘cognitive’ and ‘affective’ gains for the participants (Winterbotham 1994, 175). As part of the interdisciplinary dialogue launched in this book, our contribution offers a primarily descriptive chapter, presenting the particulars of this highly successful educational workshop. We intentionally avoid detailed consideration of specific theoretically based models of cognition and learning theory, although we do refer to general discussions of effective learning. The main points highlighted in our discussion focus on why this program has flourished for so many years and the kinds of questions and observations that were repeatedly raised by the children who participated. ‘Mummy Days’—our interactive workshop on ancient Egypt—was created more than 15 years ago and still forms one of the mainstays of the children’s programs at the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology at the University of Michigan. The workshop is open to children ages 5–12, but the majority of participants usually fall within a narrower range, e.g., 6–10 years of age. Although this cohort encompasses various developmental stages, the hands-on activities that are central to the workshop accommodate a range of ages. Participants at the upper and lower ends of the age grade assimilate different amounts and kinds of information but still acquire a basic set of concepts, regardless of their intellectual level. In general, older children are better able to grasp the symbolic aspects of the program while younger children focus on the more practical and applied activities involved. As will become apparent, the success of this project derives partly from combining hands-on learning with limited didactic instruction. In addition, the session maintains low stress levels and a high play component. Moreover, the program takes into account the fact that young children often have limited attention spans; each activity of the workshop is focused and easily accomplished within a fairly short amount of time. Although some of the activities are complicated, extensive preparatory work (undertaken by volunteers) helps eliminate extraneous work that could have engulfed or derailed a child’s attention. By reducing unnecessary activities, we allow the children to concentrate on the creative and educational facets of the program. 2. The Kelsey Museum of Archaeology

The Kelsey Museum of Archaeology is a small archaeological museum housing approximately 100,000 objects and works of art from the Greek, Roman, Egyptian, and Near Eastern civilizations. Started in 1893, the collections are now located in a late-nineteenth century building situated in the heart of the large and sprawling University of Michigan campus. The missions of the museum are multiple, encompassing teaching at the University level, research, and educational outreach to the com227

Chapter 11 - Lauren E. Talalay and Todd Gerring munity. The staff is modest in size, consisting principally of curators who hold joint faculty appointments in academic departments (e.g., Classics, Art History, Near Eastern Studies). For historical reasons not detailed here, the Kelsey Museum had no systematic program of educational outreach before the late 1980s and even today does not maintain anything approaching a full department or unit of education. There is, however, encouragement amongst the staff and faculty to design innovative and active programs that reach out to the public. Prompted by the vision of the former director, the staff at the Museum gradually created an educational outreach program, first soliciting and training docents in 1987, and then designing interactive projects aimed at teaching children about life in the ancient Mediterranean. While the displays at the Kelsey have always attracted children and afforded exciting venues for learning, they are, by definition, ‘hands-off’, engaging a restricted spectrum of senses. Our goal was to create specialized and imaginative ‘hands-on’ programs that would not only complement the displays but also engage a number of senses not usually exercised by visitors to our exhibitions. To date, the most successful of these projects are the ‘Mummy Days’, which focus on specific aspects of daily and religious life in ancient Egypt, and bring both children and adults to the museum for several hours of focused play and instruction. The activities of the workshop are spread out through several non-exhibition areas of the Museum. Once the activities are completed, the children are encouraged to visit the galleries where docents provide detailed information on the displays and attempt to link the objects in the exhibitions to activities performed at the workshop. Although exhibition space within the Kelsey Museum is severely limited, two of the permanent galleries are dedicated to ancient Egypt, with artifacts ranging from the Early Dynastic period to Graeco-Roman times. The array of material exhibited at our Museum that is associated with the practice of Egyptian mummification and the treatment of the dead is varied: a mummy mask, linen wrappings, a ‘grain mummy’,1 stone, wooden, and faience artifacts and statues (all of which served important protective functions in the afterlife), a small but impressive fragment of a painted tomb door, canopic jars, agricultural objects, papyri (one from the “Book of the Dead’), and a large painted wooden mummy coffin. As a rule, the Museum does not display mummies or any other human remains.  ‘Grain mummies’ were a special class of artifacts, which symbolized death and resurrection to the ancient Egyptians. They were formed from a lump of mud seeded with barley, which was allowed to germinate. Once the grain sprouted, the germinated seed and mud matrix were wrapped in cloth imitating the shape of a mummy, which was then given a wax mask and crown. The entire form was placed in a wooden coffin. The precise date of the Kelsey’s example, which is approximately 50 cm high, is unknown; it most likely dates from the Third Intermediate through late Saite Periods c. 1070 – 525 BC.

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…Telling Children about Egyptian Mummification 3. ‘Mummy Days’

‘Mummy Days’ emerged out of a collaborative effort between the fledging educational unit at our Museum and the local Hands-On Museum of Ann Arbor. In the late 1980s we were asked by the Director of the Hands-On Museum to design, for their museum, an interactive activity (for children) on ancient Egypt. Considering that mummies hold a particular fascination for children, we decided to capitalize on that interest and create a project highlighting the process of mummification. Since human simulation was out of the question, we settled on approximating the ancient process through the use of plastic dolls. Prior to creating the program, however, we assessed, in an admittedly desultory fashion, the nature of our audience. Our general sense was that although most children in our target areas (e.g., southeastern Michigan and northwestern Ohio) possessed some knowledge of mummification, they had only the most superficial (and often erroneous) understanding of the actual process and almost no facts about where it had taken place. The process of mummification is, of course, complex and remains a matter of debate among scholars. The practice changed over time and Egyptian records are fairly unforthcoming about the embalmers techniques, which endured for over 3,000 years. Detailed information is preserved, however, in Greek texts, most notably in the histories of Herodotus. Our ‘simulation’ was based on these early Greek writings and extensive studies undertaken on the sample of extant mummies scattered throughout the world’s museums. For the purpose of ‘Mummy Days’, the process was condensed into an easy to follow, somewhat abbreviated method for learning the basic techniques. The success of this project was immediate and eventually gained a reputation in the local area; in fact, the Kelsey Museum quickly became known, rather ghoulishly, as the place where they ‘eviscerate Barbie dolls!’2 The sessions are now offered twice a year and are usually held in the Kelsey Museum. Although the Kelsey’s ‘Mummy Days’ have undergone alterations in the last 15 years, the basic steps, which are detailed in the ensuing pages, have remained fairly constant. 3.1 Eviscerating Barbie

Each child who attends the Kelsey Museum ‘Mummy Day’ is given an array of items for his or her activity (Fig. 1): • A plastic doll that has been stuffed (through a flap cut in the  It is worth noting that strenuous attempts to acquire (in bulk) anything other than ‘white’ usually blond female dolls were often stymied. Dolls of ‘color’ are difficult to find, as are male dolls. The bias of the American market, which may in fact be echoed in other countries, reflects an unfortunate acculturation of young children—dolls are for girls, and all young girls should aspire to grow into impossibly dimensioned women, preferably adorned with long blond tresses.

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Chapter 11 - Lauren E. Talalay and Todd Gerring back) with various candy organs. The Egyptians usually removed the liver, lungs, intestines, stomach, and occasionally the heart. Accordingly, the dolls contain a chocolate-covered raisin for the liver, a walnut for the lungs, ‘gummy worms’ for the intestines, a jelly bean for the stomach, and a heart-shaped piece of candy for the heart. • A set of tweezers to remove the organs. • A set of four ‘canopic’ jars, which are, in fact, 35-mm film canisters, and an image of each of the four Egyptian gods, who guard the organs in the afterlife. The children are instructed to transfer the organs to the appropriate canister (and are warned not to eat the organs!) • Several yards of gauze to wrap the mummy, once it has been properly ‘eviscerated’ and the organs have been placed in the proper ‘canopic’ jars. • A photocopy of a pectoral and mummy mask that can be colored by the child and glued to the gauze-wrapped mummy. • A gold, spray-painted shoebox covered with photocopy images of various Egyptian motifs (again to be colored). The box represents the ‘gold’ coffin of the mummy, who will rest, as the Egyptians intended, in eternal peace. The first assignment is the most gruesome but usually proves to be the most interesting part of the process; namely, the removal of the internal

Fig. 1. Typical items given to each child during a mummy-making session. 230

…Telling Children about Egyptian Mummification organs. Children use the tweezers that have been provided to extract the ‘candy organs’ through the flap in the back of the doll. Only the heart is left in the body, as it was throughout much of Egyptian history. Children are usually curious about why the heart remains intact and often ask for an explanation. If the parent cannot answer the question a docent will step in and explain the significance of the heart in Egyptian culture and the all-important ‘weighing of the heart’ ceremony. In this ceremony, the heart of the deceased is (magically) placed on a scale in balance against the ‘feather of truth’. If the heart and the feather are in equilibrium, it indicates that the deceased has led a correct or righteous life, and he or she can proceed to the next step leading to eternal existence in the afterlife. All the other organs are placed in the proper ‘canopic jar’. Each child is supplied with a list of the gods who protect the particular organs and an image of each god, which the child attaches to the lid of the appropriate canister. The lungs (walnut) are placed in the jar guarded by the ape-headed Hapy, the intestines (gummy worm) in the jar of the falconheaded Kebesenuf, the liver (chocolate-covered raisin) in the container of the human-headed Imsety, and the stomach (jelly bean) in the vessel of the jackal-headed Duamutef. Once the organs have been removed and safely secured in the appropriate container, the doll’s back is closed and the doll is ready for the next steps. Egyptians often covered the deceased in natron—a naturally occurring dehydrating agent found in the Egyptian desert—and, according to Herodotus, then left the body to dry for several months. Although we do not replicate this part of the process, docents explain the procedure. Instead, we proceed to the wrapping stage. A strip of cloth is anchored with tape at the doll’s feet and wound like a bandage up the body and around the head (Fig. 2). An ambitious child will wrap the arms and legs separately in true Egyptian fashion. The next steps involve coloring the previously cut mummy mask and pectoral and affixing them over the face and chest of the bandaged doll. This completes the process for the ‘deceased’, who is then laid to rest in a golden coffin. Each child is supplied with appropriate decorations, which he or she will color and then attach at the sides or ends of the box. A male or female image of an Egyptian mummy, glued on the coffin lid, also awaits coloring by the participant (Fig. 3). The entire procedure, from evisceration to burial, usually requires 45 minutes to an hour, depending on the skill of the child, his or her developmental stage, and the care with which he or she approaches the project. 3.2 Ancillary activities

Most ‘Mummy Days’ at the Kelsey also include other activities, all of which are intended to situate the process of mummification within the larger context of life in ancient Egypt. While a one-time workshop can 231

Chapter 11 - Lauren E. Talalay and Todd Gerring

Fig. 2. Child wrapping plastic mummy doll.

Fig. 3. Child decorating the mummy coffin lid. 232

…Telling Children about Egyptian Mummification only impart superficial knowledge on Egyptian religion, notions of death, and the afterlife, these ancillary activities provide a broad perspective on ancient Egyptian society. It is important that the workshop participants leave with the understanding that mummification is a meaningful part of this intriguing culture, not simply a gory picture of oddness in the distant ‘Other’. The ancillary activities usually include: mastering a simplified alphabet of Egyptian hieroglyphs, designing the headdress of Hathor or a ‘double crown’ of Upper and Lower Egypt (Fig. 4; this crown, which was traditionally worn by the pharaoh, combines the emblems of northern and southern Egypt, symbolizing the power of the ruler over both areas of the country), creating an Egyptian necklace, and molding a working clay lamp. These activities are set up at various stations throughout the Museum and, like the mummy-making session, involve both children and parents. Adults play an important role in the learning and play process at these sessions—parents or supervising adults and docents are required to attend and serve as guides or assistants to small groups of children. Parents are encouraged to provide as much assistance to the child as they feel necessary. Each activity station is equipped with small placards that are intended to educate the child about some aspect of ancient Egypt associ-

Fig. 4. Children wearing the double crown of Egypt and the horns of Hathor headdress, which they created during Family Day. 233

Chapter 11 - Lauren E. Talalay and Todd Gerring ated with his or her activity. For example, the double-crown station is equipped with pictures and very short didactics explaining the symbolic importance of these two crowns. Occasionally, children will read the labels with care and ask a docent or volunteer relevant questions. More often, however, the parents mediate the learning by reading the board, digesting the information, and verbally distilling it for the children while they busy themselves with the activity. Once the children have visited the various stations (and are the proud owners of a double crown, an Egyptian necklace, a lamp, several cartouches with their names in hieroglyphs, and, of course, their mummy), it is time to visit the galleries of the Museum. When possible, docents are stationed in the Egyptian galleries where children can view the ‘real thing’ and ask questions. Children quickly relate to the hieroglyphs they have just learned, probably sensing a new though admittedly limited mastery of the ancient writing. In addition, they now understand how the mummy mask on display would have been placed on the deceased, what the double crown of Egypt signified, and how a clay lamp would have functioned. In recent years we have added a large hands-on display table, which contains objects related to the embalmer’s art—a life-size skeleton that has been completely wrapped, mummy-style, with linen, and replicas of amulets, natron, and resins possibly used by the Egyptians. The display allows children the opportunity to see, touch, and even smell the basic materials used in mummification. This part of the workshop visually reinforces the simulated activity and encourages children to translate what they have just created in miniature to a larger reality. Touching materials such as rolls of linen bandages, jars of resin, and amulet replicas, provides an effective and stimulating tactile experience, which animates the learning experience. While we tend to stress the more tactile and visual senses in these workshops, the sense of smell is not overlooked. Indeed, recent research on human olfactory senses suggests that smell can play a significant role in memory, though its precise link to learning has not, to our knowledge, been extensively investigated. It is worth noting that we have witnessed the power of smell in another mummy-related experience at the Museum. Although the Kelsey does not display human remains, it houses two small child mummies. Both ‘rest’ in storage, and over time have taken on a distinct ‘aroma’. In general, these mummies are not accessible to visitors but on rare occasions small groups of children (and other visitors) are allowed to view one of the mummies, whose jaw, teeth, and neck are exposed beneath the damaged wrappings. When the drawer that now houses this mummy is opened, children invariably comment, most emphatically, on the mummy’s ‘aroma’. It would indeed be intriguing to know if, at some time in the future, these children might have their own ‘Proustian’ memory, triggered by a smell that is associated with their first view (and smell) of an ancient mummy. 234

…Telling Children about Egyptian Mummification 4. A critical approach to ‘Mummy Days’

A seminal question arising from this workshop is, quite simply, why is it such a success? Why have our ‘Mummy Days’ retained their great popularity for more than 15 years? We discuss below, with no attempt to prioritize, some of the possible answers. At least in North America, Egypt retains a certain caché among children—mummies hold a ‘creepy’ delight and ancient Egypt is usually seen as exotic. Most school age children have some exposure to the wonders of Egypt and view it as ‘other’ but not too alien. Consequently, it is not surprising that a children’s workshop on Egypt should retain its popularity over the years. The content of this workshop, however, is only part of the explanation for its appeal; a more complex array of answers is to be found by examining the form of the activity. For children, concrete activities that are both vivid and systematically constructed stand a high chance of success. In our case, the mummification activity was not only well focused, but the steps were easy to comprehend and master. The mummy had to be constructed in stages, each of which was discrete and followed logically. Although the logical sequence certainly anchors the activity and keeps it comprehensible, we suspect that the program’s effectiveness lies more in the fact that children are encouraged to employ multiple senses (e.g., touch, sight, and smell) and a variety of skills. Ongoing discussions amongst museum educators suggest that the use of various sense perceptions provides the best avenues for challenging and stimulating visitors to museums. The most robust and successful exhibitions impart information via multiple and diverse channels: didactic labels, interactive displays, auditory access or tapes, and verbal interaction with docents or specialists (Davidson et al. 1994, Jensen 1994, Hill 2001). For children, in particular, it would appear that interactive instruction (as opposed to passive acquisition) and a degree of information redundancy are essential parts of successful learning. Related to the notion of utilizing multiple senses to acquire new knowledge is the equally important theory, proposed more than 20 years ago by Howard Gardner (1983), of Multiple Intelligences. Gardner argued that people possess different modes for acquiring knowledge—some individuals have a strong linguistic-verbal intelligence, while others are more attuned to spatial, musical, or logical-mathematical modes of acquisition. If, as many educators now agree, Howard’s model is valid, then one of the keys to the success of our eviscerated Barbie project lies in it accommodating children to learn via their strongest preference. Some children linger over the more artistic side of the project; others ask questions about the process as they proceed, while still others find themselves frustrated by the coloring and respond more to the macabre and vivid aspect of pulling out the ‘intestines’. No child is hurried through the process; each is 235

Chapter 11 - Lauren E. Talalay and Todd Gerring allowed to proceed at his or her own pace. The process of ‘replication’ also seems to play an element in the success of these programs. As noted above, children create specific Egyptiantype artifacts: the double crown of Upper and Lower Egypt, clay lamps of the kind that would have been used in a dwelling or tomb, and imitations of jewelry that might have adorned the deceased. Similar kinds of objects are often displayed in the Museum’s galleries and provide loose models for the replicated artifacts. While these hands-on projects offer entertaining activities for the participants, they also allow the children the opportunity to experience, albeit in a much reduced and altered form, a semblance of the creative processes that must have engaged the ancient craftsman or woman. In our experience, this process of simple replication encourages the children to ponder and question the techniques of ancient production, opening up yet another window onto the ancient world. Just as important, the mummification activity, as well as all the other activities undertaken on ‘Mummy Days’, is strongly personalized. No two mummies, sarcophagi, necklaces, or crowns look alike. Children leave with a sense of pride in their particular creations. When asked about their future plans for their mummies, the answers run the gamut—some children plan to display the mummy in their rooms, others say they will bring it to their art teachers or to schools, and still others think they will give it to a grandparent. One child planned to scare his sister with his creation, another to bury it in her yard, and yet another to take a picture of it and email the image to his father. Regardless of the answers, it is clear that the mummy will not be jettisoned. Children are proud of their final product and envision a long life for their eviscerated doll. It would, in fact, be worthwhile conducting ‘post-Mummy Day’ interviews to explore how long these mummies survive and where they ultimately reside. As many educators also suggest, overtly authoritarian approaches to learning can be stultifying. Neither the mummification activity nor any of the other activities briefly described above establish a strong hierarchy between the student and the teacher. Although the notion of the ‘expert’ and the learner is apparent, the ‘expert’ serves more as a facilitator. In fact, children with prior knowledge of Egyptian culture often find the workshop an opportune moment to impart their knowledge to the ‘expert’, giving them the chance to become the ‘expert’ themselves. Interestingly, the children who participate in these sessions are very willing to learn from each other. On more than one occasion we have observed a younger child emulating an older child’s construction of, for example, the uraeus on the double crown (the uraeus, which symbolized a spitting cobra, was worn on the headdress of royalty, and served to protect the wearer). Many of the children imitate each other, assimilating a range of creative ideas and skills. Since the groups are always small and the number of adults is high, there is a healthy ratio of adult to child. Both the ratio and the 236

…Telling Children about Egyptian Mummification smallness of the group size encourage dialogue and interaction amongst all the participants. As Vigotsky (e.g., 1962, 1978) and others have longed argued, learning and language are intimately linked, with knowledge and language participating in a dialectic relationship that reinforces the learning process (see also Fivush chapter 2). Learning is also viewed by many specialists as a social process, and some scholars suggest that certain forms of learning are enhanced by social engagement (e.g., Lave and Wenger 1991; Wertsch 1998). While we have no scientific basis for our conclusion, it is our distinct impression that the enduring success of these workshops is partially tied to the highly social environment in which they take place, the free exchange of questions and answers that thread through the activities, and the reinforcement of learning through language. It is, of course, almost impossible to teach children about Egyptian mummification without raising the question of death and the concept of an afterlife. Although neither the workshop nor any of the tours we offer at the Museum tends to dwell on these subjects, given their potentially disturbing nature for young children, it is our experience that the idea of death, as presented in the form of ‘eviscerated’ Barbie dolls and visually impressive remains from ancient Egypt, does not usually generate discomfort among this particular age and cultural group. While we do not disassociate the activities from the funereal context of ancient Egypt, we underscore more boldly the ideas of magic, religion, and even science that tend to be part of ancient mummification. In sum, ‘Mummy Days’ at the Kelsey Museum utilize several effective learning streams: the activities are concrete and logically laid out, they challenge and engage multiple senses, they encourage students to proceed at their own pace, and to employ their strongest preference or preferred modalities for acquiring information. Moreover, instruction is guided but never authoritarian, social interaction is encouraged, and there is a strong sense of play with little stress. Children leave with ‘products’ of their own creation, reinforcing a sense of ownership and pride about their new experience. Finally, the information acquired is immediately reinforced, accommodated, or re-contextualized by visits to the galleries. While action initiates the learning experience and motivates the child, it is the more passive experience in the galleries that validates the edifying aspect of the hands-on activity. 5. The values of a museum setting

Staging these sessions in the Museum has distinct advantages. Most importantly, the Museum’s exhibitions provide a post-activity context that helps reinforce the newly acquired knowledge. Children quickly recognize objects related to their mummy simulation—a painted Egyptian sarcophagus, a mummy mask, and a canopic jar. These objects are no 237

