Ethics and the display of human and non-human remains

I have been remiss in posting updates recently, as I’m attempting to wrap up various projects whilst enjoying my last few weeks in Southampton. As a recap, in mid-November I participated in the 110th annual American Anthropological Association conference, where I co-chaired our Visual Ethics Roundtable and officially took up my 3-year position on the Society for Visual Anthropology‘s Executive Board. The roundtable was quite successful, something that I feel confident in saying given that Jonathan Marion and I have hosted these events for the past five years straight and thus have been witness to their many highs and lows. We had nearly 50 attendees, including very well-established and emerging scholars and practitioners. Whilst Cordelia Eddy (New School) was unable to contribute due to last minute detractions, Jeffrey Ehrenreich (University of New Orleans), Adam Solomonian (University of British Columbia) & Mabel Sabogal (University of South Florida) gave provocative talks that then culminated in more than 30 mins of group debate.

Screenshot by me of AAA blog post about 2011 meeting in Montreal

The following day Jonathan & I were involved in a special event session on the role of visual anthropology in the AAA’s new draft ethics principles. We’ve fed back a bit of information to the AAA ethics task force which may or may not now have an impact on how visual media and methods are addressed in the final version of the principles. We’ll see. In brief, our primary input includes:

(1) the need to identify visual media as one suite of tools among anthropologists’ many tools which demand ethical consideration in our everyday professional practice; and

(2) the imperative to approach visual media with the same due diligence for academic integrity that anthropologists apply to text.

This ethics-oriented work has especial relevance for the exhibition at the Wellcome Collection that I’m helping to curate alongside a team from the Wellcome itself and Portsmouth University. I’ve mentioned the exhibition elsewhere, but it launches in just a few months’ time (29 March 2012 to 17 June 2012), and its title – Brains: The Mind as Matter – hints at the nature of the material to be displayed; namely human and non-human animal remains in assorted forms, plus associated paraphernalia. The objects include real brains in jars or other containment units; brains on film, in photographs, in illustrations, and as 3D models; brains mediated by artistic intervention; and related representations of how people and animals have been variously probed, preserved and manipulated in the name of ‘culture’ and brain science.

The ethical dimensions of such an exhibition are large and incontrovertible. To this end, I gave a presentation in late September at a half-day workshop organized by the Petrie Museum on the respectful display of human remains. Curators from a variety of major institutions in London (e.g. the Hunterian/Royal College of Surgeons, Natural History Museum, Museum of London, Grant Museum of Zoology) attended and/or delivered their own presentations, and there was a bit of time for concerted discussion of best practice. Certainly, there is a relatively substantial academic literature on this topic, and in fact I saw a fascinating session at the AAA conference attending to some of the same issues. But one point I’ve taken away from the workshop is that there is a developing movement (or at least a sentiment) among exhibitions professionals to reclaim or reassert curatorial authority when it comes to sensitive or controversial display subjects. In other words, such professionals typically have the intellectual tools available to produce conscientious and critical displays, and this expertise should not be completely undermined or dismissed in ever-increasing attempts to democratize the exhibition-making experience. Indeed, a couple of examples presented at the workshop spoke precisely to the problems of attempting to cater to certain audience interests ahead of others, as well as ahead, in some cases, of the judicious opinion of curators themselves.

I would say that, in my experience, the more meaningful displays of ethically-loaded objects are those that are well-contextualised, that use both visuals and text to jar viewers out of simplistic interpretations of the subject matter, that weave displays together into a larger critical narrative; and that attempt to trace – or account for the lack of tracing of – consent from brain/object donors. These are strategies that we are trying to employ within the Brains exhibit.

Another point about the exhibition which makes it so pertinent to me is its total variance from our work at Çatalhöyük where we operate on a shoe-string budget driven by local interests and ad hoc tools.  These exhibitionary environments make for great comparative case studies.

Anyway, I’m about to start a related brain project with Richard Wingate at King’s College London which aims to assess student and professor experiences in handling real brain material. I’ll post about that in the future. Otherwise, I’m busy prepping for the move to York in January (including writing a few new module proposals), and finishing off digital humanities work at Southampton, along with a major study of first-year Humanities students’ experiences at the university.

