‘A Veritable Collection of Erotomaniacs’: Archaeology, heritage and the post-apocalyptic museum
Channel: Recording Archaeology
Date: 24/03/2019

The museum has long provided an uncanny environment for sci-fi imaginaries. Objects come to life and wreak havoc on unsuspecting visitors, cursed artefacts lead to horrific murder, ancient horrors lie hidden in the dark recesses of the store room. The otherworldly atmosphere of the museum provides space for unsettling narratives that confront the ultimate unknowability of the world. Time and space are compressed in such settings, which seem to vibrate with an untapped potentiality. But what happens when the museum contains us, when the things dug up and put on display are from a world we claim to understand? This paper takes Chris Marker’s seminal short film La Jetée (1962) and Nicolas de Crecy’s graphic novel Glacial Period (2007) as starting points for a wider discussion of the post-apocalyptic rediscovery of the present. In these works, we are projected into futures where the natural, artistic, and archaeological collections of today act as powerful anchors for reawakening what have become long forgotten pasts. This has consequences horrifying and absurd: stuffed animals lead inadvertently to the saviour of humanity; sculptures debate their own worth; paintings devour arrogant archaeologists. Exploring themes of time travel, ruination, memory, and the terror of discovery, this paper will contribute to debates around the speculative nature of archaeology, and the implications of posthumanist thinking for the heritage field. 

Colin Sterling (UCL)