Chapter 11 - Lauren E. Talalay and Todd Gerring longer just curious or wondrous artifacts from the rather nebulous realm of ancient Egypt, but can be situated within the specific activity of mummification, which the children now perceive as a vital part of Egyptian ritual and religion. While museum displays always involve objects that are themselves removed from their original contexts, the exhibitions provide a useful framework in which to locate the mummification exercise. The value of offering these activities in a museum environment should not be underestimated. Each child’s miniature mummy acquires a stamp of validation when viewed next to the actual objects on display. Over the years we have found that young children are initially skeptical of artifacts on exhibit—they often ask if the objects are ‘real’ or if we, the Museum staff, have made them. Once children understand that they are viewing a 2,500-year-old mummy mask that was once worn by an actual Egyptian mummy, their understanding of the simulated activity, and of the museum, expands. Authenticity of artifacts, however, often requires an understanding far greater than a child has yet obtained. Objects that look too new or not foreign enough can come under suspicion. Often something ‘old’ to a child is merely the same age as a grandparent or even a parent. Two thousand years is usually an inconceivable amount of time to a child who has yet to experience a decade and who may not understand time in large increments. To convey ideas of authenticity, which are linked to the notion of age, it is important to relate the artifacts on display to ideas that the child already understands. For example, the amount of time between birthdays may be more comprehensible as a ‘long time’ and can be used by the resourceful docent to explain that, ‘this artifact has had 2,000 birthdays’. Discussions of authenticity and dating provide effective segues into discussions of science in archaeology. It is our experience that children can be remarkably receptive to concepts involving scientific processes and methodologies. Participants at these workshops, as well as those who visit for docent-led tours of the Museum, frequently ask how archaeologists can determine the age of an artifact. Often they know something about dating methods, though they harbor the common belief that any artifact can be dated by radiocarbon techniques. Explaining to a child that only certain artifacts made from once living organisms can be dated by C-14 techniques turns into an instructive activity itself. For example, we encourage our docents to ask children about the ‘living status’ of objects on display: where does a bone object come from, what is pottery made of, was a shell ever a living organism? The museum environment also provides an effective setting in which to discuss some of the popular misconceptions that children embrace about Egyptian religion. The fascination with ancient Egypt has long spawned a spectrum of fictional material, most recently Anne Rice’s novel Queen of the Damned (1988) and the motion pictures The Mummy and 238

…Telling Children about Egyptian Mummification The Mummy Returns (released in 1999 and 2001 respectively by Universal Studios). Intended as entertainment and not as teaching tools, these products of popular culture are, however, often taken at face value. Many children bring an array of misinterpretations (e.g., man-eating beetles, the ‘curse’ of the mummy, notions of pyramid power, etc.) to the Museum. We attempt to dispel some of the more outlandish notions through the workshop and docent-led discussions about the objects on display, in the hope that the children will leave better equipped to winnow fact from fiction. When attempting to deconstruct popular ideas of the ancient world, however, it is important to correct misinformation without curbing the enthusiasm of a young audience. Archaeologists are constantly faced with the ‘Indiana Jones’ phenomenon—archaeology is often seen as an adventurous, vaguely academic romp through ancient ruins. Programs such as the Kelsey’s ‘Mummy Days’ are designed to counteract this attitude through carefully constructed programs utilizing the true, though sometimes gory facts about ancient Egyptian mummification and other aspects of life in the ancient world. A child who is fascinated by a flesh-eating scarab is often more than willing to trade in this piece of contemporary mythology for factual information with an equal ‘gross factor’. It may seem wrong to exploit the less savory aspects of life in the ancient world but we cannot deny the interest that children have in all things that we, as adults, often see as nasty and disgusting! Although the museum ‘industry’ is changing across the world, we are hopeful that museums will continue to support the notion that structured interactive experiences must remain one of the main axis through which children learn in museum settings. There are many choices to be made in the form and content of teaching children about ancient cultures; the literature is rife with guidelines and theories—be it constructivist, functionalist, or idealist. Our experience has underscored the notion that reflective activities, which creatively combine ‘hands-on’ and ‘minds-on’ learning, and allow for individual and selective learning, are one of the most effective ways of teaching children about the past. As with any discipline, archaeology has its own language and culture. It is, inevitably, a challenge to teach children the fundamentals and language of archaeology, in all its vast, complex, and intriguing aspects (see Stone and MacKenzie 1990 on the value of archaeology in education, especially within a multicultural society). Our workshops provide a small and admittedly narrow window onto the world of ancient Egypt, which often entices young ‘newcomers’ to the field of archaeology. It is our hope that these workshops not only instill in the participants a sense that preserving and learning about the past is an important facet of their young lives but will remain an equally strong and enduring force in shaping their future behaviors. 239

Chapter 11 - Lauren E. Talalay and Todd Gerring References Davidson, B., C.L. Heald and G.E. Hein 1994 ‘Increased exhibit accessibility through multisensory interaction’ in E. Hooper-Greenhill (ed.) The Educational Role of the Museum: 179–94. London: Routledge. Hill, L.H. 2001 ‘The brain and consciousness: sources of information for understanding adult learning’, New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education 89: 73–82. Gardner, H. 1983 Frames of Mind. New York: Basic Books. Jensen, N. 1994 ‘Children, teenagers and adults in museums: a developmental perspective’ in E. Hooper-Greenhill (ed.) The Educational Role of the Museum: 268–74. London: Routledge. Lave, J. and E. Wenger 1991 Situated Learning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rice, A. 1988 The Queen of the Damned. Ballantine Publishing Group. Stone, P. and R. MacKenzie (eds.) 1990 The Excluded Past: Archaeology in Education. London: Unwin Hyman. Vygotski. L.S. 1962 Thought and Language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Vygotski. L.S. 1978 Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Winterbotham, N. 1994 ‘Happy hands-on’ in E. Hooper-Greenhill (ed.) The Educational Role of the Museum: 175–6. London: Routledge. Wertsch, J. 1998 Mind as Action. New York: Oxford University Press.

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Chapter 12 Conversations About the Past: Families in an Archaeology Museum Theano Moussouri 1. Museums and family visitors Museums1 have been characterized as “public institutions for personal learning” (Falk and Dierking 1995). Indeed, people of all ages and backgrounds visit museums in an effort to make sense of the human experience – past and present – that is embodied in the exhibitions. Museums, hence, serve as the physical and social context where groups of visitors – more often than individuals – ‘share’ their ideas, knowledge, experiences and fears with their group members, with other visitors as well as with the museum staff through a series of synchronous and asynchronous interactions. Since families comprise almost half of all visitors to museums it is not surprising that a large number of research studies have specifically focused on them. In fact, the vast majority of children visit museums in either a family or a school group. However, the social nature of the museum experience has only recently started to be widely acknowledged. Our understanding of the museum experience as a social phenomenon has been enhanced by early family learning research in museums (Blud 1990; Diamond 1986; Dierking 1987; Falk 1991; Hilke 1989; McManus 1987). As Ellenbogen et al. (2004) note, this pioneering research was followed by more ground-breaking research looking at museum visiting within the larger socio-cultural context of the family life. A number of research studies have examined issues ranging from family dynamics, motivation and identity (Macdonald 1993, Moussouri 1997, Ellenbogen 2002); to family-museum interface by looking at family interactions with exhibits and interactions among family members (Borun et al. 1997; Crowley and Callanan 1997); and to the museum environment as a learning resource for families (Perry 1993; Schauble and Burtlett 1997).  The word “museum” here refers to a variety of institutions and experiences, such as children’s, art, archaeology, history, science and natural history museums; science centres; zoos, aquariums, botanical gardens and nature centres.

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Chapter 12 - Theano Moussouri For a number of years, it has been argued that family visitors not only have an agenda for the visit but that these agendas directly influence their museum experience2 (Balling et al. 1980; Falk and Dierking 1992 and 2000; Hilke 1989; Macdonald 1993). However, there have been only limited investigations to determine the impact of family agendas on family behavior and learning (Falk et al. 1998). Understanding the agenda for the visit can help gain insight into the role museum visits play in the family social and cultural life. A basic assumption of this study is that family agendas are diverse. As the starting point for the study was to look at the family museum experience from the point of view of the family members, a decision was made to study a specific type of museum: those with interactive exhibitions. These environments are specifically designed to accommodate a range of family agendas. The study reported in this chapter tells the story of 29 multigenerational groups visiting an archaeology museum: the Archaeological Resource Centre in York. However, as this study is part of a larger project, the story also draws on findings from two interrelated studies all conducted in interactive museums or spaces in the UK: Eureka! The Museum for Children in Halifax and Xperiment! at the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester. Finally, it also draws on the growing body of literature on family visitor research. 2. The Archaeological Resource Centre The Archaeological Resource Centre (ARC) - along with Jorvik Viking Centre – was developed by York Archaeological Trust (CBA 1986; Jones 1994) with the aim ‘to demystify archaeology and raise its public profile by appealing to visitors of all ages and backgrounds’ (Jones 1990, 1). The exhibits displayed in the Archaeological Activity Area (AAA) were developed by a team of researchers, designers, computing staff and employees of the Trust with specialist advice from researchers at the University of York. The goal was ‘to design an academically sound yet exciting place for everyone interested in archaeology and what archaeologists do.’ (Jones 1994, 3). Hence, the AAA is not a typical archaeological exhibition of archaeological finds from different periods. It is a place where visitors are invited to engage in the practices and process of archaeology. The main mode of interpretation used in AAA is interactive displays and life interpreters. The latter are the voices that mediate between the museum and the visitor. They act as ‘live text’ who provide information that reflects a deep understanding of the content and context of the exhibits and who give visitors the chance to have a synchronous conversation with the Museum. Interpreters provided custom-made information by respond The term agenda refers to ‘a set of desires, needs and expectations for what the visit will hold’ (Dierking and Falk 1994:61).

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…Families in an Archaeology Museum ing to visitors’ questions and needs on an individual ‘need-to-know’ basis. On a practical level, this is made possible by regulating the number of visitors - up to approximately 30 people each time - who can watch the video and then complete the activities at the AAA (ARC 1993; Jones1994). Furthermore, each display is accompanied by a booklet which explains the task and gives further information. In addition, some resources are available on request. This includes artifacts, books and pictures which the interpreters can show visitors and let visitors touch with care. On entering the ARC, visitors have the chance to watch an audiovisual presentation before they move on to the main exhibition area, the AAA, where they are invited to handle and sort ancient finds. The AAA is divided into three areas: Finds Handling, Experimental Archaeology and Computing (ARC 1993). 3. Methods and participants This study has built on a growing body of literature emerging from the use of naturalistic approaches in museum visitor research (Hilke 1989; Macdonald 1993; Rosenfeld 1982). Also known as qualitative research, naturalistic research endeavors to answer ‘why’ questions and the researchers use life situations as a primary source of data, the aim being to understand the phenomenon studied from the point of view of the people involved. A family observation guide and a questionnaire protocol were drafted to accommodate the methodological approach and the subject of the research. Furthermore, drawings made by young children were also collected to assist with the interpretation of the speech data. Observations were recorded in a narrative form and were based on a series of family interactions including social and spatial interactions. In-depth interviews were carried out with the whole family group at the end of the visit. The questionnaire was semi-structured and included prompts to encourage the respondents to expand on any points. There were different questions for adults and children in order to draw all family members into the discussion and to sustain the social nature of the group. Twenty-nine family groups (92 individuals) were observed and then interviewed at the ARC over a six-month period. It included 47 adults (25 women and 22 men), one young adult (a young man) and 45 children (23 girls and 22 boys). The groups consisted of at least one adult and one child (up to the age of 15) and no more than five intergenerational members in total. The families who participated in this study include groups of various compositions in terms of age range, gender, educational and socioeconomic background. Family groups with members of close kinship were only included in this study. There were twelve single family groups, seven of which included a woman and five of which included a man. There were three groups that included a grandparent. Among those, two groups included the parents of the children as well. Slightly more than half of 243

Chapter 12 - Theano Moussouri the adult family visitors were of the age range 35-44, while two-thirds of the child family members were of the age range 5-11 (Table 1). These age groups seemed to be over-represented as compared to the general population but this finding is consistent with market research conducted by the ARC (1996) and with the idea of viewing museum-visiting as part of ‘an expected childhood experience’ (Macdonald 1993). More than half of the adult family members were highly educated (Table 2) and from a middle or upper-middle class background (A, B and C1) (Table 3). 4. The family ARC experience Family groups choose to visit the ARC during their leisure time expecting to have a particular type of experience. This is closely related to who family members are and who they would like to become (identityrelated), why they visit and what they expect to be able to see or do in the ARC both individually and socially. This study showed that all these factors interact and affect how family members make meaning during Table 1. Number of family visitors by age. Age Range 0-4 5-11 12-15 16-24 25-34 35-44 45-54 55+ Total

Number of Visitors 3 35 7 1 8 26 9 3 92

Table 2. Educational background of the adult and young adult family visitors. Educational Background Minimum Stayed on at school Undergraduate degree Postgraduate degree Still in full-time education NA Total

10 8 18 7 0 4 47 244

…Families in an Archaeology Museum the visit and how they reconstruct or remember their visit. Hence, making meaning of archaeology-rich exhibits and objects relates not only to prior knowledge about them but also – and perhaps more importantly - to how these exhibits and object relate to the life of the family both at an individual and at a group level. Indeed museum exhibits and objects can elicit memories of personal as well as socially (shared with other family members across different times and places) and culturally shared experiences, values, understandings and assumptions (Leinhardt et al. 2002). Table 3. Adult family visitors by socio-economic status in this study (source: Market Research Society 2003). Status A Professional people, very senior managers in business or commerce or top-level civil servants (3% of the UK population) B Middle management executives in large organisations, with appropriate qualification; principal officers in local government and civil service; and top management or owners of small businesses, educational and service establishments (20% of the UK population) C1 Junior management, owners of small establishments and all other in non-manual positions (28% of the UK population) C2 Skilled manual workers and those manual workers with responsibility for other people (21% of the UK population) D Semi-skilled and un-skilled manual workers as well as apprentices and trainees to skilled workers (18% of the UK population) E All those dependant on the state, through sickness, unemployment and other reasons; casual workers and those without a regular income (10% of the UK population) Homemaker NA Total 245

Women 0

Men 2

3

10

11

5

3

1

1

1

0

1

5 2 25

0 2 21

Chapter 12 - Theano Moussouri 4.1 Placing the ARC experience within the family identity Twenty-two family members in 18 out of the 29 family groups studied expressed a strong interest in archaeology and/or history. In all cases prior interest related to first-hand experience with the subject and, in the case of the children, subsequent encouragement by the adult members of the families. There seemed to be four main sources from which family members gained information about and experience with archaeology: a TV series called ‘Time Team’, museums or other educational and cultural institutions, history classes/projects at school, collecting things or ‘digging in the garden’. Furthermore, eight adult family members had a professional interest in the ARC as their studies or occupation was related to the subject matter. All of them were women. Six categories of motivations were identified which reflect the functions a museum is perceived to serve in the social and cultural life of visitors. These motivations were in order of importance: education/participation; place; family event; entertainment; life-cycle, and practical issues (Table 4). Education/participation represents a category of reasons related to the aesthetic, informational or cultural content of the museum and a desire to participate in the practices of the archaeology-related communities. Visitors in 25 out of the 29 family groups mention that they visited the ARC - and museums in general - in order to learn. There is also some indication that parents visited the ARC – among other venues – in order to introduce their children to different communities of practice3 as these are represented by different institutions and resources. Indeed, three children stated that they had decided to become archaeologists when they are older. This decision was supported by their parents who used all available community resources related to archaeology and history. Place is that cluster of reasons given by individuals when they categorize museums as leisure/ recreational/cultural destinations emblematic of a locale or region. Twenty family groups visited the ARC for this reason, including individuals on holiday or day trips or who had out-of-town guests. Although the place motivation was mainly mentioned by adult family members, there is indication that children were socialized on how to choose appropriate venues. Fifteen families saw visiting the ARC as being a part of a family event; museum-going as a ‘day out’ for the whole family, a special social experience with a friend or relative, a chance for individuals to enjoy themselves separately and together. Nine family groups said that they came to the ARC specifically for entertainment. Another category reported was viewing visiting the ARC – and museum visiting in general - as being a part of their life-cycle. Museum-going was seen by eight adults as a repeated activity which takes place at certain phases in one’s life; usually related  For more information on communities of practice and socio-cultural learning theories see Wenger 1998 and Wenger et al. 2002.

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…Families in an Archaeology Museum Table 4. Categories of family motivation and number of family groups that mentioned them as they compare in the three museums included in the larger project. Museum

Family Motivation Education Place Family Entertainment Lifeevent cycle 25 20 14 9 8 ARC 21 9 12 16 6 Eureka! 24 7 9 13 22 Xperiment! to childhood as it is considered an important part of children’s development and education and, hence, something one should do when one has children or grandchildren. Finally, the practical side of a museum visit (weather, proximity to the museum, time availability, crowd conditions and the entrance fee) also factors into people’s motivations for visiting. Typically, a visitor would express not one, but several of these motivations for visiting a museum. The variety and co-occurrence of several motivations shows that the incentive to visit the ARC is stronger since it caters for different aspects of a family’s social life. The ARC and York appeared to be among the places to visit when one is interested in archaeology and/or has children, especially primary-school age children. These categories of expectations were also expressed by participants in the other two cases studies of this larger project: Eureka! The Museum for Children and Xperiment! at the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester. They have subsequently been tested and used in a range of visitor research studies conducted in a wide range of museums and other educational and cultural environments (Adelman et al. 2000; Ellenbogen 2002; Falk et al. 1998; Hooper-Greenhill and Moussouri 2001a and 2001b). 4.2 Placing the ARC experience within the family personal and social context Family visitors come to the ARC in order to meet specific needs of its members individually and as a group. In this section I will argue that the personal needs, desires and expectations of family members as to what their visit to the ARC will hold intertwine with the social agenda for the visit. The ARC provides the physical and social setting where the personal and social agendas are negotiated among family members to create the family agenda. This is a dynamic process which involves all family members and extends over a long period of time during which individual family members build their identities in schools, museums, work environments, libraries and community centers. Indeed, it has been argued that identity building and meaning-making can only be understood fully in 247

Chapter 12 - Theano Moussouri reference to a number of events in an individual’s life (Paris and Mercer 2002). There were different expectations between children, parents, and grandparents visiting the ARC. Children were mainly concerned with their own experience rather than the experience of other family members; they had exhibit-specific expectations relating to certain exhibits and activities; some had subject-specific expectations relating to archaeology and/ or history, the Romans and the Vikings; and focused on the ‘doing’ aspect of the exhibitions: B: “I wanted to go to the first section and see through the magnifying glass {refers to the environmental archaeology section}.” (F11, Q4) Children’s personal expectations were affected by previous visits to the ARC; visits to other archaeological museums or sites; and things they had read or they were told about the ARC from family members or friends who had been previously. Children with subject-specific expectations had a strong interest in archaeology and/or history. Although children were mainly concerned with their own experience, there is some indication that they were also interested in influencing the social agenda of the group. Six children expressed their wish to share the visit experience with family members. Children were involved in a process of socializing other family members by bringing them to a Museum they had visited before with school. The vast majority of the adult family visitors mainly had subjectspecific expectations that related to the subject matter of the Museum; to their personal interests; and to hobbies, archaeology course or their occupation. The following quote is a typical example: W: “Ehm, just to learn a little bit more about the (…) the history of York and the Vikings and to find out (…) you know, I didn’t want a complete history lesson but I wanted to pick up information and I think we both find the idea of archaeology quite interesting. Peter’s always taken an interest and has never really been involved in any, in anything to do with archaeology.” (F3, Q5) Adults in nine family groups referred to the interactive nature of the activities and mentioned that they were surprised by the extent to which they were asked to get involved and ‘do what real archaeologists do’. All three grandparents who participated in this study said that they had no expectations of their own. They visited the ARC to spend time with their grandchildren and strengthen family ties. On the contrary, parents in seventeen groups expressed their wish to directly influence their children’s educational experience, while parents in a further eight groups referred to the experience as enriching for both adults and children. Parents used their visit to the ARC as a way to introduce their children to archaeology and the practices of archaeologists and/or to encourage an existing interest. 248

…Families in an Archaeology Museum 4.3 The family ARC experience remembered The museum visit is where family members renegotiate and refine their agenda. The nature (subject matter, media of communication and physical characteristics) of the exhibitions and visitors’ expectations and preconceptions influenced the way the exhibitions were perceived and reconstructed. Remarkably, these reconstructions related to the content of the exhibitions and they also reflected the exhibition themes and the messages that the exhibition team intended to communicate. This finding is supported by findings from Eureka! but contradicts those from Xperiment! at the Science and Industry Museum in Manchester (Moussouri 2003) as well as finding from Macdonald’s study (1993) where visitors’ reconstructions – although related to the content of the exhibitions - did not always reflect the exhibition themes and the intended messages. This finding indicates that there is a good match between the family and the ARC agenda. Visitors’ reconstructions were clearly related to their personal and social agenda for the visit which were often referred to during the interview. Both adult and child family members in all groups expressed an overwhelming preference for hands-on displays that combined intense social interaction among the family members and between the family members and the interpreters; handling real artifacts and, hence, moving in and out of the ‘reality’ the ARC displays represent and reflecting on it from different stand-points; and working as a group to solve a real problem posed by the exhibit and which archaeologists usually face. These resulted in having very intense mediating experiences which helped family members gain a better ‘appreciation’ of objects and archaeology –and, thus, of the past– and which were in line with their personal and social agenda for the visit. In reconstructing their experiences, adult family members used pictures of the exhibits to mediate information about the exhibits to their children, and to enhance the family experience the group had with those exhibits. These mediations were used as a means of making meaning of an archaeology exhibition; as a means of socializing children in the practices of archaeologists and society at large; and as a means of constructing a family identity by creating a set of socially referenced stories to be told and reinterpreted over time (see also Fivush chapter 2). Consider the following: M: “But also the realization of going back to the time of Viking and the type of things they used. I’ve never appreciated it. And see all the bones and things from them and you can pick up all things. So when we get together and we see things we can relate to it, back to what we did today. It’s maybe. It’s maybe not the exhibits today but in two, three, four, five, ten weeks time, we can relate back to what we’ve seen here and she’ll remember it.” (F13, Q9) 249