I’ll hopefully post again before the end of the year – in the meantime, my friends and colleagues Alice Watterson & Cat Cooper are hosting an interesting session on visualisation at the upcoming CAA 2012.  The call for contributions is still open, so consider applying!

Heritage & the media

Screenshot by me of York's CHM 2 MA module outline on the web

I’m preparing the outline (syllabus) for one of the modules that I’ll be leading at York in the spring term–Cultural Heritage Management 2: Museums, Audiences and Interpretation.  While most of that outline is finalised, I’m still trying to settle on the reading list for a class on ‘Heritage and the media’.  A lot of the usual literature features in the list as it now stands, including Clack and Brittain’s (2007) Archaeology and the Media, and articles by Kulik (2006) on television and Pollock (2005) on newsprint.

But in terms of scholarship on web-based media, I’m keen to flesh out the readings that I currently have listed, and I’m especially interested to include rigorous literature that is itself hosted online.  I’ve mentioned before (here and in my list of links in the column on the right of my homepage) some of my favourite blogs and web-based knowledge sources, and I’d like to have students critically read the outputs of Colleen Morgan’s 4-week Blogging Archaeology project (which culminated in a Society for American Archaeology session), and the associated Then Dig peer-reviewed archaeology blog, as well as web-based journals like anthropologies, and the incredible Day of Archaeology.  I’d also love to be able to recommend forthcoming articles (which are being published online or in academic print) that assess the public and epistemological impact of this work, not to mention of the media themselves (as applied by archaeologists and heritage specialists).

I’m keen for suggestions, so please don’t hesitate to email me, contact me on Twitter (@archaeologistsp), respond here or via Facebook.  Thank yooouuuu!

Clack, T. and Brittain, M. (eds) (2007) Archaeology and the Media. Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press.

Kulik, K. (2006) Archaeology and public television. Public Archaeology 5 (2): 75-90.

Pollock, S. (2005) Archaeology goes to war at the newsstand. In Archaeologies of the Middle East: Critical Perspectives. S. Pollock and R. Bernbeck, eds. Pp. 78-96. Oxford: Blackwell.

Çatalhöyük 2011 and so much more

Prepping materials for the Çatalhöyük Visitors' Centre, August 2011

Well, it seems about time for an update, as otherwise my blog will soon be on the verge of obsolescence!  We returned from c. 3 weeks of fieldwork at Çatalhöyük at the end of August—this time with a team of four second-year undergraduate students from Southampton.  Our work at Çatal continues to be broad-based in nature, ranging from creation of public presentations to assessment of the conceptual rigour of digital imagery.  We are committed to affordable, locally-sourced, community-led and substantively-evaluated outputs—an approach which demands significant coordination and communication time on site and in the local villages and cities.

I have primary responsibility for the Visitors’ Centre, where we’re slowly redesigning and evaluating responses to the exhibition space.  Our methodology here privileges small-scale, carefully-researched, locally-sourced and changeable design strategies and displays above permanent, outsourced, large-scale expositions.  In proceeding as such, we are able to constantly experiment with exhibitionary styles, content and layout without fear of concretising the displays.  What is critical about our approach in the Visitors’ Centre is that each year when we return to Çatalhöyük, we subject our previous year’s outputs to evaluation via interviews with staff and visitors.  The temporary nature of our displays enables us to disassemble and reassemble them in line with this evaluation.  Not only does such a strategy allow us to be true to the ever-changing nature of the archaeological excavation itself—updating and revising the materials as new finds and ideas are processed—but it also provides the ideal pedagogical environment, as students have the opportunity to plan and implement temporary exhibits that are later critically assessed by members of the academic and non-academic community.  More so, it offers a chance to challenge and rethink museological practice itself.

I’ll post a link to our 2011 project report when it’s published, so that you can read in much greater detail about all the different angles to the work that we’ve been pursuing.  Our reports from 2010 and 2009 are available here.

