GIS AND THE CURATING OF COLLECTIONS ACCESSING KNOWLEDGE AND EXPANDING INTERACTION
Channel: European Association of Archaeologists
Date: 2020-12-13

This article presents a methodology for researching, analysing, producing and transmitting knowledge in relation to the practices of curating collections. That provides useful means that engage with theoretical accounts on the materiality of objects such as Benjamin’s perceptual accounts on the aura and authenticity, Gibson’s theory of affordances, Appadurai’s biographic approaches to commodification, Hodder’s contextual and reconstructing archaeologies and Latour’s significant network associations.
The methodology was developed independently in two different stages both via experimental fieldwork and through GIS laboratory work. That produced a georeferenced model of the display with the form of a point-pattern where every point is related to an entry containing relevant information in a database. The perceptual features were expressed by defining an aura or area of influence from their width measurements. This constitutes a useful mean to define interaction between them and viewers at an artefactual scale from material affordances that may drive to further developments of the method.
The technique also provides the basis for integrating biographic and contextual approaches. Firstly, the points referring the objects can be edited and moved to previous locations. By incorporating spatial information from both visual and textual archival records, the shifts produced as a result of a succession of curational decisions can be reconstructed besides the contextual settings the objects had before their entered the collections. As a result, each object’s associations potentially produce a series of events which defines a sequence from which a particular narrative can be transmitted to the public.

Finally, this expanded knowledge can be accessed in situ by the public on the screen of their mobile devices when they are visiting the collections, so it is aimed to provide more holistic, didactic, personalised and interactive aesthetic experiences. A basic example of a georeferenced interactive catalogue is presented.


Author(s): Villajos, Santiago (Madrid Autonomous University; Alumnus, University College London)