Chapter 12 - Theano Moussouri Family visitors reconstructed their visit in two main ways: the history and the object study. In the first case, family members in 16 groups (13 adults and 7 children) referred to their visits in terms of understanding the crafts and technologies of the past and how they were used. This was done in two ways: either they commented on the things people used/ made/did in the past or they compared modern practices with past ones. In both cases, however, the family members used contemporary terms and concepts to describe their ideas. Their images of the life in the past with its ‘hardness’ and ‘lack of modern amenities’ is consistent with similar categories identified by Merriman (1991). This reading of the exhibition focuses on the historical dimension which, according to Brisbane and Wood (1996), can be one aspect of archaeological research. The other reading of the ARC exhibits related to the study of objects through the activities and the knowledge gathered as a result of the participation in them. Thirteen children (from the age range 5–10) and three adults reconstructed their ARC experience in terms of what the task and the skills involved in studying the artifacts were and how they were used in the interpretation of the material evidence of the past. Further, twelve adults and two children (10 and 11 year old) went beyond the acquisition of skills. They referred to the role of the activities in helping them appreciate the artifacts as part of their culture and the role of archaeologists in studying and interpreting material evidence: M: “What I gained from it was the idea of looking at the fragment and try to relate it to what the finished thing might have been and what surface finished might have been on it, whether it’s heavy or light and fine. I’ve found that was very interesting.” W: “Yes, I’ve liked that one very much. It was interesting looking at the whole thing from just a tiny piece, where it would have gone on that pot; some of them were the bottom, some were the handle.” (F1, Q9). The immediacy of the experience and the close contact with real objects elicited a lot of positive response, as it can be seen by the above quotes. Visitors reported having had a deep ‘aesthetic’ (Dewey 1934) or ‘flow’ experience (Csikszentmihalyi and Hermanson 1995) loosing the sense of time and self, becoming immersed in the experience. These feelings allowed them to ‘become aware’ and to ‘appreciate’ the accomplishments of the creators of the objects and the efforts of archaeologists to reconstruct the past from material evidence. 4.4 Ideas about archaeology and history A bit more than two-thirds of the families included at least one family member with a special interest in archaeology and/or history. They pursued their interest through visiting museums, attending courses, forming collections, watching TV programs and going to excavations. 250

…Families in an Archaeology Museum Furthermore, in six families an adult family member had a professional interest in archaeology or history. Hence, museum visiting and engaging with archaeology was seen as an important part of those families’ sociocultural lives. Families appreciated the fact that the whole experience was realistic as they were encouraged to perform the tasks real archaeologists perform using real objects. The kinaesthetic part of the activities in the ARC was a very important part of the experience as it made the artifacts and the ideas embodied in the displays accessible at a physical and intellectual level. Having the opportunity to handle ‘real objects’ and play the role of ‘real archaeologists’ seemed to add value to the whole experience: it enriched their visit, helped family members ‘appreciate’ the objects and form a special bond with them. Hence, there seems to be a close link between the education/participation motivation of the family members as well as children’s expectations to ‘touch things’ at the ARC and desirable learning outcomes. Four children and sixteen adult family members particularly referred to the interactive element of the activities: “this is a lot better and you learn a lot more things that way” (F15, Q14). An idea related to this was the fact that being able to handle real objects gave families a sense of freedom of movement and choice as well as immediacy of an experience, as stated by an 11 year old boy: B: “It’s more interesting than the ones you can’t like tell what they {the objects} look like ’cause they’re in boxes {glass cases}. You can’t actually go “oh, that’s on the back of this”. Here it’s like you are with them. It’s not like everything is boxed off away from me. I think it’s a lot better because you feel more free to do things.” (F9, Q14) Another two children and three adults said that involving all your senses in the activities made them think about the material used and the amount of work that went into making the objects. On the whole, the interactive element of the exhibits enhanced family members understanding and appreciation of the artifacts both as material evidence of the past and as the object of study of archaeologists. The effort put into making a shoe in the Roman times was depicted by a 4 year old child in his drawing: he explained that the zigzag lines represent the shoelace he used to stitch the Roman shoe together (Fig. 1). Family members also mentioned that they tried to guess how old the fragments might have been and to imagine what an object would have looked like from the fragment. They also mentioned that the whole experience helped them get a feeling of what life might have been like in the Roman and Viking period and how archaeologists reconstruct the past from the material evidence. Here are some typical examples: G1: “It’s more fun because you can feel everything.” G2: “Well, I think the same thing, ehm, and you can actually 251

Chapter 12 - Theano Moussouri see what it’s made of and what it takes to make it.” (F25, Q14) G: “I think I didn’t know much about archaeology and I think I’m a bit more interested because there’s so many things that have to be in here, dig things up as much, digging them up and saying what they are and stuff.” M: “You get a better appreciation, you know//” G: “I think I can, I think I can understand a bit better because before I really hadn’t thought that kind of thing like it wasn’t so difficult, like it is when you try it like on your own.” (F8, Q13) Two child family members stated that, as a result of the visit to the ARC, they decided to get more involved in similar activities: one of them wanted to create his own ‘archaeology museum’ while the other one wanted to spin some wool at home, following the interpreters’ instructions. Three more children mentioned that their visit to the ARC had inspired them so much that they would like to become archaeologists when they are older. Another interesting theme that came up during the family interviews was family members’ definitions and ideas of archaeology and history. Eleven out of the 29 family groups (all but one of them adults) used the term ‘history’ and ‘archaeology’ either as synonymous or as referring to closely related type of activities. In both cases, however, they associated archaeology and history with the past. The following quote is an interesting example:

Fig. 1. Drawing of a Roman shoe (boy, age 4). 252

…Families in an Archaeology Museum M: “Just an insight into how archaeology is done, how the archaeologists determine from the dig what, you know, what will become history.” (F25, Q5) This suggests a lack of clear understanding of what each term denotes but also readiness on the part the visitors to find out more about those terms and how they are used within the archaeology- and historyrelated communities. This would also indicate that visitors would welcome explanations of useful specialist vocabulary, such as ‘archaeology’ and ‘history’, that museum exhibition developers usually take for granted. 5. Conclusions This chapter illustrates some of the complex negotiations and interactions taking place before, during and after a family museum visit, as reported by family members themselves. Although recently there is a trend to provide for family groups when developing exhibitions and other educational activities, only a small number of UK museums conduct research with families or use existing research findings to guide development and assess their impact. The research study reported here revealed some patterns in families’ motivations as well as expectations of what the visit might hold, and in the way the visit is remembered. No matter how there were prioritized, families’ motivation for visiting and visit plans seemed to be quite consistent across family groups and museum types. Better understanding why families visit museums and how they plan their visit can help museums develop environments and activities that serve families better. This knowledge can also be used to predict how often family groups visit museums. For example, families with an education/participation motivation are more likely to visit the ARC – and any other museum for that matter – more often than the families with a life-cycle motivation. Furthermore, family agendas could also be used to explain short- (as well as long-) term learning outcomes. This study indicated that meeting an education/participation motivation and children’s expectation to have a hands-on experience can produce rich learning experiences and a deeper appreciation of the Museum’s collections. Although socio-economic data are useful for describing who the families are and perhaps predicting what type of families are likely to visit particular types of museums, they cannot predict what people do during their visit, how they learn and what they take away with them. On the contrary, this study has shown that research into family – as well as other visitor groups – agenda can be used to explain why families visit museums, what they do during their visit and what they take away with them. The live interpreter approach adopted by the ARC proved to be particularly successful at offering interpretations that related to visitors’ agendas by linking objects and the curators’ narrative with visitors’ 253

Chapter 12 - Theano Moussouri personal and social experience, and prior knowledge. However, the role of the ARC interpreters play as mediators is not fully understood. Why is it that a large number of family groups in Xperiment! – among other studies, for example – were struggling to relate to the exhibits and their content, while the families in the ARC showed a high level of engagement with and appreciation of objects? How interpreter mediation is appropriated and/or modeled by family members and how it affects the way they read and remember their visit? The limited research conducted in this area shows that the dialogue initiated by live interpreters is very likely to lead to ‘learning conversations’ among family members (Rosenthal and Blankman-Hetrick 2002). More research is needed if we are to make informed decisions about family interpretation and interpreter training. Another important finding of this study is that interactive archaeology displays which include real objects offer powerful experiences, particularly to children whose preferred learning styles is ‘learning by doing’ as expressed in their visit agendas. Handling real objects helped family members appreciate them both as examples of material evidence of the societies that created them and as the focus of the study of archaeologists. It provided added value to their experiences, reinforced their prior interest and motivated them to carry on with it on a different level. However, even highly motivated and experienced archaeology museumgoers, as the groups of families studied here, seemed to lack subject-related knowledge and the vocabulary needed to fully interpret their experience. Despite that, being able to interact with the objects and the interpreters and engage in carefully designed activities seemed to contribute to family members’ ability to connect to the objects and the work of different archaeology specialists. This proved to be an effective strategy of introducing visitors to and engaging them with archaeological material developed by this particular community. This study strongly suggests an apparent readiness on the part of archaeology visitors to increase their levels of information about objects and archaeology as a discipline. Visitors would also welcome explanations related to the disciplines of archaeology and history. It is not clear to adult visitors – let alone children – what the focus of each discipline is. Finally, this study showed that museum visiting is closely related to the socio-cultural life of the family. Families at the ARC had clear and strong agendas for the visit that interacted with the Museum agenda insofar as the latter fitted into the family agenda. Hence, it is crucial to focus on the family agenda when creating spaces and other activities for family groups. The ‘ingredients’ of the family agenda define the family museum experience which represents the way each family member makes sense of shared life experiences through the perspective of archaeology, in the case of the ARC. The family museum experience consists of a set of socially referenced stories about events, objects, people encountered during museum visits; the meaning family members attached to them; and 254

…Families in an Archaeology Museum how these events, objects and people relate to and affect the family sociocultural life. There is a need for more studies looking at museum visiting and the family agenda. Although this inevitably involves looking at child family members’ experiences, interests, knowledge, and how they engage and make meaning of the exhibits, our understanding will be very limited if we do not place this within the broader context of the family social and cultural life. References Adelman, L.M., Falk, J. and James, S. 2000 ‘Impact of National Aquarium in Baltimore on visitors’ con­ser­ vation attitudes, behavior, and knowledge’ Curator 43/1: 33–61. Archaeological Resource Centre 1993 Staff Training Manual (Unpublished Internal Document). York: ARC. Balling, J.D., Falk, J. and Aronson, R.A. 1980 Pre‑trip Orientations: An Exploration of their Effects on Learning from a Single Visit Field Trip to a Zoological Park. (Final Report, NSF, Grant #SED77-18913). Washington, D.C. Blud, L. 1990 ‘Social interaction and learning among family groups visiting a museum’ Museum Management and Curatorship 9: 43–51. Borun, M., Chambers, M.B., Dritsas, J. and Johnson, J.I 1997 ‘Enhancing family learning through exhibits’. Curator 40/4: 279–95. Brisbane, M. and Wood, J. 1996 A Future for our Past?. Colchester: English Heritage. CBA 1986 ‘Archaeological Resource Centre for York’ CBA 9/9: 78. Crowley, K. and Callanan, M. 1997 ‘Describing and supporting collaborative scientific thinking in parent-child interactions’ Journal of Museum Education 23: 12–7. Csikszentmihalyi, M. and Hermanson, K. 1995 ‘Intrinsic motivation in museums: why does one want to learn?’ in J. Falk and L.D. Dierkin (eds.) Public Institutions of Personal Learning: Establishing a Research Agenda: 67–78. Washington, DC: American Association of Museums (Technical Information Service). Dewey, J. 1934 Art as Experience. New York: Capricorn. Diamond, J. 1986 ‘The Behaviour of family groups in science museums’ Curator 29/2: 39–154. 255

Chapter 12 - Theano Moussouri Dierking, L.D. 1987 ‘Parent-child interactions in free-choice learning settings: an examination of attention-directing behaviors’ Dissertation Abstracts International 49(04). 778A. Dierking, L.D. and Falk, J. 1994 ‘Family behaviour and learning in informal science settings: A review of the research’ Science Education 78/1: 57-72. Ellenbogen, K. 2002 ‘Museums in family life: an ethnographic case study’ in G. Leinhardt, K. Crowley and K. Knutson (eds.) Learning Conversations in Museums: 81–102. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Ellenbogen, K., Luke, J. and Dierking, L.D. 2004 ‘Family learning research in museums: an emerging disciplinary matrix?’ Science Education 88: 48–58. Falk, J. 1991 ‘Analysis of the behavior of family visitors in natural history museums’ Curator 34/41: 44–50. Falk, J. and Dierking, L. 1992 The Museum Experience. Washington DC: Whalesback Books. Falk, J. and Dierking, L.D. (eds) 1995 Public Institutions for Personal Learning: Establishing a Research Agenda. Washington, D.C.: American Association of Museums. Falk, J. and Dierking, L.D. 2000 Learning from Museums: Visitor Experiences and the Making of Meaning. Walnut Creek: Altamira Press. Falk, J., Moussouri, T. and Coulson, D. 1998 ‘The Effect of visitors’ agendas on museum learning’, Curator 41/2: 106–20. Hilke, D.D. 1989 ‘The family as a learning system: an observational study of families in museums’ in B.H Butler and M.B Sussman (eds.) Museum Visits and Activities for Family Life Enrichment: 101–29. New York: Haworth Press. Hooper-Greenhill, E., and Moussouri, T. 2001a Visitors’ Interpretive Strategies at Wolverhampton Art Gallery. Leicester: Research Centre for Museums and Galleries with West Midlands Regional Museums Council and Wolverhampton Art Gallery and Museum. 2001b Visitors’ Interpretive Strategies at Nottingham Castle Museum and Art Gallery. Leicester: Research Centre for Museums and Galleries. Jones, A. 1990 Archaeological Resource Centre, (Unpublished Internal Document). York: ARC. 256

…Families in an Archaeology Museum 1994

Extending the Audience for Archaeology: The Archaeological Resource Centre in York, (Unpublished Internal Report). York: ARC. Leinhardt, G., Tittle, C. and Knutson, K. 2002 ‘Talking to oneself: diaries of museum visits’ in G. Leinhardt, K. Crowley and K. Knutson (eds.) Learning Conversations in Museums: 103–34. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Macdonald, S. 1993 Museum Visiting Series - Representations: Places and Identities (Sociology and Social Anthropology Working Papers 1). Keele: Keele University. Market Research Society 2003 Occupation Groupings: A Job Dictionary. (5th edition) London: Market Research Society. McManus, P. 1987 ‘It’s the company you keep. The social determination of learningrelated behaviour in a science museum’ The International Journal of Museum Management and Curatorship 6: 263–70. Merriman, N. 1991 Beyond the Glass Case. Leicester: Leicester University Press. Moussouri, T. 1997 Family Agendas and Family Learning in Hands-On Museums. (Unpublished Doctoral Thesis) Leicester: University of Leicester. 2003 ‘Negotiated agendas: families in science and technology museums’ Journal of Technology Management 25/5: 477–89. Paris, S.G. and Mercer, M.J. 2002 ‘Finding self in objects: identity exploration in museums’ in G. Leinhardt, K. Crowley and K. Knutson (eds.) Learning Conversations in Museums: 401–24. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Perry, D.L. 1993 ‘Designing exhibits that motivate’ in Association of Science Technology Centers What Research Says about Learning in Science Museums II: 25–9. Washington, DC: Association of Science Technology Centers. Rosenfeld, S. 1982 ‘A naturalistic study of visitors at an interactive mini-zoo’ Curator 25/3: 187–212. Rosenthal, E. and Blankman-Hetrick, J. 2002 ‘Conversations across time: family learning in a living history museum’ in G. Leinhardt, K. Crowley and K. Knutson (eds.) Learning Conversations in Museums: 305–30. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers. 257

Chapter 12 - Theano Moussouri Schauble, L. and Bartlett, K. 1997 ‘Constructing a science gallery for children and families: the role of research in an innovative design process’ Science Education 81/6: 781–93. Wenger, E. 1998 Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning and Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wenger, E., McDermott, R. and Snyder, W.M. 2002 Cultivating Communities of Practice. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.

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Children of today are perhaps more aware of the past than any generation of children before them, and in different ways. While prehistory to their grandparents was a mixture of myths and absolute truths, any modern child knows that our knowledge is based on scholarship. Quite often the results of this scholarship (not necessarily updated) are presented as games, plays or other kinds of entertainment. Real history in the form of artifacts and monuments can be seen in museums and in the landscape. One aspect of modern life that influences perceptions of the past is the huge expansion in the travel market. Accompanying their parents on holidays modern children are able to acquaint themselves personally with important historic sites of the past: Knossos, the Acropolis, Rome with its monuments, a selection of other ancient and medieval towns, Hadrian’s wall, the standing stones of the Orkneys, the Viking ships in Oslo (Fig. 1) and maybe even the rock carvings in Alta, northern Norway, would be a quite realistic selection for a twelve year old child from Western Europe, provided her parents were educated, but not necessarily well to do. Added to this would be a number of interesting sites and sights of more local importance, filling in the picture. And, of course, museums. The presentation of sites, monuments and finds to an undifferentiated public tends to be general and impersonal with very little consideration of age and less of gender in the recipient group. Individual expectations may or may not be met by such approaches. Maybe what one should aim at, is to use such occasions to help making individual people aware of each and every one’s personal expectations of the past, thus enabling them to formulate their own questions. However imperfect the presentations may be, any Western child of twelve has more personal experience in meeting the great cultural heritage than any generation before them. But, moving from form to content, is it not a heritage of adult worlds and achievements exclusively? 259

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Fig. 1. The Oseberg ship, on view in the Viking Ship Museum. © Museum of Cultural History - University of Oslo, Norway (reproduced with permission).

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Small People versus Big Heritage 1. Constructions of gendered pasts: interpretations and ideological bias? The past that we present to children is often a past tailored to fit the needs of grown-up people. That means it is consciously or unconsciously part of power structures and ideologies played out between nations, ethnic groups, genders, and individuals. I would like to propose that within such frameworks many people think in terms of at least two kinds of pasts, operating on different levels. 1.1 Collective heritage In Europe, archaeology is often looked upon as prehistory, studied and interpreted within a historical conceptual framework rather than an anthropological one. We tend to think of the link to the past as one of continuity in tradition, and people who lived in prehistoric periods are considered our forebears, us, not them. There are also degrees of relationship. Across great distances in time, people everywhere on the globe think of the first inhabitants as hunters (and gatherers, if they are well informed). It is also so distant that it often seems of little concern to modern people. In Europe, as in many other parts of the world, the idea of early humans as hunters has dominated our images of the distant past, even though the era of their dominance ended several thousand years ago. The hunting past is definitely part of a genuinely common heritage. In spite of this, in a certain sense, modern people think of the distant and indisputably common past as peopled by others, them. In Scandinavia, where agriculture was introduced quite late, agriculturalists have dominated the scene from about 3000 BC to the present. In this relatively short period the truly northern past is sought. 1.2 Identity The second kind of past created by adults and mediated to children, is the past as identity. This is where historical tradition kicks in and transforms the common heritage into separate historical traditions. All over Europe, the 19th century was a time for identifying and cultivating the pasts of nations (Trigger 1989; Soerensen 1998), including past histories which fade into preliteracy. Archaeology became an important factor in building the identities of old as well as the emerging nation states. People of this past became our ancestors. The first Norwegian archaeologists emerged, literally speaking, from a cooperation between historians, philologists and bureaucratic antiquarians during the 19th century. What they found, was interpreted as a Viking past, in impressive grave mounds as well as in written docu261

Chapter 13 - Liv Helga Dommasnes ments. The latter date from the high Middle Ages in Iceland, but profess to be about the Viking period in Scandinavia. Although it is clearly a fact that Vikings in the meaning of seafarers, pirates, traders, from the ninth century AD onwards could come from either Sweden, Denmark or Norway, people in each of these countries tend to think of the Vikings as their ‘own’. It was also established early on that Vikings at home were farmers, living on isolated self-owned farms scattered around the country. The laws (also preserved from high Middle Age society) inform us that the farmers were graded from ‘full-value’ farmer down to the slave, who was almost without rights in society. There seems to have been no aristocracy. This suited the emerging Norwegian state particularly well, as nobility was considered to be a foreign and unwanted element in Norwegian society, associated with foreign (Danish, Swedish) rulers. The presumed absence of a noble class in Viking society became the hallmark of Norwegian identity: Norwegian farmers were the true managers of the Viking heritage. In national opinion, it was legitimate to claim the Vikings as our forebears. I suspect that in many societies, one special aspect of the past, understood as crucial to identity, will attract most of the attention in a given cultural environment, to the exclusion of other periods/cultures. The identity-forming past will naturally enough play a main role in our understanding, with a perceived common, or undistinguished, hunting period acting as background. This is the past that is transmitted to the younger generation. Children and young people in 2007 are presented with pasts tailored to fit the building of national states in the 19th century, or of ethnic or gender relations in the next. The content may differ from nation to nation, but the essential drive and direction is very much the same. Classical Hellenism, imperial Rome, Celtic Britain and Viking Norway/Scandinavia are all examples of heritage managed by people of modern national states, and crucial to their identities. No wonder this becomes central also in teaching and dissemination. By educating the young generation into this tradition, one makes it clear that managing just this part of the cultural heritage is their special responsibility. By accepting the heritage they are integrated into society, us, as contrasted to the rest of the world, them. In extreme cases, even wars are legitimated by such readings of history, as we have witnessed in recent years. 1.3 A third approach: the past as adventure A more recent approach, which may or may not include one of the ones discussed above, is the past as a kind of adventure. ‘Parks’ and ‘centers’ (Moussouri chapter 12) as well as films and computer games with historic themes (Silverman chapter 5; Economou chapter 6) often choose the adventure story as their medium of presentation. Form and content tend to influence each other, however, and the understanding of the past 262

Small People versus Big Heritage changes. The identity paradigm is often played down and replaced by a conception of the past as a really foreign place. It becomes foreign not only in the sense that the cultures involved are very different from ones we know, and that people behave in strange ways. Even laws of nature are occasionally suspended when we encounter the past in such ways (see Economou chapter 6; Boulotis chapter 9). Which of course makes the past great fun just because it is unreal, and need not be taken quite seriously. As for context and interpretation of the different cultures as such, those considerations are often subordinate to the demands for excitement and action. Attention to historic detail is not always considered important. In a certain sense, the past thus becomes unreal and irrelevant. This is not to say that every mediation of the past should be serious and scholarly. But it is important to reflect on the implications of different presentations. Stories set in surroundings distant in time and/or space seem particularly prone to unscholarly treatment, although it must be admitted that the relatively recent Viking period is also a favorite subject. Popular (in the sense that they are not informed by recent archaeological research) presentations of vikings in their homelands often show Viking chieftains with horned helmets performing outrageous feats, to the great delight of the public while archaeologists gnaw their teeth in despair. The situation is not made any better by the ways those heroes of the past treat women and foreigners: toil and slavery. 1.4 What do children want from the past? In this paper the focus is on children. I want to make a letter addressed to ‘the museum’, and received by the archaeology section of the University museum of Bergen in Norway, my point of departure. It dates from 1997, and was written by two girls who were working on an assignment at school: ‘To Bergen Museum We are two girls in the fourth grade, working on a Stone Age project at our school in Masfjorden1. Our names are Malin and Stine. We have chosen as our subject Did girls hunt? We hope that someone can answer soon. These are our questions: 1. If girls hunted, what kind of weapons did they have? 2. What could they prepare from their quarry? 3. How much food did they need for an entire year? 4. Did the girls and boys hunt together? 5. Can you decide from a skeleton whether it is a girl or a boy? 6. When you find a skeleton, can you see if it has been hurt in an accident? 7. Are there any rock-carvings showing girls who hunt?  A tiny place at the bottom of a narrow Western Norwegian fjord.

