Discarded Matter: How do museums dematerialize objects?
Channel: Recording Archaeology
Date: 2019-01-28

In 2007 Hedley Swain noted that people usually encounter archaeology for the first time in so-called ‘Uber- Museums’. The British Museum, Louvre, or Vatican Museums stand as the most significant examples of these encyclopaedic museums. Those institutions are dominated by aestheticized model of displaying, which in case of presenting archaeology equals mainly with typological ordering of artefacts. Typology as a scientific method has a significant origin and in the first modern museums it served as a way of legitimizing archaeology as an academic discipline. From the beginning it was immersed in visuality and representation. Artefacts presented through lens of typological order were and are still merely illustrations of order, signs on the time-axis. Now, after two centuries of typological regime in encyclopaedic museums, places where the first adventure with archaeology starts, it is essential to reflect upon its accordance with visitors’ demands and with the trends in contemporary archaeological theory. The main goal of my presentation will be to critically reflect upon the representational character of archaeological displays in huge museums (Louvre and British Museum), taking into account the material, not solely visual, essence of artefacts. 

Monika Stobiecka (University of Warsaw)