Object Artefact Script Piquette
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Contents |
Object Artefact Script (October 8-9, 2009)
Kathryn E. Piquette (Trinity College Dublin & UCL Institute of Archaeology)
Written Things, Human Agents, Inhabited Worlds: Revealing processes of mutual constitution through digital technologies
Advances in digital technologies are enabling increasingly complex and dynamic analyses and visualisations of written media. Yet as this conference highlights, the ‘digital turn’ taking place in this domain retains certain traditional decontextualising methods—the very methods digital techniques are uniquely positioned to offer alternatives to, whether in the arena of data collection, analysis, or dissemination.
Taking an archaeological perspective as my point of departure, I will discuss some of the theoretical and methodological concerns with decontextualising approaches encountered in my research area. I discuss the ways I have attempted to address these with selected digital technologies in the context of emerging scribal practices in the Nile Valley around 3000 BCE (the period of Egyptian ‘state’ formation under a single ruler). Here, my initial aims have been to explore the influences of materials, tools and techniques on the physical appearance of graphical imagery and its meanings in both the contexts of production and use. The primary tool for data collation and analysis for this work was the computer software programme ATLAS.ti (Archiv für Technik, Lebenswelt und Alltagssprache, build 5.2.9; www.atlasti.com). Developed by Thomas Muhr of Scientific Software, this powerful workbench aids the qualitative analysis of digitised multi-media sources including text, audio, video and graphic files. ATLAS.ti was useful for grounding the study of early Egyptian writing in the artefacts themselves while enabling the integration of theories and methods from archaeology, philology and sociology. The research results demonstrate the mutually contingent relationship between written meaning and its physical expression. At the same time, the need for further consideration of the ontology of ‘writing’ is also highlighted.
Inasmuch as inscriptions do not simply exist, but are inextricably embedded in a material and inhabited world, so too are they bound up in processes of cognition, and the intentions, practices and experiences of embodied human agents (cf. Dobres 2000). If we accept that the functions and meanings of script continuously unfold through the actions of practioners in social time-space (e.g. from initial production, to emendation, removal or subsequent addition of signs and symbols, etc.), then another set of theoretical and methodological challenges having to do with embodied perception and practice emerge.
Material properties of substance and surface are perceived and engaged with through various media in the inhabited environment (see Gibson 1979) in the course of making and using writing. Perception (e.g. of painted reliefs on temple walls or funerary stelae to writing on wine jars, wax tablets and papyrus, or printed text on paper, as well as the practices (e.g. of carving, inscribing, and printing, or viewing and reading via manipulation or perambulation, etc.) depend entirely on embodiment and sensory input. It can therefore be argued that inscribed objects and their makers/users are situated in a mutually constructing relationship, simultaneously embodying (used here in the metaphorical sense) complex processes while constituting the outcomes of those processes.
Although a relative newcomer to the digital arena, I am increasingly interested in the roles technology can play in capturing, exploring, modelling and ‘visualising’ the complex relationships through which writing and its meanings are constructed. As I consider these issues for the development of a new research project, I would like to pose various questions for the discussion that I hope will follow my presentation. In the course of developing digital methods and tools for the material contextualisation of writing:
- To what extent can / should we also be accounting for other related reciprocal relationships that bind inscribed object and agent together?
- How might consideration of the various modes of sensory perception involved in making and using inscribed objects aid understandings of written meaning? Visual perception of inscribed objects is often emphasised over the other senses. How might we go about modelling the materiality of writing in relation to touch? Sound? Or even smell or taste? What stands to be gained?
- And what of embodied practices in the past? How can human computer interfaces and ‘visualisations’ more satisfactorily reproduce/reconstruct the embodied engagements and experiences of the past human actors who made and used a given inscribed object?
- For archaeological material, only partial or indirect evidence for aspects of these dynamic relationships may be evidenced. How can digital technologies aid fuller understandings? Is such a goal appropriate for all inscribed data or only certain types?
- Another concern is that some digital ‘visualisations’ can be misleading with regard to the apparent certainty or fixity of representations, reconstructions or interpretations. These run the risk of fossilising knowledge that is in fact continually evolving and changing. How then do we develop an interface between a perceptual present and a virtual past that makes the process of knowledge construction transparent while enabling its modification as new insights emerge?
Reference List
- Dobres, M.-A. 2000. Technology and Social Agency: Outlining a practice framework for archaeology. Oxford: Blackwell.
- Gibson, J. J. 1979. The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin.