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Chapter 13 - Liv Helga Dommasnes 8. Have you ever dug up an entire village? 9. How much is a skeleton worth? 10. Were girls and boys treated in the same way?’ It was more or less by accident that I became aware of this letter, sent to a colleague of mine, Else Kleppe. In a way, this little feministic project is one of the most promising encounters between museums and the public that I have ever heard of. Since they took the trouble to write to the museum, I assume that these girls had chosen not to take the teacher’s – probably vague – answers for granted, but decided to contact the expertise! The way their questions were formulated, practical and evidently informed by their own experience of life, also suggests to me that to these two girls, the past was relevant in ways that touched them personally. From us, the specialists, they expected the ‘objective truth’. That we cannot offer, but we are reminded of the obligation to think through the value system not only behind our research, but also behind the versions we present to women or men, children, students, tourists or bureaucrats. It is probably no coincidence that the period chosen for the girls’ assignment was the distant Stone Age, conceived of as so alien that things just may have been different…. To me, the girls’ investigation was focused on gender roles and their constructions, as presented in the drawing in Fig. 2, more than on the Stone Age. I want to discuss the challenge such a letter imposes on us as scholars. In addition to the well rehearsed question about the correspondence between our narratives and some variety of past experience, an ethical dimension is added. Again, the concern is not for some underprivileged ‘other’ who deserves her or his place in history, but quite simply for a part – or dimension – of ourselves, childhood. 2. Constructions of gendered pasts: the archaeological record Narratives of the past are based on verbal and material remains. The compilation and extent of this record are building stones in the construction of our history, with present ideologies and theoretical approaches functioning as the frameworks within which the building must be placed. While the data (artifacts, monuments and written sources) are visible and tangible, the framework is both invisible and often unrecognized. A critical distance to the framework is necessary to assess the basis of our narratives. I shall use archaeological survey work in Norway as an example of how the very archaeological record has, unconsciously, been gendered: During the last almost fifty years a national program of mapping legally protected ancient monuments has been in progress. In this work, the local population is seen as an important source of information regarding both existing monuments (grave mounds, house-sites) and find-spots for artifacts previously sent to the museum, thus giving the archaeologist a head start in her search. 264

Small People versus Big Heritage Archaeology is very much centered on monuments and finds as part of the rural cultural landscape. This landscape is also a farmer’s landscape, preserved in the male line (eldest son inherits the land, changed as late as the 1980’s). The masculine tradition includes the very knowledge of the land, its traditions and its prehistoric remains, a fact that we were first made aware of by the women’s inability to answer our questions. We then realized that adult women who marry farmers are more often than not separated from the well-known landscapes of their own childhood. The pattern of mobility in the feminine part of the rural population creates discontinuity in spatial relations – and memories. Whatever memories or places there may be specific to women’s traditions are not necessarily kept from generation to generation in the same place. One may even reason that because of this, exclusive feminine traditions may have different relations to space than masculine ones. It is an indisputable fact that boy children who knew they were to inherit the land often formed very close ties to the land and to its monuments.

Fig. 2. Stone Age hunters returning with their quarry, being received by women and children. This is an example of how illustrations are conveying traditional Western gender and age stereotypes, seemingly confirming their timeless quality. From Dreyer 1900. 265

Chapter 13 - Liv Helga Dommasnes In a related context, Norwegian archaeologist Grete Lillehammer (1994) has suggested that present cultural heritage policy tends to see and preserve what she calls ‘landscapes of prestige’, thereby creating a masculine bias. Among the monuments and sites elected for listing at UNESCO’s heritage list, national and regional lists of monuments of special value, one finds a majority of monuments reflecting wealth or power in political/ religious spheres. Definitions of value in heritage management favor such monuments, while all the traces that make up everyday landscapes are seen as less special and less valuable. It is not surprising that landscapes of prestige are often associated with men, everyday landscapes with women. And hardly any at all are associated with children. 3. Presentations of gendered pasts Dilemmas related to presentations: us and them, homogenous or heterogenous societies, static or evolving, scholarly or dedicated to adventure, are relevant to a number of important issues. The one we shall consider here is that of gender, cross-cutting other division lines of culture or form of mediation. I shall discuss the construction and telling of stories of a gendered past, choosing the Viking period (app. 800 – 1050 AD) as my case study. This period is rich in archaeological finds, but contemporary literary sources are few. Events that are said to have taken place in the 9th and 10th centuries are described in literature dating from the later Middle Ages, however. Looking backwards in time, there is a clear continuity between the Viking/Merovingian period back to the middle of the Roman period. 3.1 The Vikings Scholars agree that by the time the Vikings entered the scene, agriculture had long since become the main form of economy over most of south Scandinavia. The culture and settlement structure that culminated in the culture of the Vikings took shape from around 200 AD onwards in marginal areas like Western Norway, somewhat earlier in central areas. Viking society at home must have been a stable, hierarchically structured agricultural society based on family owned scattered farms. The cultural homogeneity over big areas is striking. The outward expression of the Vikings was their travels abroad. Although the image of Vikings as pirates and raiders has gradually been replaced with one of traders and settlers, the period seems to have been one of forceful cultural expression and expansion in many directions. Early Medieval Europe was violent. So were the Vikings. In the public mind a Viking is a man, king, seafarer and fighter. Literary sources and academic studies have contributed to changing this gender bias somewhat. The reassessments include women’s ideological 266

Small People versus Big Heritage standing as well as her economic importance (Christensen, Ingstad and Myhre 1992; Stalsberg 1987; Dommasnes 1982, 1998). But there is a long way to go before such insights are routinely integrated into presentations to the public, let alone children. 3.2 The Oseberg find: a woman married to a king? In the authorized version of the Viking past, a burial recovered from a big mound located on the farm Oseberg in Vestfold, southeastern Norway, has long been an icon. It has been suggested that this mound, along with a small number of similar ones on the shores of the Oslo fjord are the burial sites of the first royal family of Norway. A few of them have been excavated, yielding richly equipped ship’s graves from the 9th and 10th centuries.2 The Oseberg grave mound was 40 meters across and 4 meters high. It was excavated as a rescue operation during the very first years of the 20th century. A middle-sized ship was sitting at the bottom of the mound, securely anchored. On its deck a small timbered house had been raised. This was the actual grave, final resting place of two women. One was quite young when she died, while the other was older and suffered from arthritis. It has been presumed that one of them must have been a queen and the other her maid, but there is no consensus as to who was who. ‘Queen’ is here to be understood as the king’s wife. No one has suggested that one of the women buried here was herself a ruling queen. The grave furnishings are among the richest ever found in Scandinavia, covering almost any need one could imagine, and of the best quality: a wide variety of tools and farm equipment, household tools, finely carved wagons and sledges, and textiles. Accompanying the two women in the grave were also a number of animals, horses and cattle for pulling wagons and for meat, as well as fruits and other kinds of food. These organic materials were quite well preserved, which made the lack of jewelry and personal ornaments normally found in women’s graves of the period quite conspicuous. There is evidence, however, that the grave has been robbed at an early date. One must assume that this was when the gold and silver disappeared. The excavation, and later publication, of the Oseberg find was undertaken by the very best archaeologists in Norway at the time, and it was a truly monumental task. It was also very important politically, as the investigation coincided with the final emancipation of Norway from an almost hundred years old union with Sweden, Norway’s bigger neighbor to the east. The national importance of the find was immediately realized, in spite of the fact that it was a female grave and ‘…the limitations  The ship burials are exhibited in the Viking Ship Museum in Oslo, Norway.

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Chapter 13 - Liv Helga Dommasnes following from that’ (Grieg 1928, 1, my translation). Thus, and in spite of the fascination with the historical identity of the queen, both scholarly and popular focus with the find has been on the ship itself, on the funeral equipment, and on the fact that the king (!) was affluent enough for the royal household to support such a wide range of outstanding craftsmen and even to create an inspiring environment for them to develop their art. The main impact of the find has been to confirm ideas one might already have had concerning outstanding craftsmanship and statesmanship, and the gendering of such skills. Ship burials have come to be regarded as one of the hallmarks of Viking society, and especially of the ruling elite. Ships and voyages are associated with the Viking expansion, whether it was by means of trade, raids or settlements. It has been stated again and again that the Viking achievement was founded in the shipbuilder’s know-how. The craftsmen were male, and one assumes that men manned the ships as well. In the case of the Oseberg ship, attention has been drawn to the fact that it is quite small, not really a seagoing vessel. It has been suggested that the queen used it for cruising in coastal waters... 3.3 Queen and priestess? Only relatively recently (Ingstad 1982, 1992) did a scholar focus on the women in the grave, asking what did they represent in their own right that could merit such overwhelming burial? Building a line of argument based on literary sources, aspects of the grave furniture as well as motives in the textile fragments – tapestries and embroideries she published for the first time in 1982 - archaeologist Anne Stine Ingstad suggested that both the women buried here had been involved in fertility cult. The queen herself was probably considered to be the incarnation of the fertility goddess Frøya, while her older companion may have been a priestess of the cult. Ingstad’s interpretation is interesting, and in parts convincing. It makes sense that in a society where religion functioned as a direct legitimation of power and a base for the wealth (in the case of fertility cult: everything that lives and grows) that is its basis, positions within the religious system can in themselves be immensely important. In a gender perspective, the important and most lasting impact of Ingstad’s interpretation is that she allows the two women to become subjects in their own lives and burials. 3.4 Alternative interpretations - for whom? This kind of interpretation is necessary to change existing gender bias in Viking and other stories. Unfortunately it does not often reach much further than to the academic community itself. For a re-gendering 268

Small People versus Big Heritage of the past, communication with the public is absolutely necessary. As long as the academic society chooses to stress the tentative, doubtful or (see above) partly convincing character of alternative interpretations, it is also considered wise to keep them out of the way of the general public. Children of course, are especially vulnerable, and should not be subjected to dubious archaeology. This is a valid argument (we all use it from time to time), but it is also a problematic one. It is true that interpretations that do not give the impression of having a one-to-one relationship with the finds, that is in practice interpretations that do not conform to social structures and ideas that we have come to take for granted, sometimes require much more sophistication in the dissemination to the public than do the simple stories that say spear = hunter or ship = sailor, ship and sword = sea warrior, jewelry = rich (man’s) woman. The challenge is to make the children understand, without being confronting or unduly demanding, that the best interpretation is not always the first one would think of. On the other hand, a very simple approach may bring us a long way. When the recipient group is children in particular, simplicity (not simplification) is often necessary. In 1986 I was engaged to write a plan for a Viking Centre (Dommasnes 1987) to attract tourists to one of the West Norwegian fjords. As I realized that the people involved had rather vague ideas about the story they wanted to tell through their centre, I decided to follow my own priorities, highlighting women and also children. The method was simply to place them in the center of exhibitions and events. Since the initiators were definitely not men dedicated to imaginative thinking, I did not theorize on the gender part of my presentation. I decided to just do it, as if it were completely unproblematic. And as such it was received, at least as far as I know. The initiators saw a money-raising potential, and were absolutely delighted.3 The unquestioned acceptance of my feminine-biased story is, by the way, very much in accord with the experience related by Tove Hjørungdal and Linda Lövkvist (2000) in a paper about teaching gender archaeology in Sweden. The most fruitful approach, they found, is to start with everyday questions and the results from gender research. This is a very useful insight, I think, and really quite logical. If everyone else tells of results, and gender researchers only about uncertainties, why should people bother to listen to us? 4. Back to the children …and to the question ‘what do children want from the past’. Stine and Malin, the girls/students who wrote the letter to Bergen Museum, made it very clear that conventional narratives did not meet their need.  For reasons quite unconnected to its gender and age-profile, the center was never built. 3

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Chapter 13 - Liv Helga Dommasnes The two girls based their questions in everyday experiences, and, it seems, in the value systems they detected behind the norms they had learned to behave by. In fact, the letter can be seen as an appeal to us as scholars from someone who was reluctant to accept the past as justification for conditions in the present. In their case the gender system seemed to be under investigation. To me at least, it was both surprising and encouraging that such young girls dare challenge complicated structures conditioning authorized narratives. In addition to gendering, the letter explicitly expresses curiosity about children of the past. Depending on the way one stresses the questions, it can be read as what did children of the past do? And what did girls and boys do in the past? Were they treated differently from each other? It is not at all surprising that children want to know about children. Scholars tend to be less interested. Despite the relatively recent emergence of a subdiscipline within archaeology dedicated to childhood (Lillehammer 1989; Sofaer Derevenski 2000), children’s lot is hardly an arena for acquiring academic prestige. Like women’s archaeology a few decades ago, one must first answer questions about source material. And like women’s, later gender, archaeology, an important part of the answer must be that what is lacking is not sources, but concepts and theoretical framework to realize which they are. As long as one claims that archaeological mediation aimed at children must have a scholarly basis, scholars must engage themselves in the subject matter. Professional mediators cannot adapt into a form adjusted to children knowledge that has not been generated in the first place. Generalizing is always dangerous, but I suspect that if and when children in past societies are made into main characters in mediation projects, their lives are made to seem adventurous and idyllic. The awareness that childhood as a protected period in a person’s early life is a modern invention, is hardly reflected at all in popular archaeology. 4.1 Did girls ever hunt? Unfortunately, we could not give the kind of definitive answers that Stine and Malin wanted about the Stone Age, since most of the research has been in other directions than children and gender. What we could do, however, was to assure the two girls that in our opinion, their question made good sense, and that we, personally, found it reasonable to think that both girls and boys learned how to hunt in an age when that was the way of life. We also promised to tell our colleagues the Stone Age researchers that this was an interesting question. While waiting for specific information on the Stone Age, our argumentation must be based on what we know from more recent times. In Norwegian rural societies young children were sometimes sent away to earn something extra by helping a neighbor. Or they had responsibilities 270

Small People versus Big Heritage at home that brought cash into the household. This was normal well into the last century. A small paper describing life on a marginal farm in Western Norway in the early 1900s (Bjørgo 1977) describes how snaring, then legal and an important source of extra income, was organized within a farm. Catching grouse and woodland birds by trapping has been quite common over large areas. On the very small farm in this case study, it was quite essential in order to feed a family of thirteen children. Since the farmer himself had many tasks to take care of during winter, seeing to the snares every day, and killing the ensnared birds when necessary, was children’s, or rather, boy’s work, starting when they were about ten years old. The skill was taught from father to elder sons, and later from elder to younger boys. Thus, when the elder boys moved away from home, or were old enough to take on even more responsible tasks, there were always some younger brothers trained to take over. The quarry was sold on the market, never consumed at the farm. Girls only occasionally joined in the snaring. When, in the next generation, no boys were born, the snaring ended. So, in this particular 20th century case, girls did not hunt. A more wide-reaching aspect of the gendering is that part of the income from the sale of the fowl remained in the hands of the boys. They used it for schoolbooks, clothes, gifts and, as they grew older, partying. Girls had no similar access to money of their own. 4.2 What did children do? Traditionally, archaeologists looking for children in the past have been looking for dead children, in cemeteries. Alternatively one has tried to identify children’s playthings. The reasoning behind such choice of strategies must be something like child mortality has been very high in past societies. Although many children died in infancy, we must assume that those who survived wanted toys. At best, this is an oversimplification. A letter and a short retrospective view on the recent history has helped us focus in relation to what kind of past children might want to know about. The two central issues raised by young Malin and Stine are what did children do in the past and were girls and boys treated differently? In archaeological terms this could easily be for example how was childhood constructed? and were children gendered? In Scandinavia, and at least from the Middle Ages onwards, much of the work on farms has been quite strictly gendered. Women’s work was indoors, while men worked in the fields, hunted, traded and were the official representatives of their households in the society. Girls were expected to help their mother and learn from her. They were not entirely confined to doing household work, however. Herding was one of the tasks that children of both genders took part in. Following the animals on mountain pastures 271

Chapter 13 - Liv Helga Dommasnes could take children of ten years or less away from home for weeks and weeks. A recent history of this chapter of the Norwegian past (Drabløs 2003) renders an impression of loneliness unheard of to modern people, but also of children learning to cope, and maturing fast. A variation on this theme is dairy farming, the all-European system of bringing animals to a sort of primitive summer farm for grazing during the summer months. Life here was concentrated on the animals and refining of animal products, like making butter and cheese. All over Scandinavia young girls (dairy maids) have been in charge of summer farming, with very little contact with or control from the main household (Lönnquist and Welinder 2005). Child labor, now considered an abomination and taboo in Western societies has in fact been quite normal. One of the most heartbreaking episodes in our recent past, seen from the point of view of children rather than wealthy investors, is early industrialism. Who can ever forget stories and images of (women and) children toiling in manufacturing plants and mines? In the case of children they were employed because they were the only ones small enough to navigate narrow shafts and pits.4 Poor children lived no better than slaves in many European countries. This was long accepted as a fact of life. One need go only a generation back to realize that children in many societies and social strata have had quite extensive duties that must come before play: help in collecting and preparing food, looking after siblings, washing dishes, feeding and herding animals and so on. This help from the younger ones was considered essential to keep the economy going. In less extreme cases, child labor may also have been a way of transmitting knowledge instead of, or in addition to, formal education. During most of the past, formal education has been for the privileged. We also learn that labor has been gendered in ways that transgressed the work situation itself and influenced other spheres of life: boys who worked got money to spend, girls did not. Both boys and girls could engage in important work and take over great responsibilities at an early age, but they were rewarded differently. What did children do? Probably a ‘true’ story about children of the past should be dominated by toil and suffering. As we know, from prehistoric cemeteries, and from recent research, child mortality was high. It is quite reasonable, however, to assume that the ones who survived did chores like everybody else, and have left much the same kind of traces. Children worked. They have also suffered illnesses, been caught and sold into slavery, sacrificed to gods and married away to old friends of their grandfather’s. In fact, the first few years of a person’s life have been hard and risky in most ancient societies. As archaeologists we need to investigate if and how different phe For a short introduction to the topic from a gender point of view, see Comber 1993.

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Small People versus Big Heritage nomena occurred in a given society, time and place. It is well established in research that childhood is not a question of age alone, but of cultural expectations. This is an insight that may well be transmitted to modern children. It highlights the past as a really different cultural environment, and should inspire children to think about themselves in relation to others. Cultural expectations could mean, besides work, for example child marriages. We know for a fact that in Viking society, marriages were arranged when the children, most often girls, were still very young. If we understand the literary sources, Icelandic family sagas written in the 13th century A.D., right, no girl should be forced by her father to marry. But there are things like expectations… To girls, marriage always meant moving away from home. If you belonged to the aristocracy, you would perhaps travel halfway across Europe to make your home with a husband you had never set eyes on. This is so foreign to us that we find it almost impossible to incorporate in our understandings of the past, even when the tradition is well known and often referred to, as in the case of princess and heir to the Norwegian throne Ingrid Alexandra who was born on January 21, 2004. She is named after a number of old Norse and Medieval queens called Ingrid. One of them was Ingrid Ragnvaldsdottir, born shortly after 1100. She was first married at the age of eleven, and gave birth to her first son when she was fifteen. The only ruling queen in Norwegian history, Margaret (1353–1412) also was married at the age of fifteen. No such destiny awaits the present heir. 4.3 Children’s impact on history There is no reason to think that ordinary children were allowed longer childhoods, although the forms and criteria for entering the adult world may have varied (Fig. 3). Leaving your family at an early age is a central theme, whether the cause was work or marriage to a prince. As in later times, it could also be institutionalized as part of the educational system. Old Norse sagas tell many stories about young boys in particular who were sent abroad to foreign noblemen for fostering. Simply put, they were sent away to learn skills and manners necessary to move comfortably among their peers, and would sometimes stay away for years. When returning home as well educated young men and women, they might have made the foreign customs, material culture and value systems their own. This kind of institutionalized mobility among children and very young people is probably an underestimated source of the changes and irregularities in material culture that archaeologists observe. In the case of telling children about the past, the message is twofold: what did it feel like, to go away at a young age? And, by going away to marry and to learn, children became instruments of cultural change! They were the ones who taught their home customs in a new environment, 273

Chapter 13 - Liv Helga Dommasnes before they returned across borders, with new skills, customs and languages to pass on. This is one of the issues that makes the archaeology of children fundamentally important for understanding society and processes of change. The re-conceptualization and re-search of children’s lives and agency can change fundamentally our views on the past in general. It is definitely not for children only. 5. Telling children about the past… The examples above illustrate that childhood in the Viking Age was gendered in the sense that it was a preparation for the gendered life of adults. What archaeology can do in relation to our children is to illustrate how different this gendering has been at different times and places. By giving actual examples the message is conveyed that neither gendering nor its content are necessities, but cultural choices that can be changed. Again using Norwegian history as an example, ideological differences between the old Norse religion and the Roman catholic Christianity that was formally adopted in the Middle Ages, had great consequences for the lives of women and for the relations between women and men, girl children and boy children. One ruling was above gender, however: the Christian church did not allow for the custom of putting unwanted children away

Fig. 3. This scene, set in a Scandinavian Bronze Age environment, emphasizes the traveling activities of the upper classes of this society. Are we perhaps witnessing a powerful man’s envoy coming to ask for this child’s hand in marriage? From Dreyer 1900. 274

