The great illusion (part one)

Many of you will agree that the reconstructive models of virtual archaeology look often more like “sensational/hyped” monumental rebuilding than like the projection of deduction and reconstruction carried out by archaeologists.

I said archaeologists, not architects ...

… as if the purpose of virtuality is the activation of a trivial switch between the state of preservation and a mysterious "original appearance", rather than the deployment of a powerful tool to convey the complex dialectic – both diachronic and multidimensional - that exists between analysis, interpretation and reconstruction. 

Any archaeologist knows that the dialectic between space and time is the real goal (and the real charm) of his own work. While imagining a reconstruction, a good archaeologist will always refuse to provide the "correctness" of his findings, but will rather look to acquaint his audience with his doubts and theories. 

Maybe it's the excessive attention paid to the "registration" of the state of preservation (and to the undeniable merits of survey technologies) that has unconsciously led us to bring back to life -inside virtual archaeology - the old idea of antiquity as an eternal that we thought was superseded in the last century. 

One of the results of this approach is the exaggerated focus on a trivialization of the concept of reconstruction. As long as archaeologists limit themselves to evaluate how accurate and precise they are in their measurements and content themselves with being able to manage mountains of data, they cannot complain if the message arriving to the general public continues to confuse archaeology with the strange liturgy of a mystery cult. Or, in the most fortunate cases, an overlap between a virtual layer of reconstruction and a relief (precise, of course!) of the preserved monument. The latter choice is ineffective not only because selective, but because it endorses a flat and simplistic vision of the interpretation process. 

What has happened to 50 years of stratigraphic archaeology and methodological meditations? 

What are we able to transmit to a wide audience of all the methodological developments of the last decades? 

I’d say: little or nothing. 

I cannot otherwise explain why, despite the fact our reliefs are more precise and an increasing amount of data are being stored in our database and queried in our GIS, the Ancient Rome that appears in the media looks like a Hollywood blockbuster of the 50s. A town made of gleaming marble and inhabited by cruel people whose favorite occupation is to stab each other (preferably from behind), or (amazing, right?) do strange things, like brushing in the morning, cooking or shopping. The Middle Ages are seen as a dark and rainy millennial fantasy in which the sun never shone, everyone had a long beard and almost no one smiled. We could continue quoting the mystical charms of the Greeks, Egyptians and Phoenicians (lately a bit in decline in Hollywood and Cinecittà, to tell the truth).

to be continued ...