Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-ndw9j Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-16T15:22:16.371Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Representation and Structure Conflict in the Digital Age

Reassessing Archaeological Illustration and the Use of Cubist Techniques in Depicting Images of the Past

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2017

Eric S. Carlson
Eric S. Carlson*
Affiliation:
Historical Research Associates, Inc., 125 Bank St # 500, Missoula, MT 59802 ([email protected]; http://www.escillustration.com)
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Digital imaging technologies have enhanced archaeological research and profoundly expanded the scale of the discipline’s potentialities. As illustrators and archaeologists move away from using hand-drawn images (of hand-held, real-life objects) to depict artifacts and other archaeological information, certain capabilities of the traditional illustrative process are lost. One such loss is the ability to present a complete and informed representation of an artifact free of the distortions and visual limitations that single-perspective (i.e., digital or photographic) imagery produces. This is accomplished by the illustrator through the unification of multiple views of the artifact from various perspectives into a single two-dimensional image that communicates to the viewer important attributes of the artifact, free of distortion and remaining true to the measured, analytical conventions of the illustrative process. Liberation from the single-viewpoint perspective was one of the fundamental elements of the Cubist movement. Traditional archaeological illustrators utilize Cubist principles to communicate visually to the viewer a complete, accurate, and undistorted package of information about an artifact. The supplanting of hand-drawn illustrations by digital images in today’s archaeological publications threatens to revert the visual representation of data back to uninformed, surficial “snapshots” of incomplete objects.

Las tecnologías de imágenes digitales han enaltecido los métodos de investigación arqueológica y ampliado abismalmente la escala de potenciales de la disciplina. Al alejarse los ilustradores y los arqueólogos de la representación de objetos dibujados a mano alzada, sosteniéndolos con la mano, inclusive de otro tipo de información arqueológica, se han perdido capacidades específicas del proceso clásico de la ilustración. Una de éstas es la capacidad de la ilustración para mostrar una representación completa e informada de un artefacto, sin las distorsiones y limitaciones visuales que introduce la perspectiva de un solo plano de las imágenes digitales o fotográficas. Esto se logra por el ilustrador a través de unificar las múltiples vistas de un artefacto desde varias perspectivas, en una imagen de dos dimensiones que comunica al observador los atributos importantes del artefacto sin distorsión alguna, permaneciendo fiel a las convenciones analíticas y mesuradas del proc so de ilustración. El liberarse de la perspec iva de un solo plano fue uno de los elementos fundamentales del movimiento cubista. Los ilustradores clásicos dentro de la arqueología utilizan los principios del movimiento cubista para comunicar al observador un paquete de información completo, preciso y sin distorsión en torno a un artefacto. La sustitución de ilustraciones hechas a mano por las imágenes digitales de las publicaciones arqueológicas amenaza con revertir la representación visual de los datos en una “instantánea” superficial, desinformada e incompleta de los objetos.

Type
Research Article
Information
Advances in Archaeological Practice , Volume 2 , Issue 4 , November 2014 , pp. 269 - 284
Copyright
Copyright © Society for American Archaeology 2014