Small People versus Big Heritage in the forest to die. In old Norse society, making that decision had been the father’s prerogative. From now on it was punishable by death. My concern in this paper has been with children in the upper age range. It is important to bear in mind that children is not a homogenous group. Childhood through the early teens is a period of rapid development. Stories suitable for the youngest will be insults to the oldest children, and they need to be told in different ways as well. Regardless of age, however, it is my opinion that telling children about the past is not primarily a question of techniques, of how to tell children about the past. Most of all it is a question of which past we select for our narratives, whose past, and the ideological, always value laden setting it is placed in. Thus the past also becomes a way to illustrate many facets of ‘truth’ as we can know it. We cannot have, and do not want, value-less narratives. As scholars we owe to our audiences to make them aware of that fact, and to empower each and every one of the young ones in the audience to make wise judgments in their understandings of the stories rendered. Only in such a way can the heritage be made manageable. References Bjørgo, T. 1977 ‘Snarefangst som attåtnæring’ Årbok for Norsk Skogbruks­ museum 1976/77: 113–30. Comber, J. 1993 ‘The background and significance of the cover image’ in H. Du Cros and L. Smith (eds.) Women in Archaeology. A Feminist Critique (Occasional Papers in Prehistory No. 23): xxi–xxiii. Canberra: The Australian National University, Department of Prehistory. A. E. Christensen, A. S., Ingstad and B., Myhre 1992 Osebergdronningens Grav. Vår Arkeologiske Nasjonalskatt i Nytt Lys. Oslo: Schibsted. Drabløs, D. 2003 Gjetartradisjonar i Noreg. Hoevik: Kolofon. Dommasnes, L. H. 1982 ‘Late Iron Age in Western Norway. Female roles and ranks as deduced from an analysis of burial customs’ Norwegian Archaeological Review 15 (1–2): 70–85. Dommasnes, L. H. 1987 ‘Sognefjord Vikingsenter. Formidling om forhistorie’ Arkeo­ logiske Rapporter 11. Historisk Museum: Bergen. Dommasnes, L. H. 1998 ‘Women, kinship and the basis of power in the Norwegian Viking Age’ in K. Hays-Gilpin and D.S. Whitley (eds.) Reader in Gender Archaeology: 337–49. London and New York: Routledge. 275

Chapter 13 - Liv Helga Dommasnes Dreyer, W. 1900 Nordens Oldtid. Kristiania: Det nordiske forlag. Grieg, S. 1928 ‘Kongsgaarden’ in A. W. Brøgger and H. Shetelig (eds.) Oseberg­ fundet II:1–286. Oslo: Den norske stat. Hjørungdal, T. and Løvkvist, L. 2000 Voices from an educational world. Some issues of genderconscious teaching and learning’ Current Swedish Archaeology 8: 157–79. Ingstad, A. S. 1982 ‘Osebergdronningen – hvem var hun?’ Viking XLV: 49–65. Ingstad, A. S. 1992 ‘Tekstilene i Osebergskipet’ in A. E. Christensen, A. S., Ingstad and B., Myhre Osebergdronningens Grav. Vår Arkeologiske Nasjonalskatt i Nytt Lys: 176–258. Oslo: Schibsted. Lillehammer, G. 1989 ‘A child is born’ Norwegian Archaeological Review 22 (2): 89–105. 1994 ‘Forvaltning i et feministisk perspektiv’ K.A.N. Kvinner i Arkeologi i Norge 17–18: 136–74. Lönnquist, U. and S. Welinder 2005 ‘The archaeology of complex feelings’ K.A.N. Kvinner i Arkeologi i Norge 25: 36–51. Sofaer Derevenski, J. (ed.) 2000 Children and Material Culture. London and New York: Routledge. Stalsberg, A. 1987 ‘The implications of the women’s finds for the understanding of the activities of the Scandinavians in Rus´ during the Viking Age’ K.A.N. Kvinner i Arkeologi i Norge 5: 33–50. Soerensen, Oe. (ed.) 1998 Jakten på det norske: perspektiver på utviklingen av en norsk nasjonal identitet på 1800-tallet. Oslo: Ad notam Gyldendal. Trigger, B. 1989 A History of Archaeological Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Chapter 14 Landscapes and Winter Counts: Lakota Ways of Telling Children About the Past Craig Howe 1. Introduction On a bitter cold winter solstice morning a rider swings into her saddle on the snow swept landscape through which her ancestors—children, women and men, on horseback and on foot—eluded mounted U.S. cavalry over 100 years earlier in their quest to reach Pine Ridge agency, the home of Red Cloud, chief of the Oglalas. She has been re-tracing their route for a week and her journey will end at the same place and on the same day as theirs did—Wounded Knee, December 29th. Half way through her journey on the shortest day of the year, she and the other Big Foot Memorial Riders are learning about the past and the present in order to improve their futures and the future of the Lakota people. In so doing, they are not merely following the footsteps of their ancestors. They are continuing the Lakota tradition of using important events to teach both Lakota history and the values and beliefs that those events represent, a tradition that encourages individuals to learn their community’s past and to live their lives as good Lakotas. “I know that some of you didn’t get breakfast today,” shouts Ron His Horse Is Thunder, 46, one of the principle organizers [of the Big Foot Memorial Ride]. “Well, that’s a good thing, because when our relatives left this camp, they had no food. They were hungry. They were frightened. And they were running away from men who were trying to kill them. This morning, I want you to feel the pain of those people, because they are your ancestors and because the courage they displayed will inspire and sustain each of you as you confront the challenges of your future.” (Fedarko 2004, online) The ancestors of His Horse Is Thunder probably did not know how tragically soon their futures would be cut short when they broke camp that morning in 1890. Within eight days most of them would be massacred by U.S. cavalry at a place now called Wounded Knee. 277

Chapter 14 - Craig Howe 2. Lakota history and identity Events are centrally situated in Lakota identity. The narratives associated with them constitute a corpus of the Lakota oral tradition that, according to Michael Dorris, is “the cornerstone of every tribal society” and is “the vehicle through which wisdom is passed from one generation to the next and by which sense is made of a confusing world. It is responsible in large part for the education, entertainment, and inspiration of the community” (Dorris 1979, 156–57). Seen as such, oral traditions make the world understandable by focusing on events that are important within the cultural contexts of tribal communities. For most Native Americans time is marked by events, and these events are more than the temporary surface disturbances that French social historians disdainfully dismiss. Occurrences that take place in myths, in folk narratives, and in native historical traditions are often what I term epitomizing events. Epitomizing events bring several forces together in dramatic combination; they condense various subtle changes into a single transformative act. Whether such events actually took place or not is immaterial; they are explanatory mnemonics of the mind and emotional engrams of the heart and, as such, are ‘real’ for members of the culture. (Fogelson 1984, 84) Communities, then, made sense of their worlds by recounting events that in some fundamental sense related them to their surroundings—to other humans, to plants and animals, to landmarks and constellations. Such narratives recognized and reinforced webs of relationships that connected all entities of a community’s spatial domain, and then related that domain to the cosmos. This relatedness is evident in the kinship system that is the foundation of Lakota society and culture. The basic Lakota social unit is the tiyospaye, or extended family, that consists of a number of closely related individuals. Tiyospayes with a shared history and collective identity constitute a tribe. There are seven tribes1 within the Lakota nation, which in turn is one of seven nations that comprise the Oceti Sakowin, or Seven Council Fires, confederacy. This confederacy is organized into three divisions.2 The Isanti divi  In order of precedence, their names are Oglala, Mnikonju, Sicangu, Oohenumpa, Itazipco, Sihasapa, and Hunkpapa. 2  The word Sioux does not exist in the language of these nations and is, in fact, a French contraction of a term in the Ojibway language that means “little enemy.” The Ojibway people are traditional enemies of the Oceti Sakowin. Ojibways called the Haudennsaune people who lived east of them “big enemy” and the Oceti Sakowin people naddoasaouke, or little enemy. The ending syllable of that term was used by Frenchmen in the seventeenth century to refer to the Oceti Sakowin peoples and it is still widely used today. 1

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…Lakota Ways of Telling Children about the Past sion is comprised of four nations (Mdewakantonwan, Wahpekute, Wahpetonwan and Sisitonwan), the Wiciyela division is comprised of two nations (Ihanktonwan and Ihanktonwanna), and the Titon division is comprised of the Lakota nation. These divisions are geographically and linguistically differentiated. Isantis occupy the eastern portion of Oceti Sakowin lands and speak the Dakota dialect. Wiciyelas are centrally located and speak the Nakota dialect whereas Titons occupy the western portion of Oceti Sakowin lands and speak the Lakota dialect. Lakotas are differentiated from the other six Oceti Sakowin nations by an event that occurred maybe 19 generations ago. At that time the Itazipco Lakota tribe was visited by a mysterious woman, later named White Buffalo Calf Woman, who said she was the daughter of the Sun and the Moon and that she was sent by the Buffalo people to give them something very important on behalf of all Lakotas. Addressing the chief as her older brother, the men as her brothers, the women as her sisters, and the children as her nieces and nephews, she gave them a sacred pipe, instructed them in its use, taught them a new ceremony, and informed them that in the future six other ceremonies would be revealed to them by the spirits.3 The pipe and the ceremonies established a unique, ongoing relationship between Lakotas and their spirits, a relationship that distinguishes Lakotas from all other peoples, Native and non-Native. The gift of the sacred pipe is—in Fogelson’s terminology—an epitomizing event in Lakota history. That event was later recorded in pictographic form, most memorably by a Lakota man named Brown Hat, or Battiste Good. In his drawing, the central image is a side view of a white buffalo with a pipe above it’s back. 3. Winter counts During the 17th century, Lakotas were one of a handful of peoples who developed unique documents that organized drawings of important events as a method of recording their history. Those documents are called waniyetu iyawapi, or winter counts. In the Lakota language, waniyetu means both the winter season and a year. Each winter, the elder men in a tiyospaye would get together and discuss the significant events that had occurred since the previous winter. After deliberating about the importance of the events to the values and concerns of the tiyospaye, they chose one as the name for that year and charged the winter count keeper   According to Black Elk, Lakotas were already practicing two of the ceremonies by the time White Buffalo Calf Woman arrived. Her visitation resulted in those ceremonies being recognized as two of the seven sacred rites. And because she informed them that the four remaining ceremonies were to be revealed in the future, the relationship between Lakotas and their spirits that she established would be on-going for the foreseeable future.

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Chapter 14 - Craig Howe with creating a pictograph, or glyph, to symbolize that event and drawing it on a tanned animal skin to accompany existing glyphs that he or former winter count keepers had created for previous years. That keeper, an individual respected for his wisdom and artistic abilities, was also charged with remembering the name of that year and the narrative account of the event. By this method, winter counts established a chronology of community-specific events that enabled tiyospaye members to organize, remember, and recount stories of their past. At appropriate times, a winter count keeper would unwrap the document and invite tiyospaye members to listen as he recounted the stories of the events represented by the drawings. According to Standing Bear (1933, 27), “these stories were the libraries of our people. In each story there was recorded some event of interest or importance, some happening that affected the lives of the people…But not all our stories were historical. Some taught the virtues—kindness, obedience, thrift, and the rewards of right living.” Beginning with one pictograph and its related story, the winter count keeper would then jump to other pictographs and their stories, weaving together a unique discourse that incorporated the values of the tiyospaye and responded to its situational circumstances at that time. The winter count keeper tailored his performance to the “education, entertainment, and inspiration” of his tiyospaye, drawing on events that his kin had chosen as important. The earliest winter counts were drawn on animal hides with their glyphs spiraling out from the center in a right-to-left sequence. During the early reservation period that bridged the 19th and 20th centuries, some winter counts were organized with inward-spiraling glyphs while others completely abandoned the traditional circular organization and replaced it with successive lines of glyphs that are read from the upper-left to bottom-right like written English words on a page. A common explanation for these changes is that they reflect the Lakotas’ growing access to printed materials and the rise of Lakota literacy. However, they may also have been a strategy employed by winter count keepers to make their work more accessible to non-Lakotas. As time passed, many winter counts were drawn on muslin instead of animal hides, a change that was made necessary by the Lakotas’ ever-decreasing access to buffalo, elk, and deer once they were confined to reservations. Some winter count keepers also began recording their histories in store-bought ledgers, journals, and notebooks, drawing glyphs on one side of the page and giving a brief description of the event in Lakota next to it. Winter counts established a chronology of community-specific meaningful events that are unique to each Lakota tiyospaye. The recorded and marked events are those that community members experienced and that they considered important to their sense of identity as a community, 280

…Lakota Ways of Telling Children about the Past thereby differentiating them socially and historically from other tiyospayes. Some of those events, however, such as eclipses, meteor showers, and falling stars or comets, were simultaneously experienced by other tiyospayes.. For example, in the early morning hours of November 12, 1833, the Leonid meteor shower put on a fantastic display that was experienced by at least some members of every Lakota tiyospaye. And not surprisingly, nearly all Lakota winter counts mark that year—1833—with that event. The Leonid meteor shower thus bridges the uniqueness of each tiyospaye’s winter count, serving as a common reference for comparing and aligning them temporally. Star stories also bridge the territories of the tiyospayes. For instance, Lakota tiyospayes share the stories of Wicahpi Hinhpaya, Fallen Star. Fallen Star’s father, Waziya Wicahpi, was the North Star of the sky people whereas his mother was a Lakota named Tapun Sawin. When they married, Waziya Wicahpi took Tapun Sawin into the sky where they lived until just before she gave birth to Fallen Star, at which time she broke the taboo against using her digging stick and fell to the earth through a hole she dug. The fall killed her, but her newborn son survived and was raised by Lakotas. When he became a man, he returned to his father’s people and from near the Milky Way watches over his mother’s people, the Lakotas. He is their guardian against the hazards of nature and teaches them medicinal uses of plants. One time, according to an old story, he heard the cries of some girls who were surrounded by angry bears. He instructed them to stand on a small knoll that suddenly began to grow into a giant pinnacle. As the rock tower grew skyward, the bears clawed all around its sides, leaving deep grooves that are still visible today, and great slabs splintered and crashed down on the bears, killing them. After the danger had passed, Fallen Star instructed a flock of birds to carry the little girls back to their families on the ground. Lakotas named that landmark Mato Tipila. It is otherwise known as Devil’s Tower and is located in the northeastern corner of the present-day state of Wyoming, USA. According to some accounts, Mato Tipila also is the place where a man was given a vision of the sun dance that he subsequently taught to the Lakota people. The sun dance, of course, was one of the seven sacred rites that White Buffalo Calf Woman foretold when she presented the Lakota people with the sacred pipe. 4. Drawing, land and memory In their Old World before they saw a need to write down their language, Lakotas could only have recorded the gift of the sacred pipe in memory (Bauer chapter 1) and in drawing (Costall and Richards chapter 3). The rescue of the little girls by Fallen Star, however, represents an event that was recorded in the land itself. The Lakota landscape is a canvas upon which the entire and ongoing history of the people is recorded. It encom281

Chapter 14 - Craig Howe passes the remembered places where important events occurred. These event locations are pedagogical sites where elders taught and teach the children not only about the events themselves but also about the values and beliefs that those events represent. Such sites are powerful places for instructing children—through the recounting of events that happened there—about Lakota values and how to live their lives as good Lakotas. A creative storyteller at Mato Tipila, for instance, might begin a linked series of event stories with: 1) the sun dance being taught to a Lakota man at that location, 2) the sun dance being one of seven sacred ceremonies foretold by White Buffalo Calf Woman when she brought the sacred pipe, 3) how her visitation established kinship relations between Lakotas and their spirits, 4) the marriage of Tapun Sawin and Waziya Wicahpi and the birth of Fallen Star, and 5) Fallen Star’s rescue of the little girls at Mato Tipila. Or a winter count keeper might choose the Leonid meteor shower glyph as a starting point for a series of linked stories about events that would begin with the meteor shower in 1833 and end with the gift of the sacred pipe. The possible linked events in such a series would be: 1) the meteor shower, 2) Fallen Star’s rescue of the little girls at Mato Tipila, 3) the vision of the sun dance received there, and 4) White Buffalo Calf Woman’s foretelling of the seven sacred ceremonies when she brought the sacred pipe. The number of permutations of these linked, event-centered narratives is limited only by the capacity of the storytellers to recall events and to establish links between them. Specific geographic locations are spatially distributed mnemonic formations that helped Lakotas organize, remember and recall stories about events that occurred at them. Similarly, event glyphs are temporally arranged mnemonic drawings that served the same purpose. An organized set of event glyphs constituted a winter count whereas a remembered set of event locations constituted a landscape. Landscapes and winter counts, then, are event-centered spatial and temporal devices for telling about the Lakota past and about Lakota values and beliefs. 5. Event-centered histories “A lot of these children don’t know their culture, and this is an important learning experience for them”, says Melvina Winters, 57, one of the supporters, whose two grandsons—Wesley, 10, and Silas, 12—participate in the ride. “It brings their self-esteem up by helping them realize who they are and where they came from. They can learn that something better will come out of the past.” (Fedarko 2004, online) The Big Foot Memorial Ride is a pedagogical approach to teaching about the Lakota past that is conducted outside of the classroom. It draws on the landscape and the experience of traveling across it to imbue par282

…Lakota Ways of Telling Children about the Past ticipants with narrative accounts and emotional feelings of a memorable historical event. This approach has a long legacy and many Lakotas have a renewed interest in utilizing it to teach their children about the past. Similarly, Lakota winter counts are increasingly being drawn upon as an indigenous method of teaching about the past. But whereas the Big Foot Memorial Ride is an educational experience that takes place beyond the halls and walls of school buildings, winter counts are easily incorporated into classrooms. The South Dakota State Historical Society, for instance, created a curriculum unit organized around the Lone Dog winter count that is available online [http://www.sdhistory.org/mus/ed/ed%20buff18.html]. It includes a reproducible image of the winter count and a list of the names and years associated with each event glyph. And the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History launched an interactive Lakota Winter Counts website in 2005, that has many potential applications in classrooms [http://wintercounts.si.edu/]. It includes eight digitized winter counts whose event glyphs are linearly arranged, temporally aligned and thematically coded. These are just two sources of curriculum materials related to Lakota winter counts that are easily accessible to classroom teachers. Both sources deal strictly with Lakota history. Though the event-centered structure of winter counts may be quintessentially Lakota, it can be applied to learning about the pasts of other peoples. Moreover, the event-centered approach to tribal histories can be used to learn about the past of a particular geographical place. Such spatial histories might incorporate ‘memorable’ events that can only be discerned using geological or archaeological techniques. For instance, the earth holds evidence of natural disasters such as floods, fires and earthquakes that occurred at a particular place long before the presence of humans. It also holds evidence suggesting the appearance and disappearance of plant and animal species, as well as human cultures. Though these events cannot be dated with the precision of the November 12th, 1833 Leonid meteor shower, it is possible to arrange them in the likely sequence that they occurred, from long ago up to the present day. Such spatial histories are best centered at a distinct geographical location, like the confluence, headwaters, or mouth of a river, or any unique geographical feature such as a butte or mountain, a freshwater spring or a lake. These discrete features are the centers of larger geographical areas that stretch outward 40-50 kilometers and that demarcate the spatial extent of these histories. Only events that occurred within that defined area can be included in the history of that place. An event-centered approach to learning about the past, then, can be used for a community of people, such as Lakotas, or a geographical place, such as the immediate area surrounding Devil’s Tower. In the former instance, there are no temporal or spatial limitations on events. The only criterion is that at least some members of that community experienced each 283

Chapter 14 - Craig Howe of the events. In the case of a spatial history, however, the only criterion is that an event occurred within the defined geographical area, regardless of when it happened or who participated. In fact, it is not even necessary that humans were present. 6. Teaching children about the past Pre-packaged curriculum materials, even those that are organized around event-centered histories, do not necessarily encourage innovative classroom pedagogy. In writing about his traditional upbringing, Dakota physician Charles Eastman recalled that his uncle would often send him out alone into the woods to learn about the environment. When he returned home later in the day, Eastman would report back to his uncle what he saw and was then encouraged to guess the names of birds based on his observations. Incredibly, he would sometimes guess the correct Dakota name. Similarly, White Bull recorded that his Lakota father and uncles instructed him to “study everything you see, look it over carefully and try to understand it” (Vestal 1934, 8). White Bull’s and Eastman’s accounts suggest that their traditional way of learning incorporated hands-on experiences and the development of critical thinking skills. They were not passive learners. But the typical lecture format of classroom teaching does not promote active engagement in course content by students. This and similar teaching methodologies that “emphasiz[e] the role of teacher as presenter of knowledge” (Kraft 1985, 153) encourages teachers—not students—to develop their reading, writing, and presentation skills. Group-inquiry classrooms, on the other hand, are student-centered instead of teacherdominated. In such classrooms, “the students conduct the class. They read, inquire, write, work together, and present orally. They simply take over. And they do it in every class meeting, in a structured series of activities defined and organized by a teacher who acts as a kind of chief executive officer” (Kraft 1985, 151). Kraft’s student-centered approach is closely related to the third of Loewen’s five suggestions for teachers seeking to improve the learning of students in their American history courses. The first is to “introduce fewer topics and examine them more thoroughly” (Loewen 1995, 309). Second, delve into historical controversies where there is no one right answer or position. Third, facilitate independent learning. Fourth, encourage the hands-on experience of doing history and creating knowledge. And fifth, teach history “backwards from the present” so that students see a connection between the present and the past. For the past 16 years, I have been using an approach to teaching about the past that incorporates Loewen’s suggestions and Kraft’s groupinquiry process. The group-inquiry aspect of these college courses consists of students writing responses to team-specific questions based on a set 284

