A Critical Review of Visual Media in Artefact Shape Analysis
Channel: Recording Archaeology
Date: 03/05/2019

Researchers have long stressed the role of scientific illustrations in creating ‘expert knowledge’ (sensu Moser 2014) and the shaping and framing of interpretations and future research questions (Perry, 2015). In their very nature, these scientific illustrations are reductionist, compartmentalising analyses into a small number of variables, nodes or taxa. It is therefore important that the more visual, or ocularcentric, frameworks are critically assessed and better evaluated within the normative processes of hypothesis testing and narrative building. One particularly visual example is in archaeological shape analysis and specifically in geometric morphometric (GMM) methodologies. In their use, artefacts are decomposed and simplified to a number of points, sides, curves or surfaces, with theoretical shape changes and mean shapes often fuelling further analyses and thus expert knowledge. The illustrations produced from GMM are powerful images documenting how an assemblage can be understood in terms of shape variance, however these have been accepted at face value and not critiqued for their role in knowledge construction. This presentation will therefore examine the role of visual media designed throughout archaeological shape analyses, and their role in the construction of archaeological narratives and the knowledge-creation process. Using a variety of two-dimensional and three-dimensional case studies, this presentation addresses the epistemological significance of the visual media created, and provides an example of how archaeologists need to reflect and consider the scientific illustrations they create and disseminate. 

Line Lauridsen (Aarhus University), Christian Steven Hoggard (University of Southampton/Aarhus University) and Felix Riede (Aarhus University)