I have been lucky to collaborate over the past two years with the REPLACE Project. This collaboration has really made me think differently about leadership, about guiding teams with values in mind, and about how digital immersive technology can support people in different ways in responding to loss and its many complexities.
The question above sits at the core of a new #openaccess article we’ve just published—the outcome of an exceptional collaboration between Anna Simandiraki-Grimshaw, Colleen Morgan, James Stuart Taylor, Aida Fadioui, Lise Foket, Piraye Hacıgüzeller, Despoina V. Sampatakou, Paola Derudas, Holly Wright & Alice Clough.
Alongside our wider team on #TETRARCHs – Transforming Data Reuse in Archaeology – we’ve been using storytelling as a device to support different forms and conceptions of collecting and using archaeological data.
We have a hypothesis that more creative, emotive, complex datasets can lead to more creative and complex use and reuse of archaeological information. At the same time, we suspect this process of creating more creative, complex datasets can bring greater agency, recognition and equity both to archaeological practitioners and to wider communities. We have been testing the usefulness of storytelling as a springboard for exploring these ideas.
However, at every turn, systemic barriers have interfered with our efforts. Such barriers are often related to the sense that there is a ‘normal’ way of practicing archaeology which cannot be compromised, and that experimentation with creativity and emotion are not quite acceptable and must therefore sit next to—not within—archaeological data-making.
Simultaneously, it is widely recognised that there is no ‘normal’ archaeology, and that unrelenting conformance to normativity (which denies emotion and creativity) seriously undermines the possibility for change, for inclusion, for agency, for redistribution, for representation and equity both within and beyond archaeology.
In the article, we review key barriers we’ve faced in implementing new methods for creative data-making, and offer reflections on how to move forward. Importantly, we are readying now to test out the next iteration of our research questions thanks to our dear friends and colleagues on the Tharros Archaeological Research Project (Steven Ellis, Eric Poehler, and team), and in collaboration with the one-of-a-kind Fondazione Mont’e Prama. Thank you for making it possible to push further! And please stay tuned, as we leave for Tharros next week.
This research would not be possible without our phenomenal collaborators at Toumba Serron, our funders Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), CHANSE: Collaboration of Humanities and Social Sciences in Europe, and the tremendous support of my department UCL Institute of Archaeology. We are indebted to many whose ideas have inspired us, including direct feedback on the article from Sadie Watson, Guillermo Diaz de Liano, and Mark Gillings.
I’m writing this post from Manchester, UK, where we’ve been wrapping up the Unpath’d Waters (UNPATH) project, as well as the wider Towards a National Collection (TANC) programme that funded it plus four other ‘Discovery Projects’. We’ve done a lot of exciting work through UNPATH – from values-led practice (read more here) to in-depth audience analysis (published here and available for download here) to experimentation with visually-impaired co-designers in rethinking evaluation methods (stay tuned for more details!).
Beyond UNPATH, I am very proud of a piece of research we did in partnership with all of the TANC projects, which resulted in a publication on Ethics as Practice, available to download here. I was struggling early on in my project to manage expectations, systems, and human (and planetary) needs. I was not alone, and through communications with several amazing colleagues on other TANC projects we managed to grow a community together concerned to ensure that the next stages of investment into collections-oriented research and innovation in the UK are underpinned by a genuine commitment to ethical practices.
I am in awe of Ananda Rutherford who has led on this initiative from the outset, and feel lucky to have co-authored the publication with her, alongside Katrina Foxton and Anna-Maria Sichani – backed by the ideas and feedback of dozens of TANC colleagues. We are hosting a session at the TANC conference tomorrow, Thursday 21 November, starting at exactly 11.35am (online and in-person), where we will summarise the report and open it up to critique and comparison across different institutions and spaces, extending it beyond TANC. Here the incredible Tehmina Goskar, Paola Di Giuseppantonio Di Franco & Tao Tao Chang will share their experiences. Indeed, Tehmina has already provided a detailed response online, helping to push forward the conversation – please read!
If we don’t see you in Manchester or you’re not able to join the conference online, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with your thoughts. There is also a huge body of literature on this topic, and we have compiled a Zotero bibliography to help contextualise our thinking. You can consult the bibliography here.
SARA PERRY 