Non ci resta che piangere

Ammettiamolo. Per noi archeologi gli ultimi mesi sono stati davvero divertenti; non è passata settimana senza che fossimo allietati da notizie di ogni genere sul nostro patrimonio culturale e, davvero, i momenti di spasso sono stati tanti.

Il fantasma del palcoscenico

Abbiamo pensato di fare un esperimento:  provare a liberare l'autore, il regista e soprattutto l'attore nascosto (nemmeno tanto in profondità ...) in ogni archeologo che si rispetti.

E questo è solo l'inizio di un progetto, cui partecipano amici e appassionati, uniti dall'idea che un po' di follia non guasta mai. Anche in archeologia.

Vi assicuro che ne vedrete delle belle in un futuro prossimo, ci stiamo già lavorando.

Per prima cosa però, guardatevi il risultato del nostro esperimento ...

A bug's life (part three) - Splendor and banality

Ancient splendor and modern banality

"Return to its former glory" is an expression that I’d prefer to no longer hear, because it describes an enterprise doomed to failure. Not the failure to dig up and find nothing, but the much deeper and frustrating failure - to fail to understand the meaning of our profession and of our social role.

In its embarrassing banality this violent and conventional view hides a sense of romantic and mystical loss of something that no longer exists and promotes separation between what is ancient and what is modern ... as if our time is no longer capable of producing its own splendor.

The future of public archaeology needs a new concept of archaeology. Not as the study of antiquities but a discipline with a creative soul. We'll be very surprised then to find that modern archaeology is also looking for treasure. This treasure is nothing "beautiful" or hidden under the spot marked X, but rather the reconstruction of historical memory through many and almost unreadable traces.

to be continued ...

A bug's life (part two) - Monuments and artifacts

Too many monuments, too many artifacts.

Often, even today, archaeology is still considered as a study of objects, artifacts and ancient monuments. I prefer to consider these as "cogs" of a wonderful and powerful machine that produces interpretation and abstraction. If we pay too much attention to objects they turn into idols, easy prey for  false cultural identities. They divert attention from the links (the famous "wire" of the necklace) which are much more difficult to recognize, reconstruct and describe.

Equally difficult, and much more fascinating, is to overcome the concept of reconstruction as monumental reconstruction (real or virtual it be). The collapse of a monument can be a fascinating story to tell; even more than its construction, as long as you understand the best way to narrate it.

to be continued ...

A bug's life (part one) - Wide open data

1 - Data (and eyes) wide open ... If tomorrow archaeology must be public, and I mean social and sustainable, it must acquire today the tools to support openess and cooperation. Archaeologists must begin to speak a new language, with a new alphabet. The alphabet of this language must be open data, but the language, like every language, must also have a grammar, and a syntax.  Otherwise, the data could be as open and available as possible, but people will interact with it just like users. Or customers of an archaeology reduced to a huge app store. to be continued ... *The original titles of this post and of the following 4 was ‘crickets and ants’ and referred to a short tale from Aesop. It was originally written after the first Italian congress of public archaeology, held in Florence on 29 and 30 October, 2012. These days were intense both for the number of speakers and posters and for the intense livetweet (hashtag: # pubarch). The English version is thus a little different from original, as some time has passed since the congress. During the congress I did not make any notes (the track of these days, in Italian, is carefully reported in the blog ‘generazione di archeologi’). I wrote down some reflections about the congress, as there were the first signs of a major mental shift in italian archaeology which one hopes will change things.  Public Archaeology is a long tradition in Northern Europe and America. Maybe we have the chance to do it in Italy.

The great illusion (part two)

Another interesting side effect of the dogmatic identification between archaeological reconstruction and monumental rebuilding is the illusion that there is a 3D for archaeology, and 3D itself is a communicative language rather than an absolutely neutral technology.

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 ...