…Lakota Ways of Telling Children about the Past of shared readings. They then read their responses aloud to their teammates during class. After its members have read their statements to one another, each team formulates a collective response to its question that is read aloud to the entire class and then debated and discussed. Afterwards, students revise their answers and hand them in for comments and a grade. They may rewrite assignments for my comments, editorial suggestions and re-grade as many times as they wish up to a specified deadline. This is a tested method that enhances the creative and critical thinking, the writing, and the speaking skills of students. Crosscutting the teams are what I call ‘task groups’. All teams have the same number of students and a corresponding number of tasks. So if there are five teams of four students, then there are four task groups, each comprised of one student from each of the teams. The members of a task group are responsible for conducting research related to a narrowly defined aspect of the course topic that relates to what his or her team is studying. In an American Indian history course, for instance, each team draws on its extensive research to present and discuss an event-centered history of a selected tribe. Thus students, instead of the teachers, assume the roles of decision makers and discussion leaders; they work in teams to thoroughly study the past of specific tribes, and they conduct focused research in task groups that facilitates the identification and understanding of tribally specific events. And at the conclusion of each course, the individual task research reports are organized into team documents that are then compiled into a class booklet that represents the collective efforts of all the students. Student work in these courses is cumulative, ongoing, and process oriented. Students work on projects simultaneously as individuals, as teams, as task groups, and collectively as a class. Creativity and independent action is encouraged, but there are established guidelines, such as attendance, project requirements and due dates that students must follow in order to avoid a substantial grade penalty. These strictly enforced guidelines promote an orderly progression to their work, and a fair, even and public basis for evaluation. Based on this experience, along with feedback from primary and secondary school teachers who attended workshops on teaching with winter counts that I conducted in Saskatoon, Canada in 2005, I believe that children will respond positively to an event-centered and group-inquiry approach to learning about the past (see Fivush chapter 2). As mentioned earlier, there are two basic event-centered histories: one centered at a particular place and the other based on a specific tribe or community. Developing these histories involves a lot of work. So, depending on the age of their students and the length of their courses, some teachers may decide to focus on studying particular events instead of developing complete spatial or tribal histories. The following paragraphs, therefore, outline an approach to studying current events through the creation of winter 285

Chapter 14 - Craig Howe counts. It suggests a creative way for children to learn about their recent pasts and maps out a methodology that teachers can use to teach about the multitude of pasts that are far removed spatially and culturally from Lakotas. The first decision a teacher must make is how many students will comprise a team. Though George Miller’s influential article ‘The Magical Number Seven Plus or Minus Two’ originally published in 1956, did not investigate the size of teams, we might infer from it that 5-9 members would be the optimum number. Anecdotal evidence and personal experience, however, suggests that groups of four to seven individuals are most productive. Teams of three can sometimes result in two of the individuals ganging up on the other. And teams of more than seven are unwieldy. My experience is that the most productive team size is usually four individuals. The total number of students in a class, however, might determine the team size since the optimum condition is for all teams to have the same number of members. So a class of 15 students, for example, might be organized into five teams of three, or three teams of five. It could also be organized into three teams of four and one team of three. The next decision is the temporal frequency of events. Will the chosen events represent a week, a month, a year, or some other period of time? If the chosen time period is a month or longer, then the teacher almost certainly will have to develop a pre-selected list of events from which teams would choose. For instance, if the represented time period is to be a month, then the teacher would select events that occurred the preceding year, preferably at least two for each month. On the other hand, if the represented time period is to be a year, then the teacher would select at least two events for each year of the past decade. The reason to have multiple events for each time period is to provide an opportunity for teams to make decisions, to exercise some degree of autonomy or self-determination. However, if the temporal frequency is to be a week, then it is easier for the students, instead of the teacher, to identify and select events. On a weekly basis throughout the school year, each team would select an event to be representative of the preceding week. This would be in many ways quite similar to the traditional tiyospaye process of selecting events. The team, of course, would be selecting events on a weekly basis whereas tiyospayes selected events annually. But in a classroom setting, a weekly frequency may be best for modeling the ongoing and cumulative nature of winter counts. Closely related to the decisions of team size and event frequency are the research assignments of the task groups. Let’s assume that the event frequency is a week and that there are four students on a team. Therefore, every week each team will select an event that occurred the previous week to represent that week, similarly to how a tiyospaye selected an event that occurred the preceding year to represent that year. 286

…Lakota Ways of Telling Children about the Past Once a team selects an event, then team members undertake their task assignments to research and record the event. A tried and tested set of task groups include 1) spatial, 2) social and 3) historical. The spatial task is to research the place where the event happened. Assignments might include obtaining a map of the event location, or a series of maps that ‘zoom in’ on that place, photos of the event location at the time of the event but also in the past, and a list of other events, if any, that happened there. The spatial task is to describe the event location and to research the history of that place. The social task is to research the key individuals and groups that participated in the event. Assignments might include writing brief biographies of those individuals and short synopses of the groups, and obtaining photos of the key participants. The social task is to identify and research the key participants in the event. The historical task is to research accounts of the event. Assignments might include obtaining primary and secondary accounts of the event, and writing a brief synopsis of what happened. The historical task is to compile accounts of the event in a variety of media, including print, audio and video. The fourth task required for this winter count project is to create an image or glyph that represents the event. Assignments might include developing a number of images for teammates to choose from, writing a brief explanation of each, drawing the selected image onto the winter count, and presenting an oral performance describing the event and linking it to other events chosen by her or his team. The performative task is to depict the event in a graphic and dramatic form. These task group assignments are merely suggestive. Teachers certainly should tailor the tasks groups and assignments to the course topic and the class level that they are teaching. It is usually preferred that the task assignments be somewhat equivalent in the amount of time required to complete them. But in this case it is not imperative since team members will rotate to a different task group every week. In other words, every four weeks each team member will have cycled through the four task groups. The task group assignments, the event frequency, and the team size should be determined before a winter count course is started. Then after the teams are established, each must make some decisions regarding its winter count. First, team members have to decide how to arrange its event glyphs. The choices include, but are not limited to, a spiral or linear format, left-to-right or right-to-left sequence, and top-to-bottom or viceversa organization. Teams also determine if their glyphs will consistently exhibit left, frontal, or right orientation, or some combination of these. Furthermore, each team might also be instructed to establish its own set of values and beliefs that it will seek to enhance through the selection of events. 287

Chapter 14 - Craig Howe Every week each team chooses an event to represent the preceding week. Criteria for the selection of an event usually includes that it have a definite date and place of occurrence, that it not be recurring, and that it somehow be related to the values and beliefs of the team. After a team has identified a list of eligible events, team members discuss them and choose one. They then begin working on their task assignments. Task groups could meet to compare and share resources and techniques related to their assignments. Such meetings crosscut the teams and provide an opportunity for team members to interact with members of other teams. Teams, however, meet to review and edit the task assignments related to their events. At the end of each week, the student who has the performative task assignment presents an oral performance describing the event and relating it to the values and beliefs of his or her team. After a few weeks, this performance can incorporate references to existing glyphs on the winter count and to the events they represent. Each team organizes the task assignments related to a selected event into a packet. At the end of the course, these packets are compiled into a document that constitutes a team winter count booklet. In addition to this team and task work, students also complete individual assignments and a class-wide project. Individual assignments might include journaling and writing periodic essays related to the class. And the major class-wide project is a document comprised of the team winter counts and winter count booklets. It is a compilation that exceeds what any student could have accomplished individually. A course that is organized along the preceding paragraphs addresses many of the concerns of Kraft (1985) and Loewen (1995). The teams and task groups are based on the group-inquiry approach to learning. And the event-centered approach enables students to examine those few events in depth. With some encouragement, the teams hopefully would consider controversial events and thereby grapple with the indeterminate nature of right and wrong. Students have ample opportunities for independent learning, and the team winter counts and winter counts booklet, as well as the class-wide composite booklet, provide tangible reminders of the knowledge they created. Finally, by focusing on events in the very near past, the course certainly facilitates efforts to teach “backwards from the present.” 7. Conclusion “I really didn’t want to go at first”, says Melanie (Kuntz, 14, from Bismarck, ND). “But it was really interesting to be a part of it, to talk to the older people who know the history of this place. They told me that all our ancestors were watching as we rode through the hills—and you know, I truly felt it. Now I’m really interested in learning more about my heritage. And I feel like maybe I can 288

…Lakota Ways of Telling Children about the Past do a lot more things with my life than what I thought before.” (Fedarko 2004, online) The conceptual foundation of an event-centered approach to teaching and learning about the past is based in large part on a Lakota way of recording, remembering and recounting the past. It also responds to the shortcomings of traditional history education identified by Loewen and other researchers. There is a natural resistance from teachers and students to new or different ways of teaching and learning. But research continues to suggest that “history is the only field in which the more courses students take, the stupider they become” (Loewen 1995, 2). So if we wish for our children to know history and become smarter members of society, then it is important that we, as teachers, seriously consider the way we organize our classrooms and interact with students. Not only for the good of society, but just as importantly, for the sake of our children.

References Dorris, M. 1979 ‘Native American Literature in an Ethnohistorical Context’ College English 41(2), (October): 147–62. Fedarko, K. 2004 ‘This Ride is About Our Future’ Parade Magazine (May 16), http://www.parade.com/articles/editions/2004/edition_05-162004/featured_0 (consulted November 2005). Fogelson, R. 1984 ‘Night Thoughts on Native American Social History’ in The Impact of Indian History on the Teaching of U.S. History (Occasional Papers in the Curriculum Series 3): 67–89. Chicago: D’Arcy McNickle Center for American Indian History, Newberry Library. Kraft, R. G. 1985 ‘Group-Inquiry Turns Passive Students Active’ College Teaching 33(4) (Fall): 149–54. Loewen, J. W. 1995 Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong. New York: The New Press. Miller, G. 1956 ‘The Magical Number Seven Plus or Minus Two’ The Psychological Review 63: 81–97, Standing Bear, L. 1933 Land of the Spotted Eagle. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. 289

Chapter 14 - Craig Howe Vestal, S. 1934 Warpath: The True Story of the Fighting Sioux Told in a Biography of Chief White Bull. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

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Chapter 15 Telling Children About the Past in Brazil Ana Piñón and Pedro Funari 1. Introduction In this chapter we will highlight Brazilian government policy initiatives in two distinct, yet closely interrelated spheres. The first involves legislative reforms concerning archeological heritage. Second is educational policy relating to heritage at the elementary level of formal education, which is mandatory for Brazilians between the ages of 7 and 16 under current legislation. We begin by summarizing the history of archeological heritage as a concept in Brazil, where different laws reflected ideological changes in society throughout the twentieth century. This historical synthesis seeks to present the Brazilian context to foreign readers, so that they may better understand the course of subsequent analysis. We then examine the present state of heritage education in Brazil. We seek to diagnose the capacity of Brazilian public education to convey both the concept of heritage and its concrete expression, namely examples of heritage, to future citizens. In order to achieve this objective, we present the results of a survey1 conducted with students in various cities throughout the country. We then turn our attention to the principal resource used in formal education: textbooks. This analysis seeks to develop one of several possible explanations for the characteristics of heritage knowledge collected from students involved in the survey. It also seeks to reflect the discrepancies between the concept of heritage actually being conveyed to future generations on the one hand, and what Brazilian society defines as ‘its heritage’ on the other. Hence the importance of the synthesis presented at the beginning of this paper on heritage legislation, as this is the sphere in which that same concept is given clear and definite expression. Although this chapter will deal exclusively with cultural heritage, it is crucial that readers bear in mind the reality of social hierarchy in  The survey is part of the unpublished doctoral thesis of Ana Piñón, registered in the Department of Prehistory of the Complutense University of Madrid, Spain and directed by Pedro P. A. Funari and Gonzalo Ruiz Zapatero.

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Chapter 15 - Ana Piñón and Pedro Funari Brazil, since archeology as an activity and science is a product of that reality. That is, hierarchical order based on ethnic criteria has imposed a structure that has defined tangible dimensions of Brazilian society such as education, legislation and institutions. 2. Historical and legislative background The history and main subjects of archeological resource management in Brazil must be understood within the context of the country’s complex geography and historical development. Brazil is a large country, with a land area of 8,511,965 km2 and an Atlantic coastline spanning 7,408 km. In the north is the heavily wooded Amazon Basin, covering half the country; the northeast region is semi-arid scrubland; a large savannah or serrado area stretches to the south; and semi-tropical vegetation grows from São Paulo State in the south up to the Pampa in Rio Grande do Sul State. The country witnessed more than three hundred years of absolutist Portuguese rule, its inhabitants being vassals rather than citizens in a rigid hierarchical system. Independence in 1822 perpetuated this system through the continuation of dynastic rule up to 1889; the aggiornamento of the republic did not change the arcana of social power: people in power rule, others obey, as privilege and patronage were pervasive. Following the first period of republican rule, subsequent regimes did little to modify the hierarchical social order. That is, from the beginning of European colonization until quite recent times, Brazilian social order assigned the white ethnic group a position of privilege, while the indigenous and black ethnic groups occupied a position of inferiority and subordination. The abolition of slavery in Brazil in 1888 led to a long process of economic change, culminating in the consolidation of the capitalist system throughout the country. The capitalist system establishes its own hierarchical order, placing those who possess the most capital at its apex and those with the least at its base. In the case of Brazil, even though capitalist order was not based on ethnic criteria, until recent times the system served to reinforce the social inferiority of the black and indigenous groups in relation to the white ethnic group. The reason for this lies in a pre-existing social order that allowed access to the means of production only to whites. For example, during the 1822–1889 imperial period, legislation strictly forbade ownership of private property by individuals of the black ethnic group. Thus land, commercial establishments, liberal professions and other means of generating capital became inherited privileges that were exclusive to whites, while the two other ethnic groups were deprived of elements essential to generating and/or accumulating capital, once again consigning them to a position of socio-economic inferiority. Nevertheless, there is a gradual trend for change with regard to 292

Telling Children about the Past in Brazil socio-economic subordination, which was initially identified exclusively with the black ethnic group.2 That is, as the capitalist system advances, the criteria of social hierarchy based on capital accumulation relegates and sidelines ethnic criteria as a factor in social organization. In other words, poverty in Brazil can no longer be seen as an ethnic problem, since it affects citizens of white and black ethnicity equally; likewise, wealth cannot be considered an ethnic privilege. By the late 1980s this trend attained a degree of consolidation, owing to the establishment of a democratic system in Brazil. Democracy brought with it an increase in institutional initiatives aimed at eradicating the ethnic inequalities still existing in Brazil. In studying Brazilian society, scholars are astonished by the apparent contradictions within its unusual social structure. The private will of elite families is often assumed as public policy and personal subordination is a feature of the national character. The authorities consider the public domain, or Öffentichkeit, to use Habermas’ definition of the common interest, as cosa nostra, with loyalty a key word when defining a society based on privilege. The current population of Brazil stands at approximately 190 million people. According to data from the 2002 Brazilian Ministry of Education census (online), some 35 million are currently in elementary school, 8.7 million are in secondary school and nearly 3.5 million are enrolled in university-level studies (Table 1). At elementary and secondary levels of compulsory education, 91.10% are in state institutions and 9.90% of students are in private ones. The latter group belongs not only to the better-off social and economic classes, but also to the white ethnic group. As a consequence, the public system is homogenous in terms of students’ family income, which is insufficient to gain access to a fee-paying school. In higher education these figures are inverted in both quantitative and socio-economic terms, as private institutions receive the largest number of students, and because students with the most economic resources gain preferential access to places in public universities, whose social and academic prestige exceeds that of private universities. Table 1 Number of students by educational level and institution. Source: INEP – Brazilian Ministry of Education. Level Elementary education Secondary education Higher education

Public 31,915,585 7,587,684 1,051,655

Private 3,234,777 1,122,900 2,428,258

Total 35,150,362 8,710,584 3,479,913

 The social position of the indigenous groups is a special case, as some did not adopt the capitalist system. Thus, individuals belonging to this collective are not subject to the criteria of capital accumulation in determining their social, political or legal position.

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Chapter 15 - Ana Piñón and Pedro Funari Brazilian identity has been linked to its archeological heritage ever since the nineteenth century, though legislation was only introduced much later. In the Court in Rio de Janeiro, Romantic nationalism was grounded on the idealization of natives, and archeology played a role in this movement. At the beginning of the twentieth century, prehistoric and historic archeological heritage contributed to the forging of Brazilian identity. In this context it is natural that the earliest document providing for the official protection of archeological heritage, dating from eighteenth-century Portugal, sought to protect ‘any old buildings, statues, inscriptions in Phoenician, Greek, Latin, Gothic or Arabic, as well as coins’ (Silva 1996, 10), a regulation whose application in the Portuguese colony in South America was improbable. In the nineteenth century, despite the foundation of the Historical and Geographical Institute and the attention paid by the court to scholarship in general, no law governing archeological heritage was passed. In 1936, leading São Paulo intellectual Mário de Andrade drafted a bill for archeological and ethnological resources, classifying them into four categories: artifacts, monuments, landscapes and folklore. This was on the verge of congressional approval when Parliament was closed in a coup d’etat staged by serving President Getúlio Vargas. He had supported the bill through his Education Minister, and soon afterwards published it as a decree (decree number 25, dated 30 November 1937). The Brazilian National Artistic and Historic Heritage Service, or Brazilian Heritage (Serviço Histórico e Artístico Nacional), was established in January 1937, charged with protecting, preserving and publicizing heritage. In 1940 the Service began to register and protect archeological sites and collections. However, most cultural property remained beyond the protection of the decree. It was at this time that another leading intellectual, Paulo Duarte, became the leading champion of heritage protection in Brazil. Cultural properties included pottery, lithic artifacts, cemeteries, shell middens, rock art, as well as a variety of natural resources such as rivers, caves, fauna, and even traditional paths. A new Penal Code was also issued in 1940, making the destruction of cultural resources including archeological ones a punishable offence for the first time. From 1940 onwards Brazilian Heritage established a register of protected sites and archeological collections. Decree 25/37 is still in force. In 1948, a law was passed in Paraná State protecting Spanish and Jesuit settlements, including a surrounding area of one hundred hectares, a measure which led to the subsequent establishment of the heritage Parks of Vila Rica, Santo Inácio and Ciudad Real. Several judges and other officials also sought to achieve legal protection for shell middens in different areas of the country. The Commission for Prehistory, established in 1952 by Paulo Duarte, aimed at protecting archeological sites, shell middens and resources. Duarte was a liberal who had fought for the creation of the country’s first university at São Paulo in the early 1930s. Having lived in exile during 294

Telling Children about the Past in Brazil the dictatorship of Vargas (1937–1945), he returned to the country with the idea of initiating the scholarly study of prehistory. Duarte had been influenced by French humanism; his friendship with Paul Rivet and admiration for the Musée de l’ Homme in Paris led him to propose the creation of the São Paulo-based Commission, which was later renamed the Prehistory Institute. Duarte was intensely active in the years of democracy in Brazil (1945–1964), organizing a series of initiatives for the development of archeology and heritage protection. Congress finally approved a bill providing for protection of archeological sites in 1961 (Law 3924), this being the first actual comprehensive law regulating the protection of archeological remains. While the decree of 1937 aimed at protecting ‘assets linked to the memorable facts of Brazilian history and those of exceptional value’ (Law 3924, article one), the 1961 law was much broader in scope, as it applied to ‘any archeological or prehistoric monument’ (ibid.). Archeological sites were protected immediately ex ui legis. As members of the Prehistory Commission, Duarte and leading anthropologists Helbert Baldus and Egon Schaden drafted the bill, which was approved by the Brazilian congress in 1961 as Law 3924/61. To this day it remains the only federal law expressly regulating archeological heritage. The Law covers ‘archeological and prehistoric monuments’ and provides that they are protected by the law and should be preserved; they are to be controlled by the State and are not subject to general rules governing private property. Archeological sites in general, such as shell middens, mounds or any ancient human settlements as defined by experts, are considered monuments. It is thus forbidden to destroy the sites or to exploit ancient remains for financial gain, as they are considered the property of the Federal State. The Law also covers archeological excavations and the mandatory registration of sites with Brazilian Heritage. Archeologists’ reports and the necessary arrangements relating to the housing of archeological material are also addressed. Any export of archeological resources is subject to authorization being granted by Brazilian Heritage. In the 1960s and 1970s, several scholars including Duarte in São Paulo and Father Rohr in Santa Catarina tried to use the law to protect shell middens, but Brazil was under military rule and it was not easy to enforce the law. Following the establishment of a military dictatorship by the 1964 coup d’état, the humanist approach to the past, so clearly expressed in the efforts to preserve humble shell middens against developers, was first sidelined and later opposed by the authorities. The restoration of civilian rule in 1985 led to growing activity by state assemblies and town councils, now free to legislate on a wide range of subjects, not least resource management. Several states have introduced legislation protecting archeological sites and establishing state registers of monuments and archeological collections. This is particularly true of states where intense archeological activity takes place, such as São Paulo and Rio Grande do Sul. 295

Chapter 15 - Ana Piñón and Pedro Funari Town councils have also introduced legislation in this field, and several municipal administrations have introduced town heritage offices. Urban archeology has thus developed and interest in archeological resources revived. A new primary school syllabus introduced in the 1990s emphasized the importance of learning from local surroundings, making pupils’ towns the starting point for understanding social life. In this context, archeology can play a special role in enabling school children to learn how natives inhabited their area in prehistoric times. Furthermore, material evidence from the historic and prehistoric period has been used to show that the picture given by documents is biased, and that blacks, natives, people of mixed complexion, immigrants, migrants and poor people in general, all usually underrepresented in official documents, nevertheless left material evidence that has been recovered by archeologists. Local primary school textbooks are now introducing archeological evidence in order to give children a more complex view of the past, thus enabling them to better understand present-day contradictions in society. 3. Teaching and learning about heritage 3.1 The survey In order to diagnose the capacity of Brazilian public education to convey the concept and content of ‘heritage’ to school students, a survey was conducted among 821 students in cities throughout Brazil. The survey consisted of two questions: the first asked students whether they realized that heritage was public property. The second asked informants to name examples of Brazilian national heritage. The questionnaire was administered to 459 students in the fifth year of elementary school – at the beginning of Brazil’s second cycle – and 362 in their eighth year, that is, in the last year of the same cycle. Comparison of the data collected from the two sub-samples allowed us to measure both change and retention of the knowledge acquired. To ensure that the survey would be of statistical value, it was performed in the classroom for the same duration as an ordinary lesson (i.e. 50 minutes). The questions were formulated in accordance with standard questioning procedures, supplemented with a pilot study. To aid elaboration of the questionnaire, a pre-test was first performed on volunteers aged between 10 and 12 in the equivalent of fourth, fifth and sixth grades. This phase assisted researchers in preparing the final format of the survey with regard to vocabulary used, number of questions, answer choices and response time. Thus, the process of elaborating the survey not only took the recommendations of survey specialists into account, but also sought to adapt the survey to students’ needs, by ensuring that questions were comprehensible and could be properly answered. For example, selection of a suitable date for the survey took the order of curricular contents in 296