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

References Cited

Addington, Lucile R. 1986 Lithic Illustration: Drawing Flaked Stone Artifacts for Publication. University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Adkins, Lesley, and Adkins, Roy 1989 Archaeological Illustration. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Boas, Franz 1927 Primitive Art. Dover, New York.Google Scholar
Carlson, Eric 2012 Illustrating Life and Death in Early Bronze Age Sites in the Dead Sea Plain, Jordan: Revealing the Importance of the Process. Lecture presented at the Picturing the Past exhibit, Oriental Institute, University of Chicago.Google Scholar
Carlson, Eric, Prentiss, Anna Marie, Kuijt, Ian, Crossland, Nicole, and Adolph, Art 2010 Visually Reconstructing Middle Fraser Canyon Prehistory: Redefining a Process. SAA Archaeological Record 10:29–33.Google Scholar
Chase, Philip G. 1985 Illustrating Lithic Artifacts: Information for Scientific Illustrators. Lithic Technology 14(2):57–70.Google Scholar
Clifford, James 1988 Histories of the Tribal and the Modern. In The Predicament of Cultures: Twentieth Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.Google Scholar
Dauvois, M. 1976 Precis de Dessin Dynamique et Structural des Industries Lithiques Prehistoriques. Perigueux: Pierre Fanlac.Google Scholar
Dillon, Brian D. 1985 A Student’s Guide to Archaeological Illustration. Institute of Archaeology, University of California, Los Angeles Google Scholar
Gifford-Gonzalez, Diane 1993 You Can’t Run but You Can Hide: Representations of Women’s Work in Illustrations of Paleolithic Life. Visual Anthropology Review 9:22–41.Google Scholar
Golding, John 1988 Cubism: A History and Analysis 1907914. Belknap Press Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.Google Scholar
Hodder, Ian 1982 Symbolic and Structural Archaeology. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kahnweiler, Daniel-Henry 1949 The Rise of Cubism. Wittenborn, Schultz, Inc., New York.Google Scholar
Levi-Strauss, Claude 1963 Structural Anthropology. Basic Books, New York.Google Scholar
Miller, Arthur I. 2001 Einstein, Picasso: Space, Time, and the Beauty That Causes Havoc. Basic Books, New York.Google Scholar
Moser, Stephanie 2004 Archaeological Representation: The Visual Conventions for Constructing Knowledge about the Past. In Archaeological Theory Today, edited by Hodder, Ian, pp. 262–283. Blackwell, Malden, Massachusetts.Google Scholar
Motherwell, Robert 1949 Introduction. In The Rise of Cubism, by Kahnqeiler, Daniel-Henry. Wittenborn, Schultz, Inc., New York.Google Scholar
Prentiss, Anna Marie, and Kujit , Ian 2012 People of the Middle Fraser Canyon: An Archaeological History. University of Washington Press, Seattle.Google Scholar
Shirar, Scott, and Rasic, Jeff, Carlson, Eric, and Gutherie, Mareca 2012 Rock Art in the Far North: A Local Style of Petroglyphs from the Central-Western Brooks Range. Poster Presented at the 2012 Alaska Anthropological Association Meeting, Fairbanks, Alaska.Google Scholar
Stein, Gertrude 1984 [1938] Picasso. Dover, New York.Google Scholar
Villeneuve, Suzanne, and Billy , Nora 2008 Results of the Sxetl’ Basket Excavations at the Six-Mile Fishing Camps (near Lillooet, BC). Poster presented at the Xaxli’p First Nation Annual August Xaxli’p Days Event, Lillooet BC.Google Scholar
Villeneuve, Suzanne, Billy, Nora, Adolph, Art, Endo, Naoko, Carlson, Eric, Yang, Dongya, Speller, Camilla, Hayden, Brian, Fox, Michael, Spafford-Ricci, Sara, Watson, Andrew, Villeneuve, Sharon, Narcisse, Leanne, and Narcisse, Rose-Ellen 2011a Results of the Sxetl’ Basket Excavations at Six Mile Rapids along the Fraser River, British Columbia. Poster presented at the 76th Annual Meetings for the Society of American Archaeology, Sacramento, California.Google Scholar
Villeneuve, Suzanne, Billy, Nora, Adolph, Art, Endo, Naoko, Carlson, Eric, Yang, Dongya, Speller, Camilla, Hayden, Brian, Fox, Michael, Spafford-Ricci, Sara, Watson, Andrew, Villeneuve, Sharon, Narcisse, Leanne, and Narcisse, Rose-Ellen 2011b Results of the Sxetl’ Basket Excavations at Six Mile Rapids along the Fraser River, British Columbia. Poster presented to the Xaxli’p First Nation community, Lillooet BC.Google Scholar
Wallace, Henry D. 2004 Update to the Middle Gila Buff Ware Ceramic Sequence. In Hohokam Farming on the Salt River Floodplain: Refining Models and Analytical Methods, edited by T. K., Henderson, pp. 4524. Anthropological Papers No. 43. Center for Desert Archaeology, Tucson. Anthropological Papers No. 10. Pueblo Grande Museum, City of Phoenix Parks, Recreation and Library Department, Phoenix.Google Scholar
Zaslow, Bert 1977 A Guide to Analyzing Prehistoric Ceramic Decorations by Symmetry and Pattern Mathematics. In Pattern Mathematics and Archaeology: The Pattern Technology of the Hohokam, by Zaslow, Bert and Dittert, Alfred E., pp. 29–57. Anthropological Research Papers No. 2. Arizona State University, Tempe.Google Scholar