Consuming pasts: a storyteller’s take on taking
Channel: Recording Archaeology
Date: 2016-05-17

Ruth Van Dyke and Reinhard Bernbeck provided 12 of my fellow contributors and me with the opportunity to explore alternative approaches to seeing the past in the publication earlier this year of Subjects and Narratives in Archaeology, building on Jameson, Ehrenhard and Finn’s 2003 edited volume, Ancient Muses: Archaeology in the Arts. Theory took a backseat in both publications, and questions remain, two of which I address in this session:
1. What is the ethical basis for using the lives and customs of past peoples?
2. And, how does one develop a dialogue from an imagined past?

I ask participants to come prepared to remember what they ate the previous evening and to contribute to the development of a few lines of theatrical dialogue.

James GIBB (Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, Maryland, USA)