Telling Children about the Past in Brazil school history courses into consideration. The samples of students surveyed were representative of elementary education in both 5th and 8th grades. The representative nature of the sample should be understood as operating on two levels. Firstly, from a quantitative point of view, 56% of the students surveyed were 5th graders and 44% 8th graders, the same percentages as in the census performed by the Brazilian Ministry of Education in 2001. Secondly, the sample is representative of Brazilian social and demographic realities, which were the primary criteria for selecting schools in which to conduct the survey. Indeed, the process for selecting schools in Rio de Janeiro would be a good example of how social and demographic criteria were applied during the preparatory stage. In Rio, most of the students surveyed attend schools in the northern districts of the city, since it is the most densely populated area. By the same criterion, the sample for Rio state as a whole includes students in both large and small towns as well as in rural settlements. With rare exceptions, the students surveyed came from the middle and lower classes. The results were analyzed in terms of the students’ gender. Nonetheless, since our analysis did not yield statistically relevant variations, this chapter limits itself to presenting the survey results according to level of schooling, which did reveal significant differences in the answers. Although gender did not prove to be a factor in this study, class and ethnic affiliation were, because most of students in the public system are of black origin (Fig. 1). On the other hand, elite (9%) children were not included in the survey because it was conducted in state schools (91% of students). Before we proceed further it would be useful to clarify the terms used in formulating the questions. The use of the expression ‘historic and artistic heritage’ was intentional, even though it is now somewhat antiquated in the social sciences (Fernandes 1993, 267) and in the most recent legislation, e.g. in article 216, section II of the present Brazilian constitution, it has been replaced by the term ‘cultural heritage’. We used it because the term is still found in present Brazilian legislation (Decreto Lei n. 25-37) and some textbooks still use it. Moreover, it must be remembered that the term cultural heritage is a broader concept than that of historic and artistic heritage, since it includes not only human products (material and non-material) but also nature (environment and habitat) (Fernandes 1993, 268). In contrast, historic and artistic heritage is limited to human production, encompassing both architecture and non-architectural heritage (documentary, archival, iconographic, oral, visual and museum). The latter term is more relevant to our questionnaire because of its connection to archeology. The first question simply and directly asks ‘To whom does historic and artistic heritage belong?’ This closed, test-type question allowed students to choose from five different options: to all, to no one, to the authorities, to the scientists or to the artists who produced the works. 297

Chapter 15 - Ana Piñón and Pedro Funari Answers indicate that only 35% of students are aware of the public nature of heritage, i.e. that it is the common property of society as a whole. The remaining 65% of the school children assigned ownership of heritage to specific sectors of society. Twenty-two percent believed that historic and artistic heritage belongs to the artists responsible for producing the works, and another 36% of students were divided equally between scientists and the authorities. This view of national heritage as belonging to a limited group and not society as a whole was significantly higher among students in the fifth year than those in the eighth year (Fig. 2). Of the former, only 28% were aware of the public character of heritage, in contrast with 42% of the latter group. This significant difference would suggest that greater personal maturity and a higher educational level foster better understanding of the linkage between heritage and the community. In any event, the total number of students who answered the question correctly is fairly low: only one third understood the connection between heritage and society. As we will see later, this failure stems from the ineffectiveness of textbooks in teaching the relationship between citizenship and heritage. If schoolchildren fail to comprehend this link, they will also fail to understand heritage and historic memory as the right of all citizens. Comprehending communal ownership of national heritage means understanding the subject of history as citizenry, and not merely isolated individuals or institutions of power.

Fig. 1. Photo of a group of students surveyed in the city of Niteroi (Rio de Janeiro state). 298

Telling Children about the Past in Brazil Moreover, this lack of awareness by the majority of students reveals a gaping hole in public policy concerning heritage, which should be included in education. This means not only using museums and other socalled ‘memory sites’ in the learning process, but also including the concept itself of heritage in the curriculum, along with knowledge of students’ own heritage and the importance of preserving it (ibid, 273). Overcoming this inadequacy would contribute to reversing the alarming picture of heritage education in Brazil revealed by the open question in the survey. In this case students were asked to name examples of their national historic and artistic heritage, yet few managed to do so (Fig. 3). Indeed, nearly 60% of schoolchildren did not answer the question at all. Of the 40% who did, an appreciable percentage did so incorrectly (Fig. 4). Here again there was a sharp difference between fifth and eighth grade students as regards the percentage failing to answer the question. In the former group 69% gave no answer, but this dropped to 48% in the

Fig. 2. Graph showing the percentage of social groups to whom 5th and 8th grade students attribute ownership of heritage.

Fig. 3. Graph showing the percentages of students who named an example of historic or artistic heritage and of those who did not. 299

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Fig. 4. Pie charts showing the answers and examples cited by school­ children in the question about national historic and artistic heritage (percentages are calculated out of the total sample of cases examined). latter group. In any event, the percentage in both groups is high, while even most of the students who did produce a response did so incorrectly. Furthermore, specific examples of historic and artistic heritage almost invariably reflected a historical memory skewed towards the dominant classes and geographic regions and their architecture, which have often become symbols of the country or simply tourist attractions. Such a bias expresses a national identity linked to just one part of society rather than to the citizenry as a whole. It becomes an arduous task for anyone engaged in preserving heritage to gain the support of the citizenry for their efforts unless citizens gain the capacity early in their education to recognize heritage in their immediate surroundings, and develop an awareness that it belongs to them. In other words, the theory and practice of preservation can make progress in society only if that society becomes aware of what is to be preserved. The most glaring example of such a lack of awareness may lie in the results of tests conducted in two Rio de Janeiro schools. Both are housed in historic buildings (Fig. 5) that have been catalogued by the Institute for the National Historic and Artistic Heritage of Brazil (IPHAN) for protection as landmarks. When students were asked to name an example of heritage, most were not only unable to give a specific example, but of those who did, not a single one mentioned the school in which they studied. General analysis of the survey reveals that roughly 60% of the students were unable to identify historic heritage in any way. Twelve percent did so in a completely mistaken way: in particular, the most common 300

Telling Children about the Past in Brazil error was to name monuments in other countries, especially the Statue of Liberty in New York or the works of Da Vinci. Only twenty-eight percent of those surveyed answered the question correctly, and nearly a third of these, i.e. 13% of students, made repeated references to museums. This would suggest that some students have become aware of ‘memory sites’ as part of communal heritage. Nevertheless, the spectacular nature of the container, i.e. the museum, would seem to obscure the importance of the contents. This is the most reasonable explanation for why students who cited museums in their answers, even archeological museums, did not know that their content - the exhibits and collections- also constitute heritage (Fig. 6).

Fig. 5. Photo of one of the schools in which the survey was conducted; the building is classified as a national monument in Brazil.

Fig. 6. Pie charts showing the answers (percentages) to the question ‘Who owns the objects in archeological museums?’ 301

Chapter 15 - Ana Piñón and Pedro Funari In this regard, the comment by Monteiro (1992, 77) concerning museum collections from past centuries is still valid: there is a mechanism of reduction…of miniaturization of cultures and peoples, which involves displaying them in ornate buildings so as to better emphasize the power of the culture housing them. This is why the container, more than the contents, is absorbed and retained in the memory by future members of society. In fact, only 3% of those surveyed cited non-architectural objects as examples of historic or artistic heritage (Fig. 4), most commonly in references to the royal crowns of the Portuguese colonial era. The other 12% mentioned landmarks; added to the 13% that specifically cited museums, this means that a quarter of all students surveyed identified heritage as architectural heritage when asked to give an example (Fig. 4). Moreover, the lack of variety in examples of heritage mentioned means that in quantitative terms, tourist attractions gained a prominent place in the answers after museums. Among these, the most emblematic is Christ the Redeemer, the statue towering over the bay of Rio, pictures of which adorn more postcards than anything else in Brazil. This is interesting because the answer is found not only in questionnaires administered in Rio de Janeiro, as might be expected, but also in several questionnaires from other cities, especially in Natal. This would tend to confirm the divorce of education from students’ daily surroundings. In addition to Christ the Redeemer, many answers mentioned a city where the survey was not conducted: the Baroque city of Ouro Preto, nestled in the mountains near what was a major center of Brazilian gold mining in the eighteenth century. In 1980 UNESCO declared Ouro Preto a Heritage Site of Humanity. It should be born in mind that both Christ the Redeemer and Ouro Preto are cultural elements that are specifically products of the white ethnic group: the first is a symbol of their religion, and the second of European cultural and economic ambitions. Therefore, the absence of references to other ethnic groups is particularly striking, with the possible sole exception of 4 questionnaires – representing barely 0.5% of those surveyed – that mentioned Pelourinho. Originally, the term ‘Pelourinho’ referred to a place where slaves were tied down and subjected to corporal punishment by their masters. It was usually located on the slave owner’s property, far from cities, though for the purpose of making a public display of their power and authority, Portuguese colonizers built a Pelourinho in the center of the city of Salvador de Bahia. The term ‘Pelourinho’ later became a common way of referring to the city, and more specifically to the quarter in the historic center of Salvador containing Portuguese Baroque architecture. Given that the quarter was declared a Heritage Site of Humanity in 1985 and has become a major tourist attraction since then, it is difficult 302

Telling Children about the Past in Brazil to determine whether the students were referring to Pelourinho as a place of punishment or as an example of architecture. The difference is significant, since the latter would again represent the mapping of heritage onto white ethnicity. If this is the case, the few examples named by students as part of national heritage were drawn exclusively from a single sector of society. Since heritage, as a reminder of the historic and aesthetic values of the community, represents what is particular as general or national, the actual heritage learned by Brazilians is a clear instance of a discourse and pattern of representation in which whiteness assumes the value of a neutral element (Torres 2001, 198). This depiction of a determinate social group as embodying common humanity would serve the function of hiding the relations of power and privilege that have prevailed and that continue to prevail in the history of Brazil. Precisely because the heritage that is in fact taught is rooted in white ethnicity, it is conceivable that students in the public system, most of whom are of African descent (Fig. 1), are not particularly interested in remembering the examples given by textbooks. With the aim of testing the hypothesis that students recognize the container but not the contents as public heritage, they were asked the following question: ‘Who owns the objects in archeological museums?’ Students assigned ownership of these objects mainly to specific sectors of society (65%) such as the authorities (23%), professional archeologists (25%) or even the owners of the lands where the items were found (17%), rather than the community as a whole (27%) (Fig. 7). That is, in the overall survey, only 27% of the students were capable of associating the museum heritage with society itself by choosing the answer ‘it belongs to all’. As in other questions, the percentage of correct answers was higher in eighth grade (32%) than in fifth grade (22%). Nevertheless, in both cases the percentage was far below 50% of the students as a body and well below any percentage that might be desirable in terms of heritage education.

Fig. 7. Graph showing answers (percentages) to the question ‘Who owns the objects in archeological museums?’ 303

Chapter 15 - Ana Piñón and Pedro Funari 3.2 Textbooks The textbook has played such a key role throughout the history of Brazilian public education that it has served, and continues to serve, a function that resembles or even supersedes that of curricular guidelines (Freitag et al. 1997). This has been a constant feature of Brazilian education historically, regardless of the political regime or educational laws enacted. More specifically, both the content of classes given in state schools and the order in which this content is taught generally follow textbooks in a quite literal manner. This may not appear to be significant to those familiar with other educational systems, as it would seem obvious for the textbooks in a given educational system to closely match the contents conveyed to students in school. However, it must be made clear that the textbook cannot be considered merely as one of several elements in Brazilian education conceived as a system and a process. In Brazil textbooks carry much more weight. Indeed, their importance can be seen not only in the educational system itself but also in society at large. This is borne out by data gathered by the Latin American Center for Social Science Research (Centro LatinoAmericano de Pesquisas en Ciências Sociais): they found that in cases where middle and lower class Brazilian families have any books at home, some 70% of them have textbooks (Franco 1982, 22) This predominance means that the textbook is the most important factor conditioning teaching practice, making it the mediator of the student-teacher relationship. For various diverse reasons, such as the inadequate training of teachers, the students’ low level of economic resources or even liberal curricula in which the course content is not determined point-by-point, the textbook is the main tool used by teachers to structure and organize their classes. This is generally the case under authoritarian regimes because censorship restrictions do not allow for variations, while it occurs in democratic systems because liberal laws do not determine the course content but only general objectives. Our survey found a low degree of interaction between formal classroom learning and informal, out-of-classroom learning in Brazilian education. This reality would tend to reinforce the importance of textbooks. For instance, 86% of schoolchildren in both fifth and eighth grades say they have never visited an archeological museum. Moreover, a comparison of different ages found no increase in the number of students visiting museums, as eighth grade students did not report making such visits any more frequently than fifth graders. As very few students visit museums – i.e., archeological museums – it would be safe to assume that such visits, when they do occur, are not school activities. In addition, the fact that there is no observable increase in the number of students making such visits over time would indicate that this lack of interaction is a 304

Telling Children about the Past in Brazil constant feature throughout elementary education from fifth to eighth grades: that is, museum visits are ‘off the map’ of activities proposed by educational institutions. Thus, as museums have virtually no impact on public education, being assigned little or no intrinsic value, students’ main source of information ends up being textbooks In light of this context, we believed it vital to analyze the content of the textbooks used by the students surveyed, so as to deepen our understanding of certain aspects of the survey results. Of particular concern were deficiencies in education and the learning processes as regards the concept of heritage. We thus compared the content taught to students with the information they had actually absorbed and retained. The results led to a seemingly paradoxical hypothesis: students in the Brazilian state educational system use textbooks as the primary educational resource, even though textbooks generally feature an unequal treatment of Brazil’s national heritage, and one that clearly favors the heritage of whites. Considering that most students have black ancestry, such unequal treatment would tend to generate disinterest or negative attitudes towards textbooks, thereby hindering absorption of the information they contain. Thus, most Brazilian students not only fail to remember examples of national heritage featured in textbooks, but are also unable to identify with the examples provided. The result is that they do not absorb the concept of heritage in its most basic sense: the fact that it belongs to all. Since the re-establishment of democracy in Brazil some two decades ago, and particularly since the coming into office of the present left-leaning3 Brazilian government, the authorities have sought to correct traditional inequalities in matters of race and culture as much as possible. As regards formal education, and particularly in terms of educational materials, this concern has taken the form of an effort to remove any textbooks that contain discriminatory depictions, stereotypes or omissions against the three main ethnic groups in the country - whites, blacks and indigenous people (see in www.mec.gov.br the criteria for the use of a textbook in state schools). It would therefore be crucial to explain why our analysis found an over-representation of the white ethnic group in textbooks used today in Brazil. In our view, this over-representation is a subtle phenomenon hidden behind the apparent predominance of regionally oriented information, as we shall soon see. First of all, the issue is to distinguish between genuine regionalism or regional diversity and forms of ethnic stereotyping that promote the cultural, political and economic dominance of some regions over others, thereby serving as a mechanism for presenting certain merely local characteristics as if they were national or universal. We begin from the  The current president, Lula da Silva, is the leader of the Brazilian Workers’ Party (PT).

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Chapter 15 - Ana Piñón and Pedro Funari premise that the predominance in textbooks of information about certain regions over others is intrinsically counterproductive. Among other effects, we would emphasize the lack of interest shown by students who live far from the dominant region, which hampers their learning processes – including the learning of the concept of heritage – and even leads to school failure in the long-term. Inequality can be seen, first of all, in the illustrations given by textbooks of the cultural objects created by the most important ethnic groups to have played a role in Brazilian history. This inequality is clearly unfavorable towards groups that have been traditionally excluded from political and economic power. In other words, the illustrations in textbooks show few objects created by indigenous or black ethnic groups, whereas white culture is clearly over-represented (Piñón 1993). The material culture of white ethnic groups is represented above all by architecture from the colonial era, whether religious, military or administrative. Monuments like equestrian statues or fountains are also shown. Such imagery would suggest that the colonial process flowed from the endeavors of a specific group rather than the interaction of several groups. Precisely because the cultural products of white culture predominate, recent chronology also predominates: that is, the historic past takes precedence over the archeological past. Hence, textbooks display substantially larger amounts of materials left by colonizers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries than of materials from any other era. In addition to the time factor, this over-representation is perpetuated in a subtler manner through a particular spatial distribution of Brazilian heritage. That is, the vast majority of authors and publishers depict objects located in the southeast of the country: whether a Portuguese military fort, a church or an entire city, the southeast is presented as the locus of Brazilian heritage. Given Brazil’s uneven regional demographics, over-representation of one region would tend to exclude multi-ethnic heritage from textbooks. The case of Ouro Preto is paradigmatic, as a picture of this city illustrates the colonial period in all textbooks approved by the Ministry of Education and Sport for use in the National Textbook Program (Programa Nacional do Livro Didático), which is adopted without exception in all public schools. In particular, we found that every history textbook used in Brazilian state schools in the year 2000 showed a picture of the southeastern city of Ouro Preto. Pictures of certain buildings in the city stood out for their sheer frequency: colonial administrative buildings such as the present-day Inconfidência museum,4 or churches adorned by the sculptor  A building in Tiradentes square that once housed the old Casa de Camara in colonial times, today it is a museum that displays documents and objects of the

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Telling Children about the Past in Brazil Aleijadinho5 were used in textbooks as a depiction of the colonization of Brazil. Taking into consideration that these books are used by school children of all ages throughout Brazil, it would be safe to say that schools are conveying a homogenous heritage that bears little relation to reality. For example, in contrast to the frequent use of images of places such as Ouro Preto, there is an almost complete absence of illustrations of buildings or other materials produced by the Dutch, who engaged in fairly intensive colonial activities in the northeast of Brazil. Moreover, the architectural ‘lavishness’ of Ouro Preto tends to generalize one specific colonial reality, since this is the only region of the country in which precious metals were found. The other regions of the country were more closely related to agriculture, or to a lesser extent to port activity, and thus not invested with the same symbolic or mythological value for Brazilian history as Ouro Preto. In short, the generalized use of pictures of Ouro Preto as a prototype contributes to a homogenized description of the colonization process and further reinforces lack of regional diversity. Realities of a purely local nature are disseminated as if they represented the experience of the country as a whole, displacing other imagery or accounts of Brazilian history. This domination of regional data in textbooks requires an explanation. In our view, such an explanation lies outside the educational system as such, and is rather to be found in Brazilian society as a whole. Among other possible factors, we believe that two deserve special attention: Firstly, textbooks themselves constitute a regional product. This is due not only to the fact that they are published mainly on the Rio de Janeiro-São Paulo-Minas Gerais regional axis, but is also closely related to the institutions in which most authors are educated (Fig. 8). Of the 29 official history textbook authors, 16 were educated in the southeastern region of Brazil, mainly in São Paulo, either as undergraduates or postgraduates (especially in two universities: Universidade de São Paulo (USP) and Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo (PUC-SP). Therefore, what Brazilian textbooks often reveal is a selection of information by authors that tends to privilege their own geographic area. The second reason for the dominance of regionalism in national textbooks is the history of how heritage has been managed by official institutions in Brazil, as partially reflected in the history of Brazilian heritage legislation (see above). Throughout its history, such legislation has tended to sanction an unequal quantitative distribution of national heritage in geographic terms: the southeastern regions of Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo and Minas Gerais account for 50.2% of the sites classified as ‘tombamenIncofidencia Mineira, a movement by the Minas Gerais elite against the Portuguese colonial authorities in 1789. 5  Aleijadinho was a baroque sculptor from the city of Vila Rica, Minas Gerais (1730-1814?), born the child of a Portuguese man and a black slave woman.

