Archaeology and Photography by Lesley McFadyen;Dan Hicks;

Archaeology and Photography by Lesley McFadyen;Dan Hicks;

Author:Lesley McFadyen;Dan Hicks; [Неизв.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781350029705
Publisher: Bloomsbury UK
Published: 2019-10-18T20:00:00+00:00


Figure 7.5 Eight examples (a–h) of pecked ‘triple cup’ marking from the Ness of Brodgar, comprising the Brodgar Stone and Small Finds (SFs) from excavations. From top left: (a) the Brodgar Stone; (b) SF17506; (c) SF11546; (d) SF11566; (e) SF16599; (f) SF6136; (g) SF7726; (h) SF11560 (photos: Antonia Thomas).

This simple recognition has profound implications. Through a range of incised, pecked and ground marks, the Brodgar Stone displays a sequence of decoration and alteration involving multiple engagements at different times. It is unclear that its decoration was ever ‘finished’, or that the Stone was ever intended to be a final form. Since its design would be added to, defaced, altered or augmented, any ‘meaning’ that we might seek to discern in the decoration cannot be fixed or static. These different acts of marking do not represent discrete ‘events’, but ongoing processes of differing durations, perhaps interrupted by long hiatuses or periods of intense activity. This challenges the Stone’s status as art, and the purely visual consumption that this term implies. It leads us to consider the Brodgar Stone instead as a multi-durational artefact. It indicates that the process of working may be as significant as its form (Thomas 2016: 225). This has repercussions for how we understand the creation and appreciation of carvings in the Neolithic, and their relationship to different phases of architecture and activity.

This also tells us a great deal about the representation of the past in archaeology. The line drawings shown in Figure 7.4 depict only a virtual Brodgar Stone, as it appears to exist in various early photographs. But, and as Frederick Bohrer has argued, ‘photography has … a double impact that does as much to create anew as to record what is pre-existent’ (Bohrer 2011b: 32). The early photographs of the Brodgar Stone have effectively displaced the original artefact to become the prima facie evidence; what started as a representation has become the reality. This process is then continued as the line drawings themselves become represented as an objective point of fact, which is then interpreted in accompanying texts. As Stephanie Moser and Sam Smiles have observed,



Download



Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.