Just a brief note to say that tomorrow (Tuesday, 17 December 2013) we are hosting our second Seeing, Thinking, Doing session, from 14:00-18:00 GMT, at the Theoretical Archaeology Group (TAG) conference in Bournemouth, UK. We have a fantastic line up of speakers, who are presenting both in person and remotely–from the US, the north of England, Europe, and Canada (where I’ll be!). While we aren’t live-streaming the session, you can follow along via our Twitter account @visualarchaeo – and indeed, you can follow many of the speakers themselves who have their own personal Twitter profiles (e.g., Nicole Beale, Ian Dawson, Nicolo Dell’Unto, Matt Harrison, Mhairi Maxwell, Robin Skeates, James Taylor, Alex Zambelli; also Gareth Beale and Cat Cooper, my session co-organisers).

On top of Twitter, we have a blog that we’ve been building up since our first TAG session in May in Chicago. You can read contributors’ abstracts there, and you can also contribute yourself to the discussion by posting a comment to the site. We are very proud too of our growing digital showcase, which now hosts nearly a dozen posters from researchers and practitioners around the world. Three new posters have been added in the last week, from Tomasz Michalik, Chiara Zuanni, and Dragos Gheorghiu & Georgina Jones, respectively looking at eye tracking research, reception of displays of human remains, and imagination in archaeology.
We had twice as many submissions for our session than we could accept into the half-day conference format, and I take this as testimony to the ongoing currency of the subject matter. Just over a decade ago, when I first began studying the topic of visualisation in archaeology, I was met by a not insignificant number of skeptical voices who suggested there was little if any validity to this line of enquiry, and certainly no future in it. I’m not easily dissuaded and I was fortunate enough to have incredible support and counsel from my supervisors at UVic and Southampton, who at the time seemed to be amongst a tiny handful of kindred spirits.
It turns out, of course, that there is (and, indeed, there was) a fairly major community of like-minded individuals in existence in the discipline, as well as a deep history of experimental and critically-engaged archaeological visual practice. The problem arguably seemed to be that everyone was working in isolation, mostly unaware of or disconnected from others’ efforts. I’d like to think that this predicament has changed, and that we’re all now invested in building capacity in a subject area that continues to have massive intellectual, pedagogical and methodological potential. The diversity of contributions to our session, and to previous related events, publications and projects, would suggest the fruitfulness of such an investment.
I’ve posted the schedule of speakers below. Disappointingly, I understand that the TAG printed timetable doesn’t reflect our own timetable, so please follow the outline here. I hope we see you either at the conference or online!
14.00
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Rachel Opitz
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Reality based surveying, archaeological information visualisation, and the construction of archaeological reality
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14.15
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Maxwell & Goldberg
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Virtual-Materiality: the digital re-creations made as part of the Glenmorangie Early Medieval Research Project
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14.30
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Hermon & Niccolucci
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Real uncertainty and uncertain reality in archaeological visualization
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14.45
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Jamie Hampson
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Is rock art research ocularcentric? Embodiment theory and somatic society
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15.00
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Taylor, Dell’Unto, Berggren & Issavi
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Seeing Things Differently: the impact of digital visual technologies upon recording and the generation of knowledge at Çatalhöyük
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15.15
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Teri Brewer
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Visualizing the Invisible: Pushing the Craft in Archaeological Screen Media
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15.30 | Discussion | |
15.45
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Discussion
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16.00
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Matthew Harrison
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Topology vs. Topography: Visualising the Islamic city in the medieval and modern mind
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16.15
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Neha Gupta
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Geovisual perspectives on late 20th century Indian archaeology: putting “place” in visualization
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16.30
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Beale & Jones
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The strange case of Dame Mary May’s tomb: deciphering the visual and biographical evidence of a late 17th century portrait effigy
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16.45
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Robin Skeates
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Visualism and archaeology: the case of prehistoric Malta
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17.00
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Alex Zambelli
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Rendering the Invisible Visible: The Moves of London Stone
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17.15
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Minkin & Dawson
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Art and Archaeology: Figure and Ground
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17.30 | Discussion | |
17.45 | Discussion |