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Chapter 15 - Ana Piñón and Pedro Funari tos’, historic monuments (Rubino 1996, 99). Regional concentration of the historic and artistic heritage of Brazil should not be surprising if we recall that heritage is not only a portrait of the country’s past, but also of its present. It reflects the capacity of certain groups to document, preserve and disseminate their own role in the history of society (Rodrigues 1996, 195). 4. Conclusion Our survey revealed shortcomings in Brazilian education concerning the concept of heritage. The most proximate cause is the ineffectiveness of textbooks in teaching the relationship between citizenship and heritage. However, in broader terms, there is a series of identifiable characteristics of heritage education that are rooted in the processes and institutional structures of Brazilian society at large, as we have seen. Among these characteristics is the minimal linkage between future citizens and national heritage. Because students do not identify with that heritage, they do not recognize themselves as its ‘heirs’, nor are they afforded so much as the opportunity to come into contact with Brazil’s historic heritage in

Fig. 8. Pie chart showing percentages of textbook authors according to educational region of origin. 308

Telling Children about the Past in Brazil their most immediate surroundings. This can be explained in part by the textbooks provided to students. These focus mainly on the monuments and material culture of a specific region of the country, namely the southeast, which is a pole for economic development and the concentration of wealth, as well as the place of origin of most authors and publishers. As a result of Brazilian government policy through the Institute for the National Artistic Heritage (IPHAN), future citizens are thus meant to absorb the material culture commonly produced by the white ethnic group, with special attention being given to buildings. As containers of other cultures, special emphasis is placed on museums, but their grandiosity or ornate design overshadows the collections themselves. Even though black ethnic inheritance is dominant in the population of Brazil, especially among students that traditionally attend state schools, their historic memory is distorted by an education system that requires them to absorb the cultural symbols of the dominant social group as their own heritage. Therefore, the history, archeology and, more generally, nearly the entire historic heritage of Brazil to be conveyed to future generations is reduced to the history of a single social-ethnic sector, casting the multi-ethnic cultural references of the diverse groups composing Brazilian society into oblivion. The final outcome of this process is the practical annulment of heritage’s potential to educate students about past modes of life, and the superficial use of heritage as a national symbol in the present. As part of our conclusions, we would like to make some suggestions for future Brazilian textbooks. Firstly, authors and publishers should devote more attention to regional components of national heritage and seek to achieve a greater degree of equity in quantitative terms. This is not a question of removing images presently used, but rather of including others that might provide a more pluralistic vision of Brazilian history. Secondly, we would suggest that textbooks include a larger number of illustrations related to black and indigenous ethnic groups. This would constitute a recognition that heritage is not only a national matter, but also a concern of ethnic groups and that these groups, as subjects of history, must have their history preserved and passed on to future generations. From an educational perspective, the above changes could assist in teaching both the concept of heritage and its concrete expression in Brazil, as they would have the potential to inspire empathy among students, making them both heirs to and participants in Brazilian history. It is crucial that we acknowledge not only different ethnic inheritances from Brazil’s past but, most of all, their role in the present. The education system should no longer convey a stereotypical vision of Brazilian history that reflects only certain regional and ethnic realities. Textbooks should cease to transform regional and heterogeneous characteristics into universal ones, or rather, into national and homogenous 309

Chapter 15 - Ana Piñón and Pedro Funari ones. The idea of a universal heritage, one that belongs to all humanity, is in fact an Enlightenment idea that is controversial today. Post-modern theoretical frameworks generally contend that heritage must be understood in a fluid context (pace Jones 1997 and UNESCO documents). Thus diversity, not universality, should be the key concept in defining it. Until this happens, and until there is a recognition of a multi-ethnic history and present in Brazil, the education system will continue to resemble certain African systems of old that began history lessons with the words: “Our forebears, the Gauls….” A change in this direction would constitute an important step towards ethnic equality in Brazilian society. Finally, acknowledgement of multicultural, multiethnic and multi-regional realities in both the past and present would pose no threat to Brazil as a nation, but would instead offer a path to its enrichment. References Clairin R. and Ph. Brion 2001 Manual de Muestreo. Madrid: Editorial La Muralla – Editorial Hespérides. Fernandes, J.R.O. 1993 ‘Educação patrimonial e cidadania: uma proposta altemativa para o ensino de história. Memória, história, historiografia. Dossiê ensino da historia’ Revista Brasileira de História 25/26, 13 92/93: 265–76. Franco, M.L.P.B. 1982 ‘O livro didático de História do Brasil: algumas questões’ Cadernos de Pesquisa 41: 22–27. Freitag, B., W. Da Costa and V. Motta 1997 O Livro Didático em Questão. São Paulo: Cortez. Jones, S. 1997 The Archaeology of Ethnicity. London: Routledge. Monteiro, E.M. 1992 ‘Antropologia e colonialismo. Os casos inglês, francês e portu­ guês.’ Trabalhos de Antropologia e Etnología 32 III: 71–85. Piñón, A.C. 1993 ‘Ensinando com imagens’ Fronteiras: revista de História 6 (11): 11–40 Rodrigues, M. 1996 ‘De quem é o patrimônio? Um olhar sobre a prática preser­ va­cionista em São Paulo’ Revista do Patrimônio Histórico e Artístico Nacional 24: 195–203. Rubino, S. 1996 ‘O mapa do Brasil passado’ Revista do Patrimônio Histórico e Artístico Nacional 24: 97–105. 310

Telling Children about the Past in Brazil Silva, R. C. P. Da 1996 ‘Compatibilizando os instrumentos legais de preservação arqueológica no Brasil: o decreto-lei n. 25/37 e a lei n. 3924/61’ Revista de Arqueologia 9: 9–24. Torres, C.A. 2001 Democracia, Educação e Multiculturalismo: Dilemas da Cidadania em um Mundo Globalizado. Petrópolis: Vozes. The school census online http://www.inep.gov.br/basica/censo/Escolar/Sinopse/sinopse.asp

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Chapter 16 From Fragments to Contexts: Teaching Prehistory to Village Children in Romania Corina Sarbu and Dragos Gheorghiu 1. Introduction This chapter describes the experience of teaching prehistory to village children in a post-communist era village named Vadastra, situated near the Danube in the county of Oltenia in southern Romania. Vadastra is, we think, representative of the challenges confronting the contemporary Romanian countryside in terms of economic and cultural re-evaluations and adaptations. Being a child in a Romanian village today entails multiple challenges. This is why we chose to address aspects of these challenges and tentative solutions to them in the present paper. Realizing the importance of a past not only for present identity construction, but also for present economic development, we decided to explore ways through which art can be used as a tool to tell children about the archaeological past and to revive a forgotten craft activity. This was a multidisciplinary effort involving input from professional and student archaeologists, education specialists and artists. By introducing physical perception as an efficient way of understanding the hidden attributes of material culture, we hoped both to generate a strong, complex message for young people and to present our own alternative way of embodying the past in the villagers’ lives today. 2. A brief history of the intertwining of tradition and politics in rural Romania For centuries Romania was predominantly a traditional agrarian country where old folk customs were preserved in non-urban areas (Stahl 1946). The process of modernization, in this case Westernization, started as soon as the country won its independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1877. The shift from the Cyrillic alphabet to the Roman one and the promotion of European pedagogical methods were part of this process, which evolved very slowly. After 1947, the communist regime tried to control the rural population via collectivization and eradicate local traditions, replacing authentic folklore with a counterfeit version meant to sustain the dominant ideology. 312

A similar process of counterfeiting was applied to history, with chapters being excised and/or partially rewritten. The tripartite division of the perception of time that characterized Romanian peasant societies - now, before and ancient time (de Pina-Cabral 1994) - was changed into a dual one, with now and a fabricated ancient time. Despite modernization, by the end of the 20th century Romania’s culture was still divided between a few geographically limited urban areas and a rural population dominant in numbers as well as in terms of distribution. Agriculture was the main economic activity, and peasants lived lives not very different from those of their ancestors hundreds of years before. Despite an ongoing process of modernization promoted by the urban population, traditional folk art and local crafts were not fundamentally influenced, and remained to a large degree unaltered. With the exception of tools, a high proportion of the utensils in the peasant household continued to be handcrafted from clay and wood. In 21st century Romania, the majority of young villagers are migrating either abroad or to the urban centers in search of increased prosperity. Towns and cities attract people from rural areas, and new cultural meeting-places between townsfolk and peasants are being created. Many villages are thus being deserted; in some cases the remaining population consists entirely of elderly people. 3. The Chalcolithic Vadastra in Romanian history The beginning of Westernization in Romania coincided with a re-orientation in the development of academic historical studies, which evolved from antiquarianism to the paradigm of the national state (Gheorghiu and Schuster 2002, 298–302). The study of prehistory as a distinct academic discipline did not begin until the late 1920s - Vadastra represents a significant landmark in the evolution of prehistory as a research field in Romania. The discovery of the now well-known Vadastra Chalcolithic site coincided with the first archaeological studies in the country and the first developments in the direction of a unified national culture. The site was discovered in the middle of the 19th century by one of Romania’s first prehistorians, Cezar Bolliac, who published his findings in 1876; Vadastra soon became known to the public and the academic community via press reports. Over the ensuing years the site gained a reputation on account of the abundance of typical calcite incised black ceramics, which formed the material of the first private and public collections of prehistoric finds. From the late 1920s onwards, remains from local prehistoric cultures were presented in Romanian history manuals, with Vadastra pottery serving as a well-known example in the 1940s (Giurescu 1940). The Vadastra site was extensively explored during the communist period. Systematic excavations were organized, and the results published in scientific journals. These efforts, however, went unreported in educa313

Chapter 16 - Corina Sarbu and Dragos Gheorghiu tional literature; Vadastra culture was no longer mentioned in history textbooks in spite of the fact that prehistory was a discipline deemed ideally suited to the study of ‘the primitive commune’. Communist-era prehistory focused on relationships between the forces of production, not on ‘cultural complexity’. In this context, local traditions were regarded as a disturbance and a potential threat to class unity. Since school textbooks did not specifically focus on local prehistoric cultures, some of these, including Vadastra, fell into oblivion. Their role in shaping the cultural history of the area’s past was partly forgotten, even if some Vadastra ceramic artifacts were displayed in the Bucharest National Museum of History and in some regional museums. In terms of dissemination to the public, the attention of the totalitarian regime was focused on the Iron Age rather than on prehistory. The Iron Age was a period exploited by the national communist ideology. The head of state, Ceausescu, identified with the mythical king Burebista of Dacia, a kingdom that had existed on the actual territory of present Romania before the first century A.D., and insisted that the formation of the Romanian national state went back to Burebista’s reign. Even after the fall of Ceausescu’s regime in 1989, prehistory remained more or less forgotten within the Romanian public education system; new textbooks focused almost exclusively on modern history. For example, one history manual approved in 2002 by the Ministry of Education (Oane and Ochescu 2002) devoted only two pages to European prehistory, without a single reference to Romanian prehistoric cultures. 4. The Vadastra Project In an attempt to rectify this situation, the Vadastra Project has attempted to draw attention to the distant past and make the Vadastra culture known again through the study of ceramic technologies. As an experimental archaeology and art education project it teaches village children prehistory in general, while also offering them the opportunity to acquire an additional skill. Centered on a village close to the Chalcolitic site, the project was initiated by Dragos Gheorghiu in 2000.1 In addition to the specific scientific objectives of experimental archaeology, it aimed at educating the village children. The hope was that by disseminating the expert knowledge learned through archaeological experiments and handson activities, and by teaching the villagers about the local prehistoric past, a center for the production of traditional ceramics could be developed at  Grants from the Romanian Ministry of Culture (2002 and 2003); in 2001-2002; grants from CNCSIS and World Bank No. 112 (2001-2002), Project Director Dr.D.Gheorghiu. The following archaeologists participated in the experiments in Vadastra: A. Gibson, J. Chapman, G. Nash, R. Carlton, B. Induni, K..Andrews, R. Doonan, R. Rowlett, P.L. van Berg, M. Van der Linden, A. Desbat, A. Chohadziev.

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…Teaching Prehistory to Village Children in Romania Vadastra. It was hoped that the establishment of such a center might create new jobs and provide an incentive for the village young to stay instead of migrating to the cities. Alex Gibson (2002, 138) describes the situation as follows: …Vadastra lies in Oltenia, one of the poorest regions of Romania. There is very little work and people live on a subsistence economy. There is no industry and no crafts to speak of. The local villagers need and use pottery and this all has to be bought and imported. Yet on their doorstep lies an excellent source of clay in the riverbank and the Chalcolithic technology is simple, easily replicated and extremely effective. Fuel is abundant and the children are eager to learn. All the necessary ingredients for a local industry are at hand and with the right encouragement this industry could be viable. …I have confidence in this project and pray that it will maintain its momentum. Archaeologists and art students from the National University of Arts in Bucharest taught the village children the history of the site and the technological methods used by prehistoric people to build clay objects (coil building, slow potter’s wheel, moulds), using household waste to fire ceramic objects, recycling meager resources. Now that rural and participatory tourism (Komppula 2000) have become a potential source of income for communities, the revival of traditional ceramics production technologies at a prehistoric site is a realistic social project, with long term, positive potential for economic growth in the area. 4.1 The social aspect of the Vadastra project What characterized this archaeological project was a very close relationship between academic and social practice. The results of any experiments conducted were almost immediately transferred to the people in the village. Alex Gibson (Bradford University) and his family were very much involved in helping Vadastra’s children by collecting and donating manuals, while Bruce Induni (Bournemouth University) explored and documented sustainable designs for firing ceramics to assist the functioning of the future ceramics center. If it is possible to use the past to revitalize a lost craft and create hope for the future, this must be seen as a positive effect of archaeological work. It is an example of how archaeology can be put to positive use in the present. The project aims to create new local educational and economic activity centered on the art of ceramic manufacture. Through the new center, Vadastra could be transformed from being little more than an emblem for prehistoric studies and national identity into a hub of alternative economic activity defined by the new reality at the end of the 20th century. In order to succeed, such a project obviously called for some special training for the participants. This was achieved by initiating an education program 315

Chapter 16 - Corina Sarbu and Dragos Gheorghiu directed at village residents of all ages. It must be noted that the mindset of even the contemporary villagers, who have lost most links with tradition, is one of suspicion towards novelty and change. Consequently, we started by teaching the adults, so as to create an awareness of the prehistoric context of their home village, postponing the interaction with the village children to a later date. One of the first people to be convinced of the positive social implications of the project was Ion Cococi, a man in his thirties who owned a small shop in the village. Possessing innate talent, Cococi become a sort of assistant in all the vase making and firing experiments conducted in Vadastra, and was soon able to make vases to rival those crafted by the art students involved in the project. His vases were admired first by the foreign archaeologists, then by the officials from the county’s cultural department, and later by other villagers. By 2002 he had reached a level of craftsmanship that enabled him to gain a job as ceramic instructor at the Cultural House in Vadastra. From that moment on the organizers of the project perceived him as the interface with the village’s younger generations, orally transmitting information on prehistoric technologies and the prehistory of the place, and thus facilitating intercultural communication. 4.2 Persuading the Children (2001-2002) The best way to familiarize the children with their local heritage (Steele and Owen 2003), and subsequently with prehistory, was to allow them to participate in creative processes, combining the making of objects with theory. One way to this is through ‘tactile museums’. Such museums have been designed in Greece, Hungary, Germany and other countries to assist people with visual impairments (see Benaki 1991; Schmidt-Herwig 1991; Szoleczky 1991), but the information offered in them is restricted to conventional exhibitions that are always a-contextual. The goal of the Vadastra museum project was to create the premises for a sensory experience that would appeal to many senses and would take place in different local settings in close proximity to the prehistoric ones, i.e. to relate the sensory experience to the material culture in context (cf. Gheorghiu 2001 a, b). Exercises to acquaint the children with prehistoric art in Vadastra began as early as 1999, when art education experiments were being carried out by Ana Vanaanen, a Finnish lecturer from UIAH in Helsinki. This art education initiation was continued in the summer of 2001 by a group of Finnish students,2 coordinated by Professor Elsa Ytti from the same university, with the help of two Romanian art education students.3At this  Aki Pulkannen, Antti Matela, Susana Hoikkala and Taniasipi La.  Gabriel Ulariu and Marius Cristea.

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…Teaching Prehistory to Village Children in Romania level of instruction children learned a number of basic rules of prehistoric visual grammars. Contact with past technologies was followed by exercises throwing ceramics on a potter’s wheel. Positioned on the main street in front of the village school, the wheel attracted a very large number of children, since the making of vases was considered an unusual social activity that broke the monotony of rural daily life (Fig. 1). A. Gibson’s (2002, 139) text synthesizes this unique experience: ‘They started coiling and ring-building pots just as was done in prehistory. Inevitably we started off with what I described as “the largest collection of ashtrays in private hands” but gradually pot walls started to grow and forms become more adventurous. By 2001 children as young as 6 years old were beginning to wheel throw pots. I shall never forget one child, too small to reach the kick wheel, having to have the wheel powered by an older, taller friend while he threw a perfectly acceptable small vase.’ Such enthusiastic response convinced the organizers to invest more in the participatory educational process through art and craft, and, as a result, the National University of Arts in Bucharest decided to integrate the Vadastra Project into the 2001-2002 academic curriculum, by outlining several research topics for students in the Design Department.4 In addition, art and design students were encouraged to suggest new subjects

Fig. 1. Children working at the potter’s wheel in front of the village school.  Coordinator lecturer Marina Theodorescu, Department of Design, Faculty of Decorative Arts and Design, National University of Arts Bucharest.

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Chapter 16 - Corina Sarbu and Dragos Gheorghiu for later BA and MA theses that could keep the social education project going. 5. A museum designed for children One of the proposed MA topics was the making of a large sgraffito5, on the main façade of the Cultural House, which illustrated the decorative patterns of Chalcolithic Vadastra ceramics. This project attempted to maintain a cultural tradition in the county of Oltenia that dates back to the 18th century, involving the painting of visual narratives with moral or social subjects on the facades of secular and religious buildings. Despite the strong visual impact of the message, the large gap between past and present was not bridged, as subsequent interviews with villagers revealed. To address this problem, the idea of participatory education under the umbrella of ‘a village museum for children’ suggested by Corina Sarbu was readily taken up. Such a museum would allow the village children to relate actively to the exhibition. The museum building was completed in June 2002, following the rearrangement of several rooms in the village Cultural House. The basic idea in this project was that the museum should appeal to the senses as well as the intellect by physically involving the viewers. The objects were displayed in such a manner as to prompt a sensory experience through the combination of two senses, sight and touch, and sometimes of a third, hearing, all of which involved the process of perceiving and understanding an object. A first step in the design of the project was to transform the small ceramic fragments found by children into large decorative panels, enlarged one hundred times (Fig. 2). The expressiveness of the decorative patterns was emphasized through the hyperbole of enlargement, aided by the use of colors. The texture of the materials was also exploited by emphasizing the differences between rough and polished surfaces. Because Vadastra’s archaeological remains were fragmentary, we believed that the reconstruction of the whole was compulsory for the process of teaching, as was the relationship between parts and the whole. To reconstruct the whole, we adopted virtual reality as our tool, reconstructing objects ranging from vases to houses in 3D. These were then presented to the children, together with real shards and the art panels copied after the shards, hence allowing them to relate their sensory experiences to real artifacts and to complete virtual contexts. One educational method we applied involved getting the children to relate the sensory experience of the texture and shape of objects to the construction of these objects (Fig. 3) In this activity children were required to constantly envisage the relationships between the parts and the whole, in an integrative process of learning (cf. Ramusden 2002, 40).  Author Magdalena Serban. MA project in Mural Art, Faculty of Decorative Arts and Design, National University of Arts Bucharest.

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Fig. 2. Museum panels inspired by local Chalcolithic ceramic shards.

Fig. 3. The sensorial experimentation of the museum panel texture. 319

Chapter 16 - Corina Sarbu and Dragos Gheorghiu Unlike its inception, the completion of the museum proved to be an arduous enterprise because of the divergent values, priorities, and preferences of the interested parties: artists, educators, archaeologists, and the local community. Despite these difficulties, in the spring of 2002 the shard-panels were already positioned in a room in the Cultural House, together with the reconstruction of a traditional kiln surrounded by Vadastra vases and shards, the whole being designed to generate a ‘dialogue’ between the fragments and complete pieces. Color was very important in creating a dramatic effect: the panels representing Vadastra shards were painted with soil colors and had the incisions filled with white calcite, in such a way that the resulting composition gave the same artistic effect as paintings in an exhibition. The children’s first reaction was extraordinary. They started by touching the panels and following the incised spirals and meanders, while at the same time laying their hands on the diverse textures of the colored surfaces, frantically searching for the real shards that would have the same decorative patterns as the panels. Discussions centering on their experience continued long after they had left the museum. This enthusiastic behavior was at the same time both expected and surprising. It offered a rare chance to designers to witness the direct reception of their work, as the modern world separates creation from production. The participatory approach adopted by the children was also explainable in terms of the fact that cultural (visible or invisible) barriers between the viewer and the museum objects did not exist in a village community. The absence of cultural barriers allowed direct sensory participation by the children when attempting to understand museum objects. From this perspective, the project questions the concept of a museum as a collection of artifacts removed from any direct contact with the public. Direct participation was emphasized by a set of events at different locations in the village, where the displayed objects were incorporated, through kinesthetic exploration, in their original contexts. In such a sensorial museum, experiences with small real fragments of ceramics, with large real or virtual objects and contexts of environment, were combined with oral transmission of the information about the past to support and complete the whole participatory experience. We used oral transmission of information, a specific feature of the traditional Romanian peasant society, as a supplementary tool to help in the teaching of prehistory to children, while the potter trainer was instructed to act as a ‘translator’ who would transfer the information displayed from the visual field into speech. In this way, every object displayed became an object to be ‘told’ through kinesthetic exploration of its patterns and textures, by the analysis of its color or of its relationships with other objects in context (Fig. 4). Because we believed that a more flexible utilization of the museum as an educational instrument would involve using the power of contexts, after the first experiments had been completed, we arranged for subse320

…Teaching Prehistory to Village Children in Romania quent ones to be conducted in different locations in the prehistoric site. There, children were able to establish connections between the material culture, the settlement and the broader landscape. 6. Beyond the past: the long term effects of the Vadastra project Over a year has passed since the end of the educational project and the warm reception of the museum by the local peasant community. The consequences of the Vadastra project may be summarized as follows: • thanks to the creation of the ceramic manufacturing center that produces replicas of prehistoric ceramics, a new economic activity is now helping the Vadastra community to open its own way to the challenges of the country’s development in a manner that is in tune with the idea of sustainability. • A new perception of archaeological remains, and consequently of prehistory, has developed within the young generation. The past is not an abstract notion to be proud of; to the children of Vadastra it has become the tangible link between the present and the future, a strike of hope and a path out of misery and poverty. • Alongside a growing awareness of the past, new ceramic production inspired by the prehistoric local ceramic tradition is now being created by young people in the village, leaving space for individual creativity. • All the above work hand in hand to forge a new identity amongst the children involved in the project.

Fig. 4. Ion Cococi “story-telling” a museum panel to a child. 321

Chapter 16 - Corina Sarbu and Dragos Gheorghiu The museum was designed in such a way that it could be replicated in different cultural contexts, with minimal stylistic changes depending on each specific case. Over the next few years our intention is to expand the experiment to other Daubing villages, even without the goal of creating new ceramic centers. Future projects will focus on the standardization of information concerning the technologies of making and decorating objects. The use of the Vadastra site for developing a social and crafts education project was emblematic, since this location has played a significant role in the formation of Romania’s modern history. At the same time, contemporary life in Vadastra exemplifies the crisis of rural society at the beginning of the 21st century, and as such was a target for our attempt to revitalize a rural community by making its continued existence and growth meaningful in a new socio-economic context. The initiative for teaching children about the past originated from the idea that the study of the past can influence the present and the future. In our case, the study of ceramic manufacturing technologies has been adjusted to the contemporary needs of the local community in the Vadastra village, thus motivating the young people to revive an ancient craft. The museum was designed to develop awareness of the local prehistoric material culture among young people by means of sensorially experiencing the artworks inspired by local prehistoric ceramic production. The museum showed that art and archaeology can collaborate in an educative and creative way, and that significant results were generated by the mix of sensorial experiences from interactions with museum objects, the reconstruction of ancient technologies and the virtual reconstructions of objects and environments. Another positive result of the museum was the successful combination of traditional technologies with modern digital ones. Last but not least, as our experiments demonstrated, the museum proved to be an efficient educational tool in using the past to try and address present social and economic problems. We conclude by stressing the educational importance of direct experimentation by children, as this method offers a sensory experience of the past more credible than literary descriptions to be derived from history books.

Acknowledgements Our gratitude goes to Nena Galanidou for her invitation to contribute to the present volume and for her patience. Last, but not least we are grateful to Bogdan Capruciu and Roger Doonan for improving the English translation of the paper, and to two anonymous referees for their useful comments. 322

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