Some other random news…

• The lecture that Matthew Johnson and I gave at the Society of Antiquaries of London in June on the Alan Sorrell project was mentioned, in passing, in the Times Higher Education journal.  The topic of that article—effectively intellectual property rights—is a poignant one that admittedly did not feature very prominently in our talk, but has had a lot of coverage in various forums and under various guises recently, for instance as regards open access and publishing in academia.
• I’ve recently been elected to the board of the Society for Visual Anthropology—a three-year term starting at the close of the AAA meetings in Montreal in November.  I’ll post on this subject again in the upcoming weeks, as Jonathan Marion and I are chairing our fifth annual Visual Ethics Roundtable at these meetings, and we have an absolutely wonderful line-up of speakers coming from around North America to participate in the discussions.
• Next week I’m heading up to York for my first full introduction to the archaeology staff.  I’ll be planning my teaching schedule for 2012, although I already know I’ll be lecturing during the spring term on the MA in Cultural Heritage Management.  My York webpages are under development too—you can link to them here if you want!
• I’ve been doing a lot – a LOT – of digital humanities research and exhibition work lately, and we’re launching much of that work in the next month… this will be the subject of my next post, I think…  In the meantime, you can browse the international Heritage Portal web feature on the Portus Project, whose content has been developed by a team of us from Southampton and the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

Day of Archaeology, 29 July

Screenshot by me of www.dayofarchaeology.com home page

I wanted to make a contribution – however brief! – to the incredible Day of Archaeology.  It’s been organised by Lorna Richardson, Matthew Law, and many other colleagues whose engagement with digital media, including blogging, is truly pioneering.  Check out the hundreds — literally HUNDREDS — of amazing pieces that have been added by archaeologists from around the world.  What Lorna, Matt and team have accomplished here is actually completely overwhelming and awe-inspiring.  It’s worthy of so much praise.  Here’s a link to my little post…

I’m heading off to Çatalhöyük very soon, so I’ll aim to blog about the experience of our third field season when I return to Southampton in September.  You can read our report on last year’s work here (pp. 117-123) – we’ll be building on these activities again this year.  See you in September!

Lectureship in Archaeology @ York

Screenshot by me of York's archaeology department website

I have some good news to share, as I’ve just learned that I’ll soon be taking up the position of Lecturer in Archaeology at the University of York (UK – not Canada!).  The appointment begins on 4 January 2012, and I’ll be contributing in particular to the department’s excellent cultural heritage programme.  I have the great fortune of getting to work alongside the excellent John Schofield, Julian Richards, and others—both faculty and research students—whose research and ideas I find inspiring.  Kate Giles, Anthony Masinton, Pat Hadley, and James Taylor are among those with whom I’ve interacted through the VIA project and through our practice at Çatalhöyük, and I’ve been peeking around at some current activities happening in York’s archaeology department such as this cool multi-disciplinary conference: https://kminterconference.wikispaces.com/Welcome.  Moreover, the department has an interesting legacy, beginning with Philip Rahtz, and carried on by Martin Carver and others, and it is now home to such iconic archaeological institutions as the ADS, and Antiquity.

York is spectacular, and I don’t think I could have dreamt of a better academic body at which to start my professional career, as it combines world-leading digital archaeology with boundary-pushing, on-the-ground disciplinary field practice.  I love the work of John Schofield precisely because it challenges one to reconsider what archaeology is today, and what it can be in the future.  You can read about some of his ongoing projects through the ‘research’ tab here, and you can check out aspects of York’s digital research stream here.

Most excitingly, I’ll be able to take on my own research students starting in January, which is probably the aspect of professional life that I’m looking the most forward to.  That opportunity to collaborate with new academics—to share thoughts and help others to nurture their novel & untested ideas—is where so much of the excitement & passion of the scholarly environment lies.  I’m thrilled about this job, and feel very fortunate to be moving to York at the end of the year.

I’ll be blogging again towards the end of this month for the Day of Archaeology – 29 July 2011.  If you’re an archaeology fan or a blogger, make sure to check out this project, which is being managed by a few of my amazing colleagues.  Also read about the larger Festival of British Archaeology here.