Deep Maps Of Digital, Post-Representational Archaeology
Piraye Hacıgüzeller
Abstract Moving beyond the epistemological objectivity-subjectivity debate, post-representational thinking in archaeology has recently started to explicitly challenge the idea of a past reality that exists independently from the present and future. A post-representational archaeology, with its neo-empiricist ambitions, is to concentrate its efforts primarily and explicitly on the witnessable formations of the present. The past in post-representational thinking is therefore not an existing code to be cracked or reality to be discovered. Rather, it is creatively constructed here and now through a set of relations presented together insofar as such presentations are found relevant and acceptable by consensus.
Despite the increasing influence of such ideas in the discipline, the core business of archaeological practice today still largely remains focused on seeking knowledge that truthfully corresponds to the “archaeological past”. Post-depositional processes and practices of archaeologists in this context are treated as of importance as far as they influence the processes of revealing or interpreting the past.
I will be arguing in the presentation that “deep archaeological maps” facilitated by the digital transition in archaeology can serve to further destabilise the ideas of and hopes for an independent past that can be known, understood and explained. Specifically, cartographic data visualisation in archaeology can be carried out with multimedia deep maps populated with narratives, videos, sound recordings, maps of emotions, hopes, fears, pictures, personal and material biographies, as well as links to conventional archaeological databases and Big Datasets. Such “thick” cartographic presentations of archaeological sites would act as a continuous reminder of the identity of archaeological places, processes and pasts as continuously becoming at present. I will describe the possibilities for such deep mapping applications at Çatalhöyük (Turkey) with the help of a multimedia deep map prepared with Prezi presentation software and in relation to the Çatalhöyük Living Archive project.
